310 
Tlie AyricuUure of Staffurdshire. 
grass, and Gs. for a strong crop. Beer is given when the hay is 
carried, on the same principle as at harvest. Frequently a bonus 
of IO5. is given at the end of haytime, and afternoon luncheons 
are allowed. Mowing-machines are now very much reducing the 
expenses. 
A dairy-maid capable of managing a dairy of forty cows, without 
a mistress, receives from 18/. to 22/. a year and board ; assistants, 
with a mistress, receive from 8/. to 14/, 
The usual wages of a milker are 14^. a week all the year round, 
besides the harvest perquisites. Common labourers get 12s. in 
winter, and they do hoeing or taskwork, according to custom. 
Married ploughmen receive 125., a house and garden, carriage of 
coal, which costs about lO.y. per ton at the pit, and ten rods of 
potato-ground, manured and prepared, and allotted in the field of 
the employer. The total amounts to 15s. a week. Day men also 
get 12s., and the potato-ground on farms where this custom pre- 
vails. Local differences in the price of wages in different parts 
of the county are slight. In the south the labourers are drawn 
off by the mining and manufacturing towns; in the north by the 
potteries. A man can go from one extreme of the county to 
another in two hours and a half for less than 5s. Around Burton 
the employment of a large number of men in the great breweries 
in the winter months only causes an unequal disposition of labour 
in that locality. 
Statute fairs, with all their bad accompaniments, are upheld 
at Burton, Uttoxeter, Tamworth, and Fazeley. On the occasion 
of these rough carnivals, young persons of both sexes crowd the 
streets and market-place, where the hiring proceeds. The most 
respectable repair punctually to their engagements, but they are 
exposed to the evil influence of those who are bent on mere 
pleasure and dissipation. The evils are apparent, and it is much 
to be desired that masters would discourage the fairs by hiring^ 
servants elsewhere. 
The Limestone and Moorland Districts. 
It is seldom that romantic scenery and fine land are found 
together ; but they frequently are on the limestone range that ends 
at the Wever Hills. Except in the river glen called Dove Dale, 
with its huge walls of grey limestone 800 feet high, the rock 
seldom appears at the surface, which is generally covered with 
grass. The hills are as smooth as the Downs of Hampshire and 
Wiltshire, but they are on a larger scale, and the sheep, which 
are scattered very thinly over them, are all of a heavy long- 
woolled breed. Cows are the grazing stock of this singular 
district, and though the long winter and the difficulty of finding 
