district, set upon brick pinnings, and roofed with slate or corrugated iron, with proper water troughings, large underground cemented cisterns to collect the rain, and all necessary outbuildings.

The houses vary in size. The best of them must contain six rooms, while others are on a more humble scale, but all seem thoroughly well built and comfortable-such habitations as men put up with their own money to dwell in for the remainder of their days and to leave to their children after them. We entered the first, and were introduced to the wife of its owner, a woodman, who during parts of the year works at hurdle-making and tree-felling in the neighbourhood. On a table in the sitting-room lay many rolls of cloth. These were the produce of the Winterslow spinning and weaving industry, founded and, as I gathered, to some extent subsidised by Mrs. Poore, the wife of Major Poore. The cloth, which is manufactured from the wool of Hampshire Down sheep, is an excellent and closely woven homespun that, as is shown by the certificates hung upon the wall, has gained much commendation at the Albert Hall exhibitions and elsewhere. Up to the date of my visit, however, this venture could not be said to pay, chiefly for the reason that customers will not purchase home-carded woollen goods, and at Winterslow no perfected carding machine was available. Therefore the raw material had to be sent to Scotland to be carded at an expense greater than it could bear. The price of it is 5s. a yard of 30 inches in width. This is not exorbitant, but homespun at that figure must face competition. Thus, as it chanced, my companion on this visit was wearing clothes made of a most admirable and lasting cloth which he purchased in Connemara. It cost him 2s. 6d. a yard of 36 inches in width, that is, 50 per cent. less than the Winterslow product.

The husband of the manageress of this weaving industry was the owner of an acre plot, and his house, I understood, cost about £150 to build, some of it borrowed money. This acre, which is a strip twenty-two yards in width, was divided

into a little flower garden in front of the house, planted with well-trained and pruned espalier apples, thirty yards of kitchen garden set with winter vegetables, thirty yards of springing rye, and a hundred yards of mixed white turnips and swedes. The balance was fallow. Near by lay a second typical plot of five-and-a-half acres, of which one-and-a-half were rented from another owner. The house was good and very neat, built of chalk concrete and plastered over. Its master worked on a farm during part of the year, and the wife took in washing. They had a well-planted garden, and, with the exception of a small portion reserved for roots, the land was laid down to sainfoin. There was a pigsty with an iron roof and a cow-house-in the pig-sty two sows, in the cow-house two cows and a calf. Also there was a pen with about a dozen fowls, and on the land was an unbroken hale' of beet: here, I think, it is called a 'pit.' The establishment looked and was, I believe, most thriving.

Next we came to a four-acre plot, with the usual good house. This was laid down in sainfoin after barley, the sainfoin being cross-drilled to secure a thinner and more equal distribution of the seed. The owner, a baker, worked his land by help of the horse which he used on his rounds. It was, by the way, customary to hire horses when they were needed to plough the plots.

I might quote many other examples, but perhaps the above will suffice. The conclusions to which they lead the observer are sufficiently astonishing. Whenever, in my search for a remedy against rural depopulation, I have in past years ventured to suggest that something might be done by small holdings and the sense of ownership, many well-informed voices have promptly cried out that I was a theoretical enthusiast, since under few conceivable circumstances could such holdings be made to pay. Yet I found this Winterslow settlement established upon poor land, with an insufficient water supply and a severe winter climate, where small holdings do pay, and their owners have built upon

them comfortable homes, in which they take as much pride and pleasure as does the rich man in his mansion.

As I hope to show presently, the common cry in Wiltshire and Hampshire seems to be that, like those of other counties, the villages are in course of depletion. It is alleged, on the contrary, that here in Winterslow the population will show a considerable increase when the new census returns are announced. This is one of the very suggestive results of the system of small holdings, which after all is not wonderful when it is remembered that whereas on the 195 acres of the original Cooper's Farm only three labourers earned a livelihood, some fifty or sixty men with their families now live on, and more or less live out of, that portion of it which is the subject of Major Poore's experiment. Again, the villagers seemed well contented. I heard of no grumbling, and was told that even the members of the landholders' court, by which the settlement is managed, do not quarrel among themselves. Moreover, the general tone and intelligence of the inhabitants appear to have been raised.

