232 FACTORIES AND FARMING 



drifts which have left flat areas with imperfect drainage 

 in which peat has accumulated. Chat Moss, nearer to 

 Manchester, is one of the most famous of them, known 

 for the difficulties George Stephenson experienced in 

 building the first railway from Liverpool to Manchester 

 across it. Not long ago the mosses were waste heath 

 and swamp, but they have been drained and now yield 

 great crops by the aid of the town manure with which 

 they are so liberally fed by river, canal, and railway. 

 The great crops are potatoes and oats (both of which 

 are well known to like a black acid soil), and wheat ; 

 seed hay seems to occupy rather less than the fifth of 

 the land due to it on the prevailing rotation, and very 

 little of other roots are to be seen, just a few breadths 

 of swedes and cabbages. There was little permanent 

 grass to be seen, usually only small paddocks, and 

 those poor and weedy with quantities of ragwort 

 flowering; no stock were about the fields, though a 

 considerable amount of dairying is done indoors, and 

 will probably increase as town manure becomes more 

 difficult to obtain. The crops were heavy, the potatoes 

 magnificent, mostly maincrops, though here and there 

 a cleared field replanted with cauliflower or cabbages 

 showed that earlies had been already harvested ; the 

 wheat and oats had the grey look on which we have 

 already commented. On that particular day the air 

 was full of corn thrips, and we drove for many miles 

 before getting out of the sphere of the irritating pest. 



South-west Lancashire is not particularly attractive ; 

 the soil is black, the roads are black, and though the 

 crops grow and flourish, trees are few and stunted, and 

 the horizon is always bordered by chimneys, for the 

 coal district is not far away St. Helens, Rainford, 

 and Wigan itself on one side, Prescot, with its factories, 

 on the other. Towards Ormskirk the land rises, and 



