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THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



533 



are fed down by sheep, and there are no 

 bare fallows. The purchased food given 

 to the cattle in the straw-yard and sheds, 

 and to the sheep in the field, consisting 

 of oilcake, meal; and beans, cost 2000/. 

 a-year. The greater part of this oil-cake 

 is charged to manure, which it enriches in 

 quality as well as increases in quantity ; 

 but the direct expenditure on artificial 

 manures — guano, nitrate of soda, and su- 

 perphosphate of lime — amounts in addition 

 to 1000/. a-year. Wages absorb from 

 2600/. to 3000/. a year. Seven or eight 

 waggon-loads per acre of farmyard- manure 

 are ploughed in on land intended for roots, j 

 besides above 305. worth per acre of su- 

 perphosphate of lime drilled in with the j 

 turnip-seed; while wheat has a top dress- j 

 ing of 1 cwt. of guano, ^ cwt. of nitrate j 

 of soda, and 2 cwt. of salt, mixed with j 

 earth and ashes. No weeds are grown. 

 The turnips are taken up in November, and 

 a troop, called by the vile name of a ' gang,' 

 consisting of 'boys and girls,' under the 

 care of an experienced man, traverse the 

 ground, forking out and burning every, 

 particle of twitch or thistle. The same | 

 • troop' is called in during the progress of | 

 the root-crop w^henever occasion requires, | 

 and immediately after harvest -they go over i 

 the stubbles with their little three-pronged j 

 forks, exterminating the slightest vestige j 

 of a weed. The expenses ol cleaning are j 

 thus kept down to Is, an acre, a price , 

 which excited the admiration and doubts! 

 of that admirable agricultural essayist the j 

 late Mr. Thomas Gisborne, and which j 

 proves that, by stopping the evil at the! 

 source, and never allowing the enemy toi 

 get ahead, land may be kept wholly weeded , 

 more cheaply than half weedf^d. Lord | 

 Beriiers mentioned as recently as 1855 that j 

 lie found in Leicestershire hundreds of: 

 acres netted over with twitch as thick as! 

 a Lifeguardsman's cane, and studded with 

 clumps of thistles like bushes. Such neg- 

 lected land required an expenditure of 51. 

 to 61. an acre to put it in heart. The 

 farmer who saw a thief daily stealing from 

 his dung-heap would soon call in the aid 

 ofthf* policeman. The weeds are an army 

 of scattered thieves, and, if the pilferings 

 of each are small in amount, the aggregate 

 is immense. The wise and thrifty farmer, 

 therefore, keeps his constabulary to take 

 up the offender, and consign him as quickly 

 as possible to death. He who allows him- 



self to be daily robbed of his crop, and the 

 community to the same extent of food, 

 and all the while looks helplessly on, is 

 not only a bad farmer, but in effect, though 

 not in design, a bad citizen also. 



Mr. J. Thomas, of Lidlington Park, our 

 second example, farms about 800 acres of 

 a mixed character under the Duke of Bed- 

 ford, of whom it is the highest praise to 

 say that he is a landlord worthy of such 

 tenants, consisting in part of clay, which 

 has been rendered profitable for arable 

 cultivation by deep drainage, and in part 

 of what is locally called sand, which 

 has been reduced from rabbit-warrens to 

 corn-fields by the Norfolk system. This 

 intelligent cultivator read a paper some 

 time since to the Central Farmers' Club, 

 in which he stated, with the assent of his 

 tenant audience, that, under very high 

 farming, it was not only possible but advi- 

 sable to reduce the fertility of the soil 

 by the more frequent growth of grain — as, 

 for instance, by taking barlej^ after wheat, 

 and returning to the once fatal sj^stem of 

 two white crops in succession. He said 

 that, under the four or five-course he began 

 to find his ' turnips subject to strange, in- 

 explicable diseases ; his barley (v^here a 

 large crop of swedes had been fed on the 

 ground by sheep, with the addition of cake 

 or corn) laid flat on the ground by its own 

 weight, and in a wet harvest sprouted, 

 thus rendering the grain unfit for the 

 maltster, the straw valueless as fodder, 

 while the young clover was stifled and 

 killed by the lodgment of the barley crop.' 

 Thus, while Roman agriculturists, with all 

 their garden-like care, were torn)ented by 

 a decreasing produce on an exhausted soil, 

 we, atler ages of cropping, have arrived at 

 the point of an over-abundant fertility — an 

 evil to be cured, not by any fixed rule, but 

 ' by permitting the diligent and intelligent 

 tenant-farmer a freer exercise of judgment.' 

 In this speaker we have another specimen 

 of the invaluable class of men by whom, 

 during the last ten years, on tens of thou- 

 sands of acres, the produce of meat and 

 corn has been doubled. 



At Lidlington, where there is strong 

 clay to deal with, and more good grass- 

 land than exists at Castle Acre, it is not 

 necessary to purchase so much food to 

 keep live-stock for manure. But there are 

 about one hundred and fifty beasts and 

 one thousand sheep sold fat, besides a 



