CHAPTER IV. 
LORD LEICESTER’S ELEVEN-COURSE SHIFT. 
the early part of the present century (about 
1837), Mr. Thomas William Coke, M.P., known 
as ‘‘Coke of Norfolk,” and distinguished as the 
greatest agriculturist of his day, was, we believe, 
elevated to the peerage and title of Earl of Leicester and 
Viscount Coke, solely on account of the great benefits he 
had accorded to the agricultural industries in this country. 
He it was who introduced the four-course shift system of 
alternate husbandry, and as we write we note that the present 
and second Earl of Leicester is brought into prominence by 
the depression in prices of grain, and by the consequential 
failure of the very system which his father had before him so- 
successfully introduced. 
The present carl is, in our humble estimation, as great, if 
not greater, an authority upon things agricultural as his father 
was. He has for years been experimenting upon temporary 
pastures, and has recently, at the instigation of Mr. Shaw- 
Lefevre, expressed his views in the Z7mes. 
The conclusions drawn from his observations seem to show 
that only the finest and most productive land can now be 
advantageously farmed under the “four-course shift system,” 
the weaker and poorer land requiring more manure than the 
produce will repay. In the latter case recourse is had to 
pastures, laid down with a mixture of morc or less leguminous. 
seeds, which, in a few years, aided by the stock grazing thereon, 
