DEVON SHEEP 361 



out these West Country sheep ; both the Devon long 

 wool and the South Hams belong to the big long- 

 woolled white-faced hornless race that probably came 

 to England from Flanders. When the improvement 

 of sheep set in, Lincoln and Leicester blood was 

 introduced, and the characteristics that now separate 

 the breeds are of no great antiquity nor importance. 

 The Dartmoors, again, are a rougher sheep, nowadays 

 with a grey rather than a white face, but betraying 

 their common origin, modified by selection and 

 hardened by exposure on that wind-swept upland. 

 The usual cider orchard and some newer orchards 

 planted with table fruit completed the farm ; the 

 cider, however, was only made for the men, who could 

 have what they wanted during the day and also take 

 some home. In Devonshire there are a good many 

 of these customary allowances to be added to the 

 standing wage of 155. or i6s. a week for example, a 

 breadth of potatoes on the root land and a cottage at 

 I5d. a week. It is a question though, whether cottage 

 rents will not soon get raised to a level more nearly 

 representing an economic interest on their capital 

 value. 



We were informed that the Duke of Bedford had 

 recently been selling part of his Tavistock pro- 

 perty, and the tenants who wanted to hold on to 

 farms which were yielding them a good living found 

 themselves, to their alarm and disgust, compelled to 

 pay in the open market a good deal more than the 

 capitalized value of their old easy rentals. It was still 

 worse when the rates were raised to correspond to the 

 scale of values not only upon the farms that had been 

 sold, but upon others alongside, until in some cases 

 the rateable value has been fixed higher than the rent 

 actually paid. The change was even more manifest in 



