534 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



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choice breeding-flock of four hundred 

 Downs, the result of twenty years' care. 

 By these sheep the light land is consoli- 

 dated and enriched. It they are store 

 sheep they are allowed to gnaw the turnips 

 on the ground for part of the year ; if they 

 are young and to be fattened for market, 

 the turnips are drawn, topped, tailed, and 

 sliced by a boy with a portable machine. 

 Thus feeding by day and penned succes- 

 sively over every part of the field at night, 

 they fertilise and compress, as effectually 

 as any roller, the light-blowing sand, and 

 prepare soil which would scarcely feed a 

 family of rabbits for luxuriant corn crops. 

 The cattle, consisting of two-year-old 

 Devons, Herefords, or short-horns, or 

 three-year-old Scots or Anglesea runts, 

 purchased at fairs according to the supply 

 and market-price, in spring or summer, 

 are run on the inferior pasture until win- 

 ter, then taken into the yards or stalls, fed 

 with hay, swedes, mangolds, ground cake, 

 linseed or bailey meal, and allowed an un- 

 limited supply of clean water. When the 

 spring comes round they are put on the 

 best grass, and sent off to market as fast 

 as they become ripe, having left behind 

 them a store of manure, which is the 

 capital from which everything else must 

 spring. 



Ten years ago four miles of rough bark 

 fences were cleared away on the clay half 

 of this farm, and replaced by single rows of 

 blacklhorn, dividing the fields into square 

 lots of forty or fifty acres. Under the old 

 system two hundred acres were poor pas- 

 ture ; now under the rotation system the 

 strong clay feeds four times as much live- 

 stock as before, and bears wheat at least 

 twice in six years. According to the 

 latest experience, the most profitable sys- 

 tem in its present light condition would 

 be, to devote the farmyard dung to grow- 

 ing clover, to eat down the clover with 

 folded sheep, and then to use the ground 

 fertilized by the roots of the clover, with- 

 out home-made manure, for cereal crops, 

 assisted by a top-dressing of guano, to be 

 followed by roots nourished with super- 

 phosphate of lime. Good implements 

 come in aid of good methods of cultiva- 

 tion. Mr. Thomas has eight or nine of 

 Howard's iron ploughs — both light and 

 heavy — iron harrows to match the ploughs, 

 a cultivator to stir the earth, a grubber to 

 gather w^eeds, half a dozen drills, manure 



distributors, and horse-hoes, a clod-crusher, 

 a heavy stone-roller, a haymaking-machine, 

 and horse-rakes. Reaping-machines are 

 to follow. To deal with the crops, a fixed 

 steam-engine, under the care of a plough- 

 boy, puts in motion the compendious barn 

 machinery we have already described, 

 which threshes, dresses, and divides the 

 corn according to its quality, and raises the 

 straw into the loft, and the grain into the 

 granary, besides working a chaff-cutter, a 

 bean-splitter, a cake-crusher, and stones 

 for grinding corn or linseed. With ma- 

 chinery no large barn is required in the 

 English climate ; the corn can remain in 

 the rick until required for market. About 

 twenty men and thirty trained boys, under 

 an aged chief, are constantly employed. 



No land is here lost by unnecessary 

 fences ; no food is wasted on ill-bred live- 

 stock ; no fertility is consumed by weeds; 

 no time or labour is thrown away. One 

 crop prepares the way for another, and 

 the wheeled plough, under the charge of 

 a man or boy, follows quick upon the 

 footsteps of the reaper. The sheep stock 

 I is kept up to perfection of form by retain- 

 ing only the best-shaped ewe-lambs, and 

 hiring or buying the best South-dov/n 

 rams. The profit of keeping first-class 

 stock was proved at the Christmas market 

 of 1856, when twenty-five pure Down 

 shearlings, of twenty months old, which 

 were sold by auction at Hitchin, made an 

 average of 4/. 8^. each, being nearly double 

 the usual weight. The large produce, 

 whether in corn or meat, is the result of a 

 system the very converse of that practised 

 by the Belgian peasant proprietor, or 

 French metayer, whose main object is to 

 feed his family, and avoid every possible 

 payment in cash. As for laying out six- 

 pence on manure, or cattle food for making 

 manure, no such notion ever crosses the 

 minds of those industrious, hard-living 

 peasants, and the diminution in the means 

 of subsistence in consequence is almost 

 past calculation. He who puts most into 

 the land, and gets most out of it, is the 

 true farmer. The bad cultivator gives lit- 

 tle, and receives accordingly. 



When the Central Farmers' Club dis^ 

 cussed the advantage of returning to the 

 plan of more frequent corn crops, which 

 before the days of artificial manures was 

 found to be utterly ruinous, the then chair- 

 man said that he 'had for several years 



