HORSES AND HOUNDS. 31 



fermentation, producing mouldiness. The first has a strong 

 diuretic effect ; the last will occasion disease of the lungs and 

 broken wind. Clean fresh wheat straw is at any time prefer- 

 able to bad hay, and when hunters or carriage-horses are fed 

 upon manger food entirely — that is, corn and chaff mixed — 

 they should have a few pounds of clean and sweet wheat straw 

 put into their racks at night. I have known horses kept for 

 agricultural purposes entirely without hay throughout the sea- 

 son, and in confirmation of this I may mention the system 

 pursued on the late Lord Ducie's farm at Whitfield, in 

 Gloucestershire. Some five or six years since, the fame of Lord 

 Ducie's improved mode of cultivation having reached my ears, 

 I was induced, with three friends, to pay a visit to his farm, 

 then under his lordship's personal superintendence. 



The farm consisted, as I was informed, of about 240 acres of 

 land, wdiich, under the old system, had produced a rental of 

 about 200^. per annum. The fences had been levelled, with all 

 the timber ; the land thoroughly drained, and a wide water- 

 course cut through the farm, into which the drainage water was 

 conveyed. Instead of the old-fashioned barns, which, in my 

 opinion, are much more calculated, and do generally prove, 

 better preserves for rats and mice than for corn, a large and 

 expensive threshing machine had been erected, driven by steam, 

 and the ricks being placed close to the building, and on each 

 side of a rail which led into the threshing-fioor, the process of 

 taking in and threshing out the corn proceeded simultaneously 

 as w^ell as the cleaning and sacking it. The system pursued on 

 this farm was that which alone can answer in the present 

 times — viz., to grow the greatest possible quantity of green and 

 root crops, by which a large stock of cattle and sheep may be 

 supported, and thus to add to the increase of the wheat crop 

 also. The roots grown on the farm, consisted of mangold wurzel, 

 white carrots, and Swedish turnips, the average per acre being, 

 I was told, about thirty tons. 



Except in the first year, very little artificial manure had been 

 used, and none afterwards except that made on the premises. 

 Large tanks were made to receive all the liquid manure from 

 the different yards and bullock-houses, which, by forcing 

 pumps, was thrown over the compost heaps standing outside 

 the yards. As nearly as I can recollect, there were about 

 eighty acres of roots, forty of clover, and one hundred and twenty 

 of wheat growing on the farm when I visited it. The trimming 

 of the carrots produced an immense quantity of green food 

 during the summer months, upon which and the clover, cut in 

 a green state, the cattle and stock subsisted. Hay was neither 



