though there is sufficient in their practice, customs and peculiarities, to justify the classification here adopted. They are all more or less dairy and grazing counties; that is, devoted to the manufacture of cheese, rearing of young cattle, and sheep farming. Pigs are also reared in vast numbers, and constitute an essential appendage to the dairy farm; and in the low tracts, immense flocks of geese and other fowls are annually fatted for the city markets. The most extensive orchards in Britain are to be found in the valleys of Devon and Somerset, and hence the management of these, and the subsequent manufacture of cider and perry, constitute one of the main duties of the farmer.
The practice of employing women prevails more or less in all these counties; their out-door labor consists in hay-making, reaping, hoeing turnips, weeding corn, picking stones, beating manure, planting and digging potatoes, pulling turnips, and occasionally hacking them for cattle. They are also sometimes employed in winnowing corn, about the threshing machine, and in leading horses and oxen at the plough. The in-door labor is milking and making cheese, and looking after, cleaning, turning, weighing, and removing the cheeses that are already made. This is a sort of work that is said to be "never finished."
The wages of women differ slightly, not only in adjoining counties, but even on different farms, according to the character of the farmer, or the ability and skill of the laborer. Generally speaking, all light work, such as apple-picking, turnip-hoeing, stone-gathering, and the like, is paid at the rate of sixteen cents a day, with an allowance of cider. Hay-making at twenty cents, and potato lifting and harvest work at twenty-four cents, with dinner in harvest time, and a quart of cider. Most of the cider is saved by the women for their husbands. When
