The Progress of Scientific Agriculture. 439 



Besides tlie six-course shift there was one of seven courses, 

 in which vetches took their place between wheat and barley. 

 But the best farmers pursued a five-course rotation, which 

 consisted of two white crops, one root crop, and two-year's 

 seeds. The farmers of the thin-skinned light soils of the 

 western district avoided as far as possible the exhausting 

 practice of growing two white crops in succession, which, 

 however, prevailed on the richer soils of East Norfolk. Upon 

 the strong lands where, without drainage, turnip cultivation 

 was impossible, the course was a fallow, barley, seeds, wheat 

 dibbled, and beans or peas. The real value of marshes and 

 pastures was not appreciated, and the greater part of the 

 eastern district on each side of the Yare, and also on the 

 northern side of the Bure would not bear a bullock. Home- 

 breds, Scots, and Irish beasts were principally purchased at 

 Harltston or St. Faith's Fair, though Devons were fast being 

 introduced. A good trotting variety of the roadster and a 

 sho! t-legged sturdy breed of draught horse peculiar to the 

 county were in use, and the old Norfolk sheep was just be- 

 ginning to make room for the Leicester. 



The changes apparent by 1850 were as follows : — Between 

 1804 and 1821 alone one hundred and fifty-three inclosures 

 took place ; the Fen districts had been drained and clayed ; 

 the great Eau Brink Cut, which commences at Denver and 

 empties its waters into L3mn harbour, was completed ; steam 

 pumping stations were built ; and districts, which in the time 

 of the windmills had been liable to become quaking bogs^ 

 whenever the breeze lulled, now yielded some of the finest 

 pasturage in the kingdom. In order to avoid the succession of 

 two white crops the farmers, especially of light soils, widely 

 adopted the four-course shift, and to obtain a firmer seed-bed 



^ In 1847, Mr. Clarke in his description of the Fens in the Journal of 

 the R.AS.E. enumerates two hundred and fiftj^ windmills and forty to 

 fifty steam engines as constantly at work pumping out the drainage. 

 These had been instrumental in redeeming 680,000 acres, described best 

 in the language of Dugdale as a district " where no element is good. The 

 air cloudy, gross, and full of rotten hairs; the water putrid and muddy, 

 yea, fxill of loathsome vermin ; the earth spongy and boggy ; and the fire 

 noisome by the stink of smoking hassocks." 



