84 AN AMERICAN FARMER IX ENGLAND. 



" No ! not have rooks ? They be main good in a pie, sir." 



We met the cows, of which there were about a dozen, driven 

 by a boy towards the farm-house. They were large and in good 

 order ; with soft, sleek skin, and, like every cow I have seen in 

 England, look as if they had just been polished up for exhibition. 

 He could tell nothing of their breed except of one, a handsome 

 heifer, which he said came partly of Welsh stock. He took me 

 across a field or two to look at a few cows of the Squire's. They 

 were finer than any of his, and seemed to be grade short-horns. 



The cows were driven into hovels, which he called ship-pens, 

 and fastened at their mangers by a chain and ring, sliding on an 

 upright post (the latest fashion with us), eight of them in an 

 apartment, standing back to back. Three or four of his daughters 

 came out to milk very good looking, modest young women, 

 dressed in long, loose, grey, homespun gowns. They had those 

 high wooden tubs to milk in that we see in the old pictures of 

 sentimental milk-maids. It seems constantly like dreaming to 

 see so many of these things that we have only known before in 

 poetry or painting. 



The dairy-house and all the farm 'buildings were of brick, in- 

 terworked with beams of wood and thatched. They were very 

 small, the farm being only of fifty acres, and the hay and grain 

 always kept in stacks. The arrangements for saving manure 

 were poor much the same as on any tolerably good farm with 

 us a hollowed yard with a pool of liquid on one side. He 

 bought some dung and bones in Liverpool, but not much. He 

 esteemed bones most highly, and said they did immense good 

 hereabout. They made a sweeter, stronger, and more permanent 

 pasture. Where he had applied them twelve years ago, at the 

 rate of a ton to an acre, he could see their effect yet. He took 

 me into an adjoining field which, he said, was one of the best 

 pastures in the village. It had been plowed in narrow lands, and 



