VII] THE RISE OF THE SANDS HI 



further treatment seems to have been necessary, and 

 good crops were at once obtained after a reasonable 

 outlay on manure; so permanent was the improve- 

 ment that the land still lets for £2 per acre per 

 annum. Other of the land, however, was very poor 

 and required heavy manuring before it became 

 productive. Most of the land thus reclaimed was 

 divided among the lords of the manors and others 

 possessing rights of common, of cutting turf, etc., 

 while part of the remainder was sold to defray the 

 expense of reclamation; the stone that was taken 

 out lay stacked along the roads in enormous quan- 

 tities, and people thought it never could be used, 

 but subsequently it was all required for making up 

 the Weald roads. The reclamation went on between 

 1814 and 1818, but was not completed: only recently 

 has the whole of the land been taken in, the last 

 surviving piece of waste having proved a considerable 

 nuisance because of the gipsies that encamped there. 



The system of managing sandy soils introduced by 

 Townshend and Coke is, as we have seen, a combina- 

 tion of crops and live stock: nitrogenous compounds 

 are added to the soil by clover or other leguminous 

 crops, and by purchased oilcake: lime, potassium 

 salts, phosphates are also added : the crops so grown 

 are (with the exception of grain) fed to animals to 

 make manure for more crops. Crops and live stock 



