228 FACTORIES AND FARMING 



the winter at these close intervals. Oats had not been 

 profitable of late years, and the occupier was looking 

 for a good spring wheat wherewith to replace them, 

 as it was not easy to get the potato crop out of the 

 way in time for autumn-sown wheat. Wheat straw 

 always sold a little better than oat straw, though 

 Manchester formed an excellent market for either. 

 The produce was carted into Manchester as required, 

 and the returning waggons brought home some of the 

 dung needed to keep up the draft upon the soil's 

 resources that was involved in selling everything away. 

 But the fertility was more than maintained, something 

 like 1000 tons per annum of farmyard manure being 

 brought on to the 200 acres of the farm. This was 

 lavishly supplemented by artificial manures, and the 

 farmer not only took what advice he could obtain from 

 the College, but was a student himself and a careful 

 reader of recent literature on fertilizers, from the 

 scientific and experimental side as well as from the 

 purely practical. The result of all this manuring was 

 to bring the land up to a very high condition ; only 

 big crops could pay for the high rent and the 

 expensive labour. 



Potatoes looked like a very heavy crop, the haulm 

 had made growth such as we had not previously seen, 

 with more of the lush character we had been accus- 

 tomed to find on the rich potato lands of Lincoln in 

 the previous year's damp and growing season. Certain 

 pieces were being sprayed as an experiment, but 

 potato-spraying is not general in Cheshire, possibly 

 because the little touch of sulphur in the smoky 

 atmosphere keeps the disease in check. The haulm is 

 also said to grow so rankly early in the season as to 

 make spraying difficult. The oats and wheat were 

 both heavy crops, especially the latter, and they both 



