192 



TJie Country Gentleman s Magazine 



OUR COMMON LANDS. 



By Mr J. J. Mechi. 



I COME to the conclusion, after thirty 

 years of experience at Tiptree, that our 

 common lands can be cultivated profitably by 

 the investment of capital in drainage (where 

 required), deep and clean cultivation, and 

 ample supplies of manure, natural or ar- 

 tificial. We have 27,000,000 acres still in 

 their primitive state. The Inclosure Com- 

 missioners, in their 27 th Annual Report, re- 

 cently issued, say that out of 9,000,000 acres 

 of common and commonable land in England 

 and Wales, of a convertible character, only 

 670,000 acres in the last twenty-five years 

 have been enclosed. This 9,000,000 acres 

 is exclusive of waste lands in Scotland and 

 Ireland, comprising many additional millions 

 of acres. The question is, therefore, one of 

 considerable magnitude, for the cost of bring- 

 ing such lands into cultivation, and providing 

 suitable buildings, could scarcely be less than 

 ^io to ;^2 5 or more per acre. 



About 50 acres of Tiptree Farm are a 

 type of the poorest kind of common land. 

 When fresh ploughed up, it exhibits a map 

 of parti-coloured soils, intersecting each 

 other in a variety of shapes. There you see 

 drabs and yellows, plum colour, black and 

 white ; white sand, black sand, gravel, dirty 

 silt, conglomerate pudding stone, bound in 

 rocky masses by black or protoxide of iron, 

 sandy masses bound together by similar pro- 

 toxides, veins of yellow birdlime-like clay. 

 I have reason to believe that these veins are 

 150 feet deep, and where they surround 

 sandy or porous veins, the latter become 

 watery sand pots of unknown depths. Of 

 course all the porous veins were full of spring 

 or bottom-water, which in winter arose to the 

 surface and flowed over it, and at all times 

 kept the surface chilled. The hard ironsand 

 and grit, a few inches from the surface, 

 grated or smoked as the plough went over it, 

 and of course at 6 inches the plant roots and 



the plants came to a standstill or miserable 

 existence. 



My first operation was to drain the boggy 

 portion 12 feet deep, and the other portions 

 from 4 to 6 feet deep, cutting through the 

 clay veins, and thus making an escajDe for the 

 pent up water, which now and for thirty years 

 have discharged in the driest summer some 

 50 gallons of water per minute, and abundant 

 streams in winter. I then, with three strong 

 horses in the first plough, followed in the 

 track with a powerful iron plough drawn by 

 six strong horses, broke up the hard pan, and 

 dislodged masses of pudding-stone and iron- 

 sand. 



How my predecessors could get any crops 

 off such land when unimproved I cannot 

 imagine, but I do know, from the workmen's 

 evidence, that the crops were too often 

 wretched failures. On these lands I have 

 since often grown from 5 to 7 qr. of wheat 

 per acre, and 6 to 8 qr. of barley after 

 wheat. 



I have now on the field called, and really 

 is, "black-sand," as fine a crop of wheat as 

 could be desired. I never cart any farm-yard 

 or shed manure on this part of the farm, but 

 manure it with the sheep, folded and supplied 

 with cake, corn, malt-culms, and bran, in 

 addition to the ryegrass or turnips ; all the 

 straw manure goes to the heavy land ; I 

 irrigate the Italian ryegrass; 150 sheep have 

 thus been kept on 6 acres. Well, then, if 

 in my case such results can be profitably 

 obtained, they can on other wastes of similar 

 character, for I have enclosed several pieces. 

 The main cause of my success is (after 

 drainage) very much deeper cultivation than 

 is usually practised. I have perseveringly 

 continued the system for nearly thirty years, 

 and my cultivation is deeper than three- 

 fourths of that done by steam-power, but I 

 have always been careful to keep the top soil 



