The Progress of Scientific Ag^^icttlture. 437 



interest was prostrated with this blow, and men, who had 

 borne up against the misfortunes of ruinous prices and devas- 

 tating murrain, were hanging their heads in abject despair, 

 Caird's splendid advice to make high farming a compensation 

 for the loss of the Corn Laws ^ aroused them to renewed energy 

 like a trumpet call. This later period, when British farming 

 had reached the zenith of perfection, is, however, beyond the 

 range to which we are obliged to limit our vision. Our 

 present purpose is to closely compare the farming of those 

 nineteenth- century experts, who carried on their craft under 

 State protection, with that of the eighteenth-century prac- 

 titioners whose sayings and doings we have already studied in 

 the reports to the Board of Agriculture. 



We shall first confine our attention to a minute examination 

 of the husbandry of one particular county, and then extend 

 our view so as to embrace the entire country. 



The district of our choice is Norfolk, whose fortunes we have 

 faithfully followed since the time when Tusser quaintly sang 

 its practice of husbandry in doggrel verse — that county which 

 has always attracted the physiologist's attention, whether be- 

 cause of its preponderance of dry soil, which made Charles II. 

 desire to cut it up into strips for the highways of England, or 

 for those qualities which render it so suitable for our present 

 purpose and which led Dr. Fuller, an ancient writer, to assert 

 that, " all England may be carved out of Norfolk, for here 

 are fens and heaths, light and deep, sandy and clay grounds, 

 meadow lands and pastures, arable and woodlands." 



Let us then briefly recapitulate the chief features of its 

 husbandry as practised in the days of Young and Kent. 



We find this latter writer, in his report of 1796, extending 

 a welcome hand to the long-lease system just coming into use, 

 and urging on landlords its general adoption for the sake of 

 the encouragement that it would afford to the cultivation of 

 those commons and warrens which then composed a large 

 portion of the county. 



The general system of husbandry was the six-course shift, 



^ High Farming as the best substitute for Protection. Sir James 

 Caird, 1849. 