One of the complaints of country dwellers is that our system of education is not adapted to rural needs. I visited the school at Winterslow, and what did I find? On the blackboard that had been in use that day were chalk drawings illustrative of the effects of shallow and deep culture upon root action, and of those of good and bad tilth upon the growth of plants. The schoolmaster, Mr. Witt, went to a shelf and took from it a roof-tile, sprinkled with soil and set in a pan of water, whereon some of his pupils had been testing the germination of the beans, which were to be set in their school gardens. Thus they learn to love and understand the land. What is the reason of it all? I cannot say, unless some explanation may be found in the fact that for a century or more there have existed at Winterslow a number of freeholders who in the beginning established themselves on some waste land. None other occurs to me, as I have not heard that the inhabitants of this place are congenitally

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superior to their neighbours. Moreover, I may mention that Major Poore has tried very much the same experiment at Bishopstone, some ten or twelve miles away, but on a larger scale and in bigger lots. Here the holders, finding the payment of instalments irksome, actually approached Major Poore and offered to take over the land with all responsibilities. To this he consented, with the result, as I understood, that the freeholders were doing well.

And now one question: If the system succeeds at Winterslow, why should it not succeed elsewhere? Major Poore, who had no faith in county councils, suggested that individual owners should follow his example in their respective districts. But few of them possess his enterprise and energy, even if they have the capital and the time to devote to a somewhat intricate business. Also many landlords, for various reasons, are deeply averse to the principle of small holdings. In the face of the admitted evils of rural depopulation, and the obliteration of the yeoman class, is it not worth the while of Parliament to look into the matter?

This Winterslow settlement, by the way, furnishes an amusing instance of the evil-and expensive-results of giving way to superstition. Everywhere in England there seems to exist a somewhat general belief in the magical powers of dowsers' or water-finders—that is, of men who allege themselves to be able to discover hidden springs by means of a hazel twig, which goes through mysterious bendings and convulsions at the spot where the water lies hidden in the earth. Of the results of the divination of one of these inspired persons I have told a rather amusing story in my book 'A Farmer's Year,' and here at Winterslow they were exemplified again. Water being scarce on the settlement, a dowser was employed to reveal the spot where a well should be sunk, which would provide it with a general and perpetual supply. At a likely looking place near the bottom of a hollow the twig jumped in the orthodox fashion. For some reason, however, the work was not begun before this magnetic expert died, and when the time came to under

take it nobody was quite certain of the precise place which he had pointed out. So another dowser' was retained, whose powers led him to the same spot, where the infallible evidence of the twisting rod enabled him to assure his employers that at a depth of 100 ft. a splendid supply of water would be struck. Filled with faith by this double revelation, they set to work and dug. As no water was found at the 100 ft. level, however, they went down another 100 ft.; indeed, the issue being still unsatisfactory, greatly daring, they sank yet a third hundred.

The results as I saw them were an enormous heap of white chalk, a 300-ft. shaft with a little water at the bottom of it, such as accumulates in what are there called 'weeping wells,' and a bill for about £150! At Winterslow the subject of that experiment is somewhat delicate ground to tread on. I ventured to suggest that by way of a change it might now be wise to take the opinion of a competent water engineer. To hazel twigs and those who hold them they seem to have given a fair trial.

At the back of this Winterslow settlement once ran a Roman road, leading, I believe, from Old Sarum to Winchester. One of the freeholders had recently cut into it, revealing its foundation. This is constructed of flints closely cemented together; how I cannot say. When I was there this man had taken out some twenty loads of them, and so fast do they cling, that he found it a great labour to break them up. Evidently the old Romans understood the science of road-making as well as, or better than, we do to-day.

On one bitter morning-for the sou'-westerly gale had now veered to the north-east-we set out from Salisbury to visit Mr. Dibben, of Bishopstone, a very noted breeder of Hampshire-Down sheep, with the single exception of Mr. Flower, perhaps, indeed, the most noted in the county.

After recent and painful experience of the dreadful tracks of mud and stone, which in certain parts of Suffolk are called roads, the smooth and beautifully made highways of Wiltshire were very pleasant to the traveller. Our path