A GREAT FARM 



The Kammerherre Tesdorpf, my kind host at his 

 beautiful house of Ourupgaard, is one of the compara- 

 tively few large Danish landowners, being the pro- 

 prietor of an estate of about 7000 acres. There exist 

 larger properties than this in Denmark, for instance 

 that of Count Weddell in Fyen extending, I believe, 

 to 30,000 acres, which unfortunately I did not see, but 

 such properties are not common. 



Mr. Tesdorpf informed me that his father was a 

 very large landowner indeed. He sold most of his 

 estate, but by a peculiar provision of the Danish land 

 laws, which are so intricate that it is difficult for a 

 foreigner to follow their details, in contravention of 

 the usual embargo against laying farm to farm, he was 

 able under the terms of certain Acts to reserve one 

 out of each nine that he sold and to concentrate them 

 in a single block. The Ourupgaard property was the 

 result of this transaction. At least that is how I 

 understood the matter, as to which I hope I have 

 made no mistake. I should add that the law under 

 which this was done has now been repealed, so that in 

 Denmark an estate can no longer be formed in this 

 fashion. 



Mr. Tesdorpf, with the exception of a few holdings 



that are still held by tenants on what is known as 



faeste tenure^ which will revert to him in due course, 



farms all this 7000 acres himself, with results that we 



should think remarkable in England. At any rate he 



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