208 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 



tural works of Arthur Young, and would not have heen convinced if they had, 

 found their projudicea in favor of local breeds shaken by a personal interview 

 with gigantic specimens of the Teeswater ox. 



In IT'JS the Duke of Bedford, Lord Somerville, and others, with Arthur 

 Young as honorary secretary, established the " Little Sniithfield Club," for 

 exhibiting fat stock at Christmas time, in competition for prizes, with a speci- 

 fication of the food on which each animal had been kept. This society has 

 rendered essential service by making known t-he best kinds of food, and by 

 educating graziers and butchers in a knowledge of the best form of animal. 

 We smile now on reading that in 180G, in defiance of Mr. Coke's toast, 

 *' Small in size and great in value," a " prize was given to the tallest ox." 

 Length of leg has long been counted a serious fault ; for it is the most un- 

 prolitahle part of the beast. In 185G a little Devon ox, of an egg-like shape, 

 which is the modern beau-ideal, gained the Smithfield gold medal in competi- 

 tion with gigantic short horns and Ilerefords of elephantine proportions ; and 

 in LS54 a large animal of Sir Harry V^erney's was passed over without even 

 the compliment of a " commendation," because he carried on his carcase too 

 much offal and more threepenny than ninepenny beef. 



But the fattening qualities and early maturity of the improved stock would 

 have been of little value beyond the few rich grazing districts of tlie Midland 

 counties, without an addition to the supply of food. The best arable land of 

 the kingdom had been exhausted by long years of cultivation, and the barren 

 fallow, which annually absorbed one-third of the soil, failed to restore its 

 fertility. A new source of agricultural wealth was discovered in turnips, 

 which, as their important qualities became known, excited in many of their 

 early cultivators much the same sort of enthusiasm as they did in Lord Man- 

 boddo, who on returning home Irom a circuit went to look at a field of them 

 by candle-light. Turnips answered the purpose of a fallow crop which cleaned 

 and rested old arable land ; turnips were food for fattening cattle in winter ; 

 turnips, grown on light land and afterwards eaten down by sheep which con- 

 solidated it by their feet, prepared the way for corn crops on wastes that had 

 previously been given up to the rabbits. By this means the heaths and wolds 

 of iforkshire and Lincolnshire, with the help of marling in certain districts, 

 the blowing sands of Norfolk, Nottinghamshire, and Bedfordshire, were grad- 

 ually reclaimed and colonized by the race of farmers who have been foremost 

 to adopt all the great improvements iu English agriculture for the last cen- 

 tury. This new system required a capital on the part of both landlord and 

 tenant. It required from the landlord barns and yards, and houses fit for 

 first-class farmers. Mr. Coke of Holkham laid out above a hundred thousand 

 pounds in 20 years on dwellings and offices. It required the tenant to expend 

 a considerable sum on flocks and herds, and, above all, in labor for the years 

 before the wild land began to yield a profit. Mr. Rodwell, in Suffolk, sunk 

 5000^. in merely marling 820 acres, with a lease of only 28 years. Such spir- 

 ited proceedings demanded no mean amount of intelligence to conduct them 

 with discretion and profit. The value of Mr. Rodwell's produce during the 

 28 years of his occupancy was 30,000/. greater than the 28 years wliich pre- 

 ceded his improvements. No needy race of peasant cultivators, no rack-rent 

 absentee line of landowners, could have achieved this conquest over the Eng- 

 lish wilderness, then far from ports, manufacturing towns, and markets. 



This great advance in arable farming took its rise in Norfolk. The king of 

 Brobdignag gave it as his opinion, " that whoever could make two ears of corn 

 or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew 

 before, would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his 

 country than the whole race of politicians put together." Tliis passage might 

 have been written upon Lord Townsend, who retired in 1730 from public 

 affairs, which went on none the worse without him, and devoted the remain- 

 ing eight years of his life to improving his estate. He originated practices 

 which increased the produce not only two, but a hundred fold, and of which 



