484 Farming of Warwickshire, 



lb. less than the best. The small farmers save their own bulls, 

 and as they never expend anythino^ for a superior animal, the 

 breed deteriorates rather than improves : pure bred stock is not 

 common. Much of the land lies in high ridges, which, after 

 furrow drainage, require to be reduced with care, as there is little 

 extra depth of soil at the crown.* The Birmingham and Strat- 

 ford Canal passing through this district supplies the farmers, 

 who avail themselves of it, with manure. Artificials are little 

 used ; guano is sometimes applied to the corn in spring, but it is 

 quite an exceptional case. As few pigs jue kept, little corn given 

 to cows, and but few oxen fattened, the quantity of manure ap- 

 plied to the laild is very meagre. 



The Northern District consists of that part of Warwickshire 

 lying north of the Avon and of the tract we have just described. 

 The soils vary fi'om a gravelly loam, of various degrees of fertility, 

 to the sands of Meriden Heath and Sutton ; there is also a small 

 portion of heavier land, particularly in the neighbourhood of 

 Tanworth and the coal measures. There is a pasture tract on the 

 eastern side, on the borders of Leicestershire, but, generally 

 speaking, the land is in arable culture, and the greater portion of 

 the grass land is on the banks of the numerous streams. In the 

 neighbourhood of Birmingham farming merges into market- 

 gardening. Rents vary from 2/. for the strong to 11. for the light 

 land, and, near the town, 3/. to 4/. Under the head of stock we 

 may mention dairies of from 10 to 15 cows ; sheep in numbers, 

 which are yearly augmented by the draining of the land ; and 

 oxen and pigs which are fattened, though not in large numbers, 

 by the larger and better farmers. The stock is maintained through 

 the summer by depasturing nearly the whole of the seeds, which, 

 in accordance with the custom of this county, are heavily manured 



* Whenever a transverse sectional view can be got across one of these old 

 high-ridged fields, the appearance below the plough-line, on the tops of the 

 ridges, is as completely that of subsoil as though it had ncrw been stirred. It is 

 difficult to account for this, as the ridge itself implies the commencement of the 

 tillage vpon the level; and the difference of the soil and subsoil (in the district 

 spoken of) is too striking to leave it easily credible that the once-cultivated soil 

 could ever return to its subsoil texture and appearance. A field of this description 

 "was drained (down the furrows) in the autumn of 1844-, and the ridges cast ; it 

 was cross -ploughed, scufiled, rolled and harrowed, in the spring, and, whea 

 quite level, sown with barley and clover-seeds, with a top-dressing of guano. The 

 opinion expressed by one or two neighbouring farmers was that the crop would 

 "be bad on the site of the old I'idges. I'/te reverse ivas the case to a degree very 

 strikingly perceptible during the whole period of growth. The difference was 

 equally observable in the clover crop the following year. The explanation may 

 perhaps be this, — that deeply as the soil had been gathered into the old furrows, 

 it furnished less mineral food to meet the demand of a manure rich in ammonia 

 than that which had been newly restored to cultivation on the ridges. On another 

 field, levelled in like manner, and laid down with permanent grass-seeds, the 

 opposite effect (conformably with the caution in the text) has continued to exist, 

 the pasture being best on the sites of the old furrow. — C. W. H. 



