THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



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towns ! What a view of thronging inhabitants opens 

 before the mind wlien we remf mber how, beyond this 

 limit, the country is intersected in every direction and 

 dinned with the traffic of railways ! Six railroads meet 

 at Chester : one from Birkenhead, another from War- 

 rington, bringing visitors from the multitudinous net- 

 work of Lancashire and Yorkshire lines, converging at 

 Liverpool and Manchester ; one from Crewe, where 

 meet two Cheshire branches, the Great North Western, 

 the line from the Potteries, and the other branches and 

 junctions, uniting Macclesfield, Leek, Uttoxeter, Derby, 

 Tamworth, Lichfield, Birmingham, and Wolverhampton; 

 another railroad bisecting Shropshire from Ludlow, by 

 Church Strotton and Shrewsbury, branching also to 

 Wellington and ShifTnal ; one from the town of Mold ; 

 and, lastly, the Welsh-coast line from Holyhead (the 

 landing-place of the Irish visitors), collecting passengers 

 for the Show at Carnarvon, Bangor, and Conway. 



With the general features and agriculture of those 

 counties which have been the subjects of prize reports 

 in the Society's Journal, the English farmer ought to be 

 tolerably familiar ; but as, unfortunately, Stafford and 

 Salop yet remain to be so described, a few details relating 

 to them may be of interest. 



Staffordshire is more a mining and manufacturing 

 than an agricultural county. The northern part is a 

 moorland tract, subdivided by peaty valleys ; the hills, 

 rising to an elevation of a thousand feet above the sea, 

 sometimes consisting of vast heaps of gravel, sometimes 

 of huge cliffs, having immens3 masses of rock scattered 

 round their bases ; and, excepting some beautiful vales 

 and fine pastures (as along the rivers Dove and Churnet), 

 the district is bleak and sterile. The southern angle of 

 the county is a tract of coal-mines, furnaces, and 

 foundries ; and the Pottery district, extending between 

 Newcastle-under-Lyne and Norton-on-the-Moors, is a 

 succession of towns and villages busied in shaping and 

 baking " cups and saucers" out of the fire-clay and coal 

 abounding there, combined with the finer clays from 

 Purbeck in Dorsetshire, soapstone from Cornwall, and 

 flints from Gravesend, from Wales, and Ireland. In the 

 middle portions of the county are fine estates — a 

 pleasant country of woods and gentlemen's seats, rich 

 pastures, and irrigated meadows bordering the beautiful 

 Trent, Dove, and Stour. The banks of the upper part 

 of the Dove are extraordinarily fertile, mainly arising 

 from the spring floods ; whence the proverb thus runs 

 — " In April, Dove's flood is worth a king's good." 

 This stream fertilizes like another Nile ; but sudden 

 rain or melting snow on the moorland or Peak hills is 

 sufficient to inundate large breadths of iand, though, 

 from the declivity of the valley, the largest floods do not 

 last long, giving the grazier some trouble to watch 

 against his stock being drowned. The soil of the agri- 

 cultural part of Staffordshire varies from sandy loams 

 and gravels — good for turnip husbandry — to stronger 

 land, and in some instances to heavy clay. There are 

 many large properties ; and also many farmers, we are 

 glad to say, owning their respective farms. Old 

 marl-pits abound ; but this mineral application has now 

 greatly grown into disuse, and guano, svjperphQsphate, 



&c., employed for the root-crop. One of the first ex-» 

 amples of agricultural improvement, the drainage and 

 rt'clamation of an estate, the breeding of fuperior sheep 

 and cattle, the erection of fine farm buildings, and thC: 

 successful application of machinery — both in the em- 

 ployment of the drainage-water of the estute as a motive- 

 power for all the thrashing and mill- work of the far- 

 mery, and in the working of steam-cultivators on the 

 land — may be seen at Lord Hatherton's, at Teddesley, 

 near Penbridge, Near this, and to the west of Rugeley, 

 stretches the notorious Cannock-Chase — fourteen tliou- 

 sand acres of waste land, mainly improvable, but at 

 present in a state of nature. Visitors of a curious turn 

 may find in this county some remains of the old long- 

 horned breed which one sees at the Birmingham Cattle- 

 show, but which arc being improved and altered in 

 character by the all-absorbing short-horns. To show 

 that this county manifested an extiaordinary precocity 

 in the matter at.least of ploughs, if not of field imple- 

 ments generally (witness the extended use of what are 

 known as " twins," pr in the eastern counties as the 

 " Staffordshire harrow "), we give an extract from a 

 report of the farming in 1794 : " Double, or two- 

 furrow ploughs are much used, and answer well on light 

 soils, where four horses will plough two acres or more 

 per day. The*e ploughs are made on o good construc- 

 tion, and require no holder. The single ivheel jilo^igh 

 is a very good tool, requiring no person to hold or 

 touch it, except when it is turning at the end of the 

 furrow. They require but one attendant, for which a 

 boy of fourteen or fifteen years of age is sufficient. And 

 here I cannot but remark the superiority of a plough 

 that requires no holder, but a person only to drive the 

 horses, and turn it out and in at the end of the furrow, 

 to one which requires to be held, and the horses of 

 which are guided by reins. These ploughs have been 

 much improved by the addition of an iron earth-board 

 firmly screwed to the coulter, called here a flag, for 

 ploughing turf, which takes off the turf, and turns it 

 into the furrow, where the plough immediately covers it 

 with earth. By this management, a turf at one plough- 

 ing has the appearance of a fallow, and harrows nearly 

 as well." 



Shropshire can only be considered as half- agricultural, 

 for there are very extensive moorlands or hills, as the 

 Bettws ridge on the confines of Radnorshire, the Stiper- 

 stones, the Long-mynd, Wenlock Edge, th€ Caradoc. 

 and the Clee Hills. In the south-west are wild districts 

 of barren hills, abounding with lead mines ; and the 

 east of the county, especially at Coalbrookdale, is a 

 region of furnaces and blazing iron- works, with an 

 aspect Vulcanic and grimy by day, and glowing volcanic 

 in the hours of darkness. There are also both potteries 

 and manufactories — china-ware at Coalport-on-the- 

 Severn; pipes, rails, &c., at Broseley ; carpets at 

 Bridgnorth ; gloves at Ludlow ; and flannels at Shrews- 

 bury. A comparatively level plain occupies the central 

 portion of the county, from the confines of Cheshire 

 down to Church Stretton, and from Oswestry to Coal- 

 brookdale — the famous Wrekin rising out of this plain 

 toward its eastern side. The noble river Severn flows 



