PROGRESS OP ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 223 



to be fatted for market, the turnips are drawn, topped, tailed and sliced by a 

 boy with a portable machine. Thus feeding by day, and penned sueeeseively 

 over every part of the field at night, tliey fertilize and compress, as effectually 

 as any roller, the light-blowing sand, and prepare soil which would scarcely 

 feed a family of rabbits for luxuriant corn crops. The cattle, consisting of 

 two year old Devons, Herefords, or Short horns, or three year old Scuts or 

 Anglesea runts, purchased at fairs according to the supply and market y)rice, 

 in spring or summer, are run on the inferior pasture until winter, then taken 

 into the yards or stalls, fed with hay, swedes, mangolds, ground cake, linseed 

 or barley meal, and allowed an unlimited supply of clean water. When the 

 spring comes round they are put on the best grass, and sent oiF to market as 

 fast as they becume ripe, having left behind them a store of manure, which ia 

 the capital from which everything else must spring. 



Ten years ago four miles of rough bark fences were cleared away on the clay 

 half of this farm, and replaced by single rows of blackthorn, dividing the 

 fields into square lots of forty or fifty acres. Under the old system two hun- 

 dred acres were poor pasture ; now under the rotation system the strong clay 

 feeds four times aa much live stock as before, and bears wheat at least twice 

 in six years. According to the latest experience, the most profitable system 

 in its present light condition would be to devote the farmyard dung to growing 

 clover, to eat down the clover with folded sheep, and tlien to use the ground 

 fertilized l)y the roots of the clover, without home-made manure, for cereal 

 crops, assii<ted by a top-dressing of guano, to be followed by roots nourished 

 with superphosphate of lime. Good implements come in aid of good methods 

 of cultivation. Mr. Thomas has eight or nine of Howard's iron plows — both 

 light and heavy — iron harrows to match the plows, a cultivator to stir the 

 earth, a grubber to gather weeds, half a dozen drills, manure distributors, and 

 horse-hoes, a clod-crusher, a heavy stone roller, a haymaking machine, and 

 horse-rakes. Reaping machines are to follow. To deal with the crops, a fixed 

 steam-engine, under the care of a plow boy, puts in motion the compendious 

 barn machinery we have already described, which threshes, dresses and divides 

 the corn according to its quality, and raises the straw into the loft, and the 

 grain into tiie granary, besides working a chaff-cutter, a bean-splitter, a cake- 

 crusher, and stones for grinding corn or linseed. With machinery no large 

 barn is required in the English climate ; the corn can remain in the rick until 

 required tor market. About twenty men and thirty trained boys, under an 

 aged chief, are constantly employed. 



No land is here lost by unnecessary fences ; no food is wasted on ill-bred 

 live stock ; no fertility is consumed by weeds ; no time or labor is thrown 

 away. One crop prepares the way for another, and the wheeled plow, under 

 the charge of a man or boy, follows quick upon the footstepjs of tiie reaper. 

 The sheep stock is kept up to perfection of form by retaining only the best 

 shaped ewe lambs, and hiring or buying the best South-down rams. The profit 

 of keeping first class stock wag proved at the Christmas market of 1856, 

 when twenty-five pure Down shearlings, of twenty months old, which were 

 sold by auction at Hitchin, made an average of 4:1. 8s. each, being nearly 

 double the usual weight. The large produce, whether in corn or meat, is the 

 result of a system the very converse of that practised by the Belgian peasant 

 proprietor, or French metayer, whoise main object is to feed his family, and 

 avoid every possible payment in cash. As for laying out sixpence on manure, 

 or cattle (bod for making manure, no such notion ever crosses the minds of 

 those industrious, hard-living peasants, and the diminution in the means ot 

 subsistence in consequence, is almost past calculation. lie who puts most into 

 the land, and gets moat out of it, is the true farmer. The bad cultivator gives 

 little, and receives accordingly. 



When the Central Farmers' Club discussed the advantage of returning to 

 the plan of more frequent corn crops, which before the days of artificial man- 

 ures was found to be utterly ruinous, the then chairman said that he " had for 



