Just as in corn districts, machinery has not reduced the actual number of hands employed, but has made the work come in spells or rushes; so in the meadows the haymaking is shortened.  The farmer waits till good weather is assured for a few days.  Then on goes his mowing machine and levels the crop of an entire field in no time.  Immediately a whole crowd of labourers are required for making the hay and getting it when ready on the waggons.  Under the old system the mowers usually got drunk about the third day of sunshine, and the work came to a standstill.  When it began to rain they recovered themselves, and slashed away vigorously—­when it was not wanted.  The effect of machinery has been much the same as on corn lands, with the addition that fewer women are now employed in haymaking.  Those that are employed are much better paid.

The hamlets of grass districts are not, as a rule, at all populous.  There really are fewer people, and at the same time the impression is increased by the scattered position of the dwellings.  Instead of a great central village there are three or four small hamlets a mile or two apart, and solitary groups of cottages near farmhouses.  One result of this is, that allotment gardens are not so common, for the sufficient reason that, if a field were set apart for the purpose, the tenants of the plots would have to walk so far to the place that it would scarcely pay them.  Gardens are consequently attached to most cottages, and answer the same purpose; some have small orchards as well.

The cottagers have also more firewood than is the case in some arable districts on account of the immense quantity of wood annually cut in copses and double-mound hedges.  The rougher part becomes the labourers’ perquisite, and they can also purchase wood at a nominal rate from their employers.  This more than compensates for the absence of gleaning.  In addition, quantities of wood are collected from hedges and ditches and under the trees—­dead boughs that have fallen or been broken off by a gale.

The aspect of a grazing district presents a general resemblance to that of a dairy one, with the difference that in the grazing everything seems on a larger scale.  Instead of small meadows shut in with hedges and trees, the grazing farms often comprise fields of immense extent; sometimes a single pasture is as large as a small dairy farm.  The herds of cattle are also more numerous; of course they are of a different class, but, in mere numbers, a grazier often has three times as many bullocks as a dairy farmer has cows.  The mounds are quite as thickly timbered as in dairy districts, but as they are much farther apart, the landscape appears more open.