512 
Cow-Keeping hy Farm Labourers. 
Bearing in mind the medical evidence which has sometimes 
come before the public on the deterioration of the diet of farm 
labourers by the substitution of tea, coffee, and beer for milk, 
one cannot but feel gratified to find that in certain districts they 
still keep cows. Several years ago I wrote upon this subject 
in a well-known Review, and described the advantages which 
some labourers' families in Sussex derived from their cows. 
I described what I had seen on the estates of the Earl of 
Chichester and others, and I expressed a hope that proprietors, 
on suitable soils and in districts where the genius of dairy 
management exists, would offer the farm labourers on their 
estates the opportunity of keeping cows. The readers of rural 
literature need not be reminded that cow-keeping was formerly 
almost universal among the peasantry of England, and that at 
a later period farm labourers very frequently kept cows on 
highways and wastes, under a system which has become illegal, 
so far as the roads are concerned, and impracticable on the 
wastes, which, in fact, have been ploughed up. I do not recom- 
mend the revival of obsolete and objectionable customs, but 
when old systems wear out it may be possible to introduce new 
methods to succeed them with advantage. The cows on Lord 
Chichester's estate do not run either on highways or commons ; 
they are kept on rent-paying pastures, set apart for them on 
land in the occupation of a farming tenant, a member of the 
Royal Agricultural Society of England. 
The method of keeping cows contemplated in this article 
applies to pasture-land only, and it will be understood that my 
remarks are limited to the pastoral or mixed districts. Labourers 
cannot keep cows with advantage on thin chalks, the rubbles, 
or the rag-stones, and they must dispense with them on the South 
Downs generally and on the Cotswolds ; but they might keep 
many more than they do at present in the Weald and in the 
intermediate districts generally, which are less pastoral than 
Cheshire, and more so than Norfolk or the wolds of Lincoln- 
shire. They might keep cows in numerous districts where at 
present the main obstacle is their want of skill. The seeds of 
the necessary knowledge might be sown with great advantage 
in the intermediate districts ; and I hope that those proprietors 
of pasture-land who can spare a few plots of their acres in 
localities which are at present destitute of cottagers' cows, will 
visit some of the estates referred to in this article, for the 
purpose of introducing a system which has proved exceedingly 
beneficial on those estates. 
With a view to obtaining reliable information, I compiled a 
list of queries and submitted them to a number of gentlemen in 
various parts of England. My subject aided me, and the zeal 
