STATISTICS OF AGRICULTURE. 



1092 



Huntingdonshire. Shepherd, of Chlin>enham, has Invented a 

 variety of hnplements. Some threshing machnes, and the 

 best Lothian implements, at Lord Hardwicke s. lhe/^ 

 hear roller is an iron roller, with a number of pieces of iron 

 like small spades fixed into it. It is used m the fenny dis- 

 tricts for cutting up the weeds, which choke up the s'o li- 

 ning rivers. The horses walk along the bank, and draw t 

 several times up and down the "ver. The weeds are thus 

 rooted up, and canied down the stream by the farst flood. 



6. Arable Land. . tt ^ ., i,- 

 Ploughed and cultivated in general as m Huntmgdonshire , 



hemp is cultivated more extensively; f ax is grown, and mustard, 

 near Wisbeach and Outwell ; a few lentils, as in Huntmgdon- 

 "hke, butare considered of less value thari tares. The reporter 

 says!a ^ond crop of mustard is obtained by- what shells from 

 the first, and that mustard springs up in land where it has not 

 been cultivated for upwards oi a century. Woad is m 

 cultivation, and for every forty acres a woad mil'.'' '^ ^^-' " 

 required. No crop pays equal to the reed, which requires no 

 culture but cutting and bunching; owing to the improvement 

 of the fens, they are now becommg scarce. Whit^eed (Poa 

 aqnatica), or fen hay, is produced on niany parts of the 

 fm lands, and even on such parts as have been dug for peat. 

 The land is inundated till the crop appears above the water, 

 and then, wherever it can be'eflected, it is let oft ; m other 

 cases the grass grows to a great height in the water, is mown 

 twice in the season, and often produces two tons per acre each 

 time. The hay is esteemed valuable for cows ; causing them 

 to produce much mUk, and, it is said, giving^ the parUcular 

 flavor to Cottenham cheese. 



7. Grass Lands. ^ . , 

 Extensive; some under no management, and of little value ; 



others very productive, both as hay and feeding jlands. In 

 the district called the Wash, they will carry from one to two 

 bullocks, and from five to twelve sheep per acre fed the 



Part IV. 



greater part of the year. 

 8. Gardens and Orchards. 



Good market and fruit gardens at Ely, Soham, Wisbeach, 

 &c. which supply Lynn and various places, by water carnage, 

 with apples, cherries, and vegetables. 



9. Woods and Plantations. 



Some young plantations. The Rev. G. Jennyns, of Bot- 

 tisham, " does not cut off the tap roots of oaks in th usual 

 manner, and finds they thrive faster." (That he is mistaken, 

 see 3646.) Osiers are grown in various places for the basket 

 makers, and found to pay as well as a y crop. 



10. Wastes and unimproved Fen. 

 In 1794, 158,500 acres. 



11. Imfrrovements. 



In no part of the island draining and embanking so much 

 wanted as in the fens of this county. 



The former state qf the fen lands, and their degradation to their 

 present state, is given at length in the report, chiefly from a 

 pamphlet by Lord Hardwicke. It was the opinion of Atkins 

 (a commissioner of sewers in the reign of .Tames I. 1604) that 

 these fens (a space of upwards of 280,000 acres) were once 

 " of the nature of land-meadows, fruitful, healthy, and very 

 gainful to the inhabitants, and yielded much relief to the high- 

 land countries in time of great droughts." Sir W. Dugdale 

 (who was born 1605, and died 1686) was of the same opinion, 

 adding as a proof, " that great numbers of timber trees (oaks, 

 firs, &c.) formerly grew there, as is plain from many being 

 found in digging canals and drains, some of them severed from 

 their roots, the roots standing as they grew, in firm earth, below 

 the moor." 



