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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



and The Reiver, all by Pantaloon ; of Rambling 

 Katie, and Blanche of Middlebie, by Melbourne ; 

 and of Katherine Logie, by the Flying Dutchman. 

 She has been from the first, and still continues, in 

 Lord John Scott's stud. 



Hobbie Noble was somewhat renowned as 

 a race-horse. Indeed his two-year-old per- 

 formances were so good as to make him 

 first favourite for the Derby of his year, for 

 which he ran as Mr. Merry's, having heen pur- 

 chased of Lord John Scott for the unheard-of- 

 price of six thousand guineas. It is not, however, 

 as a race-horse, but as " the best stallion to get 

 hunters" that Hobbie Noble's portrait appears 

 here. This distinction was awarded him at the 

 Salisbury Meeting of the Royal Agricultural So- 

 ciety, when he took the first prize of 30 sovs. 

 against Spencer (the second-prize horse), Theon, 

 The Knight of Gwynne, Little Brownie, Lascelles, 

 Clumsy, Master Robin, The Circassian, Flagella- 

 tor, Stotforth, and others ; the entry in all reach- 

 ing to fifteen. Still, the award was all one way, 

 and just as any horseman would have decided 

 it — to the best known, best bred, and certainly 

 best looking horse of the lot. Hobbie Noble is in 

 colour a bright bay, with a great deal of power 

 and style about him, a good neck and shoulder. 



capital deep barrel, strong quarters, but still 

 rather light in the thighs. Taken altogether he is 

 a remarkably fine animal, and a particularly well- 

 topped borse, with a somewhat wicked head, and 

 not, we fancy, to be trifled with. The family, in 

 fact, are not famous for the best of tempers, and 

 his own brother, The Reiver, was one of the most 

 savage horses ever stripped. 



Hobbie Noble's career on the turf closed in 

 1853, and he stood for the next two seasons at 

 WiUesden. More recently he has been transferred 

 to the North by his present owner, Mr. Groves, 

 who has always a good horse to show us at the 

 Yorkshire Meetings. Another of his, the Knight 

 ofGwynne, was also in the entry at Salisbury, and 

 selected as the second-best at the unprecedented 

 exhibition of thorough-bred stock at Waterford ; 

 while a third, a draught-horse called The Conqueror, 

 an animal of amazing size and substance, took the 

 extra premium at the great horse show at York, 

 in the same month. 



Hobbie Noble has been let for the ensuing season, 

 to go to Ireland. None of his stock have yet ap- 

 peared ; but Mr. Groves himself has two or three 

 coming on by him, and there should be something 

 of his under weigh this spring. 



WEEDS. 



BY CUTHBERT W, JOHNSON, ESO., F.R.S. 



There are few practical inquiries more likely to 

 repay tlie farmer than those wliich relate to weeds. 

 Their habits ; the vegetation of their seeds ; their 

 extirpation; their use, either miburned or their 

 ashes, as manure — are all matters of the highest im- 

 portance to the cultivator. These were questions 

 which, in what are sometimes called — as if in deri- 

 sion — " the good old days of England," the farmers 

 but little regarded. The custom was then — as, in 

 fact, is yet the case in most newly or only partially- 

 cultivated districts— for the landholder to run away, 

 as it were, from enemies he was too ignorant or too 

 indolent to successfully withstand. When, there- 

 fore, he found his neglected and exhausted arable 

 land gradually becoming full of weeds, instead of at- 

 temptiug their extirpation by fallowing, or hoeing, 

 or paring and burning, he took the easier course of 

 abandoning the field for a considerable period to 

 Nature's care. Thence soon came hosts of couch- 

 grass, thistles, and the other denizens of extensively- 

 exhausted arable soils. These speedily crowded 

 together, and formed a mass of herbage which, by 

 its copious growth, ripening, and decay, formed in 

 the soil a collection of organic matters, on which 

 better and mote daintily-feeding plants were gra- 

 dually (after seasons had elapsed) enabled to subsist. 

 And then, after a series of years had brought about 

 this state of things, the farmer was wont to again 

 bring his long-neglected field into cultivation. 



It is true that the more enlightened, of those days, 

 denounced this indolent neglect of weeds. Land- 

 lords suggested improvements : even the Legislature 



interfered, evidently, however, with little success. 

 The late Sir John Sinclair has given some amusing 

 instances of such enactments. It seems that, by an 

 old French law, a farmer might sue his neighbour 

 who, at the proper seasons, neglected to destroy the 

 thistles on his land ; or he might employ persons to 

 extirpate them, at the grower's expense. In Den- 

 mark, there is a law which is directed to the extir- 

 pation of the corn-marigold (Chrysanthemum se- 

 getum) ; and in Scotland, so far back as the year 

 1220, a statute of Alexander II. provides for the 

 punishment of those farmers who allowed their land 

 to become foul. Like most of the old statutes of 

 Scotland, the law contains but few unnecessary 

 words. It merely declares that man to be a traitor, 

 "who poisons the King's lands with weeds," and thus 

 introduces into them a host of enemies. It seems 

 that tenants who had the corn-marigold plant in 

 their corn were fined a sheep for each stalk ; and 

 that, under the authority of the law to which we 

 have been referring, a Scotch baron— Sir William 

 Grierson — was accustomed to hold Goul Courts, at 

 which all those persons were hable to be fined, on 

 whose land more than three heads of that weed were 

 discovered. 



It is refreshing to turn from times when such 

 laws were deemed to be desirable, to days when, as 

 at present, the extirpation of weeds is eagerly 

 sought, and a constant and successful war waged 

 against them, without the aid of Parliament. 



The labours of modern farmers, aided by the 

 "extirpators," "scarifiers," and other invaluable 



