The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-04-20

DevonShire, consists. For AmeFlcAns, oA course, Dartmoor, with which so many of the novels of Eden PhilDotts deal, has a special historical interest, since at Princetown, the chief center of popula- tion, stands the prison, built during the war with Napoleon, in which so many American and French captives were con fined During later years this has been convict prison, and was such until the beginning of the war when the criminals were sent elsewhere and the ancient prison turned into place Of confinement for conscientious objectors,' some 5o or whom have. been employed for the past couple of years in the carrying out of big land reclamation scheme which is also duchy of Cornwall enterprise.
 On Dartmoor, a gaunt, rocky, wind swept region that even today shows no i trace of man for miles on end, half wild 1 ponies, natives of the region, are found | in great numbers. These ponies, which | are descendants of the old Celtic ones fact which is indicated by the black 1 stripe down their backs-are dun colored, and exceptionally strong and hardy Some ! three years ago the Prince Of wales es- tablished stud farm on Dartmoor where, as already mentioned, the natlve | breed of pony Is crossed with an Arab strain The idea is to combine the fleet | ness of the Arabian steed with the hardi- ness and intelligence of the Dartmoor ponies, in whom the latter or these quail ties has been engendered naturally py reason of their having had to fend for ! themselves. The stallion, Dwarka by name, that is used for mating with the Dartmoor ponies, is the only desert-bred Arabian in England. The prince now has l about 100 ponies and some 80 horses. The ponies are sold, for the most part, at the annual Princetown fair, which IS held Tn l the first week of September, the excep- | hrad htrt h royal highness which are disposed of at 1 TattersalFs in London. The prince ex- hibited some of the ponies from his Dart l moor stud at a pony show held Tn Lon l don sometime back and they created a great deal of interest, especially when l attention was called to the fact that this was their first experience of being under 1 a roof.
 l The prince also breeds military horses, and another of his experiments in the equine direction is an attempt to repro duce the old Devon pack horse, type or | steed which carried on its powerful oack various burdens in the days when, De- yond Exeter, now the center of net work of railways, no proper roads ex- 1 ister. This was the case up to the year 1750 when beyond this cathedral town | only the ''pack horse tracks" were found. On others of his duchy farms the prince breeds shorthorn cattle, and sells them l for high prices.
 Of all the industries in which the Prince 1 of Wales, as Duke of Cornwall, is inter- ested, however, incomparably the most profitable is that represented by the ex- tensive works which he has started in Cornwall, to the west of Tavistock for the recovery of the mineral Whlcn IS known as wolfram" Wolfram in olden ] times was regarded as nuisance by min CTS for tin Git was so named in fact as being the wolf that ate up the proflts of the metal with which it was founO, and for many centuries it was thrown away as worthless. This was the case, in fact, until the year 1903. But wolfram has now become of inestimable value as the basis of the rare metal, tungsten, which, many times harder than steel IS now used for high speed tools.
 l The supplies of wolfram both above and below ground are virtually inexhaustible lin Cornwall, and large sums of money lhave been invested by the Prince of Wales in American machinery for the purpose Of treating the wolfram and separating
 it from the tin derived from his mines
 in the duchy. Wolfram, in fact. has be- come infinitely more valuable than tin
 FORTUNE IN MINES
 The prince has in his Cornish wolfram huge fortune within his grasp, and has
 the satisfaction of knowing that, by de-
 veloping this industry. he is at the same
 
 upon all the steel industries of his native land especially in connection with ord nance and warships. Moreover, the de- velopment of the wolfram industry in
 other parts of Cornwall in which the ad-
 ministrators of the duchy hope to inter- est private enterprise of the right type | is likely as it proceeds to be the means
 of bringing back to their native county many of the Cornishmen who emigrated | to various parts of the world when the
 tr mining industry, once the greatest in the district, virtually died in consequence of the discovery of tin nearer the sur
 face in other parts of the world. This
 picturesque result is felt to be certain of fulfillment snce as one Of the duchy
 officials expressed it to me, the Cornish nan like the Frenchman, is never at home" anywhere but in Cornwall.
 The big land reclamation scheme now
 being carried out on Dartmoor as an en- 7 terprise of the duchy of Cornwall is as Interesting as any of recent times, ana it's results to British agriculture are like
 ly to be important. The valleys of the
 historic moor, through which its rivers
 flow are unusually fertile. but higher
 attitudes of the granite upland. which
 comprise by far the greater part Of its
 surface, have for centuries defied cuiti-
 vation A legend, in fact, runs that Dart
 moor says to the asriculturist, "Scratch I my back and I'll pick your pocket" and l so true has this proved that an outlay of
 $350,OCO by one Sir Thomas Tyrwltt,
 lord warden of the Stanneries in the time ! of the prince regent in an attempted re-
 clamation of part of the moor had re- | suits which today represent no more than
 s25oO a year in the shape of produce.
 The principal enemy to be fought Is the
 excessive moisture of the soil, the great
 CT part of Dartmoor being a vast bog.
 This district whose uplands lie at an ai- titude of from HOO to 1900 feet above the
 sea level, has the highest rainfall in
 England-1O0 inches a year. Water also
 cones freely upward from springs, as well
 as falling from the sky. As a result, the
 soil mainly consists of peat, some 20 feet 1 in depth, which lies on subsoii or de- composed granite.
 To cope with the devastating effects o1
 rair and wind the scientist in charge ol
 the present reclamation scheme, Mr. ven
 delmans, has devised a scheme of shelter
 belts novel to the majority of British
 agriculturists. These shelter belts VII
 consist of trees, and the most important of them will be 110 feet in breadth. The
 trees chosen for this purpose are Qulck-
 growing Japanese larches, Sitka, Dougias
 and Norway spruces, Scots frs. ashes
 beeches, sycamore and willow. In rev
 years these trees will have risen up anc
 formed green walls which. will serve as
 protection for future crops.
 Tn former attempts to reclaim Dartmooi
 the method adopted was to dig down te
 the bottom of the peat and replace it wltr
 a soil more susceptible of cultivation, bu
 Mir Vendelmans prefers system oi
 drainage which he has devised after ex' | Hn<nv1 <l