THE EASTERN COUNTIES. 225 



that Suffolk owes its fame as being the seat of the 

 largest manufacture of agricultural implements in Eng- 

 land. There are to be found the celebrated establishments 

 of Messrs Eansomes of Ipswich, Garrett of Leiston, &c. 

 These immense factories testify to the extensive use 

 among English farmers of the heaviest and most costly 

 machines. A similar trace of M. Mathieu of Dombasle 

 remains in the department where he lived ; the recollec- 

 tion of that great agriculturist, who in some respects 

 resembled Arthur Young, is preserved more particularly 

 by a manufactory of implements. 



Norfolk has been the true theatre of the success of 

 Arthur Young. The north and west of this county 

 forms an immense sandy plain of 750,000 acres, where 

 there is no obstacle to large property and large farm- 

 ing, and where everything favours horse-tillage, cultiva- 

 tion of roots, the use of machines in one word, the 

 four-course rotation. By means of this system, steadily 

 pursued for sixty years, these inferior lands, producing 

 scarcely 5s. per acre in 1780, now return, on an average, 

 25s. per acre, or five times their former net production ; 

 and the gross production has risen in at least an equal 

 proportion. 



A large part of the credit due to this wonderful 

 transformation belongs to an extensive proprietor in 

 the county, the friend and disciple of Arthur Young 

 Mr Coke, who, in acknowledgment of his services to agri- 

 culture, was created Earl of Leicester. He died a few years 

 ago, at an age not far short of a hundred. Mr Coke had 

 a large property in the west of the county, called Holkham, 

 containing about thirty thousand acres. This immense 

 estate, which is now worth at least 1,200,000, was worth 

 at most 300,000 in 1776, when Mr Coke inherited it. 

 It was then in the occupation of a great number of small 



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