The Making of the Land in England. 
363 
deed 60 feet wide ; they are now reduced to 30. At this 
width they appropriate 33 acres of land over which the public 
enjoys rights of free passage, insisting at the same time on 
the maintenance of a hard level weather-proof track of ample 
width, made, preserved, and protected solely at the cost of the 
proprietors of the land through which they pass. The cattle of 
the owners of the soil are prohibited from grazing its sides, and 
the very hedges and trees, which might and which have afforded 
them shelter, have to be reduced to statutable dimensions for 
the convenience and enjoyment of the casual wayfarer. These 
desirable results, attracting so little remark, regarded as they 
are as matters of course, and almost the production of Nature, 
have been effected only at a heavy charge on the real estate 
of the parish. Fifteen acres at the least are entirely lost in the 
metalled surface of the highways, and the account for the whole 
of the secondary works of reclamation will stand approximately 
as follows : — 
£ 
3i miles of parish roads, at £700 per mile to make .. 2,216 
The two boundary fences on either side, at £200 per 
mile 633 
The one mile of occupation road and its fences .. .. 550 
36 miles of quick fences to the 150 enclosures, at £112 
per mile 4,032 
200 gates and gateways to the enclosures, at 40s, . . 400 
1600 acres drained at £6 6s. per acre, say , 10,000 
Total £17,831 
But the record cannot be closed here. Roads without bridges, 
carriageways without footpaths and causeways, grazing grounds 
without waterings, lairs or cattle-pens, would be regarded as 
incomplete. Even the prairie requires its corrals. Rights of 
way, allotments, orchards, buildings for the poor, and grave- 
yards must be taken into account before the average cost value 
of an acre in the typical parish can be estimated. 
Beyond this there remains yet one noteworthy adjunct, which 
from the earliest time to the present has marked and capped 
every advance in civilization that has given character and value 
\o country estates. 
The owners of the soil, sometimes with enthusiasm, sometimes 
without, but still always somehow, have regarded the erection 
and maintenance of a place of public worship as a work without 
which their rural economy would be incomplete. To bring the 
expenditure on this head into the account is no fanciful or 
extreme stretch of the imagination, but would on reflection seem 
to be a solid actuarial item in the schedule of operations, by 
which our ancestors enhanced the value of every rood of their 
