pcrior, to any the best pastures : and, allowing the expense to be what it may, state it if you please three 

 rents, and let tlie produce only equal the outgoings, mark the advantages : a certainty of food for cattle, 

 at a time when other men's stock is pining with want and almost famishing, and the necessary conse- 

 quence, a power of keeping perhaps double* the stock which the farm would otherwise carry, and 

 withal a dunghill, the value of which is incalculable. This you will allow is artificial farming highly 

 meritorious ; that art, which I am now to explain to you, is of a different kind, it is not the art of 

 making land produce more, but it is the art of husbanding land well, it is the art of Economy. I have 

 already stated to you in general terms, that Mr. Curwen's whole farm would but just maintain his horses 

 in the common method of keeping them, and that he says himself forty acres in the way he now uses 

 will go as far as two hundred and eighty used to do ; nay that previous to his adopting the present plan 

 **,hje sunk the rent of his farm (oflOOO) and .£700 besides :" but general assertions alone are not suffi- 

 cient to induce a wise farmer to risk capital and practice upon innovations. I must reduce my observa- 

 tions to an arithmetical calculation, and be as concise and clear as I can. I will therefore briefly state 

 Mr. Curwen's plan, and then proceed to the calculation, and shew what would be the expense and profit 

 of pursuing the same in some instances here. 



Mr, Curwen feeds all his horses, by day, upon steamed potatoes, with cut straw and bruised oats 

 mixed with them, and with uncut straw by night. To each horse he gives 2\ stones of steamed potatoes, 

 a sixth part of cut straw and 8lbs of oats, and by night 6 lbs. of uncut straw, and no hay or food of any 

 otlier sort whatsoever, except to his horses underground, which have hayf instead of straw by night. 

 If now it shall appear tliat 20 horses thus fed in Norfolk would leave to the farmer a quantity of land 

 to be applied to other purposes, and even if the profit thence arising does but pay the expence of hav- 

 ing recourse to this mode of feeding, mark what is done — Land before employed in the feeding and 

 maintaining horses is rescued to the use of man either to feed cows, oxen, and sheep, or to produce 

 what may be consumed as food by man : in which case the public receives an incalculable benefit, and 

 provision is made for an increased population. This will, however, require such a diffusion of philan- 

 thropy and patriotism perhaps as is not to be expected, unless private advantage accompanies the pro- 

 cess. Let us, then, examine the advantage to the farmer by feeding twenty horses in this manner. 



Each horse has 2\ stonesj of potatoes ; then 20 horses require 50 stones per day : of cut straw each 

 horse has ten pounds; 20 horses then require 200 lb. i.e. 14 y stones per day — say 14 bushels 

 struck : this will require (to speak in popular language) about 4 bunches of straw. Each horse has 8lb. 

 .of uncut straw ; then 20 horses require 1 60 lb. i. e. 11^ stones — say 3 bunches. Each horse has 

 6 or 8 lb. of oats ; therefore 20 horses require 120 or 160 lb. of oats, i. e, about 1 bushel of oats each 

 horse, or 5 coombs per week for 20 horses. 



* Undoabtedljr this will depend upon the proportion of water meadows to the arable land. 



t Mr. Curwen means to alter this allowance of hay to the horses in the collieries. 



I The stone is 14 lbs. the cwt. is 8 stones, or 112 lbs. The bushel is the Winchester, the coomb is 4 Winchesters, 

 a sack of potatoes is 3 Winchesters heaped, and the chaldron is 36 bushels heaped. It is necessary to make these 

 observations, for nothing creates more confusion than the difference of weights and measures in different parts of the 

 kingdom, and particularly betwien Cumberland and Norfolk; a bushel there generally means 3 Winchesters, a coomb is 

 not heard of, and a bushel of potatoes means a bushel struck. 



