establishment of small holdings are bad. I fully believe in legislating for the larger tillage farmer, and making it profitable for him to continue a good system of rotation farming. I see no way of doing this except by the imposition of duties on imports from abroad. I am a Protectionist against my own interests, for I happen to be a large importer of corn from abroad. I believe that a rise in the price of corn in this country would be for the benefit of nine persons out of ten. Tillage .of land would thereby be so greatly stimulated that the surplus population would be drawn back to the land, and wages would consequently advance both in town and country to a much greater extent than the extra cost of food. At the same time I would stop the importation of foreign labour, and I would encourage emigration to our Colonies, and give to those Colonies preferential treatment over all foreign countries.

W. J. HARRIS.

VILLA FARMS. (TOWN TOILERS NEED QUIET and repose).

By C. F. DOWSETT, F.S.I.,

Author of various Articles on Land und House Properties; “Striking Events in Irish History"; etc.

VILLA FARMS, or Broad Acre Gardens, are the kind of Home needed by toilers in towns.

In February, 1882, I commenced writing a few articles on this subject, and used the term "Villa Farm," which has since become a well recognised expression, and the principle of the proposal is gradually finding its develop

I then compared the relations between the people and the land, to men at sea suffering from thirst, although surrounded by water. Had seamen the power of condensing the sea water and so make it usable their supply would be unlimited; and likewise if large tracts of land, which in many places the owners are willing to sell, were made usable for the dwellers in towns, the demand would compensate the supply. Large tracts of land, within reach of London and other towns, can generally be purchased, and yet many persons in these towns are thirsting for a good, honest, broad acre of garden, instead of the confined back yard, or prison-like conventional strip which is found outside their back doors.

Country-born persons who have to work all day in London, or in any large town, appreciate, at its full value, the calm, the quiet, and repose, which appertain to a home in the country.

In a large town, and especially in London, there is a hum of noise, even in the quietest parts, from which it is impossible to escape, and to be beyond the reach of which is a charm not less essential to the restoration of the nervous system than attractive in a variety of ways.

I shall never forget an experience I had when a lad of seventeen. I was staying at a hotel in London with my father, waiting for instructions to join my ship-the constant din and roar of the streets, day and night, distressed me beyond expression-when we learned that a delay of another week was necessary, and my father, therefore, took me back with him to our rural home in East Kent; the change made an impression upon me I could never lose the peaceful country, the perfect quiet, broken only by song birds, or animals giving expression to their enjoyment of it, the green meadows, the leafy trees, and those many charms which surround a rural home, tended to fill my young heart with a sense of gratitude and delight, such as only those who have experienced the sensation can understand. The contrast was stupendous; it was as of a change from a rack to a couch, from the wildest discord to the sweetest music, from interminable strife to perfect peace..

The change from hard, hot pavements and monotonous brick walls, in ever continuing miles, to the comforts and calms of Nature's solitudes, is not only a subject for poets but an experience which the majority of the whole human family values at a high estimation.

Quiet and repose are needed by men whose daily duties are performed amidst more or less of constant excitement, hurry and worry. These, however, can only be obtained by living at a sufficient remove from perpetual noise. Many suburban districts are much affected by noise from railways, a great variety of road

vehicles, street cries, foot passengers, and other sounds. To secure real quiet, one must get on to the broad acres, and something more is needed than any system in vogue at present to bring the people and the broad acres together.

Streets and roads are pushed out, gradually absorbing the next green field, and the next, and the next, but it is only to multiply closely-packed houses by turning fields into streets, and not by carrying houses into fields.

My proposal in suggesting Villa Farms was not to turn fields. into streets, but to put houses into fields, and this I proposed to do by running short spur light railways or tramways from existing lines into tracts of land which could be divided up into small broad acre communities. Such lands being bought at a low price would enable purchasers to secure half-an-acre, and sometimes an acre, at the same price as they now have to pay for a strip too small for productive or recreative

purposes.

Thus a class of Villa Farm yeomen would be created who would own from half-an-acre to a few acres each.

A great deal of suburban building land produces, say £125 for a plot which is a sixteenth of an acre, i.e., £2000 per acre. On this one-sixteenth of an acre a house is built and furnished as luxuriously as the means of the owner will permit; the costly furnished drawing and dining rooms of the mansion are imitated in a small way, and every effort is made to convey a sense of the highest gentility-the means are spent upon the inside of the house. As to the outside, it is too small to enlist much interest; if it be devoted to flowers, the children are restrained in their movements; if it be kept as a small play-ground or drying-ground, then, for the smallest productive purposes it is useless.

Land Companies and individuals buy, say from five to fifty acres of land, construct drains and roads, and then cut it up into fragments and sell it; but the division of large tracts of land into Villa Farms or Broad Acre Gardens, has yet to be more fully developed. In some places where work is centralised, and thousands of men have to labour within a small area, their dispersion is more difficult, but there are many localities where some such suggestion as the following could be carried out. Supposing 1000 acres of land producing an agricultural rental of from 15s. to 30s. per acre, say an average of 20s. per acre, be cut up into lots ranging from one acre each upwards, and let on building leases at ground rents of from £3 to £5 per acre, or the freehold sold at from £60 to £100 per acre, this would give a return justifying the enterprise. To turn an agricultural estate into a residential one of this character would not need the expense usually incurred in forming a suburban building estate, because no sewers would be needed; there would be sufficient land to each house to beneficially absorb all the sewage which could be created; a drain, of course, would be necessary for carrying off the surplus or overflow water-then the roads would be constructed at a comparatively small cost, and a proviso would attach to each lease or conveyance that the owner should maintain his portion of the road when necessary. If the subsoil were chalk or gravel this expense would principally be one of labour.

There remain water and transit. The supply of water would be an undertaking remunerative in itself, and, therefore, would add nothing to the cost of the land. The same may be said of the light railway or tramcarway running between the land and the main line. The roads could be lighted by oil as even fashionable Wimbledon is to this day.