1140 



STATISTICS OF AGRICULTURE. 



Part IV. 



with the Chinese, now more common than the pure native 

 liretxl. Wherever there is a dairy, hogs are kept, but they are 

 not counted a profitable stock to be fed with what would fatten 

 cattle or sheep. Carcass chiefly made into bacon ; cured in 

 the usual way, and dried in rooms heated with wood or coal. 

 Loveden has a bacon house, heated by a stove and flues. In 

 rarm-houses, much is smoke-dried in the chimneys with wood 

 fires, which is supposed to have the best flavour. 



RalibUs kept in warrens, in one or two places 

 tleraan re.irs tame rabbits of a pure white, the 

 seil hi^h fur trhiunings. 



; and one een- 

 skius of which 



Poultry. Near Oakmgham, many are crammed for the 

 market : they are put up in a dark place, and crammed with a 

 paste made of barley-meal, mutton suet, and some treacle, 

 or coarse sugar, mixed with milk, and are found to be com- 

 pletely ripe in a fortnight. If kept longer, the fever that is 

 induced by this continued state of repletion renders them 

 red and unsaleable, and frequently kills them. In the eastern 

 part of the county, many geese reared on the common. 



Pigeons in considerable numbers. 



Been, not very common. Sir William East, of HuUplace, a 

 celebrated apiarist. In the forest district, bees are most com- 

 mon. One gentleman removes his hives to a heath at the 

 flowering season. 



Deer kept in several parks ; 2J00 fallow, and 300 red deer, 

 in Windsor Great Park. 



12. Political Economy. 



Roads for the most part good, especially smce a part has 

 been put under the care of M'Adam. Gravel, flint, or chalk, 

 abounds in most places. Canals and navigable rivers so inter- 

 spersed, that no part of the county is further than twelve miles 

 from water carriage. Cloth for sacking and hammocks, ma- 

 nufactured at Abingdon and Maidenhead, also some sail- 

 cloth, and rush, and twine matting. Cotton mills at Taplow. 

 Paper, and formerly blankets and other woollens, at Newbury. 

 A parchment manufacture at Oakingham. At Reading, a 

 pin manufactory, and the weaving of galoon, satin, ribands, 

 and other light fabrics ; a floor cloth manufactory ; twine and 

 rope making ; sail making, sacking, &c. 



TIte Berkshire AgricuUural Society, established in 1794. 



7/91. GLOUCESTERSHIRK A surface of nearly 800,000 acres, in three natural divisions; the 

 Cotswold hills, the vale of the Severn, and the Forest Lands. Great part of the county is under meadows, 

 pastures, and orchards ; and cheese and cider are its known agricultural productions. It is also a 

 manufacturing county, and its fine broad-cloths are celebrated, as well as its iron, tin-plates, and pins. 

 Ihere is no very eminent gentleman agriculturist, nor any agricultural society in the county, but Dr. 

 lennant farmed a small estate on the Chilterns. {^Turner's Report, 1794. Rudee's Report, 1807. Mar- 

 )ifial's Review, 1818. Smith's Geological Map, 1821.) 



1. Geographical State and Circumstances. 



Climate, cold and bleak on the Cotswold hills; mild in the 

 vale, which lies open to the south winds ; on the sandv soils of 

 the forest district, the harvest is sometimes cut a fortnight 

 earlier than in the vale. 



Soil of the Cotswold is all calcareous loam or sfonebrash; 

 in the vale, a fine black loam, or fertile red loam, and in some 

 places a strong clay and peat earth ; the finest soil is generally 

 sand^r loam, sand, or peaty earth. 



Minerals. None in the Cotswolds, but iron and coal in the 

 iForest of Dean, both worked, I^ad found in the limestone 

 rocks of the lower part of the vale ; not worked. Though 

 ironore be abundant in the Forest of Dean, only a small quan- 

 tity is raised, it being found more profitable to bring the richer 

 ore of Lancashire, which is burnt with the coke of the forest 

 coal for cast-iron, and plates for tinning. Coal pits numerous, 

 and worked at a shallow depth, for want of proper machinery 

 to exhaust the water ; three sorts delivered, kitchen coal, 

 smith's coal, and lime coal. Claystone and freestone found in 

 arious parts of the forest ; paving stones, grindstones, yellow 

 and grey stone tiles raised in different pai ts of the Cotswolds ; 

 gypsum is raised for stuccoing, and sent to Bath from Han- 

 bury ; it is also used as alabaster for chimney pieces, &c. 



Water. Produce of tlie Severn is roach, dace, bleak, floun- 

 oers, eels, elvers, chub, carp, trout, and perch. The sea-fiSi 

 taken within the limits of the county, in the Severn, are 

 salmon, lampreys, lampems, chad, soles, shrinips, cod, plaice, 

 conger-eel, poruoise, and sturgeon. Salmon formerly caught 

 in great abundance, but now comparatively scarce. Great 

 mischief done by the use of small meshed nets, wliich take the 

 samlets or fry. 



