PKOGRESS OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 211 



truly good tenant-farmer cannot be too much favored, or a bad one have his 

 rent raised too high " — that " good culture is another name for much labor " 

 — that "(Treat farmers are generally rich farmers." By these methods he 

 raised hia rental to more thousands a year than it was hundreds when he in- 

 herited the estate, and had enriched a numerous tenantry into the bargain. 

 Mr. Coke showed that no profession in the world was so lucrative as that of a 

 landlord who devoted his life to the improvement of his property. The wealth, 

 nevertheless, wiiich accrued to himself was the smallest part of the gain. He 

 was a national benefactor upon a mighty scale, and was the cause, directly 

 and indirectly, of adding a countless mass of corn and cattle, of beef and 

 mutton, bread and beer to the resources of the country. 



No discovery, perhaps, in agriculture was made by Mr. Uoke, but he showed 

 a surprising sagacity in singling out what was good iti ideas which were not 

 received by the farming public at large, in combining them into a s.ystem, and 

 persevering in them till they prevailed. Young states, in his " Report on the 

 Agriculture of Norfolk," which was published in 1804, that Mr. .Coke had 

 even then grown the invaluable Swedish turnip for several years with the 

 greatest success, and used large quantities of purchased manure in the shape 

 of rape-cake. Above all, he at that date drilled the whole of his crops, tur- 

 nips included, and he was the prominent champion of this much opposed 

 system, which is now universally adopted for the time and labor it saves, for 

 the facility it affords for applying the manure directly to the seed, for keeping 

 down weeds and stirring the soil by means of the horse-hoe, and for thinning 

 out the crop with regularity and speed. 



The Norfolk farmers, while attending to arable culture, had never turned 

 their attention to improving their stock. One of Mr. Coke's most intelligent 

 tenants said that " bones iind offal, rather than meat, were the production of 

 the best grass lands in the county." A small number of Norfolk or Suffolk 

 cows, good milkers but miserable graziers, were kept, and a flock of the black- 

 faced, long-horned, Norfolk sheep — aa active, bony, hardy animal, well suited 

 to pick up a living on the wild, bare heaths, and which gave a little wool 

 every year, and a little mutton at the end of four or five. It is just fifty years 

 since Mr. Coke said, in one of hia annual Holkham speeches, " that a Norfolk 

 flock had hitherto been considered as little more, in point of profit, than a 

 dung-cart." He soon taught his tenants that, valuable as was manure, they 

 had better keep animals which would at the same time make a return in flesh 

 and fat. His own skill in the difficult art of judging of the qualities of stock 

 was great, and he used to assist his neighbors in parcelling out the ewes to the 

 rams according to the shapes of each, that the defects of one parent might, aa 

 much as possible, be remedied by the good points in the other. " I have seen 

 him and the late Duke of Bedford," says Young, " put on a shepherd's smock, 

 work all day, and not quit the business till darkness forced them to dinner." 



A new system of fattening sheep, which has been attended with wonderful 

 results, was commenced in 1824, on the suggestion of Mr. Coke's steward, 

 Blaikie, by Mr. John Hudson, now known throughout England in connection 

 with his present farm of Castle Acre. He ventured to supply his young weth- 

 ers with sliced turnips and purchased oil-cake. Such was the success of hia 

 experiment, " that, to Mr. Coke's astonishment, when he asked to see the 

 produce of his tup, he found they had been sent fat to market twelve months 

 before the usual time.'* Yet all John Hudson's neighbors, including hia 

 father, a man of agricultural progress, prophesied his ruin from his extrava- 

 gance in buying food for sheep, which was regarded in much the same light 

 in farming as for a young spendthrift to go for money to the Jews. At the 

 present day the purchase of linseed-cake, or meal, or foreign pulse, is one of 

 the regular means by which an increased quantity of meat is manufactured. 

 Wherever turnips are grown and sliced, there cake-troughs are to bo seen, and 

 the improved feeding, coupled with tlie natural tendency of the improved 

 breeds to early maturity, has multiplied to an enormous extent the amount of 



