A CHAMPION OF TURNIPS 175 



" Why, of two brothers, rich and restless one 

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

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

 All Townshend's turnips 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 own county, his methods were peculiarly 

 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 annual rent of 240 ; a farmer 

 named Mallett 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 innovations, 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 universally adopted ; 

 still later was it before the improved methods were accepted which 

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

 fields and pasture. 



