[ 8o ] 



farmer must be sensible of the folly of keeping a horse after he is 

 six or seven years old ; they should then be transferred to common 

 carriers, &c. and agriculture should only be the medium, whereby 

 a young horse becomes by gentle labor, inured to more severe dis- 

 cipline. 



Having already stated that lime is the great article of modern 

 improvement of these hills, I shall only add, that instances might 

 be produced of lands letting at this time for 30s. per acre, which 

 forty years ago were not worth 4s. and the beginning of all these 

 improvements has been by lime, whereby the acidity of the soil 

 impregnated with mineral exhalation, has been corrected, and crops 

 raised on them as good as those on improved fields ; and it is no 

 less wonderful than true, that thirty cart load of rotten dung per 

 acre, previous to liming, have had no sensible effect ; but after the 

 land has been once limed, the operation of dung is as perceptible 

 here, as on other lands. Surely this circumstance will prove, that 

 these hills come under the description of barren land, as referred to 

 in the statute of Edward III. and as such be exempt from the pay- 

 ment of tithe for seven years. Yet this principle is now disputed, 

 and though the clergy have in all the inclosures heretofore enume- 

 rated, honorably and generously relinquished any claim, it is now- 

 attempted by a lay impropriator, who of all others has no right to 

 complain ; as a foundation is laid for considerable augmentation of 

 income, [after seven years) from a source whence he has hitherto 

 derived no benefit. 



The matter is now before the court of exchequer, and by its de- 

 cision all ambiguity in the meaning of that act of parliament, will, 

 I trust, be done away. 



Before we leave the subject of liming, it may be right to inform 

 my readers, that some have dressed their old pastures with hot 

 lime, by which the moss has been destroyed, and a fine herbage 

 produced, highly grateful to the palate of all sorts of stock. The 

 lime after the rate of 160 bushels per acre is put on the land soon 

 after it is mown, and its effects are very durable; being perceptible 

 for fifteen or twenty years, and it quite alters the nature of the 

 coarse, sour grass, to which old layers are very subject. 



I confess I am ignorant of the whole cause whereby lime produces 

 such happy effects j but however unknown the cause, all agree that it 



is 



