76 AGRICULTURE. 



Improvement An Account oj 'the Improvement of more than Ninety Acre* 

 of waste lands. ,. T . . . a 



of Liana lying waste. 



In the year 1804 a large quantity of waste land was di- 

 vided and allotted in the township where I live, on thebor., 

 ders of North Wales, by private agreement. I became 

 possessed, as proprietor, of seventy acres of these lands. I 

 obtained fifty acres more by two leases, each for twenty 

 one years. 



The wastes consisted of two divisions. The first was a 

 piece of common land, surrounded by old enclosures. This 

 portion, though raised far above the general level of the 

 country, is much less elevated than the larger tract here- 

 after to be described. 



The portion of this waste allotted to me was eight acres. 

 The grass produced, while the land was in its natural state, 

 was a sour rough sort. It afforded pasture in the summer 

 to a few cattle, horses, and sheep. The coldness of the 

 soil, and the consequent bad quality of the grass, gave this 

 common the Welsh name of Rhos, a name which implies a 

 tract of moist land, producing a coarse sour herbage. 



1. I began my improvements upon this allotment, because 

 it lay near my house. The fence is a bank four feet high 

 from the bottom of the ditch, with a double rail at the top, 

 A double row of quick is planted upon the top of the fence, 

 to supply the place of the rails when they decay. 



The surface soil is about six inches deep, with a substra- 

 turn of bad yellow clay. The first ploughing was in June 

 1804. It was cross-ploughed and harrowed in August; 

 ploughed a third time about the 20th of September; ma! 

 nured about the end of the same month with one thousand 

 six hundred and ninety bushels of lime, amounting to about 

 two hundred and eleven bushels an acre; ploughed a fourth 

 time in the middle of October, in small butts or ridges; 

 sown and harrowed. This operation of ridging was pecul 

 liarly necessary here to carry off the surface water, which 

 had formerly greatly injured the land. Twenty-four 

 bushels of Devonshire wheat were sown: the return was? 

 about two hundred and forty bushels (thirty bushels an 

 acre). The crop was one of the finest in the county. 

 The expenccs, as appear by the subjoined table, were 



