BEDINGHAM, DITCHINGHAM d- THE FARMS 33 



instance, if I remember right, the back lawn had been mown nine 

 years in succession. Moreover, the arable was for the most part 

 a mass of docks and other weeds — indeed, such was its condition 

 that after vainly attempting to clean one piece for two years, we had 

 to abandon the effort and ' summer till ' it. Another field of four 

 and a half acres I let off. Meeting the tenant a while afterwards, 

 I asked him how he was getting on, whereon he informed me, 

 almost with tears, that he had spent fourteen pounds in labour in 

 getting the docks out of that field ! In proof of his words he 

 showed me the docks themselves, with salt thrown over them, 

 heaped in a long ' hale,' like beet, where in due course they rotted, 

 to be put back on to the land as manure. To-day that close is a 

 pleasure to look at. The occupier farms it in four shifts, as though 

 it were a tiny farm, and not a weed can I discover on it, for every 

 bit of black grass even is forked out. The result is that he grows 

 more on his four acres than many people do on six or eight. 



Farms coming on their owners' hands in the condition of that 

 which I am describing are not rare nowadays, having been reduced 

 to it by the poverty of the tenant or by deliberate ' land-sucking.' 

 Even in these times a deal of money can be made in four years or 

 so out of a farm, provided that it is in good heart at the time when 

 the ' land-sucker ' commences operations. Let us say that he has 

 taken on a four years' lease a holding which has been worked for a long 

 period by its former owner, some gentleman deceased, or that he has 

 decided to give up his tenancy after the expiration of another three 

 or four years. From that moment, if he be a person of this sharp- 

 dealing order, the land will be run \vith its labour bill brought down 

 to an irreducible minimum ; the hay and straw will be sold off it 

 instead of going back into the soil as manure, weeds will be left to 

 seed and drains to choke and ' holls ' uncleared, and many other 

 things will be done, or left undone, that are known only to the 

 experienced land-sucker. 



Then Heaven help the unfortunate landlord who finds 

 himself in the possession of acres so deteriorated that nobody 

 will pay a rent for them, for it will need capital, skill, and six or 



D 



