96 
Exmoor Reclamation. 
The results of the reclamation of Exmoor, since 1818, may be 
summarised in a very few words : — 
In 1841, when handed over to the management of the present 
owner, there were only two tenants, one of whom paid 40/. and 
the other 30/. a year, and there were only two farm-houses 
and seven cottages ; ten years later a score of good farmhouses 
and homesteads had been constructed, which no Devonshire 
man would rent on any terms, while the landlord derived a small 
and precarious return from a stud of native ponies. When 
twenty-five more years had elapsed there were twenty-eight 
farm-houses and fifty cottages ; all the farms had for several 
years been let to substantial thriving farmers, born and bred in 
the immediate neighbourhood ; and the applications for farms, 
when vacant, gave the landlord ample choice. The four hundred 
ponies had been reduced to forty mares, whose foals were sold 
annually. The summer and winter pastures in hand, with 
additional rape-crops, were consumed by 9000 ewes and lambs. 
Steam subsoiling and cultivation were rapidly preparing wild 
land for crops which would enable the breeding flock to be in- 
creased by at least one-half. 
The substantial improvements have not been executed without 
the " master's eye." For many years, Mr. F. W. Knight has 
spent the greater part of the Parliamentary recess on Exmoor, 
superintending the details of his pastoral and agricultural in- 
novations in person. In three visits to Simon's Bath Lodge in 
1875, 1876, and 1877, I have traversed the district and realised 
the progress of the works which I have attempted to describe. 
Dairying. — The North Devon farmers have within the last 
few years opened up a good market in London for the speciality 
of the county, namely, clotted cream. But up to the present time 
the operations of dairying, and particularly of butter-manufacture, 
are conducted in as barbarous a manner as in any part of 
England or Ireland. Mr. George Allender observed, in a paper 
on Dairying, read before the Farmers' London Club, in 1877, 
that, " Nothing commands a more certain sale than first-class 
butter ; there is plenty of second-class. The difference is many 
pence per pound, and the difference between first-class and second- 
class in ninety cases out of a hundred is only a matter of better 
management and attention to trifles. . . . ; three-fourths of the 
butter is spoiled after it is churned, from not getting the butter- 
milk thoroughly out of it and not making it up close, so as to 
exclude the air." 
The North Devon Dairy farmers have everything in their 
favour, an excellent breed of cows, soil, climate, and generally 
unlimited supplies of soft running water ; but their operations 
are conducted entirely by rule-of-thumb, entirely dependent on 
