442 History of the English Landed Interest. 



from a rye to a wheat producing district ; who raised the 

 average of rentals from 5s, to 20^, and at the same time 

 showed the farmer how he could pay this extra charge and 

 yet flourish. If therefore we want to see the acme of success- 

 ful husbandry at this period we must in imagination go, like 

 Arthur Young did in reality eighty years earlier, and walk 

 over the Holkham estate. On such holdings as the home- 

 farm of the landlord, the Castleacre farm of Hudson, the 

 Weasenham and Burnam Sutton farms of the two Overmans, 

 or the Sussex farm of Blyth, we should have found a process 

 of high husbandry, with one exception only, equal to any 

 advanced practice of the present day. Mr. Blaikie, the Scotch 

 agent, or his farming factotum, Bulling, would have pointed 

 out the beauties and economic excellence of his lordship's 

 Devon herd or Southdown flock. Hudson would have con- 

 vinced one that in order to carry the four-course system to 

 perfection no single shift must be stinted of its proper manures. 

 He would have first startled the observer with a sight of the 

 annual total expended in artificial fertilisers, and then reas- 

 sured him as to the wisdom of such an outlay by affording 

 him a comparison between the profits of his tenancy thirty 

 years before and at present. Caird tells us that when, in 1850, 

 he went over this farm, its occupier was not only claying the 

 entire surface every twenty-one years and spreading over it 

 every load of dung made on the holding, but was expending a 

 considerable amount of capital in artificial foods and manures 

 for it. Thus he never bought less than two hundred tons of oil 

 cake annually, and many hundreds of pounds went in the pur- 

 chase of Lawes' superphosphate, guano, salt, and nitrate of soda. 

 This last item, however, is the exception made above, for there 

 was too much used on the light lands of Holkham to have en- 

 sured prolonged success. Though it is justifiable to use it in 

 proper proportions as an auxiliary for other less active fertil- 

 isers, farmers are prone, when bad seasons reduce their profits, 

 to alter these proportions for the sake of temporary advantages. 

 It is for such and similar reasons that those who buy much of 

 it at the present day render their actions and motives liable to 

 grave suspicion, and indeed few landlords permit their tenants 