On deepening the channel of Wisbeach river, in 1635, the 

 workmen, at eight 'feet below the then bottom, discovered a 

 second bottom, which was stony, with seven boats lying in it, 

 covered with silt. And at Whittlesea, on digging through the 

 moor at eight feet deep, a perfect soil was found with swards 

 of grass lying on it, as they were at first mown. Henry of 

 Huntingdon (who lived in the reign of Stephen, 1135), de- 

 scribed this fenny country " as pleasant and agreeable to the 

 eye; watered by many rivers which run through it, diversified 

 by many large and small lakea, and adorned by many woods 

 and islands." And William of Malmsbury (who lived in the 

 first year of Henry II. 1154), has painted the state of the 

 land round Thomey in the most glowing colors : he says, " it 

 is a verv paradise, in pleasure and delight it resembles heaven 

 itself; "the very marshes abounding in trees, whose length 

 without knots do emulate the stars." " The plain there is as 

 level as the sea, which, with the flourishing of the grass, 

 allureth the eye ; in some parts there are apple-trees, in others 

 vines." It appears then, on the authority of the authors 

 quoted, that the fens were formerly wood and pasture. The 

 engineers were of opinion that the country in question, formerly 

 meadow and wood, now fen, became so "from partial embank- 

 ments preventing the waters from the uplands going to the 

 sea by their natural outfalls ; want of proper and sufficient 

 drains to convey those waters into the Ouse; neglect of such 

 drains as were made tor that purpose ; and that these evils in- 

 creased from the not embanking the river Ouse, and the 

 erection of sluices across it preventing the flux and reflux of 

 the sea ; the not widening and deepening, where wanted, 

 the river Ouse ; and from not removing the gravels, weeds, &c. 

 which have from time to time accumulated in it. 



The first attempt at draining any part of the fens appears 

 to have been made in the time of Edward I. (1272, &c.) ; many 

 others with various success followed. The famous John of 

 (iaunt (or Ghent, who died in 1393), and Margaret, Countess 

 of Richmond, were amongst the draining adventurers ; but 

 Gough, in his addition to Camden, says " the reign of Eliza- 

 beth may be properly fixed on as the period when the level 

 began to become immediately a public caso. Many plans were 

 proposed and abandoned between that time and "1634, when 

 King Charles I. granted a charter of incorporation to Francis, 

 Earl of Bedford, and thirteen gentlemen adventurers with 

 him, who jointly undertook to drain the level on condition 

 that they should have granted to them, as a recompense, 

 95,000 acres (about one-third of the level). In 1649, this 

 charter was confirmed to William, Earl of Bedford, and his 

 associates, by the Convention Parliament; and in 1653 the 

 level being declared completely drained, the 95,000 acres were 

 conveyed to the adventurers, who had expended 400,000/., 

 which is almost 4/. is. per acre on the 95,000 acres, and about 

 II. Ss. on the whole breadth, if the whole level contain 285,000 



acres, and It Is generally supposed to contain 300,000 acres. 

 In 1664, the corporation called " Conservators of tlie great 

 level of the fens" was established, This body was empowered 

 to levy taxes on the 95,000 acres, to defray whatever expenses 

 might arise in their preservation; but only 83,000 acres were 

 vested in the corporation, in trust for the Earl of Bedford and 

 his associates ; the remaining 12,000 were allotted, 10,000 to 

 the King, and 2000 to the Earl of Portland. At first the levy 

 was an equal acre tax, but upon its being deemed unjust, a 

 gradual one was adopted, which is now acted upon. In the 

 year 1697, the Bedford level was divided into three districts, 

 north, middle, and south; having one surveyor for each of the 

 former, and two for the latter. In 1753, the north level was 

 separated by act of parliament from the rest. In addition to 

 the public acts obtained for draining the tens, several private 

 ones have been granted, for draining separate districts with 

 their limits, notwithstanding which, and the vast sums ex- 

 pended, much remains to be done; a great part of the tens 

 is now (1806) in danger of inundation; this calamity has 

 visited them many times, producing effects distressing and ex- 

 tensive beyond conception, indeed many hundred acres ot va- 

 luable land now drowned, the misfortune aggravated by the 

 proprietors being obliged to continue to pay a heavy tax, not- 

 withstanding the loss ot their land. 



The interior drainage of the fens is performed in most places 

 by windmills, which are very uncertain in their effects. Steam 

 has been tried, and there can be no doubt would be incompa- 

 rably preferable, as working in all weathers. 



