EXCEPTIONAL RENTS 347 



slacken, as countries much farther south improve their 

 methods, and with that the farming must take a more 

 normal and less expensive form. 



Something may, perhaps, be saved on the present 

 extravagant and one-sided manuring, though a priori it 

 is unwise to pronounce that men with so much experi- 

 ence must be wrong. Even so it is difficult to believe 

 that the Penzance farmers can continue to retain 

 their very specially profitable market. They may still 

 continue to grow early potatoes, but they will not 

 be early enough to justify either manures or rents on 

 their present scale. On the whole, the landlords are 

 getting the special profit attaching to the situation of 

 this land ; the growers, as far as we could learn, were 

 not on the average earning much more than other 

 small farmers. But for all that the Cornish market 

 gardening is a notable industry, and presents a fine 

 object-lesson to the farmers on the seaboard of Wales, 

 who as yet have not attempted to take advantage of 

 a very similar climate and situation and a closer 

 proximity to the great markets. 



Over but a limited area do rents of 10 or even 4. 

 an acre prevail ; still, land in West Cornwall is in 

 great demand, and about 2 an acre seemed to be the 

 ordinary rental. We were told that some of the recent 

 demand had arisen from Cornish miners, returned from 

 South Africa with a little money and anxious to settle 

 on the land in their native country. They were said 

 to offer too much for the land, and landlords were 

 blamed for taking them to the detriment of the old 

 tenants. But the grumbling was chiefly directed at 

 small landlords, men who possessed perhaps only a 

 farm or two bought as a speculation in the time of 

 the depression : and we met one man looking for a 

 fresh holding who declared he would only take a farm 



