238 AGRICULTUEE. 



they are now so much reduced that they would " stretch 

 little further than York" which says, " The utter extinc- 

 tion of the land overshadowed by trees would be gladly 

 submitted to by every farmer, provided the trees were to 

 be annihilated, and that without any diminution of rent," 

 comes not from a scientific lecture-room, nor from a city 

 counting-house, but from the Conservative M.P. for Berk- 

 shire and editor of the " Royal Agricultural Journal ;" and 

 the man who boasts that it is now a very long time since 

 his own internal fences have been removed entirely, is the 

 same individual. 



Four-footed game are doomed also another cheap im- 

 provement; but we are thankful to Mr. Pusey for tole- 

 rating pheasants and partridges. He reckons burning 

 clay, claying, liming, boning, and chalking among cheap 

 "landlords' improvements." No one of these operations 

 is of general application. Perhaps situations may be found 

 in which each of them may produce an improvement 

 having somewhat of permanence. Nothing but local ex- 

 perience is a safe guide. Of lime, Mr. Pusey says, " it is 

 considered indispensable on the west side of England, and 

 is generally found utterly useless elsewhere." Of burning 

 clay, we beg to state, that though he cites eight witnesses 

 who all testify strongly in its favour, and though we do not 

 at all doubt their testimony, our experience tells us that 

 this practice also is only of local advantage. We have 

 burnt clay in Staffordshire and Derbyshire, we have seen 

 it burnt for several successive years on a large scale and at 

 vast cost in the former county, and we never saw an in- 

 stance in which it was followed by any apparent advantage, 

 and we have seen several, where the surface of the land 

 was burnt, in which the result was manifest deterioration. 

 We state this, not to dissuade persons from proving the 

 effect, but to caution them against practising on a large 

 scale before they have proved it. We need not go far to 

 find a gentleman whom the clay-burning papers in the 

 "Agricultural Journal" have cost hundreds of pounds, 