Embanking may be considered a necessary accompaniment 

 of draining on the fen-lands. The fens are divided into three 

 large levels, and each of these levels are subdivided into nu- 

 merous districts by banks ; but as these banks are made of fen- 

 moor, and other light materials, whenever the rivers are 

 swelled with waters or any one district is deluged, either by 

 rain, a breach of banks, or any other cause, the waters speedily 

 pass through these bright, moorv, porous banks, and drown all 

 the circumjacent districts. The fens have sornetimes sus- 

 tained 20,000/. or 30,000/. damage by a breai^h of banks ; but 

 these accidents seldom happen in the same district twice in 

 twenty years ; the water, however, soaks through all fen banks 

 every year in every district ; and when the water mills have lift- 

 ed the waters up out of the fens into the rivers in a windy day, 

 a great part of the water soaks back through the porous banks 

 in the night upon the same land again. This water that soaks 

 through the bank, drowns the wheat in the winter, washes the 

 manure into thedykes, destroys the best natural and artificial 

 grasses, and prevents the fens from being sown till too late in 

 the season. This stagnant water Iving on the surface, causes 

 also fen agues, &c.; thus the waters that have soaked 

 through the porous fen banks have done the fertile fens more 

 real injury, than all the other floods that have ever come upon 

 them. The remedy for the soaking through of the water is ob- 

 viously that of forming a puddle wall in the middle, which 

 appears to have been first thought of among the ;fen bank- 

 makers by 'Smithof Chatteris, a professed embanker, who thus 

 describes his mode of putting a vertical stratun) of puddle in old 

 mounds. " I first cut a gutter eighteen inches wide, through 

 the old bank down to the clay (the fen substratum being gene- 

 rally clay), the gutter is made near the centre, but a little on 

 the land side of the centre of the old bank. The gutter is 

 afterwards filled up in a very solid manner with tempered clay, 

 and to make the clay resist the water, a man in boots always 

 treads the clay as the gutter is filled up." This plan was tried 

 last summer (1794), on a convenient farm, and a hundred 

 acres of wheat were sown on the land. The wheat and grass 

 lands on this farm are now all dry, whilst the fens around are 

 covered with water. This practice answers so well on this 

 farm, that all the farmers in the parish are improving their 

 banks in the same manner, and some have begun in adjacent 

 parishes. 



With respect to eynhanking from'the sea, Vancouver is of opi- 

 nion, that the ground ought to be covered by nature with 

 samphire or other plants, or with grass, before an attempt is 

 made to embank it : there is particular danger in lieing too 

 greedy. " If the sea has not raised the salt marsh to its fruit- 

 ful level, all expectation of benefit is vain, the soil being imma- 

 ture, and not ripened for enclosure; and if again with a view 

 of grasping a great extent of salt marsh, the banks or sea wall 

 be pushed farther outwards than where there is a firm and 

 secure foundation for it to stand upon, the bank will blow up,^ 

 and in both cases great losses and disappointments will ensue." 

 Paring and tmrning \^ everywhere approved of, and consi- 

 dered the sine qua non of the fen district, in breaking up turf. 

 Without it com crops are destroyed by the grub and wire- 



Irrigaiion. Col. Adeane, of Barbraham, has 300 acres of 

 meadows, which have been irrigated from the time of Queen 

 Elizabeth. " Pallavicino, who was collector of Peter's pence 

 in England, at the death of Queen Mary, haviijg 30,000/. or 

 40,000/. in his hands, had the art to turn Protestant on the 

 accession of Queeii Elizabeth, and appropriated the money to 

 his own use ; he bought with it an estate at Barbraham, and 

 other lands near Bournbridge ; and procuring a grant fi om the 

 crown, of the river which passes through them, was enabled 

 legally to build a sluice across it, and throw as much of the 

 water as was necessary into anew canal of irrigation, which he 

 dug to receive it in the method so well known, and commonly 

 practised in Italy long before that period. The canals and 

 the sluices are all well designed, and are the work of a man 

 evidently well acquainted with the practice ; but in taking the 

 waters from them for spreading it by small channels over the 

 meadows, there does not seem to be the least intelligence or 

 knowledge of the husbandry of watering. No other art is ex- 

 erted but that merely of opening in the bank of the river small 

 cuts for letting the water flow on to the meadows always later- 

 ally, and never longitudinally, so necessary in; works of this kind. 

 The water then finds its own distribution, and so Irregularly, 

 that many parts receive too much, and others none at all. 

 From the traces left of small channels in different parts of the 

 meadows, it would appear that the ancient distribution formed 

 under Pallavicino is lost, and that we see nothing at present 

 but the miserable patch-work of workmen ignorant of the 

 business. Irrigation has not spread from this example, but 

 might be extensively practised on the banks of all the rivers." 



12. Live Stock. 



Cattle, a breed peculiar to the county; but some of all 

 sorts. Butchers give more for a Cambridge calf than a Saf- 



