Writing on 2 February 1851, my grandfather says:--“Not a flake of snow fell on the Forest of Dartmoor in the month of January: not the oldest man living on the Moor recollects the like before.” On 2 March 1862:--“Well, the old people say there never was a February without snow. There has not been any this year, unless it came Friday night before twelve o’clock. A man that was out about sheep says that it did fall before twelve but after eleven: so they still adhere to the old saying. But the others that did not stay up, say that the snow came with March.” Like many other people of his time, my grandfather was certain that the climate had improved, and he thought he saw the cause. He writes to my father on 22 December 1850:--“I attribute the mildness of the winters and the warmth of the summers to the better state of cultivation of the land draining off the cold stagnant waters that lay about in all directions in my youthful days.” He writes on 23 November 1851:--“The old plan was to have the wheat up in grass at Christmas, as the farmers used to say ‘high enough to cover a crow,’ but they find now from the altered winters that to till in this month and the next is sufficiently early, and better crops.” My grandfather tried farming here; and I gather from his accounts that he sank about £20 per acre in the first three years. That meant draining the ground, and getting it into good condition; and after that he made it pay, except in the years of the potato famine. He writes to my father on 8 March 1846:--“I should say a diligent clever man, farming his own estate, can make more money now than he could in war time [that is, before 1815] for the system of farming is quite changed, and the land is made to produce nearly double what it did then.” His knowledge of farming was derived from books; and he did things that were not customary here, sometimes with failure, but often with success. Thus, he writes to my father, 2 April 1854:--“I tilled some barley yesterday.... It was another such March fifteen years ago, when I tilled this same field to barley. I then hired horses and gave it a good working; and the weather was so tempting that I tilled it in March to the amusement of my neighbours. The storms in April made it look blue, which amused them still further. But they all acknowledged they could not produce its equal to harvest.”