CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



1849. Half the land consists of most excellent 

 soil, the remainder being poor, barren, and worth- 

 less. Until very late years, there has been an 

 annual deficiency, though the property ought to 

 return at least ,60,000 a year. In Nottingham- 

 shire, Mr Evelyn Denison has grubbed up some 

 extensive oak-woods growing on a red-clay soil, at 

 a total expense of ^17 per acre, and has found 

 that in every case the timber, &c. upon the ground 

 defrayed the entire expense, and left a surplus of 

 jCS to 12 P 61 " acre th e increased annual value 

 being about i, 43. per acre. Many thousand 

 acres of our national forest-land might be simi- 

 larly treated with the same advantage. 



But besides bringing woods and forests into cul- 

 tivation, immense quantities of land may be added 

 to our present arable and pasture by the simple 

 removal of useless fences, and curtailing the dimen- 

 sions of those which are really requisite and neces- 

 sary. Thus, around Exeter, the loss of land from 

 the size and number of hedgerows amounts to no 

 less than one acre out of ten ; and in some 

 districts of Norfolk, again, a like proportion of 

 ground is thus wasted. 



SPADE-HUSBANDRY. 



Fig. 20. 



The reclaiming and culture of small pieces of 

 land by means of the spade and other instruments 

 of manual labour, is usually spoken of under the 

 name of spade-husbandry, but is also sometimes 

 called cottage - farming or field - gardening the 

 operations of the culturist bearing an intimate 

 resemblance to those applied in ordinary kinds of 

 gardening. 



It is very common for persons to argue against 

 the practicability or advantage of settling the poor 

 and hard-worked or out-of-work population on 

 tracts of waste land say in cottages with twenty 

 acres, ten acres, or considerably less, to each 

 family, assuming as the basis of their calculation 

 that the cottager would make no more return from 

 the same area of surface than the farmer who tries 

 reclamation on 'a great scale. But innumerable 

 facts contradict this assumption. Thus, the culti- 

 vation of the Bagshot sands has been attempted 



612 



by many practical farmers, and afterwards aban- 

 doned ; but it is a fact, that when the labourer 

 puts his spade into this soil, he almost invariably 

 succeeds in turning it into good potato-ground. 



In his Report on the Farming of Cornwall, Mr 

 Karkeek says : ' As a proof that a large part of 

 the granite waste in the Land's End district would 

 pay an almost immediate profit to the cultivator, 

 I have only to state that a very considerable 

 extent is now in progress of reclamation by 

 cottagers, who obtain small plots of waste on 

 leases of three lives, which they cultivate and build 

 cottages on. When not very rocky or boggy, the 

 land may be reclaimed at $ to 6 per acre 

 fencing not included, which varies according to 

 circumstances. On taking ground of this descrip- 

 tion into cultivation for the first time, the cottager 

 does not attempt to grow wheat, but potatoes and 

 oats ; in the course of five or six years he intro- 

 duces barley ; and in ten or twelve years, wheat 

 .... An immense breadth of waste on the slate- 

 formation has also been reclaimed by cottagers, 

 chiefly miners. The soil is exceedingly thin, 

 resting on red or yellow gritty clay and coarse 

 slates, abounding in quartz fragments, and tra- 

 versed by mineral lodes and elvan rocks in every 

 direction. The late Earl of Falmouth and Lord 

 de Dunstanville gave a great impetus towards the 

 reclaiming of this coarse kind of land, by granting 

 pieces from three to five acres to cottagers on 

 leases of three lives, at a small rent of from 2s. 6d. 

 to 53. per acre, on condition of their building cot- 

 tages on the holding. The parish value of these 

 lots now averages from xos. to 205. per acre. The 

 Earl of Falmouth has nearly 2000 tenements of 

 this description, which have increased in value, 

 since 1815, from 20 to 25 per cent.' It is supposed 

 that no less than 6000 working-miners are pos- 

 sessed of cottages on land which they have 

 reclaimed. 



In one district of Lincolnshire, called the Isle 

 of Axholme, the occupations are remarkably 

 small, a great number of farms being under ten 

 acres in extent, while single acres, half-acres, and 

 even roods are general over large tracts of open- 

 field land. The soil is a very rich sand-loam, 

 managed chiefly by the spade, hoe, and fork, and 

 yields abundant crops to the constant and com- 

 plete tillage and cleaning which it receives. Pota- 

 toes, onions, and other garden produce form a 

 large proportion of the cropping. Many of these 

 small cultivators may be poor, especially those 

 who, having been too eager for a plot of land, 

 have borrowed too large a proportion of the neces- 

 sary capital, and so fallen into the clutches of 

 mortgagees ; but as a general rule they are well 

 off, earning an independent though frugal liveli- 

 hood. Perhaps one-fourth of them are owners ; 

 and there is a constant emulation among the 

 remaining occupiers to become proprietors by a 

 thrifty industry, great prices being consequently 

 given for small plots of land. On the rich soils of 

 the Isle, where toil is the principal requisite in 

 cultivation, an industrious family succeeds well in 

 spade-husbandry ; though on light lands, needing 

 the trampling of the flock and the expenditure of 

 heavy sums in artificial manuring, the man whose 

 chief capital is in his sinews would be at every 

 disadvantage ; though even there it is found that, 

 by taking an acre or so of garden-ground, the 

 labourer is amply benefited. 



