THE SOUTH MIDLANDS I I 



developed as in North Wiltshire, the conditions are 

 much more favourable. 



In the hill districts of Gloucestershire, farms which 

 rented from 20s to 31s gd an acre in the seventies, now 

 stand at from 12s to 8s. 



Mr Spencer says of this stretch of country, "The poorest 

 arable land has suffered most of all. The cold, bleak 

 soil of the Cotswold Hills, and the thin chalk land on 

 the Berkshire Downs and Chiltern Hills, when prices 

 fall below a certain level, can no longer be cultivated at 

 a profit, and as they cannot be laid down, must econo- 

 mically drop out of cultivation." ^ 



Turning to the South Midlands, Mr Pringle has 

 given a vivid sketch of the decline of agriculture in Bed- 

 fordshire, Northamptonshire, and Huntingdonshire. 



The cold, wet seasons from 1875 to 1880 gradually 

 put the heaviest clays out of workable condition, and 

 started the ruin of the rest. And the mischief was not 

 confined to arable land. The finest pastures of North- 

 amptonshire were deteriorated by the icy rains of 1879 ; 

 the grasses became coarse and fell to the level of store 

 grazing, while " fluke " destroyed flocks by the thousand, 

 and swept away farmers' capital. And since 1879 there 

 have been continually falling markets, and the farmer 

 has been unable to recover his capital. 



" Serious loss, if not ruin," he says, " threatens everybody 

 whose capital is represented by or invested in land. I 

 much doubt whether half of the arable farmers of the 

 three counties could pay 20s. in the £. Were I to 

 accept the evidence given to me without qualification, I 

 would be compelled to report that over a large propor- 

 tion of these counties, farming has assumed all the 

 features of a bankrupt industry." ^ 



Up to 1890 graziers had done fairly well, but since that 

 year the fall in the value of fat stock, and the scarcity 

 and dearness of store cattle, have pulled them down too. 



In these, as in the eastern counties, the heavy clays 

 and the light lands have suffered most, while there is, in 

 all of them, a residuum of exceptionally good and well 



' Spencer, Oxford, etc., p. 29. ^ Pringle, Beds, etc., p. 54. 



