Farming of Warwickshire. 481 



Cleveland. One-horse carts and two-liorse ploughs go together ; 

 the common practice of this county exhibits but a small propor- 

 tion of either. In carrying out dung, some use four or five horses 

 to a cart, and this on land by no means hilly. An instrument 

 which will be a novelty to some of our readers is the douhle-plough, 

 which, not content with figuring on the signboards of some of the 

 country inns, is still made use of even by some intelligent farmers. 

 The beam is 9 feet long, the handles 5 feet, and the beam is either 

 crooked to the right or a cross-piece is mortised-in to carry a 

 second mould-board ; the front one is the smallest, and following 

 close behind is the larger one, 4 feet long. Four, five, or even 

 six horses are harnessed to it, and two furrows turned at once. 

 Some look with contempt on the machine ; but specimens may 

 still be seen. It had its origin on the clays, and is still largely 

 iised to stir the fallows, for which purpose it is here thought in- 

 valuable. In good weather it will plough nearly 2^ acres a day. 



The clays south of the Avon tract vary from a rich old pasture 

 soil to a poor lias clay, or a rubbly limestone. The best grazing- 

 land is on the borders of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire — 

 at Grandborough, and from Wormleighton to Farnborough, Burton 

 Dassett, and lladway. At Wormleighton some of the poorer pasture 

 has been pared and burnt and ploughed up ; the rich old turf 

 remains untouched. At Burton Dassett one may follow the foot- 

 path for four miles on the road to Kineton and only cross two 

 ploughed fields, and the cattle are seen grazing with equal relish 

 •in the flats and on tlie bare mounds which here and there break 

 the level surface. Herefords and shorthorns are preferred by the 

 graziers ; but no great attention is paid by them to the breeds 

 which they purchase. The best land bears one ox per acre, or 

 one ox and three sheep on two acres. The last reporter of War- 

 wickshire farming remarks on the lamentable way in which some 

 .of the pastures were laid down, and on the unevcnness of the 

 surface and the wide spaces between the ridges, which remain 

 soaked instead of conducting away the water. Draining and 

 ■levelling have in a great measure checked these evils, and the 

 rushes and sour grass which marked the wet furrows have in most 

 cases disappeared ; but some of the land that has been subse- 

 <]uently laid tlovvn is in the worst possible ])light. It was cropped 

 hy the worst farmers until it bore nothing, and then not laid down 

 but allowed to riui to grass, or rather to couch. Nothing but 

 paring and burning, a good summer fallow and manuring, can 

 cure it. Clay-land, even when productive, is, from the capital 

 and energy required in its cultivation, more liable to Ijc abused 

 than any otli'M-. 



Pasture-laud on tlie soutlicrn side of the county is in the pro- 

 portion of about one-third of the whole ; towards Kineton it 



