674 The Farm Labourers of England and Wales. 
inmates of tlie cottages, but rents are usually charged for them 
in addition to the rents of the houses. Speaking generally, 
gardens are fewest and smallest in the Midlands and the 
Northern Counties, especially in contiguity to the manufactur- 
ing or mining districts. In some of those districts what 
would be styled allotments elsewhere are called gardens, and if 
within the bounds of a village they are usually let at very high 
rents. Potato ground is frequently allowed by farmers to all 
their labourers, free of charge, in districts where gardens are 
most scarce, and it is said by many witnesses that the men do 
not care for gardens or allotments. Where they earn high 
wages, it is added, they would rather buy all their vegetables 
than take the trouble of growing them. There is a great deal 
in custom, and where young labourers have grown up in cottages 
devoid of gardens they do not feel the want of them ; but the 
value of a garden to a family is out of all proportion to the 
labour bestowed upon it, and it is a bad sign when a man does 
not care for one. In Hampshire and Sussex, where allotments 
are comparatively few in number, the gardens are generally 
large, and often well stocked with fruit trees ; while in Bedford- 
shire and Hunts, where gardens are sometimes few or small 
in the villages, allotments are more numerous and larger than 
in any other counties. But in some parts of Nottinghamshire 
and Leicestershire allotments are fewest where gardens are least 
numerous and smallest. 
A garden of moderate size attached to a cottage is more 
advantageous than a large allotment a mile away, not only 
because of the superior convenience of working in the former 
for the man and his family, but also because fruit is commonly 
grown in gardens, and seldom in allotments. Even in the large 
and cheap allotments of the Woburn district, attached to 
cottages though they commonly are, the lack of fruit trees is 
unpleasantly striking. A farm labourer who has a good garden 
frequently pays his rent from the sale of fruit. 
Allotments are most numerous, and as a rule cheapest, in 
parishes forming parts of the estates of large landowners. But 
not a few of the smaller landowners are strongly favourable to 
the allotment system. The rents are usually low for land a 
mile or more from a village, and frequently very high within it. 
In some of the “ close villages ” on the great estates, however, 
the rents of allotments are moderate. It seems absurd for 
agricultural land to be let by the square yard, but allotments are 
so let in a few counties. The statement common to nearly all 
the reports in the several districts that the supply of allot- 
ments is equal to the demand must often be taken to mean only 
