34 History of the English Landed Interest, 



terms of recent Agricultural Holdings Acts. Every practical 

 farmer nowadays knows that lime and clay sink rapidly, 

 especially on pasture land, because there is no ploughing to 

 lift them to the surface again ; and even the rough lumps of 

 Pliny's days would have disappeared beyond the reach of vege- 

 table roots in eight or nine years at the most. We are glad to 

 notice that Pliny recognised the principle contained in the 

 old saw, — 



" Lime and lime and no manure, 

 Make both land and farmer poor"; 



and that rich, heavy lands are most benefited by its 

 application. 



His hints on the purchase of land are as trite and practical 

 as if written by a modern land agent. " Consider," he writes,^ 

 " first of all, its neighbourhood, its access to markets, its water 

 supply. Never buy unhealthy land in a fertile place, or mce 

 versd. The health of a land cannot be judged by the appear- 

 ance of its inhabitants, who are acclimatised to the bad air," 

 a recommendation which modern farmers might well follow 

 out, by a brief study of the local death rate statistics. " Don't, 

 if you can hel^D it," he writes, "succeed a bad tenant, who has 

 exhausted the farm." Market gardening near towns is cited 

 as the most lucrative kind of farming. Grass lands are ranked 

 next in order ; arable farms last — facts as unassailable now as 

 then. The error common to many a modern squire in building 

 too spacious a mansion for the proportions of his small estate 

 is next exposed. The best site is fixed upon with a shrewd- 

 ness hardly credible in an age so deficient in hydrodynamic 

 skill. But we have already afforded ample proofs of the wide 

 experience possessed by these two agricultural writers, and 

 can safely conclude that the ancient British yeomen had fallen 

 into the hands of competent teachers, who would be both reso- 

 lute and willing enough to replace the old savage farming 

 customs with so much of their own agricultural system as 

 could be adapted to so deficient a soil and climate. 



* Plinius, Hint. Nat., lib. xA'iii. ch. 5. 



