BULLOCK GRAZING 421 



to superior stallions would induce him to take them 

 up again. Young hunters are not only a risk but 

 a nuisance upon a farm ; the farmer can make no 

 use of them before they are sold or if an accident 

 renders them unfit for market. Though a bit of a 

 hunting man himself, he declared the feeling against 

 hunting was growing, especially among the smaller 

 farmers, who were increasing their stock of poultry 

 in the fields and were careless about shutting them up 

 properly at night. 



We found most of the farmers in the district 

 produced little except summer milk ; farming cheaply 

 and growing their milk upon the natural pastures, 

 they were averse to spending money upon the feeding 

 stuffs and facing all the troubles of management that 

 attend winter dairying. They contended that the 

 higher price of winter milk was not sufficient to pay 

 for the feeding, especially as they had to compete 

 with more favoured districts where the winter is not 

 so severe and cows can graze longer than on the 

 bleak Midland plateau. Moreover, one great milk 

 market, that of the Stilton cheese makers, is confined 

 to the summer. In this district, as in Derbyshire, 

 the cheese maker has become a specialist, taking the 

 milk of many farms, whereas thirty years ago cheese 

 was made in almost every farmhouse. 



Farther south and east the country falls away a 

 little, and along the river valleys in particular in South 

 Leicestershire and Northampton come the famous 

 bullock pastures of the Midlands, where during the 

 summer heavy cattle Herefords, Devons, Welsh, and 

 Irish can be fattened out upon the grass without any 

 artificial aid. It was once all corn land; in 1639, 

 Gabriel Plattes describes the Vale of Belvoir as the 

 best corn land in Europe, but for many years grass 



