AN UNECONOMICAL SYSTEM 105 



yard " in winter. Sheep, of course, cannot be kept, 

 and the only dairying is for the purely local supply of 

 milk. It is difficult to understand how a system of 

 farming so wasteful of labour can possibly survive ; 

 after ploughing one of his selions the holder must take 

 his plough and team by road perhaps a quarter of a 

 mile to begin upon another ; even in the strip itself 

 there is waste, because the dividing furrow forms no 

 inconsiderable fraction of a land only one rod wide. 

 But though the holders are very sensible of the 

 advantage of adding one selion to the next, and will 

 always bid heavily for such plots adjacent to their own 

 as may come into the market, we were generally 

 assured that there was little or no prospect of per- 

 suading men to a general survey and redivision of the 

 land which would give every man his full acreage in 

 a single plot. Each man fears that he might get 

 placed on a piece of the poorer land, and the present 

 system has endured so long that the holders regard 

 the inconveniences as normal. 



There are no longer any remains of the co-opera- 

 tive working which made the medieval open field 

 something of an economic unit ; each man owns his 

 own implements and works entirely for his own hand. 

 There are a certain number of " higglers " who will 

 plough and cultivate at customary prices per acre ; 

 these men are chiefly employed by the village trades- 

 men who own a few selions but do not maintain a 

 crew-yard. For all its disadvantages the land is in 

 good demand ; 60 to 80 an acre has been paid 

 recently for selions that have come on the market. 

 This is for freehold land ; copyhold land, which is 

 subject to a small fine, fetches about 5 an acre less. 

 The long custom has evolved a cheap system of con- 

 veyancing, in which there is no attempt to set out a 



