IV. 



a powerful spur to industry and contrivance a truth sufficiently 

 proved by the fact that the greatest improvements in farming were 

 begun on the poorest soils. Necessity compelled the occupiers of 

 such soils to exert themselves to the utmost, and to become good 

 farmers, to gain a maintenance. Nature has been kind to this 

 county, and given to the greater part of it a very productive soil ; and 

 therefore formerly too much was left to nature ; art and great exertion 

 were not much needed to raise such crops as enabled the farmers to 

 live. The case, however, is now widely different : with the most 

 productive soil, great exertion is absolutely necessary. In former 

 times, old persons have often said to me " there is no farming 

 like the old farming." Such prejudices have died with them ; -the 

 present generation of farmers are more enlightened, they are not, as their 

 predecessors were, opposed to all suggested improvements of cultivation. 



C. HILLYARD. 



Thorpelands, near Northampton, March, 1837. 



