MOUNTS BAY 341 



farmers of the East of England worked out systems of 

 management which have been very little modified since. 

 From the East of England the improved farming 

 spread all over the country, through the example and 

 precept of reforming landowners, the enterprise of the 

 larger farmers which was stimulated by the growth of 

 population round them, and the missionary zeal of 

 writers like Jethro Tull and Arthur Young, who 

 diffused the information they had derived from the 

 best practitioners. And if under very similar con- 

 ditions of soil, climate, and inaccessibility Welsh 

 farming has dropped very much behind Cornish, the 

 result must be largely set down to the barrier of 

 language that Wales retained and the difficulties of 

 mental rather than of physical intercourse between the 

 west and east of the country. 



The contrast is certainly great enormous when we 

 contrast the market gardening round Penzance with 

 the unintensive stockraising and milk production on 

 the southward shores of Carnarvon and Anglesey, 

 where soil and situation can be but little inferior. 

 The Cornish market gardening is, however, a very 

 special business, and in its most concentrated form is 

 found only in a very limited area round Mounts Bay, 

 the little village of Gulval, about half a mile east of 

 Penzance, being the centre. The land most esteemed 

 lies about half a mile back from the water's edge on 

 the gently rising southern slope ; the soils are mostly 

 light, derived from the decomposed " killas," or clay 

 slate, though here and there are other soils arising from 

 the intrusive volcanic rocks. The determining factors 

 are, however, the warm, growing temperatures that 

 prevail all through the winter, and the freedom from 

 frost or snow, three or four degrees of frost at any time 

 being a very rare occurrence disastrous when it 



