The Progress of Scientific Agriculture. 441 



the heavy in the production of fine wheat crops ; while, by 

 means of the drain pipe and the Croskill clod crusher, the 

 latter soils competed with the former in the luxuriance of 

 their root produce. 



But the good effects of artificial foods and manures in in- 

 creasing the farmer's livestock are undoubtedly the chief 

 feature in this comparison between the husbandry of ISCJO and 

 1850. 



The returns from forty-six Norfolk holdings of all descrip- 

 tions of soils in 1844, show a total of 2,235 cattle, being an 

 average of 48i- to each holding ; the average weekly number 

 of cattle for sale on Norwich Hill was between 800 and 1,000 

 head,^ and the quality of the stock does not seem to have been 

 much behind the quantity, if we may so judge from the fact 

 that a Norfolk farmer, in 1850, showed the finest Hereford ox 

 on record, and got besides first prize for his Galloways at the 

 Smithfield Fat Show.^ Yet Norfolk never was, and probably 

 never will be, either a breeding or a dairying county. At the 

 beginning of the century it did not even produce its own sheep, 

 importing all it wanted from other parts ; but the increase of 

 turnip culture and the large use of bone dust and rape cake 

 converted it into a market for all the grazing wants of Essex, 

 Lincoln, and Suffolk. In 1816 the statistics of the Norwich 

 market show 75,701 sheep, and 15,659 pigs. Twenty years 

 later they had risen respectively to 214,480 and 29,267.^ In 

 horses, however, Norfolk had retrograded rather than pro- 

 gressed. Farmers no longer rode in companies on fast trotting 

 hackneys to the weekly markets, nor could the county boast 

 any longer of a distinctive breed of draught horse. 



The prime mover in all agricultural improvements during 

 these fifty years was, as we have shown in another chapter, 

 Thomas Coke, by this time Earl of Leicester. He it was who 

 introduced the Southdown sheep and the Devon cow ; who 

 established the four-course system, and turned West Norfolk 



* Bacon's Frizt Essay on the Agriculture of Norfolk, p. 300. 



* The Heaths of Horning. Vide Caird's English Agriculture, p. 174. 

 ^ Bacon's Prize Essay, p. 116. 



