458 



KEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Oct. 



Goose's Melodies." We know from that distin- 

 guished authority that 



"Little Bo Peep 

 Was under the bay-cock fast asleep j" 



•which is a feat he never could perform in these 

 days of degenerate cocks, which are wholly incom- 

 petent to cover anything bigger than a baker's loaf, 

 ■which is getting to be the least among terrestial ob- 

 jects, unless it is a mustard-seed. It stands to rea- 

 son, and we should suppose would stand to the 

 reason of farmers, that the larger the cock, the 

 more complete the protection from wet, — the stack 

 being in this respect preferable to the cock, the 

 cock to the winrow, the winrow to the swarth. We 

 therefore suggest to farmers, that the practice of 

 raking up their hay into such small parcels should 

 be altogether reformed, and large ones substituted. 

 This greater labor, and it will not be much increas- 

 ed, will be followed by a large reward in the aug- 

 mented value of the hay-cock. Many may object 

 to caps, but few, it seems to us, can make any ra- 

 tional opposition to the foregoing suggestion, — 

 JVewark Sentinel. 



For the New England Farmer. 



LETTER FROM ENGLAND. 



BY H. F. FRENCH. 



My Friend Brown : — I begin to have some char- 

 ity for people who write books of travels. There 

 are so many things that I know must interest my 

 friends at home, that it is very difficult to select 

 from the multitude, or, rather, very difficult to de- 

 cide to omit forever some notice of them aU. I be- 

 lieve my sketches have not been renewed since 1 

 left Suffolk county. 



After the cattle show of which I gave some ac- 

 count, I made a visit to Butley Abbey, the resi- 

 dence of Thomas Crisp, Esq., one of the most not- 

 ed breeders of Short-horn cattle, of swine, and of 

 Suffolk cart horses, in that part of England. He is 

 the gentleman who has furnished Mr. Stickney, of 

 Massachusetts, some, if not all, of his white Suf- 

 folk pigs, which are now so popular in New Eng- 

 land. Mr. Crisp took the trouble to send a mes- 

 senger twenty miles to renew an invitation to me 

 to pay him a visit, having met me at the Suffolk 

 Exhibition. I spent several days beneath his hospi- 

 table roof, and gave his stock of animals a pretty 

 thorough examination. He farms about three 

 thousand acres of land, and has hundreds of cattle 

 and horses, and thousands of sheep. Perhaps a 

 ride round the farm, for it is quite too large to 

 walk over, may give an idea of a large farmer's af- 

 fairs in that part of England. Mr. Crisp is, like 

 most farmers, a tenant, and not the owner of the 

 land he occupies. These tenancies, usually, I find, 

 are not by a written lease, but by a sort of under- 

 standing, not quite definite enough for my taste, 

 regulated much by the customs of the particular 

 estate. A large proprietor, usually Lord Some- 

 body, or the Duke of Something, owns some twen- 



ty or thirty thousand acres, which has been in the 

 family a thousand years, or, at least, from the time 

 of William the Conqueror. This proprietor usu- 

 ally gives no personal attention to his estates, so 

 far as the rents are concerned, but entrusts all 

 such affairs to a steward, who makes his bargains 

 with the tenants, and the Lord of the domain 

 sometimes does not even visit a farm in a gen- 

 eration ; the tenant occupies at a fixed rent, 

 which he pays half-yearly in cash, and although 

 neither party is bound for more than the year, the 

 tenant often occupies for his lifetime, and his son 

 takes the farm at his decease. Landlords are wil- 

 ling to give long leases, but tenants seem to prefer 

 the yearly system, so far as I have observed. 



The tenant farmer seems to go on and make 

 permanent improvements, often at great expense, 

 and lays out his work as if he owned the fee sim- 

 ple, and on the whole, homes are far more perma- 

 nent in this land of mere tenants, than in our land 

 of fee simple owners with migratory habits. Still, I 

 am not quite satisfied with this precarious tenure, 

 and shall have more to say of its effect on the char- 

 acter of the people, when my observations are com- 

 pleted in the country. The farmer pays a rent, say 

 of five dollars per acre, annually, for his land, and 

 conducts his operations in his own way, provided 

 he does not cut down any trees, or plow up any 

 pasture land, or mowing land, or disturb the game, 

 such as hares and partridges and pheasants, which 

 go wnere they please, aud do as much damage as 

 they like, unmolested. A "keeper," that is a game- 

 keeper, lives on the estate, whose business it is to 

 protect the game, and catch the poachers who 

 presume to touch these animals, which are held as 

 sacred as the geese in Rome's capitol. The Game 

 Laws are, and have ever been, a fruitful occasion of 

 crime and suffering, and always will be, till human 

 nature is thoroughly changed. I have noted the 

 subject for a more careful consideration in future. 

 On every estate where I have been, I have noticed 

 with a feeling of indignation, the ravages of these 

 useless animals, called game, in fields of the finest 

 wheat, while neither farmer nor laborer dares even 

 drive them away, on penalty of his lord's dis- 

 pleasure, and the loss of his lease next year. I will 

 say, however, here, that properly viewed, this waste 

 of human food is not the loss of the farmer, but 

 of the landlord, because land not subject to the 

 preservation of game is, for that reason, leased at a 

 higher rent. 



Mr. Crisp's swine are of two distinct breeds ; 

 the blacks, which are the color of total darkness, 

 and the whites of the same breed as those known 

 as Suffolks in New England. lam very much at a 

 loss which of them to prefer. Mr. Crisp's prefer- 

 ence seems to be for the black, but he says he has 

 never had an order for one of that color, from 

 America. He has taken for them a great many 



