of yielding unusual crops of particular value, or in the neighbourhood of towns where fruits and flowers or other costly articles are in demand.

In Cheshire Lord Tollemache has found it necessary to refuse the letting of land in less quantities than thirty acres, unless the tenant has a shop, or some other independent business for his support. In that case the small farm may be worked with the other business, and it can hardly fail. This management, in fact, has proved a sound piece of statesmanship, as conducive to the content and welfare of the population as the radical reformer's wild policy in the case just cited proved disastrous. I hope this digression will be pardoned. I would venture to recommend caution, if I may be allowed to do so, as one who has seen a great deal of farming. If the imaginary division of estates which has been going on for a long time, and especially in recent years, among those who have no land, pleases them, then by all means let them indulge in small farming mentally as much as they like; and if Mr. Jesse Collings desires a small farm there can be no objection to it, because his other occupations will secure him. But to other enthusiasts, owners, or would-be occupiers of land, I would say "Hasten slowly," or your experiments will fail. These remarks may not be out of place, perhaps, in a paper on allotments, since the first step in small farming must necessarily be the technical education of a class of small farmers. At present no such class exists; but if small farming should prove sound economy, the extension of allotments of various sizes will assist in creating it; and as this consideration invests the allotment question with additional interest, I propose offering a few more examples of the system.

The Whitfield allotments were described in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England many years ago. They were started by the late Earl of Ducie close to the houses which stand around or near the allotment field.

The land happens to be very superior. It was worth to a farmer 50s. per acre, and was let in allotments at £3, including rates and taxes, draining and fencing. The size of the plots varies from a quarter of an acre to half an acre, and the success of the experiment was so great that the allotment system has been greatly extended in many adjoining parishes. From the first an annual exhibition of allotment produce has been held in Tortworth Park, where the allottees assemble as Lord Ducie's guests, and compare notes in the exhibition tents with great advantage. The whole village population, young and old, may be seen at work on the plots in those evening hours of spring and autumn when the cultivation of the ground or the ingathering of the produce is carried on. In many cases the garden plot provides one-fourth the bread

corn needed by the family, and more than one-fourth of the potatoes.

The fascination of a garden is felt by none more keenly than the farm labourer. "I would rather have my plot and pay a heavy rent for it," said a corn-grower of 40 rods, "than a five-pound note once a year for nothing." If an intelligent plotman were asked whether he could not now purchase wheat for less than it costs him to produce it, he would probably frame his answer without much regard to the rules of political economy. But although wheat from India may be cheap, and wages may be dear in this country, arbitrary rules limiting the size of allotments seem to me quite out of place. On this point the holders of the plots are themselves the best judges.

In point of fact their area varies with the circumstances of different neighbourhoods. Some years since (1879) I visited the allotments at Helmingham, in Suffolk, on one of the admirablymanaged estates of Lord Tollemache. I knew that when the strike occurred in East Anglia this estate remained undisturbed amidst the general disaffection of the neighbourhood, and, as there are no cow-plots at Helmingham, I felt curious to learn by what wise. methods the casus belli of other neighbourhoods had been avoided.

I found that the secret lay mainly in the liberal provision of allotments close to the cottages. As this is a typical corn-growing estate, consisting of heavy land in a dry district, ill-adapted for pastures, and as Lord Tollemache has managed the property in such a way that he has not at the present time a single farm to let, bad as the times may be for corn-growers; I propose to describe his garden system, to which part of his success at least is due.

On an estate of 7,000 acres there are 200 cottages, all of them model dwellings of their class. The rooms at the early hour of the day, when I entered them, though it was washing day in some of the cottages at the time of my visit, and there were tubs and soap-suds in the kitchens, were, in other respects, models of neatness; the living-rooms, well-furnished with pots of flowers in the windows; the bed-rooms spotless, with the windows a little way open-a sure sign of good house-keeping. In the pantries there were casks of home-brewed beer. "Ah," said I, "there is no public-house at Helmingham, I believe." "No," replied one of the good wives, "and a very good thing too." There is a new doctrine that temptations should be thrown in the way of people, in order to strengthen their minds. But the good woman I have just quoted is not a philosopher; and I must confess that the most inebriate villages I have known were pot-house places, unprovided with allotments; and the most sober spot I have ever

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visited was in Shetland, twenty miles from a public-house, where the fishermen take tea as their only beverage. But sometimes, on the rugged coast of this tea-drinking country, a shipwreck happens, and a keg of whisky comes ashore, and then something occurs which tells against the theory of temptation just noticed, for the people tap the whisky, and a drinking debauch takes place-the minister in charge of the people described it to me as an escape," and I record it with regret. I feel bound to add that the universal home-brewed beer at Helmingham does not lead the cottagers into temptation like the occasional whisky on the coast of Shetland, and their allotments are an additional safeguard.