Bonds for water made on the Cotswold hills, as already de- 

 scribed (4467), in the vale in the common manner. The wa- 

 ters, which rise through beds of blue clav, are often strongly 

 saaine, as at Cheltenham, &c. 



2. Property. 

 Largest estate 8000/. a year among the nobility, and 3000/. 



among the gentry ; tenures chiefly freehold, some copvhold, 

 and about one fortieth corporate or ecclesiastical. Estates un- 

 der the see of Gloucester, leased out on lives ; those of the cor- 

 poration of the city the same ; usual fine for renewal of a life, 

 pne year and a half of the improved annual value. 



3. Buildings. 

 Many handsome seats ; farm-houses and cottages on the 



Cotswolds built of freestone, and covered with stone tiles ; 

 often as many on an estate of 100/. a year as are required for 

 a farm of 500/. a year, under the correction of modem im- 

 provement ; barns, however, of a moderate size ; wheat stacked 

 on stone staddles. Cottages, as in most counties, neglected, and 

 uncomfortable; some judicious remarks on the subject by 

 Kudge. 



4. Occupation. 

 Farms differ much in site ; few exceed 1000/L or fall short 



of 50/. a year- Some grazing farms in the vale of 600 acres, 

 butaOO and 300 more common. Leases of three years most 

 common, next of seven years, not many of fourteen, and those 

 of twenty-one on corporate property. 



5. Itnpleinents. 

 A narrow-wheeled waggon in general use among farmers. 



Various ploughs ; a short-beamed one-wheel plough in use 



on the Cotswolds ; in the vale a clumsy swing plough. Lum- 

 bert's draining-plough much in use with the improved draught 

 apparatus, and in the old way. Various improved plouijhs 

 and other implements, as well as threshing and winnowing 

 machines, introduced. A thistle drawer (.fe.'i'il.) in use foe 

 extracting, tiie com thistle (Serr^tula arv^nsis) from corn- 

 fields ; cridle-scythe used for cutting beans. 



6. Enclosing. 



The first enclosures during Queen Anne's reign ; eleven du' 

 ing the reign of Geo. II. ; and upwards of seventy during the 

 reign of George III. Hedges of white thorn, on which the 

 reporter observes medlars might be grafted, and raised in great 

 plenty. Black thom (Primus spinosa) hedges, he says, never 

 suffer from the blight ; a most erroneous idea. 



7. Arable Land. 



300,000 acres ; much ploughing on the Cotswolds lightens 

 the staple of the weak soils : seven horses often used in the vale 

 teams ; ridges in the vale so high that a person six feet high 

 may stand in the furrows, and not be able to see the crown of 

 the second ridge from him ; to reduce them a small ridge often 

 begun between them. Fallowing practised on the clavs, 

 then wheat and beans, or oats. Rotation on the Cotswolds 

 1 turnips, 2 barley, 3 and 4 clover mown the first year, 

 5 wheat, 6 oats, tares, or peas; if oats, frequently laid 

 down with saintfoin. On crumbly soils wheat is sown and 

 ploughed in during rather wet weather, otherwise the seedling 

 plants are apt to be thrown out with the first frosts ; the same 

 thing attended to in Oxfordshire and various other counties ; 

 this IS called seven-field husbandry. Beans either drilled or 

 dibbled ; a broad bean, the mazagan, used when the land is in 

 gootl heart, and ticks when less so. The Burbage pea, an 

 early grey variety, most in use. " Some lands have the pecu- 

 liar quality of raising siddon) peas, or such as boil freely;" on 

 thfm the Charlton is grown, and sold for splitting: clay landk 

 never have this property. Tares common, and among these a 

 sort <'alled dill, supposed by Marshal to be the B'rvum hirsiitum 

 L., but erroneously termed ^n^thum by Rudge. 'Turnips on 

 the Cotswolds always broad cast, and sometimes after wheat 

 or tares, and then called stubble turnii* ; consumed by sheep 

 in hurdle folds ; sometimes given to horses, and found to induce 

 thein to eat ham chaff with a better appetite. Some flax 

 raised ; teasels a good deal cultivated formerly, now not 100 

 acn*of them in the whole county. 



8. Grass. 



Very rich meadows on the Severn, overflown during winter 

 and spring, on which the farmers depends for a crop. When 

 the salt water overflows, the meadows are termed marshes, and 



f razed by horses and cattle that require rest and spring physic, 

 n general meadows are mown and pastured alternately, ex- 

 cepting near Gloucester, where abundance of manure is ob- 

 tained. Herbage, plants, and rye grass sown on the Cotswolds, 

 but little in the vale ; saintfoin much cultivated on the stone- 

 brash soils. Grass lands fed in general from May to the end of 

 September, and then the cattle, unfinished, are taken in and 

 completed with hay, oil-cake, and other artificial food, but 

 seldom with roots. The (Vrchis miscula so common in the 

 meadows, that it has been gathered, Rudge informs us, and 

 made into sago. (6184.) 



9. Gardens and Orchards. 



Most of the cottages, such as they are, have gardens, and 

 almost every farm its orchard ; but large ones, so as to admit of 



