Farming of Warioicksliire. 479 



In tlie district under description few pigs or oxen are fattened ; 

 the straw is trodden into dung by cows, horses, and sheep. 

 Dairying is pursued on a small scale, and although cows are kept 

 on most of tlie farms, it is not often there are more than 10 or 12 

 on each. It must be remembered that in this part of the county 

 there is little pasture-land ; the grass-land is chiefly on the banks 

 of the Avon and its tributaries, and these meadows are of course 

 always mown. Cows are pastured on the seeds, and, strange as 

 it may seem to farmers who cut their seeds for hay, some of the 

 best cheese in the kingdom (taking price as the criterion) used 

 to be made on a farm near Warwick, which is without pasture- 

 land. Cheese has of late given way to butter-making ; and 

 cheese farmers are often stigmatized as very bad ones, and 

 cheese-making as the great enemy of Warwickshire landlords. 

 A small quantity of cream-cheese is made on some of the farms, 

 and the neighbourhood of Leamington is particularly noted for 

 it, A good many calves are reared ; they are procured from the 

 Bucks markets and raised by hand ; they are fed on milk and 

 linseed, and as they become strong, are allowed to run out in the 

 paddocks and are fed on bran ; afterwards they are kept on the 

 meadows, seeds, turnips, and straw, and are sold at two years old 

 in calf to dealers, who take them to the county whence they came. 

 Sheep are the main stay, except on farms where the number of 

 cows makes it necessary to banish other stock during the summer 

 months. The breeds kept throughout the county are the long" 

 wooled, generally crossed with the Southdown, In Mr. Murray's 

 time, what he calls the " ancient Warwickshire sheep," a large 

 polled sort, was most in vogue ; " the average size when hogs 

 and fat is 23 lbs, per quarter, A dispute arose between Mr. 

 Bakewell and Mr. Palfrey, a breeder of the Warwickshire sort, as 

 to the comparative merits of these and the Leicesters, which 

 ended in a cross being proved the best." The fleeces of the old 

 Warwickshire used to average 9 lbs. each, of the mixed, (5 lbs. 

 There are some farmers in the neisrhbourhood of Warwick who 

 still keep this large uncouth breed, which was formerly spread 

 over Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, and Lincolnshire. I3ake- 

 well's improved Leicesters were produced by making selections 

 from this stock and breeding from the progeny ; and in general 

 they have been crossed so as to lose their original characteristics, 

 or replaced by Cotswolds, Leicesters, or Shropshire sheep. The 

 plan of using cross-bred rams, so pertinaciously adhered to by 

 some men, whose maxim is to use wliat costs least, is giving way ; 

 and farmers now prefer rams of the above breeds, or a jiure 



young plant, and as an enrichment of the moisture falling on and filtering 

 through it into the soil below, is in perfect accordance with the best procedure 

 which science could suggest, had not practice already established it. — C. W. II. 



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