Famihuj in Devon and Cornwall. 
531 
He is bound further to mention that in all his travels through 
he two counties he never met with bad butter, for all the butter 
vhich appeared on the hotel and other tables was invariably 
sweet and good. To test the keeping qualities of one dairy, a 
:>ample was taken home and kept for a month, at the end of 
»vhich time it was every bit as good as at first, and had not 
changed its flavour. Severe critics might say that it never had 
much of a flavour to change, and in this respect it certainly was 
uferior to the best of raw-cream butter. But the latter varies 
greatly, and in some respects is not so reliable as butter made 
.Voni the scalding process. Besides, absence of strong flavour is 
rften more noticeable than the presence of much sweetness in 
:he foreign butter that appears on the tables of the great London 
md other hotels. 
Fields and Fences. 
Devonshire is well known as the land of small enclosures. 
In an interesting essay on this subject in Vol. V. of the First 
Series of this Journal, Mr. Grant, of Exeter, estimates that within 
an area of 37,000 acres dealt with, there existed 1,651 miles of 
fences, occupying 2,612 acres, or 1\ per cent, of the whole. The 
average size of the fields he found to be 4a. 2r. 22p., and 
out of 7,997 enclosures 7,670 were less than 10 acres apiece. 
This estimate is applicable to many districts at the present day, 
if indeed it is not in excess of actual facts Need of shelter is 
urged as the chief reason for the retention of these numberless 
division fences, though, curiously enough, the greatest proportion 
of small enclosures is to be found in the valleys aud on the 
best land where trees and plantations abound. On many of the 
higher districts, where trees are scarce and shelter more needed, 
the fields are larger. Fully one half of the existing fences 
might in places be removed without unduly exposing the land 
or depriving it of shelter, and much land could thereby be 
added to the cultivated area. Many instances were noticeable 
of adjoining fields, of 2 to 3 acres apiece, on the same farm, being 
under the same crop, where the division fences could be spared 
without the slightest interference with the cropping, or to the 
prejudice of the grazing of the seeds. 
The fences, or more correctly speaking the banks — for they 
are mainly of earth with a short growth of scrub on the top — are 
generally not less than 2 yards wide at bottom, 6 to 8 feet 
high, and so nearly perpendicular that they are not easily 
negotiable by sportsmen who have weight and age to carry. 
Being thus composed of a soft and loose material — covered only 
with grass, or weeds, or ferns, and such like — the banks are easily 
