during the last Four Years. 185 



other matters of farming, our practice is in advance of our 

 science. 



There is still a practical point of view, however, which strikes 

 me so forcibly, with regard to these common admixtures of soil, 

 that I cannot but shortly advert to it. They are all permanent 

 in their effect, and nevertheless all exceedingly cheap. Chalking 

 land on the hills costs little more than 21. per acre ; pays itself 

 often in the second year ; and its effect lasts for twenty years. 

 Marling cannot cost more ; repays itself as soon ; and lasts even 

 longer. Claying the fen-land costs 36^. an acre; converts very 

 bad into very productive land ; and lasts twenty years. Yet there 

 is a great deal of land in each district to which these improve- 

 ments are applicable on which they are not practised, although 

 they are permanent, while farmers elsewhere lay out 31. an 

 acre for bones which hardly last above two or three years. It is 

 not that the farmers of these districts have any doubt of the 

 efficacy of each process. Why, then, is not each universally 

 carried out upon every acre of land within its own limits ? This 

 is a difficult question to answer. In some degree none of us carry 

 out all that is in our power ; but want of capital, or want of con- 

 fidence in the tenure of farms, are, I suppose, the two principal 

 causes of this omission. Without entering minutely into the 

 remedy, I think the more landowners acquaint themselves with 

 the real merits and real difficulties of farming, the more these two 

 obstacles will be smoothed; and I must say that land-agents might 

 promote such improvements more than they do, if they would 

 make themselves acquainted, not with the theory, which is difficult, 

 and may be mischievous, but, as they easily might, with the common 

 practfce of their own neighbourhoods. We have many intelligent 

 agents ; but it is an evil that any land-agents should be utterly 

 unacquainted with land. Besides these three cheap and lasting 

 improvements of the soil itself, we have found a still more neces- 

 sary and almost equally cheap improvement, draining, which, it 

 now appears, can be accomplished by some well-known method 

 or other on all land, at little more than 31. per acre, the cost, as I 

 before said, of a good dressing of bones. Now, as the varied sur- 

 face of England passes through my mind, I do not see that in any 

 large portion of it one or other of these acknowledged improve- 

 ments might not be at once put largely in practice, with an ab- 

 solute certainty of success. The chalk hills span the whole south 

 of the country in four branches. We hear of marling in Norfolk, 

 Suffolk, Warwickshire, Bedfordshire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, and 

 Hampshire. I do not know the extent of the fens ; but I have 

 seen the extent of land which empties its waters into Boston Wash 

 stated at a million of acres. As for draining, there is not a county, 

 nor any large proportion of parishes, or even of farms, in which 



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