SOILS roil ITS GHOWTII. 123 



a secondary consideration. The details of its manage- 

 ment, are, nevertheless, much less minute and trouble- 

 some than with flax ; it is however of great consequence 

 to the country, and appears likely to become of greater 

 importance, and even to deserve encouragement from the 

 legislature, both as a means of giving employment to the 

 poor, and also as furnishing an independent supply of an 

 article indispensable for the national use, which we 

 mainly procure fron a hostile country. 



Favourable soils in England are found in the tract 

 called Holland, in the county of Lincolnshire, and the 

 fens of Ely, where it has long been cultivated to great 

 advantage, as it might be in many other parts of the 

 kingdom where there is a similar quality of soil ; but it 

 will not thrive on clay or stiff cold land. It is found, 

 however, that it will do very well after turnips on friable 

 loams and good sands, provided it be well manured. 

 Spalding Moor, in Lincolnshire, is a barren sand, and yet, 

 with proper care and culture, it has produced as fine 

 hemp as any in England, and in large quantities. In the 

 Isle of Axholme, in the same county, the culture and 

 management of it has long been the principal employ- 

 ment of the inhabitants ; and according to Leland it was 

 so in the reign of Henry VIII. In the county of Suffolk, 

 in the district extending from Eye to Beccles, hemp has 

 been cultivated on sandy loams with great success. On 

 such soils the quantity is not so great as in a black rich 

 mould ; but the quality is much finer, and therefore 

 better adapted to the fabric of hempen cloth. Hemp, in 

 short, delights in valleys and the banks of rivers. Eresh 

 broken lands in the midst of woods and forests are 

 favourable to its growth ; so also are gardens and other 

 spots that have long been cultivated by the spade. The 

 same is the case on a crop of broken-up lucerne, on land 

 in good heart, after a crop of oats has been taken ; on 

 broken-up pasture land, and fresh-drained marshes, and 

 newly-emptied pools. Count Gallesio, to whose treatise 

 we shall have to refer hereafter, regards as the best com- 

 position of hemp-land that which is composed of one- 



