374 Glimpses of Farming in the Channel Islands. 
suggestive of penury in the style of living wliicli the larger 
Jersey farmers adopt. On the contrary, the houses and ap- 
pointments, interior and exterior, of many a Jersey farmer 
holding (and generally owning) twenty acres of land, strike the 
visitor as superior to those of most English farmers of two 
hundred acres. After finding the Jersey farmer at work in the 
field with his men, it is somewhat surprising to a stranger to be 
conducted by him into a drawing-room fitted up with all the 
modern decorations found in a middle-class suburban residence. 
There is not much " tally-ho " for the Jersey farmers, I believe ; 
but the plough does not keep them from getting a fair educa- 
tion, while their wives and daughters happily distribute their 
attentions between the cow and the piano. 
It is the great returns obtained from the production of early 
potatoes which have forced up rents to extravagant rates. In 
all probability there will have to be a considerable fall before 
long, for early potatoes have this year been coming more abun- 
dantly than heretofore from other sources than the Channel 
Islands, and prices have been very low in two out of the last 
three years. There was, I believe, a downward tendency in 
rents and land values two years ago; but it was apparently 
stopped by the large returns obtained from the potato crop 
last year. 
Nothing more strikingly indicates change in the system of 
farming in Jersey than this sentence in the prize essay of 
1859 : "Jersey was once famous for the cultivation of potatoes." 
The -writer proceeds to point out that, before the visitation of 
the potato disease, the production of 18 tons of tubers per acre 
was not uncommon, whereas it was a good crop in 1859 to yield 
8 or 9 tons per acre. It is to be borne in mind that " old " or 
fully matured potatoes are here referred to, the practice of growing 
new potatoes for export not having begun. The general course of 
cropping in 1859, the same wTiter states, was one of five years, 
as follows : — (1) turnips, mangolds, parsnips ; (2) potatoes, 
and frequently carrots or parsnips ; (3) wheat, in which clover 
and ryegrass are sown ; (4) hay ; (5) hay. In this division, 
potatoes occupied only about one-tenth of the land, and farms 
of 20 acres, with few exceptions, where meadow-lands or 
orchards predominate, are said to have been thus divided : — Hay 
and pasture, 10 acres; turnips, 2; mangolds, 1 ; parsnips, 1 ; 
carrots, | ; potatoes, 2 ; wheat, 3^. Even among the old- 
fashioned farmers, the course is greatly changed now, being one of 
potatoes for two years, corn for one year, and clover or mixed seeds 
for one year or two years. More commonly, however, the farmers 
grow potatoes for two or three years, and then rest the land by 
