A CHAMPION OF TURNIPS 175 



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" Why, of two brothers, rich and restless one 

 Ploughs, burns, manures, and toils from sim to sun ; 

 The other slights, for women, sports, and wines, 

 All Townshend's ttirnips and all Grosvenor's mines. 



Is known alone to that Directing Power 

 Who forms the genius in the natal hour." 



Townshend's efforts to improve his estates were richly rewarded. 

 On the sandy soil of his o^ti county, his methods were pecuharly 

 successful. Furze-capped warrens were in a few years converted 

 into tracts of well-cultivated productive land. Those who followed 

 his example realised fortunes. In thirty years one farm rose in 

 rental value from £180 to £800 ; another, rented by a warrener at 

 £18 a year, was let to a farmer at an amiual rent of £240 ; a farmer 

 named MaUett is said to have made enough off a holding of 1500 

 acres to buy an estate of the annual value of £1800. Some farmers 

 were reported to be worth ten thousand pounds. But the example 

 only spread into other counties by slow degrees. Outside Norfolk^ 

 both landlords and farmers still classed turnips with rats as 

 Hanoverian iimovations, and refused their assistance with Jacobite 

 indignation. Even in Townshend's own county, it was not till the 

 close of the century that the practice was at all^miversally adopted ; 

 stiU later was it before the improved methods were accepted which 

 converted Lincolnshire from a rabbit-warren or a swamp into corn- 

 fields and pasture. 



