317 
LINCOLNSHIRE AGRICULTURE 
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 
JOHN CORDEAUX, M.B.0.U 
Great Cotes, R.S.O., Lincoln, 
swept away, once and for ever, the original features of the land, and 
with these the beasts and birds, the insects and wild flowers, which 
flourished, free and without restraint, on its vast heaths and commons, 
boundless fen lands and marshes. 
In 1798, the Board of Agriculture undertook the task of sending 
down a Commissioner, who was then Secretary to the Board, to 
report on the position of Agriculture throughout the county, and the 
proceedings of this survey were published in 1799. The Commissioner 
was Arthur Young, one of the fathers of English agriculture— 
a man greatly in advance of his day, and of much culture and 
experience. 
As might be expected, the report, which is extremely practical 
and exhaustive, deals almost exclusively with the actual position of 
husbandry in those districts visited. The Commissioner had no 
eyes for anything beyond: the special information he sought ; 
fortunately, however, in the voluminous mass of facts and statistics 
put on record, we find here and there a few words, sometimes 
a whole paragraph which helps to bring forcibly before us those 
natural features of the county as then existing—a century ago. 
The information in the report is scattered, and has to be collected, 
here a bit and there a bit. There is no proper index, and the 
Original proofs have evidently been allowed to remain uncorrected, 
_ for each page bristles with inaccuracies and misspelling of names of 
men and places, and of local and provincial terms. 
In making this survey, Arthur Young had the advantage of 
having professionally visited the county thirty years previously, and 
during this interval great advances had already been ma e in the 
enclosure of open lands, the clearing of gorse from the hills, and 
the cultivation of the turnip. Without now going into the subject, 
ang 
ae Nov. x€95. 
