Cow-Keeping hy Farm Labourers. 
531 
go out to harvest-work. The inclosure of commons has completely abolished 
the old freeholders in other places, and even where, as at Whitejarish, there 
is a common, their property generally gets in a disgraceful state, and their 
cotta2;es go to ruin. My endeavour, by letting cow-land in the neighbourhood 
of villages, and large acre or two-acre allotments to tradesmen and wood- 
dealers, who have a horse, is to confer greater advantages than those of which 
the old freeholder has been deprived. It has a tendency to keep trade in the 
country parishes, and to keep labourers in them on the prospect of some 
day having a cow-land. As to moral advantages to the men themselves — 
" (1.) It gives an encouragement to soberness and providence, as they may 
lose their land if they farm it badly. 
" (2.) It is healthy for the family to have milk. I fancy I can pick out a 
cow-land child in a school from others. 
" (3.) It employs the wife and eldest daughter without obliging them to 
work in the fields, which has a directly immoral tendency, insures an uncom- 
fortable home, and wears out the clothes. 
" (4.) It helps to teach the boys the care of cows and pigs and the milking 
of cows, and the girls dairy work. 
" From my experience, it has acted verj- beneGcially in unexpected ways 
at Whiteparish. The land was lately purchased of a ruined freeholder, and 
■was completely worked out. Part of the cow-land was an old cottage- 
garden, grown to weeds ; and they asked to plough it up, which was refused. 
They sowed clover, and that, and the rest of the grass-land, is wonderfully 
improved in the two years of their occupation. The woodman's pasture is 
twice as much manured, and looks twice as well as the same portions of 
the field let to larger tenants. The allotments of cow-land are loaded with 
manure. In one case, an old policeman, on a pension, has been enabled by 
the cow-land to pay 5s. a week towards the expense of a daughter as pupil- 
teacher, and asked for half an acre more allotment to keep another cow for a 
second daughter. 
" In one case the man has died, and the widow and her son keep on the 
land, and have hitherto thereby kept entirely off the parish. In another, the 
water-meadow man, an old foreman and labourer, quite keeps his head 
above water." 
Sir A. K. Macdonald, Bart., writes from Woolmer, Liphook, 
that milk is not readily obtainable in that localitv, and that the 
few labourers who keep cows enjoy common rights which enable 
them to do so. 
Earl Cathcart has been good enough to obtain the following 
replies from Mr. R. W. F. Mills, the eminent land agent 
of \ ork, whose opinions on this subject are entitled to great 
weight, and are entirely concurred in by Lord Cathcart. 
" It is desirable that a farm labourer should have a cow ; milk is not other- 
wise readily obtainable. 
" The cow should be kept by the man if he has land, by the employer if 
otherwise, and the cow should be the property of the employer in the latter 
case, and there would then be a deduction in weekly wages. 
" The quantity of pasture allotted for a cow varies according to quality, but 
where he has a field or two the quantity is regulated by the size of the fields 
more than by the actual quantity required. From three to four acres may be 
taken as the average for summer and winter maintenance. 
" The pasture is hired with the cottage, and from the owner of the land. 
" The food purchased for the cow is a little linseed cake during the year. 
