Food. 555 



'' You know the road from my late farm in Sutterton Marsh, to thai 

 Village, 2 miles. Wlien 1 entered on that part of the Glebe of Sutter- 

 ton Vicarage, (I think it was in 1797) the outgoing tenant did not 

 leave so much as a wisp of straw on the premises, and he had sold 

 off the whole of the manure, produced in the previous winter. 



I found 3o acres prepared for spring corn, according to the custom 

 of the country. No other crop iiad been sown, nor was there one 

 inch of the whole farm in a state to be laid in for hay. 



1 instantly planted ten acres of the former years wheat stubble, 

 with potatoes and drill. 



I relied on the accuracy of my pulverizing instruments to render 

 the ground friable, because I had no manure. The rest of the land, 

 in course for fallow, was well laboured, and with the potatoe ground 

 sown with wheat in that autumn. My powerful steam apparatus 

 went to work in the winter, there was no hay on the farm, the 

 working Horses were served with 56 lbs each, per diem, of steamed 

 potatoes, there was no rack in the sheds, and to these sheds they 

 bad free access to and from the straw yard. Each pair was divided 

 off by itself, in the straw yard and shed. Thus managed, the month 

 of May found my Horses fatter and more glossy-coated than any 

 Coach-Horses in the neighbourhood. From the nature of the case, 

 nevertheless, they might have had oats, but I do not believe it, for 

 I tried the Horses with clean oats and potatoes, placed by own hands 

 in their mangers, at the same instant, over night, and with my own 

 hands I removed all the corn untouched, on the following day. To 

 place the matter beyond doubt, in winter 1798-9 I had no oats, no 

 hay, on my farm, in that wet autumn my neighbours were called to 

 the opening of a new threshing mill, and the corn, wet as it came 



