15 OCTOBER 1932, Page 15

Some of the vacant acres referred to above are flanked

on either side • by farms which appear to flourish beyond the average. To' one at any rate, as to the Wiltshire pioneers, a new form of dairying has brought new prosperity. It consists not of an open-air " bail " or any other technical advance, but in the system of marketing ; and I have noticed in more than one county and parish signs of a return to the local marketing that was the secret of the country life of the past— of its priVations, it must be confessed, as well as its natural charms. Farmers are setting up their own shops in neighbour towns, as well as conducting their own milk rounds. They find in this 'way that they can sell anything that they happen

to produce, especially eggs ; and, indeed, some of them have found their clients so eager that they have been forced, not reluctantly, to retail their neighbour's produce as well as their 'own. And more than their neighbours'. Even Cornish butter finds its way, not direct to the shop but to the homestead of this type of retailing farmer.