Amateur Farming. 353 



that Bake well erected all tliese appliances out of his own purse, 

 he records the fact " as a remarkable instance of spirited hus- 

 bandry." 



But Young was too true a farmer to find no fault where 

 fault was findable ; so, when he comes to the general manage- 

 ment of the holding, he begins to criticise not altogether 

 favourably. On 440 acres, 110 of which are grass, he is both 

 amazed and pleased to find so large a stock as 60 horses, 400 

 sheep, and 150 beasts. He makes no objection to the hus- 

 bandry, 15 acres of which are wheat, 25 spring corn, and 30 

 turnips. Nor can he disapprove of the practice of floating some 

 80 acres of low-lying meadows, or of Bakewell's persistent aim 

 to convert as much arable land as he can spare into pasture. 

 Walking over one of these areas of new turf with its thick 

 covering of white clover, he asks his guide the secret of his 

 success, and is surprised to hear that each acre has been seeded 

 down with 10 lbs. of broad clover and half a bushel of rye grass. 

 On asserting his own personal preference for white clover and 

 trefoil, his host deftly recalls him to the ocular proofs around 

 him of the superiority of the Dishley process. Convinced by 

 such an object-lesson as this, Young next asks Bakewell how he 

 had been able to rid his land of " the couch, twitch, and other 

 trumpery," which had so often smothered his own sprouting 

 grass-seeds. He is assured that the entire success of his host's 

 system can only be attributed to the extreme care bestowed on 

 the preliminary clearing of the land, and the subsequent thick 

 dressing of farmyard manure — a combination of processes 

 which seemed to replace as if by magic the moribund clover 

 with natural grasses and honeysuckle. In one direction, how- 

 ever, Young could not be reconciled to Bakewell's economy, 

 and, indeed, when he revisited Dishley fifteen years later, it 

 had been altered. He noticed that the stall-fed cattle were 

 not littered, and that their manure was kept two or three years 

 before being deposited on the arable land. Instead of being 

 " like dark butter," it was " powdery, like snuff," and Young 

 could not see the benefits derived by Bakewell from making 

 a present to the nearest ditch or horse-pond of all the liquid 

 constituents of the cow byre and loose box, but preferred Mr. 



U. A A 



