SOIL AND CLIMATE IN CHEESE-MAKING. 145 



CHAPTER XX. 



The Cheshire Cheese District and English Husbandry upon Heavy Soils 

 Pastures ; their permanence The use of Bones as a Manure in Cheshire 

 A Valuable Remark to Owners of Improved Neat Stock Breeds of 

 Dairy Stock Horses. 



HHHE soil of a considerable part of this county being a tenacious 

 * clay, favorable to the growth of grasses, and difficult of tillage, 

 its inhabitants are naturally dairy-men, and it has been particu- 

 larly distinguished for many centuries for its manufacture of 

 cheese. Its distinction in this respect does not appear to be the 

 result of remarkable skill or peculiar dairy processes, but is pro- 

 bably due to the particular varieties of herbage, to the natural 

 production of which, the properties of its soil, and perhaps of its 

 climate, are peculiarly favorable.* 



The grounds for this conclusion are the general value placed 

 by the farmers upon their old pastures, where the natural assort- 

 ment of herbage may be considered to have entirely obtained and 

 taken the place of the limited number of varieties which are arti- 



* The best cheese is made on cold, stiff, clay soils (but not on the purest clays), and 

 from the most natural herbage, even from weedy, sterile pastures ; but much the largest 

 quantity is made from an equal extent of more moderately tenacious and drained or per- 

 meable soils, spontaneously producing close, luxuriant, fine (not rank) grasses and white 

 clover. 



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