Eulogium on William West. 149 
The business of farming may be said to have been 
new to Mr. West, for although he had a general idea 
of the common operations of husbandry, yet he must 
have been very deficient with respect to the various 
. minor details upon which so much of the success and 
profit of a farm depend. The land he bought was al- 
most a common: there being scarcely a fence of 
strength sufficient to keep out whatever animal chose 
to walk over his fields and they were covered with 
briars and weeds of every kind. In these respects his 
farm was not singular. All the agricultural operations 
of the district were the reverse of what they ought to 
have been, and of what they now are.—There is still 
much room for improvement. 
After fencing his land, by substantial inclosures, and 
clearing it of weeds, briars, and wild hedge-rows, he 
looked around for information, as to the best mode of 
conducting his farm. He saw cattle half starved in 
winter for want of food, and pinched with cold from 
deficient shelter, and but poorly fed even in summer. 
Grass was the result of the spontaneous, though scanty 
production of the soil after the crop of grain was taken 
off, or in a few cases, of natural rough meadow, or wa- 
tered fields, but as the first of those resources was not 
in the power of all, and as the latter, if within their 
command, was neglected from indolence, or ignorance 
of the benefit to be derived from it, or of the method 
of effecting the improvement, the provision of hay was 
necessarily extremely poor: the consequence was, that 
the stock kept was small in number, or if the vanity of 
shewing a large stock infected the farmer, they were of 
course but half nourished. In either case, manure was 
