518 
Cow-Keeping ly Farm Labourers. 
"Foresters" they lived, the other day, in hovels; they now 
reside in houses. As the method of helping the farm labourers 
of this estate has been to divide the home farm of the proprietor 
among them, and thus convert them into small tenants, I should 
quit my subject in describing it, though in doing so the reader 
would be made acquainted with an admirable example of the 
patience and the large-hearted benevolence which are necessary 
to those land-proprietors who would introduce changes and im- 
provements, such as cow-keeping by labourers, into new districts. 
I have not met with a single objector to the system of cow- 
keeping recommended in this article among any persons who 
are practically acquainted with the svstem, though some have 
objected to it who have never seen it. I am glad to reckon 
Mr. \\ illiam Smith, Woolston, Bletchley Station, among those 
who have encouraged labourers in keeping cows in a district 
where the practice is rarely met with. Mr. Smith says : — 
" It is by no means desirable that a cow should be kept for farm labourers, 
neither is it positively necessary that milk should be readily provided for liim, 
for most of our best men have been raised without anj". 
" If a cow is kept it should be kept by the man himself, by hiring land of 
his master or elsewhere, and buying the extra food needed in winter. 
" In one case that I know of the man rents a 2-acre field and buys the 
winter food. In another case the man keeps 2 cows where he rents 8 acres, 
one half of which he mows and the other half he grazes. 
" In the two cases noticed above the land is hired distinct from the cottage ; 
in the former case it is hired from his master, and in the latter case from 
other ownere. 
" In the former case the man buys hay for the winter, in the latter case he 
provides it himself. 
" They sell the produce of the dairy in butter and skimmed milk. 
" The butter is under an average in quality. No methods of insurance 
have been adopted." 
One of Mr. Smith's men has kept a cow for some years. Mr. 
Smith does not recommend cow-keeping as a general custom 
among farm labourers, as he thinks that " in any district where 
milk is needed, there will be little industrious men spring up to 
provide it." I am sorry to say that this has not hitherto^ been 
the case. Labourers, having lost the privilege of keeping cows, 
have abandoned the use of milk. They cannot produce it, and 
they will not purchase it, and have become generally ignorant 
of its value. 
Sir T. D. Acland, Bart., M.P., writing from Killerton, Exeter, 
repeats the complaint that comes from all quarters of the diffi- 
culty experienced by farm labourers in obtaining milk. I believe 
that Sir Tliomas has endeavoured to obviate the evil, but I 
have not seen his estate : it does not lie in a district where cow- 
keeping by farm labourers is understood, and the difficulty of 
introducing the system would be very great. Sir Thomas has 
