2 Farming of Bedfordshire. 



practice to make open water or head-furrows on this description 

 of land only where crops of corn are sown or in the first stages 

 of their growth. Attempts of this kind are seldom made at 

 other seasons, from which neglect the finest particles of manure, 

 mucilage, or food of plants are damaged or washed away, and the 

 cells of the plants are rotted and their tubes wasted or destroyed." 

 " The inischievous effects of this wretched system of farming," 

 the writer adds, " are not confined to the growth of corn, but 

 the destruction of cattle and sheep depastured thereon is but too 

 frequently produced — not merely by the rot of a single farmer's 

 flock, but occasionally of nearly the entire sheep of a village and 

 neighbourhood," 



We shall have occasion to make further reference to this Re- 

 port, but these facts may suffice to show some of the difficulties 

 with which our present farmers have had to contend. 



The county of Bedford is computed to be about 35 miles from 

 north to south, and a little upwards of 22 miles from east to west, 

 containing an area of about 480 square miles, or, according to 

 Mr. Stone's estimate, about 307,200 acres : if we take Mr. 

 Beak on income tax, 293,059 acres ; or the Parliamentary 

 Gazetteer, 296,320 acres. We adopt this last computation, 

 being the medium and most modern. It is divided into nine 

 separate hundreds or polling-plaCes, 124 parishes, and 10 market- 

 towns, viz. Bedford, Ampthill, Woburn, Leigh ton- Buzzard, 

 Dunstable, Luton, Toddington, Shefford, Biggleswade, and 

 Potton. 



Since the construction of the railroads, Bedford and Leighton- 

 Buzzard have become the leading corn-markets. 



The soil of the county varies much ; but, for our present pur- 

 pose, it is scarcely necessary to. divide it into more than the three 

 following principal classes or descriptions, although there are 

 two or three sub-varieties which will require cursory notice. 



L The Tenacious Claij Soils, lying on a bed of IjIuc marl, 

 brick earth, or gault. 



II, The Gravelly and Sandy Loams, with a subsoil of gravel, 

 greensandj or sandstone. 



III. The Thin, Loose, Mixed Soils, upon the oolite or chalk 

 formation. 



First. The Clay-land forms nearly the whole northern divi- 

 sion of the county below Bedford. From the southern base of 

 Clapham Hill to Shelton, the extreme northern boundary; and 

 in the opposite direction from Beggary to Cold Harbour — 

 ominous terms ! — comprising nearly one-third of the county, you 

 have clay-soil, excepting that small intersection composed of a 

 strip of low land and the meadows adjoining the Ouse. Of this 

 intersection the subsoil is chiefly gravel, but in several parishes 



