no THE FERTILITY OF THE SOIL [CH. 



Bedford reclaimed much of the sand at Woburn^ 

 and before long the old parish turbary was waving* 

 with corn. An example of a later reclamation is 

 afforded by Delamere Forest, Cheshire. The marl 

 pits having been formed and opened, a tramway was 

 laid from the pits to the land. Dressings of marl 

 were given varying from 100 to 180 cubic yards per 

 acre at a cost of £7 to £10 ; in consequence the land 

 which before marling was not worth 5s. per acre 

 afterwards let at £1. 10s. per acre^ The light sand 

 of the Pays de Waes, lying between Antwerp and 

 Ostend and traversed by the Waesland railway, has 

 also been reclaimed by the application of clay or 

 marl. 



Sometimes, however, the barrenness of a sandy 

 soil is due to a layer of rock or a "pan" lying near 

 the surface and interfering so seriously with the move- 

 ments of the soil water that proper plant growth can- 

 not take place. In such cases the only possibility is 

 to break up the rock and pick it out, a laborious 

 enough process even now when steam implements are 

 available, and still more so in the early days. An 

 example is furnished by Coxheath, an area of some 

 900 acres near Maidstone. This used to be waste 

 land, but in 1814 an Enclosure Act was obtained. 

 The gi'ound was then trenched and the layer of rock 

 broken and removed. Over part of the land no 



^ Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society ^ 1864, p. 369. 



