There is no Bad Land 3* 



where fenced off as unworkable, and how these 

 partitions are now removed, making a clean sweep 

 from end to end. The dividing fences had been 

 planned intelligently enough in their way, along 

 the line between the workable and the unworkable 

 areas, often tapping springs in their course ; but a 

 line dividing such areas, and aiming at the springs, 

 was necessarily crooked, which made wiring very 

 difficult, and left the lower end of every working 

 area an irregular zig-zag, with the utmost waste 

 in work and headlands. They were all earth 

 fences, with not more than 100 yards of hedge in 

 the whole place, but every one of them is now 

 replaced by a deep drain, sunk well into the sub- 

 soil of limestone gravel, so that the high waterlevel 

 no longer prevents the lime and the necessary aera- 

 tion assisting economic vegetation on the surface. 

 In some of these drained " bottoms " I found very 

 rich deposits of various kinds which had all through 

 the ages been held useless by the excess of water 

 and the exclusion of air. Men who have plenty 

 of such land held useless, and who cry out for an 

 increase of land, come wondering now at my 

 clover on the track of sedge and flaggers ; but 

 while I lower the water level, they make holiday, 

 expecting the Government and the taxpayer to 

 make good the loss. 



The field of five acres which we call the paddock, 

 where the calves and the young bulls are herded, 

 may stand to illustrate the whole, in fencing, 

 draining arid manuring alike. The area was in 

 five patches, only one of which could be tilled. 



