A Honiton Lace-Worker
The population of the Geographical County of Devonshire, according to the census of 1901, is 661,314, and there are in the county 123,608 inhabited houses. A hundred years ago the population was 340,308; it has, therefore, not quite doubled during the century. In the busier county of Kent the population has in the same time increased from 268,097 to 1,348,841. In common with all except five of the counties of England, there are in Devonshire more women than men; the excess of the female over the male population being 37,096.
The chief occupation is agriculture, which provides employment for 42,000 people, or about one-nineteenth of the inhabitants—a considerably lower proportion than in the adjoining county of Somerset. Less than 3000 men are engaged in mines and quarries; 2000 are fishermen, and lace-making occupies 350 men and 1500 women.
In common with many other parts of England the small country parishes of Devonshire are much less populous than they were. In the last fifty years there has been a decline of 17,000 in the rural population.
Devonshire is a somewhat thinly-inhabited county. There are in it a little more than 2 ½ acres to every man, woman, and child, or 254 persons to the square mile, compared with 558 to the square mile for the whole of England and Wales. Westmorland, the most sparsely-populated county, has only 82 people to the square mile, or eight acres to each inhabitant. Lancashire, on the other hand, contains more than 2300 people to the square mile, or four people to every acre; and in the county of Middlesex there are 12,669 to the square mile, which gives about twenty inhabitants to every acre of ground.
[13. Agriculture—Main Cultivations. Woodlands. Stock.]
The area of all the land in England is, in round numbers, 32 ½ millions of acres, of which 24 ½ millions are under cultivation; 10 ¾ million acres being arable, and the greater part of the rest being devoted to permanent grass. For some years past the area of cultivation in the British Islands has been gradually growing less; and in 1908 the decrease in England alone was more than 25,000 acres, chiefly in the amount of land given up to barley and oats, but extending to almost all crops except wheat, potatoes, and lucerne, which showed a slight advance. The cultivation of fruit, especially of small fruit, continues to increase, but the total space devoted to it is not quite 300,000 acres.
With regard to live stock, the Government returns show that the total number of horses in England (about a million) was 10,000 less in 1908 than in 1907; but that the number of cattle (about five millions), of sheep (about sixteen millions), and of pigs (about two and a half millions) had increased, especially in the case of sheep and pigs.