The rent paid for each allotment is the same as the land bore previous to its separation from the adjoining farm, and its enclosure as a cottage garden. Its extent in each case is half an acre. Each pair of cottages cost about £300, and the annual rent of each, including the flower-garden, is £3 10s. There are pigsties to each, pigs being essential to fertility. The present proprietor has erected a hundred new cottages, and rebuilt and repaired a hundred old ones on the estate. The supply of labourers occupying these cottages amounts to about four men per hundred acres, and all who are familiar with rural affairs will understand what a happy change must have been effected in the neighbourhood by doubling the number of the cottages and attaching to each of them a good allotment. The allotments at Helmingham are close to the houses, and here it may be mentioned that one of the great advantages of isolated cottages is that the gardens may be formed, as in this case, close to them, instead of at a distance, as they must be when the labourers live in villages. The allotments at Helmingham are beyond the usual size, each consisting of half an acre. They were conceded by Lord Tollemache, many years ago, against the wishes of the farm tenantry, who did not anticipate at that time that a labour "difficulty" would ever arise in East Anglia, and that the irresistible attraction of the large gardens would prove most effective in breeding content, restraining migration, and securing to the tenantry of the estate an abundant supply of superior labourers, and of rendering them indifferent to the persuasions of agitators. Better gardens you will hardly find. Each is fertilized by the inevitable fat pig. In fact, some of the cottagers fatten as many as six pigs annually, and the result of the heavy manuring is that the crops are excellent. Half the land is kept in corn, and cleaner and better patches of corn are rarely seen. Potatoes and other green crops alternate with the corn. The wheat is threshed out in the usual manner, by portable steam-power threshing machines, when they happen to be working on some neighbouring farm, and

the cottagers are glad to pay the cost, as they have neither barns for threshing in, nor can they spare the time which the operation would cost them. It is amusing sometimes to hear such assertions as that allotments of half an acre cannot be held with justice to employers. The farmers here thought so once, and saw, as they believed, insuperable difficulties looming in the future. But few arguments are more convincing than a fait accompli. Here are the gardens, half an acre each; they are admirably managed, and the "agricultural interest" has not suffered. In practice the system works well. The cottager does not perform nearly so large a share of the labour required on his allotment as the employers seemed to anticipate. He does not dig the whole of the ground, since his master is willing to assist him sometimes in ploughing it. He does not reap all his corn, for his wife and the bigger bairns help him, and make merry over the short task; and if any persons should assert that women ought not to perform outdoor work, they must be very lackadaisical, and they must have quite forgotten Mother Eve. They are thinking, perhaps, of the gang system," which had to be suppressed by Act of Parliament. No one can defend the gang system, but even so good a man and sincere a friend of the labourer as the late John Grey, of Dilston, did defend and advocate moderate field-work for women, such as the noble race of his own Northumberland always practised. It is necessary to discriminate. One may dance without being disorderly; and if I am told that light work in a garden tends to unsex a woman, or to affect her in any way except beneficially, I must decline to argue the point until I have learned how such a conclusion was arrived at.

Most matters in regard to practical farming can only be settled in the field, and, in most cases, the patent-leather booted and kidgloved theorist is not at all at home in a field. I must ask him, nevertheless, in what part of the country his conclusion about harm done to woman by picking up potatoes, or doing a little weeding, has been arrived at. The same remark applies to an ingenious argument I have heard, that schools have rendered allotments unpopular, because there are now no young people for the light work which a grown-up labourer cannot undertake with profit. This is a mere midsummer dream! Six pigs, or half as many, will so enrich half an acre that a weed will have no room to grow. At any rate, the cost of weeding, if we must reduce it to figures, will not exceed 2s. 6d. in the half-acre, and the children-especially the ten or twelve-year-old boys-will settle with the weeds in the evening. I have known it to be done by moonlight! Then there are the old men. At Helmingham a great deal of the work in the allotments is done by the old men. It is impossible to describe

the minutiae of this business. There is an old saying: "Where there is a will there is a way," and I shall only add that the work is thoroughly done, that hired labour is willingly paid for, and that the farm tenants approve of the allotments, and have reasons for doing so, since the Poor's Rate is considerably reduced by their influence, the old folk are kept out of the Union, and labour of the right sort is secured by the attraction of homes that the men would be loth to leave.

An interesting experiment has been tried in allotments, in a very different neighbourhood, by Sir John B. Lawes, of Rothamstead, which I have watched with great interest. More than thirty years ago Sir John Lawes set apart several acres for garden allotments, increasing the quantity afterwards to sixteen or seventeen acres. The whole of the land was let in plots of one-eighth of an acre, the number of tenants being 171. The rules and regulations of the Rothamsted Allotment Club will be found in Lord Onslow's book, and also in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, 1877, p. 387, in a paper written by Sir John Lawes. The sound principle has been adopted of placing the entire management of the club in the hands. of the labourers themselves. A club-house, where the men meet and spend their evenings, stands in the centre of the allotment field. Any person wishing for an allotment has his name and that of his proposer written on a board which is hung up in the room, and, in the event of vacancies occurring, the names of the candidates are voted on at a meeting of the committee. The annual election of the committee takes place in June, and it is worth notice that a great improvement has taken place in the business tact of the labourers since the election of the first committee thirty years ago. The only beverage served at the club is beer, and each inember serves the office of drawer and care-taker of the beer in turn, according to the number of his allotment. A small fine is imposed for the non-attendance of the drawer at his appointed time in the evening, a penalty of 2d. is imposed on any member repeating an oath in the club-room or the verandah outside the door, and another fine of 6d. for getting vegetables in the allotment-field after 9 o'clock on Sunday morning. Any member who injures his neighbours by letting weeds run to seed, or in any other way, is liable to be dismissed from his tenancy, by a vote of two-thirds of the committee, due notice of the grievance having first been given. Each member of the club pays an entrance-fee of 18., 1d. weekly, and 3d. on the death of any member or his wife; and the sum of £2 is paid to the widow, widower, or nearest relation of any member at his death. Rents are paid in the clubroom to the committee, without trouble to the proprietor, under strict regulations, the committee being somewhat peremptory, so