these is better than a savings-bank to the occupant. He not only
deposits his odd pennies but his odd hours in it; keeping both away
from the public-house or from places and habits of idleness and
dissipation. The days of Spring and Summer here are very long, and
a man can see to work in the field as early as three o'clock in the
morning, and as late as nine at night. So every journeyman
blacksmith, baker or shoemaker may easily find four or five hours in
the twenty-four for work on his allotment, after having completed
the task or time due to his employer. He generally keeps a pig, and
is on the qui vive to make and collect all the manure he can for his
little farm. A field of several acres, thus divided and cultivated
in allotments, presents as striking a combination of colors as an
Axminster carpet. As every rood is subdivided into a great variety
of vegetables, and as forty or fifty of such patches, lying side by
side, present, in one coup d'oeil, all the alternations of which
these crops and colors are susceptible, the effect is very
picturesque.

My Woodhurst friend makes his allotment system a source of much
social enjoyment to himself and the poor villagers. He lets forty-
seven patches, each containing twenty poles. Every tenant pays
10s., or $2 40c., annual rent for his little holding, Mr. E. drawing
the manure for each, which is always one good load a year. Here,
too, these little spade-farmers are put under the same regime as the
great tenant agriculturists of the country. Each must farm his
allotment according to the terms of the yearly lease. He must dig
up his land with spade or pick, not plough it; and he is not allowed
to work on it upon the Sabbath. But encouragements greatly
predominate over restrictions, and stimulate and reward a high
cultivation. _Eight_ prizes are offered to this end, of the