358 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
of dalesmen fed almost exclusively upon oatmeal; either as “ hasty 
pudding,” that is, boiled smooth and eaten while hot with milk or 
treacle; or “lumpy,” that is, boiled quickly and not thoroughly 
stirred; or else in one of the three kinds of cake which they call 
“ fermented,” viz., “riddle cake,” ‘ held-on cake,” or ‘ turn-down 
cake”; or of a fourth kind called ‘clap cake.” They also made 
“tiffany cakes” of wheaten flour, which was separated from the 
bran by being worked through a hair-sieve = tiffany, or temse 
(tamis). The dalesmen then lived upon the agricultural produce 
of their land; but in some respects the district of Nidderdale 
proper differs from the surrounding country. 
In Nidderdale much of the upper part of the dale consists 
of property farmed by the landlords. ‘There is no trace of any 
other state of things having existed in Nidderdale than that 
of occupation by individual landowners. -But in Wharfedale, 
Coverdale, Wensleydale, and on the slopes of the hills to the east 
of Nidderdale, the country is covered with little step-like terraces 
called “‘ranes.” ‘The sides of the limestone slopes of Wharfe- 
dale are covered with them, each being twenty or thirty or more 
yards long and two or three yards wide, and though they almost 
always there run horizontally, yet occasionally they lie up and 
down. ‘These ‘“ranes” lay on land which belonged to the village 
communities of the dale, and each man in the village had one. 
One man held a ‘“‘rane” for three years, when he exchanged for 
another. ‘This system was in full working order down to the 
time of the grandfathers of the present generation of men about 
fifty years old. With the decline of agriculture and the increase of 
grazing farming, consequent upon the departure of manufacturing, 
power to enclose was applied for, under the Enclosure Act [6 and 
7 William IY., cap. 115], 1836, which gave power to enclose, 
without a special Act, “open and common arable and pasture 
lands, and lands commonable during part of the year only, by 
Commissioners with consent of two-thirds in number and value 
of proprietors, or, without Commissioners, with consent of seven- 
eighths in number and value.” Long stone fences were built, 
and the ‘“‘ranes” remained as the monuments of a bygone age. 
This was followed by a rapid depopulation of the dales. The 
stream of emigration set in to the great manufacturing towns of 
Leeds and Bradford; so that the population of the dales is not 
now one-third of what it was early in the century. 
