282 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



who still employed the methods of the eighteenth century : 

 on one farm wheat producing 40 bushels an acre, threshed by 

 steam at a cost of 35-. bd.^ on the next 20 bushels to the acre 

 threshed by the flail at a cost of 9^.^ 



Drainage in the counties where it was needed had made 

 considerable progress, the removal of useless hedgerows often 

 crowded with timber, that kept the sun from the crops and 

 whose roots absorbed much of the nourishment of the soil, was 

 slowly extending, but farm-buildings almost everywhere were 

 defective. ' The inconvenient ill-arranged hovels, the rickety 

 wood and thatch barns and sheds devoid of every known 

 improvement for economizing labour, food, and manure, which 

 are to be met with in every county in England, are a reproach 

 to the landlords in the eyes of all good farmers.' ^ The farm- 

 buildings of Belgium, Holland, France, and the Rhenish Pro- 

 vinces were much superior. In parts of England indeed no 

 progress seems to have been made for generations at this date. 

 Thousands of acres of peat moss in Lancashire were unre- 

 claimed, and many parts of the Fylde district were difficult even 

 to traverse. Even in Warwickshire, in the heart of England, 

 between Knowle and Tamworth, instead of signs of industry 

 and improvement were narrow winding lanes leading to 

 nothing, traversed by lean pigs and rough cattle, broad copse- 

 like hedges, small and irregular fields of couch, amidst which 

 straggled the stalks of some smothered cereal ; these with 

 gipsy encampments and the occasional sound of the poacher's 

 gun from woods and thickets around were the characteristics 

 of the district.^ 



Leases were the exception throughout England, though 

 more prevalent in the west.^ The greater proportion of farms 

 were held on yearly agreements terminable by six months' 

 notice on either side, a system preferred by the landlord as 

 enabling him to retain a greater hold over his land, and 



^ Caird, English Agriculture in 1850-1, p. 498. '^ Ibid. p. 490. 



^ Victoria County History : Warwickshire, ii. 277. 

 * Caird, op. cii., p. 481. 



