THE WOLDS 99 



In Lincoln the chalk is never very high, rising above 

 500 ft. in only a few places, and there the scarp is some- 

 what pronounced, though it has the Greensand at the 

 foot and not the Gault clay, which here has thinned out. 

 With the lower elevation the characteristic features 

 of the chalk country are also less in evidence, the 

 great folds and valleys are flatter, and, though the 

 fields are big and the country has the same bright 

 open look, the land is more completely farmed, and 

 there are none of the wide downs which we always 

 associate with the chalk in the South of England. 

 We called upon one large farmer in the heart of 

 the Wolds, and saw the typical farming of the district 

 about as well carried out as it could be. The system 

 was the pure four-course shift without any variation 

 beyond the frequent substitution of oats for wheat ; 

 the turnips were folded off by sheep : then barley was 

 taken, and in it the seeds were sown ; lastly, wheat or 

 oats completed the rotation. The seeds were gener- 

 ally alsike and white clover, and, as on the Heath, 

 we saw some excellent temporary pastures which had 

 thus been formed. Red clover can only be grown 

 with any success about once in sixteen years. Sainfoin 

 was not infrequently grown in some odd field where 

 it can be left for several years, and occasionally small 

 patches of lucerne were sown near the homestead. 

 The elevation and the exposure to the North Sea 

 make it a late district, so catch crops were not taken. 

 The roots were swedes, with a few early turnips and 

 thousandhead for the lambs ; mangolds are very rarely 

 seen. Our host, for example, had only a little bottom 

 field of two acres on which he grew mangolds every 

 year. Usually the soil is very thin, the pure chalk 

 setting in at from 6 in. to I 2 in. below the surface, and 

 the soil itself is all full of small fragments of chalk. 



