THE duke's improvements. 17 



me to occupy a place in his covered waggon. His 

 Grace's long and powerful telescope is now in my 

 possession, as he gave it to Lord George Bentinck 

 when advancing age prevented him attending the 

 Newmarket meeting any more, and Lord George 

 gave it to me when he sold his stud in 1846. 



Although his Grace never took a very active 

 part in political life, there were few noblemen who 

 devoted themselves more energetically to improv- 

 ing their estates than he did. Being the most 

 practical of men, he was well aware that a 

 thorough and exhaustive drainage of land was 

 needed to bring his Welbeck estates into a condi- 

 tion to produce abundant crops. With this end 

 in view he drained thousands of acres, many of 

 them at the cost of £100 per acre. 



I cannot give a better illustration of the mag- 

 nitude of his Grace's expenditure upon his property 

 than by quoting the following passage from the 

 last edition of Mr John Murray's ' Handbook to 

 Nottinghamshire.' The writer says : — 



" At two and a half miles from Mansfield a road 

 leads by Clipstone and Edwinstowe to Ollerton, 

 seven miles distant from Mansfield. Clipstone is 

 an estate belonging to the Duke of Portland, and 

 the road to it runs by the side of a canal of irri- 

 gation, formed by the fourth Duke at an expense 

 of £80,000, and called 'The Duke's Flood-Dyke.' 

 By it the stream of the river Mann, augmented 



B 



