208 Cottage Gardens, live Stock of the Cottage?', fyc. 



supply his wants. I have rated the produce of the cow iow, and its value 

 at Id. per quart, sweet, at the lowest country rate ; near towns it is doubled 

 or trebled in value. About 3/. might be saved in labour on the large 

 establishment, by employing the plough; but circumstances will always 

 regulate this. With regard to the produce of the field department, its 

 application by the English and Scotch is widely different. In Scotland the 

 oats will be ground into meal, and the barley into barley flour ; the five and 

 a half bolls oats is within one boll of what would suffice a family all the 

 year over for breakfast, with milk, made into pottage. The barley flour 

 will make bannocks, which are always on the table at dinner ; potatoes and 

 milk, cooked in one or other of the " hundred and one " ways of which 

 they are susceptible, furnish a light supper for the greater part of the 

 year. In the highest establishment, therefore, very little will require to 

 be purchased, and about 4 lbs. of butter may be sold weekly during the 

 summer months, by a frugal wife, to assist in getting clothes to the children, 

 paying books and school fees, &c. This is the way we live in Scotland : 

 we like our oatmeal pottage, our barley bannocks, and our independence. 

 As wheat cannot enter into the culture suited to a cottager, whose cow 

 would perish on wheat straw, the system will not be so profitable to an 

 English family. While a Scots housewife would have her oats, barley, 

 and peas made into meal and flour, for bread and pottage, an English 

 cottager's wife would convert the barley into malt, if His Grace of Welling- 

 ton allowed ; the peas she would have split for making into soup, a very 

 excellent dish, too ; but the oats, so necessary for " hawkee's " fodder, 

 would have to be sold and converted into quartern loaves, which might 

 bring about two and a half loaves in the week, at 9d. The prejudice, 

 however, in the south is so strong against the use of oatmeal, that I shall 

 not attempt to remove it. With regard to mills, in Scotland we are every 

 where supplied with water-mills, the owners of which drive our corn to 

 and from the mill, and grind it for an allowance of a twentieth part. Where 

 such cannot be got in England, one of the hand-mills must be resorted 

 to ; but it might be better if a miller by profession would purchase one of 

 the most approved, and grind the corn of the cottagers at the same rates 

 as they do in Scotland. The only implement I have to recommend to 

 abridge labour is a kind of plough-hoe, which I invented last season ; it 

 operates on the same principle as a Dutch hoe, and for surface weeds a 

 man may push it before him," and work as fast as he can walk ; it will go to 

 any depth, being guided by a wheel before the hoe. A drawing of this 

 implement will be sent for the Gardener's Magazine. With regard to a 

 horse, this can only, in my opinion, be adopted when the country is in a 

 state to improve waste lands ; at present the poor are in immediate want of 

 some means of support. The improvement of waste lands for cottagers or 

 pendiclers would require a long essay of itself. 



The facts I have stated being familiar to my mind, I do not know that I 

 have exaggerated in any one instance ; if what I have stated be thought 

 worthy of publishing, and be of any benefit to my fellow-countrymen, it 

 will give me much pleasure. 



The Cottarman's Friend. 



January, 1830. 



