The Agriculture of Staffordshire. 
311 
food and bedding are drawbacks wliich reduce the average 
returns, the cheese is as good as, and in some instances the 
pasturage is quite equal to, that of any parts of Staffordshire. 
Tlie parish of Butterton, which is ahnost entirely in grass, is 
perhaps the richest in the county, and the land is entirely the 
property of fanners and others living in the village ; and so good 
is it, and so great the competition for it, that GOO/, has recently 
been given for 5 acres b}' a small farmer, and one freeholder can 
boast of 9 acres worth 1000/., with the cottage and cow-house. 
There are other localities where 3/. to 4/. an acre are common 
rents, and some of the land is rented at 5/. This latter rent can 
only be paid by men who work at the copper mines, or lime- 
stone quarries, while their families do the work of the dairy. 
A farmer of 50 or 60 acres seldom pays more than bOs. an acre. 
The value and the rent of land have greatly increased of late 
years. The highest returns in cheese-making which I met with 
were in this parish, where a woman with 4 cows and 12 acres 
of pasture made 22 cwts. of cheese. The great drawback of 
the hill district is the climate, which, though favourable to grass, 
prevents the cultivation of a due proportion of ploughed land. 
The bleakest exposures are quite bare of trees ; there are a few 
in the smooth wide hollows, which resemble the coombs and 
basins among the chalk hills, but no kind of fruit trees thrive 
even in the most sheltered situations, except the gooseberry and 
currant. Apples and cherries are rare, and even the damson, 
which flourishes at Wootton-under-Wever and the adjacent 
parishes, where it is largely grown for sale at distant markets, is 
unable to travel the few hundred feet which would bring it into 
the gardens of the hill farmers. In ascending the highlands the 
gradations in the scale of vegetation are very striking. The 
steep road which leads from Oakamoor, in the narrow glen of 
the Churnet, is for the first half-mile like a white chalk lane in 
Surrey ; but the oaks and beeches are then replaced by rows of 
Scotch firs, which become blacker and more ragged in appear- 
ance, till at the edge of Wever Hill a stunted scrub or two of 
elder and thorn alone remain in that unsheltered site. The 
northern portion of the hill-district has been already described 
as consisting of millstone grit and other rocks ; they are covered 
by soil and grass of a very inferior description. The line where 
the two formations meet is very clearly drawn on the surface by 
the sudden change in the vegetation. This line crosses the road 
halfway up the hill above the village of Onecote, and is the 
boundary between the clovers and good herbage of the limestone 
and the harsh rough grass of the moorland ; you step at once 
from 30s. an acre to 25. %d. The hay-fields are three weeks 
later, the stone-wall fences are blacker, and the country poor and 
VOL. v.— S.S. Y 
