572 
Agriculture of North Wales. 
ability. Women's wages : head dairy-maid, from Ql. to 8/. ; 2nd dairy- 
maid, from 4/. to 6/. ; other female servants, from 30s. to At., according 
to age and ability. All the women-servants work in the field when re- 
quired, at such work as planting and gathering potatoes and at harvest- 
time, loading or spreading muck, or turning and stacking turf. 
' The rents in this country are high, particularly on small farms, where, 
what with rent and poor-rates, I hardly know how they contrive to live; 
but live they do, but very hard : for dinner you will see a small farmer 
have half a salt herring, with potatoes and butter-milk (very poor food 
for a working man) ; his wife and family must content themselves with 
butter-milk and potatoes ; or perhaps, after the father has finished his 
part herring, there will be a scramble amongst the youngsters for the 
bones to suck as a treat. I forgot to mention that they sometimes have 
a little skim-milk cheese with oaten-bread. Some better off than others, 
muster bacon ; yet the amount of poor and county-rates these men pay 
per annum will amount to from At. to 5/. each; in fact, the paupers live 
better than these men. The cloth they wear they weave from wool of 
their own growing, both men and women ; the men a kind of frieze, 
and the women linseys. 
* The landlords of the country stand sadly in their own light in not 
granting leases to tenants who are respectable on the large farms, or such 
as have a sufficient capital to conduct such farms : they can never expect 
their estates to be improved until they do grant leases; for who in his 
senses would lay out money in draining and other improvements without 
some kind of security for his outlay? Thus it is that improvements on 
the best farms have been neglected. The drill-system is general for 
turnips and potatoes throughout Wales; they are seldom seen in beds, 
except in small patches.' 
I have given the above at great length, as it is highly illus- 
trative of many minor points of agricultural economy ; the remarks 
are perfectly applicable to all the poorer districts. 
The country extending in length from Festiniog in the north to 
Dolgelly in the south, and from the Arenlgs in the east to 
Cardigan Bay in the west, a tract of about 20 miles each way, is 
wholly occupied in grazing black cattle and sheep ; the farms are 
large and the country thinly inhabited ; the cattle are not all 
brought to the homestead during the wititer, but are housed in 
detached buildings at some distance from each other, with a 
herdsman to look after each lot ; this system is forced upon the 
upland grazier, as, from the absence of tillage and good perennial 
or artificial meadows, the farmer in such a situation would be 
forced to sell off in autumn the whole of his stock, except about 
six or eight head, for which he can manage to collect sufficient 
provender adjoining his homestead, the manure from the con- 
sumption of which furnishes the dressing for a patch of potatoes, 
followed subsequently by oats and grass-seeds, it would be 
utterly impossible for the mountain grazier to collect at one spot 
