MAltx->MtT.] 



PRINCIPLES AND PliACTICB OF 



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the spirit of improvement takes possession of 

 a class or people, neither proper men nor 

 plenty of means will be wanting to realise the 

 objects in view. Mr. Coke, of Holkham, 

 expended over £100,000, in twenty years, on 

 dwellings and offices alone. This sum, how- 

 ever, was by no means unprofitably laid out ; 

 but whatever sums the new system required 

 to be expended by the landlord, it also de- 

 manded a proportionate expenditure on tlie 

 part of the tenant. It required him to lay 

 out a large sum on flocks and herds, and, 

 above all, in labour, for years, before the ^M 

 laud began to return a profit. We are told, 

 that a Mr. Eodwell, in Suflolk, sunk £5,000 

 in merely marling 820 acres, with a lease of 

 only twenty-eight years. The value of his 

 produce, during that period of his occupancy, 

 was £30,000 greater than the twenty-eight 

 years preceding his improvements. Specula- 

 tions of this kind required no mean degree of 

 intelligence to conduct them, and no small 

 amount of spirit to enter upon them; yet 

 they seem generally to have been crowned with 

 success. 



Turnips' are said, by Young, to have been 

 brought into farm cultivation by the celebrated 

 Jethro TuU, and found an ardent advocate in 

 Lord Townshend, who, in 1730, retired from 

 taking part in public affairs. After this, he 

 devoted the remaining eight years of his life 

 to the improvement of his estate. It is said' 

 that lie originated practices which increased 

 the produce not only two but a hundred-fold, 

 and from which the country still continues to 

 draw the benefit. In England, the practice of 

 marling and claying farms was far from being 

 new. Indeed, it was very old. In the reign 

 of Elizabeth, Harrison, in his Description of 

 Britain, says — " Besides the compost that is 

 carried out of the husbandmen's yards, ditches, 

 and dove-houses, or out of great towns, we 

 have with us a kind of white marl, which is of 

 so great force, that if it be cast over a piece 

 of land but once in three-score years, it shall 

 not need of any further composting." The 

 usage, however, died out ; and seems not to 

 have been again recovered until Lord Towns- 

 hend and a Mr. Allen applied it to the sands 

 of Norfolk, and converted immeasurable acres 

 of rabbit-warrens and sheep-walks into rich 

 soil. At the close of the last century, Young 

 880 



estimated that three or four hundred thousand 

 waste acres had been reclaimed and turned 

 into gardens, and rents rose from sums 

 varying from a sixpence and two shillings an 

 acre up to fifteen and twenty. Marling, how- 

 ever, would not, of itself, have reclaimed the 

 wildernesses of Norfolk ; it required the as- 

 sistance of something else ; and that was found 

 in turnips. Townshend had the sagacity to 

 perceive that this was to be the parent of all 

 future crops. Without a supply of food 

 through, the winter, a limited stock must be 

 kept, and this could yield but little manure, 

 without which profitable farming was vain. 

 "The turnips were, therefore, employed to 

 secure a large dung-heap; and the dung-heap, 

 in turn, was mainly appropriated to securing 

 the largest possible store of turnips. This 

 tillage, in a circle, w^as as productive as it was 

 simple. The ground, cleaned and enriched by 

 the root-crop, afterwards yielded abundant 

 harvests of corn; and as has already been 

 observed, the treading of the sheep upon the 

 loose soil, while they fed off a portion of the 

 turnips, gave it the necessary firmness. Thus, 

 through the agency of the turnips, a full fold 

 and full bullock-yard made a full granary." 

 Essex and Suffolk soon followed the method, 

 although they did not proceed in it so far as 

 they did in Norfolk ; and, in many parts, the 

 turnips were never thinned or hoed, upon 

 which their dimensions) and, consequently, the 

 largest portion of their value, depended. 



To the reader of the ancient agricultural 

 writers, it will seem strange how it was that, 

 for so many centuries, the value of the turnip 

 was not perceived by the farming mind, when 

 its qualities were, at least, tolerably known 

 eighteen hundred years ago, Pliny tells us, 

 that no crop is so valuable except grasses and 

 corn. He also says (we quote from an article 

 of Ancient Agricultural Literature), "That 

 they are most wholesome food for man, and 

 excellent, dressed in a variety of ways ; that 

 they keep through the year, cither potted or 

 when mixed with mustard ; that they are most 

 valuable in ornamental cookery, as capable of 

 receiving six colours besides their own, one of 

 the colours being purple — a quality possessed 

 by no other kind of food ; that, when boiled, 

 they will feed fowls, and that the leaves are 

 good for cattle ; and, finally, that he has seen 



