SIZE OF HOLDINGS 43 



general opinion and the official returns is the fact 

 that each farm is still returned under a separate 

 heading, so that though one man may be working 

 four contiguous farms they do not appear in the 

 statistics as a single larger holding. When rents had 

 reached their lowest level and times still looked black 

 for farming in the 'nineties, the men who had learned 

 to make money under the new dispensation added 

 farm to farm ; but of this process no record appears 

 in the agricultural statistics, where almost the only 

 change to be recorded is the division into separate 

 tenancies of some area which had hitherto been 

 regarded as a single farm in the estate books. The 

 accretion, however, had been arrested at the time of 

 our visit, for farms were no longer to be had easily, 

 little land was coming into the open market, and that 

 was in steady demand at the current rents of about 

 153. an acre for the better land, and 7s. 66. for that 

 on the hill. Even 205. an acre all round had been 

 lately paid for a good Down farm. Labour was 

 obtainable in satisfactory quantity ; and though " silly 

 Sussex " is rather a byword, the men of the hill are 

 very sound hands among sheep, and if stubborn and 

 wedded to the old ways, yet very dependable and 

 possessed of a measure of originality and native 

 character rare in southern England. But the stock- 

 men are always the pick of the agricultural labourers ; 

 they have to be continually using their judgment, 

 and the Southdown shepherd lives out among his 

 sheep to an unusual extent. 



Though sheep-breeding is the mainstay of the 

 South Down farmer, it has always been the custom 

 to buy in young bullocks in the autumn and winter 

 them in lodges high on the hillsides, feeding them on 

 the oat straw and on the seeds, hay, and roots, and 

 4 



