CULTIVATION OF WASTE LAND 389 



the work was done piecemeal at times when the men would otherwise 

 have been idle. Were any strict account to be framed, the reclamation 

 probably did not pay its way for many years, and it has only become 

 possible again because of modern advances in science and machinery. 

 'As examples of the type of land, I may instance the Bagshot Sands on 

 which, in north Surrey, in Berkshire and Hampshire, and again in its 

 southern development in the New Forest, lie so many thousands of 

 acres of uncultivated heath. No systematic reclamation has taken place, 

 but everywhere farms have been carved out on this formation often by 

 the industry of squatters, and within reach of London the vast supplies 

 of town manure which used to be available have converted some of it 

 into fertile land. The crystallization of common rights into charters 

 for public playgrounds, its growing appreciation for residential pur- 

 poses, will now always stand in the way of the utilization of most of the 

 Bagshot Sands for agriculture, but further afield there are many areas 

 of similar character. The Lower Greensand is perhaps equally dis- 

 counted by its residential value, but on the Tertiaries of Dorset, the 

 Crag and Glacial Sands of Suffolk and Norfolk — the brak, the Bunter 

 Beds of the Midlands, lie many expanses of waste that are convertible 

 into farming land, just as Lincoln Heath and much of the beautifully 

 farmed land of Cheshire have been gained for agriculture within the 

 past century. Equally possible is an attack upon the sandy areas, war- 

 rens or links, behind the sand-dunes on many parts of the English and 

 especially the Welsh coasts; not all of them are wanted for golf, and 

 many can be fitted for market-gardening. Of old the only way of 

 dealing with such land was merely to clear i\ burn the rubbish, and 

 start upon the ordinary routine of cultivation, but for a long time on 

 such a system the crops will hardly pay their way from year to year, 

 and the permanent deficiencies of the soil in lime and mineral salts re- 

 main unrepaired. In Cheshire the enormous value of marl and bones in 

 such a connection was early recognized; it has been the later discovery 

 of the potash salts that renders reclamation a commercial proposition 

 to-day. The method that is now followed is to begin by clearing the 

 land of shrubs, burning off the roughest of the vegetation, and turning 

 over a shallow layer in the summer, leaving the heathery sod to the kill- 

 ing and disintegrating action of sun and frost until the following spring. 

 The manure is then put on — lime or ground chalk or marl as before, 

 basic slag and kainit, and the sod is worked down to a rough seed-bed 

 on which lupins are sown, to be ploughed in when they reach their 

 flowering stage. The growth of the lupins makes the land, they supply 

 humus to bind the sand together and retain moisture, they draw nitro- 

 gen from the atmosphere and with the phosphoric acid and potash form 

 a complete manure for succeeding crops. Sometimes a second crop of 

 lupins is ploughed in, but usually the land is put immediately to an 



