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Tlic Country Gentleman s Magazine 



corn. Since visitation of the cattle plague sheep have 

 been bred and kept on lands in East Norfolk which 

 -were formerly considered unsuitable for sheep. A 

 great demand for all sorts of sheep, Ixit particularly 

 ewes, two or three years ago, caused a wonderful rise 

 in the value of this stock, ixit the increased number of 

 lambs that are produced, and the appalling drought 

 we have just passed through, have reduced the price 

 of lambs to a lower range than has been kno\«i for 

 more than twenty years. 



The chief alteration that has taken place in the 

 sheep stock of this county results from the introduction 

 of the so-called Oxford Downs. The medium-wooUed 

 sheep are most useful animals, but every half-bred 

 mongrel passes by the name of an Oxford or Shrop- 

 shire Down. 



Half-bred flocks are now far too common in the 

 county. It requires a great deal of care and selection 

 to preserve any uniformity . in the produce, and we 

 cannot be too thankful that some of our noblemen and 

 leading agriculturists still adhere to the Southdowns 

 and other pure breeds. Though our Leicesters of 

 twenty-five years ago have recently been christened 

 Cotswolds or Longwools, I believe they are the best 

 style of sheep for producing a genuine half-ljred lamb 

 upon which the supply of Norfolk mutton must mainly 

 depend. 



The Norfolk pig is the same lanky, long-nosed, flat- 

 sided brute it ever was, notwithstanding the enter- 

 prising efforts of a few of our leading breeders to im- 

 jorove the porcine stock of our county. 



Pigs are generally bred by small farmers with whom 

 the sow that will produce the largest family and afford 

 a bountiful supply of milk is much more thought of 

 than the quality of the progeny she rears. The 

 young pigs are sold to the larger occupiers for shack- 

 ing their stubbles or straw-yards and are generally 

 resold as store pigs, comparatively few being fatted by 

 them. In olden time when corn was all thrashed 

 by the flail more pigs were kept in the bullock yards 

 than now, and the same remark may apply to poultry. 

 The restless pigs disturb the quiet slumbers of the 

 drowsy oxen, and the cocks and hens are sure to make 

 free with the choicest morsels of meal and cake, as 

 they find so fev\f stray grains of corn to pick up. The 

 poultry has certainly improved of late years, though I 

 cannot think the gaunt and lanky Cochins produced 

 any benefit, but the establishment of improved breeds 

 by many enthusiastic amateurs has left good mai-ks in 

 many neighbourhoods. 



The fruits of the liberal prizes offered by our Agri- 

 cultural Society are beginning to be felt in the restora- 

 tion of our cobs and cart horses to the proud position 

 they once held. The Norfolk cart horse is never what 

 is termed a fashionable animal, having few distinctive 

 or attractive features, but he was a clean-legged, quick- 

 stepping, hardy horse, well adapted for the light 

 tillage of our Norfolk soil. Years of neglect and an 

 indiscriminate admixture of Suffolk blood, have 

 rendered our Norfolk cart horse still more of a non- 



descript ; but there are many teams of these useful 

 and most serviceable animals that contrast well with 

 the petty Suffolk in a show-yard, and would worlc 

 them to death if exposed to all the labour and hard 

 keeping of an ordinary farm-yard. 



Tlie old stamp of Norfolk cob has not been quite 

 regained, but the long entries of good trotting nags 

 and bold stepping ponies at our recent shows give 

 good grounds for believing that a great improvement 

 is taking place in this class of stock. 



CROPS CROWN IN NORFOLK. 



There can be no doubt that the yield of wheat in 

 Norfolk has greatly increased during the past twenty- 

 five years. From only one part of the county have my 

 correspondents intimated that there is but little change. 

 TJiis comes from some of the best land in Norfolk, 

 when great crops of wheat were common fully fifty 

 years ago. The repetition of wheat on these soils 

 may be more frequent, but the yield does not seem to 

 have perceptibly increased. And until we discover 

 some chemical manure — some soluble silica for in- 

 stance — that will strengthen the straw in moist seasons 

 and enable it to bear a large and fuller ear, any in- 

 crease of yield in these fertile districts must remain in 

 abeyance, for already the greatest loss is incurred from 

 the crop lodging at an early period of its growth, and 

 the more the crop is forced the more this tendency of 

 the straw to go down increases. Thin and early sow- 

 ing, with a thorough consolidation of the land, may in 

 a measure alleviate this increasing difficulty, but once 

 let the chemist show us how to stiffen the straw of our 

 cereals and then tire produce, for aught we know, may 

 be douliled unless they should be smitten with blight 

 and mildew — diseases which so frequently attack over- 

 stimulated crops. On the thin clialks and light lands 

 of Norfolk, the yield and extent of wheat is increased. 

 Twenty-five years ago it was considered that 26 to 28 

 bushels per acre was the full a\-erage yield of wheat 

 for the county. In 1854 Sir J. Walsham estimated it 

 at 30 bushels, and I think we may now put it at 32 

 bushels or 4 qrs. per acre, but this is fully 4 bushels an 

 acre over the average of the last four years — including, 

 of course, the present harvest. The extraordinary 

 difterence of the yield of wheat on moderately light 

 land farms, in dry or moist seasons, has been furnished 

 me by more than one large occupier. I will not give 

 the details, but simply state that the produce has oc- 

 casionally nearly reached twelve coombs per acre, and 

 has frequently been less than five, and one year barley 

 reached three coombs, while the money return has 

 been in a good season fifteen guineas per acre, and in 

 a very bad one little over ^3. 



The yield of barley is not perceptibly augmented : 

 the estimated produce in 1854 was put at over 38 

 bushels per acre, and that, I am sure, is fully up to 

 the average yield of the last ten years. No doubt a 

 larger extent is grown, but, as to the increase per acre, 

 the same unfortunate tendency of the straw to lodge 

 hindei's, even in a greater degree than in wheat, the 



