486 Farming of Waricicksldre. 



a few excellent sliort-liorned cattle bred ; they are grazed on 

 seeds throui^h the summer, and run in the yards from November 

 to May, The Tamworth breed of hogs is common in this as in 

 other parts of Warwickshire ; the number fattened is not very 

 large. One plan of feeding them deserves notice, because it 

 accords with a favourite notion of Arthur Young : it is, to give 

 them sour food. Swedes are boiled and mixed with one-third of 

 meal, a couple of cisterns are filled, with a week's allowance in 

 each, and the food is used a week old, and in a sour state. The 

 meal is increased as the animals fatten. 



A plan which an excellent farmer has adopted for economising 

 liquid manure, and which has the advantage of being cheaper 

 than the tank and water-cart system, is to dig a hole outside of 

 every yard, fill it with all sorts of rubbish, and make it the re- 

 ceptacle of the drainage, carting away the stuff when necessary. 

 The escape appeared very trifling. 



In the neighbourhood of Birmingham a great deal of the land 

 is under spade culture, and large quantities of vegetables are 

 grown for the town. Potatoes are planted on the clover ley, first 

 ploughing flat, then trenching 18 inches deep, and placing the 

 dung and the turf on the top of the bottom spit. Then follows 

 wheat and afterwards potatoes and turnips. 



Draining and Irrigation. — Some writers have awarded to 

 Joseph Elkington of Pnncethorpe, in this county, the merit of 

 being the originator of under drainage. In Sinclair's Code of 

 Agriculture we read as follows : — 



" In the year 1764, Elkington began to drain some fields on liis farm of 

 Princethorpe, which were so extremely wet, as to rot several hundreds of his 

 sheep. He had dug a trench for that purjiose, about four or five feet deep, 

 which did not, however, reach the principal body of subjacent water. It is 

 said that, while he was deliberating what was to be done, a man was passing 

 with an iron crow-bar. Being desirous to know what sort of strata lay under 

 his drain, he forced the bar down about four feet below the bottom of the 

 trench. On pulling it out, water burst up through the hole, and ran down' 

 the drain. This led him to the knowledge, that wetness may often be pro- 

 duced by water confined farther below the surface than the usual depth of 

 drains. For his success in acting on the hint, by boring, as well as other 

 modes of draining, and readiness to commrinicate his principles to the Board 

 of Agriculture, a thousand pounds was voted to him by Parliament," 



We give a plan of a piece of ground drained by Elkington, 

 which forms a portion of a narrow strip of land of 35 acres, for- 

 merly filled with water from the hills which rise on either side, 

 and now converted from a peat-bog into productive water- 

 meadows. The dotted line running under the hill represents 

 Elkington's drain, pierced at intervals of 9 feet with auger holes ; 

 from these the water rose into a covered sandstone drain. By 

 this simple and inexpensive process the land would have been 



