292 A FARM IN BEDFORDSHIRE. 



With respect to the stalks, experience will prove that what- 

 ever the fibre sells for beyond the cost of preparation, is gain. 

 Thus would the unfruitful fallow be soon excluded fronvthe 

 Farmer's rotation, turnips be cultivated upon soils now uncon- 

 genial to their growth, and abundance spring up in the place of 

 a scanty herbage and meagre grain. 



Land devoted to summer fallows, broad fences, ordinary 

 grass, and rubbish, is a national loss, and incurs a serious re- 

 sponsibility upon both landlord and tenant. The soil ranks 

 amongst the highest talents committed to our charge, and we 

 are bound to render it subservient to the wants of mankind. 



The time has arrived for the farmer to give up idle preju- 

 dices, to lay hold of every available source of profit, and to 

 depend on increased production as his only security against 

 foreign or home competition. 



Whether your correspondent be a tenant or a landlord, he 

 cannot but acknowledge the correctness of these conclusions, and 

 that he who obstructs the springs of national improvement is un- 

 worthy the name of Cincinnatus, the Roman Consul and Farmer. 



I lately had the pleasure of inspecting a farm in Bedford- 

 shire, accompanied by the noble owner and the occupier. It 

 consisted of a thousand acres, and evinced, throughout every 

 field, the national advantages of good tenants and liberal land- 

 lords. There I saw land that had recently yielded excellent crops 

 of grain, which before, as pasture, was comparatively worth- 

 less; fences reduced from twenty-one feet wide or more, to three ; 

 fallows giving way to turnips and mangel-wurzel ; unsightly 

 ditches being removed ; fields enlarged ; and tiles, to complete 

 the all-important work of drainage, strewed in every direction. 



To every suggestion for improvement a cordial assent was 

 given. I had also the additional gratification of seeing a long 

 range of cattle-boxes with a boiling-house attached, rising from 

 the ground; and of learning that a quantity of linseed would 

 be grown to carry out my system of fattening cattle with 

 native instead of foreign produce a system that enables the 

 farmer to triple the number of his cattle and quantity of 

 manure ; a system, the advantages of which will be seen in the 

 following account of last winter's return for grazing upon my 

 premises. 



