43^ EMEANKIXG. 



tlie buildings, nnd other things, amounted to as much 

 more, for five new farms, with houses, barns, and all ne- 

 cessary offices, were immediately raised ; this was, how- 

 ever, going to a greater expense than necessary, for the 

 land would have let as well in two or three farms, as it 

 did in five. Calculating the expense at io,OOo!. and the 

 new rental at loool. a year, it is just ten per cent, for the 

 capital. The expenses certainly ran too high ; for the 

 value of the marsh, at 2?. 6d. an acre before embanking, 

 reduces it to less than nine per cent. ; after which, there 

 is still to be deducted, the almost periodical repairs, which 

 remarkably high tides still occasion, and which may be 

 averaged at once in ten years. So that wjien we considev 

 it not as a purchase of a new estate, but an agricultural im- 

 provement of a waste, the profit is not equal to what might 

 be made on other species of waste lands. 



This is probably owing to the husbandry of these stiff 

 wet soils being very ill understood, and managed in a man- 

 ner that is reprehensible in almost every particular. 



Instead of a system of miserable tillage, with weeds the 

 chief signs of fertility, the plough ought to be introduced 

 only as a preparation for the most perfcdl grass system 

 that can be devised. These lands, when well laid down, 

 will fatten the largest bullocks and sheep in England, 

 which is the right employment of them ; and in which 

 application they would be better worth 30s. than in their 

 present state 20s. Hence it should be an improving land- 

 lord's business to farm the marsh till he got it to a very fine 

 grass, laid down himself, for 1 scarcely ever saw a tenant 

 that would do that well. Ray-grass, and the weedy rub- 

 bish of a loft, which he calls hay-Seeds, with, perhaps, 

 some common clover, are what he has recourse to ; and, 

 under such management, the wonder is, that he ever gets 

 a pasture worth even 20s. In all improvements, where 



the^ 



