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In most parts of Great Britain it is at present somewhat higher.

The great rise in the price both of hogs and poultry, has, in

Great Britain, been frequently imputed to the diminution of the

number of cottagers and other small occupiers of land; an event

which has in every part of Europe been the immediate forerunner

of improvement and better cultivation, but which at the same time

may have contributed to raise the price of those articles, both

somewhat sooner and somewhat faster than it would otherwise have

risen. As the poorest family can often maintain a cat or a dog

without any expense, so the poorest occupiers of land can

commonly maintain a few poultry, or a sow and a few pigs, at very

little. The little offals of their own table, their whey, skimmed

milk, and butter milk, supply those animals with a part of their

food, and they find the rest in the neighbouring fields, without

doing any sensible damage to any body.