THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



535 



taken a crop of wheat every other year; 

 and that on such soil as that of his farm, 

 as long as he manured accordingly, he 

 considered that he was not using the land 

 (one-half of which is his own freehold) un- 

 fairly.' This Weald of Sussex farm shall 

 be our third example; and we adduce it 

 to show what may be done with the most 

 intractable class of retentive soils. A few 

 years ago it was divided into enclosures of 

 from four to eight acres each by broad 

 hedge-rows, many of them with ditches on 

 both sides. It was among the evils of 

 these small enclosures that they facilitated 

 the old make-shift plan of draining by 

 surface furrow^s to shallow sub-drains of 

 bushes, because the water had not far to 

 run. A partial cure postpones completer 

 remedies. In the numerous hedges, ac- 

 cording to the custom of the country, the 

 landlord grew oak timber and the tenant 

 underwood for fuel and for mending fences, j 

 Before railways had made coal cheaper j 

 than hedgerow cuttings, the labourers were 1 

 employed in line weather during the winter 

 in trimming the hedges, and clearing out 

 furrows and ditches ; in wet weather they 

 retreated to a large barn and threshed out 

 w^heat or oats with a flail, in a damp at- 

 mosphere the most unfavourable for the 

 condition of the corn, and a time of the 

 year most convenient for pilfering it. The 

 usual course of cropping was — 1. fallow ; 

 2, v;heat; 3, oats ; 4, seeds. The seed 

 crops were fed until the beginning of June 

 with all the stock of the farm, and then 

 broken up for a bare fallow with a wooden 

 turnwrist plough. The crops were about 

 twenty bushels of wheat per acre once in 

 four years, about forty-eight bushels of 

 oats the year following, and hay and seeds 

 in the third year. The stock consisted of 

 about twenty-five cows, and ten young 

 beasts, which were sold half-fat. The 

 horses ploughed four at a time in a line, 

 and were usually the plumpest animals on 

 farm. Sheep there were none, nor was it 

 believed possible to keep them without 

 Down feed. Lime was the only manure 

 purchased, and hay the only winter food. 

 The present owner and farmer of Ockley 

 Manor, after travelling through England 

 to study the best specimen of modern 

 tenant-farming, began by reducing a hun- 

 dred enclosures totwenty, and by borrowing 

 enough money from the public loan to 

 drain the whole of his clays, the stifFest 



imaginable, three feet six inches deep. 

 He would have preferred four feet deep, 

 but the expense lopped off six inches. This 

 indispensable preliminary process enables 

 him to grow roots and keep a large stock 

 of Southdown sheep on his clovers and 

 seeds, with plenty of cake, running them 

 on the land almost all the year round. To 

 assist in disintegrating the drained clay he 

 avails himself of ' Warne's box-feeding' 

 system, manufacturing a large quantity of 

 long straw-dung, which, when ploughed 

 in, exercises a mechanical as well as a fer- 

 tilizing effect. 



There are three modes of feeding cattle 

 in use — open yards, stalls, and boxes. 

 Well-built yards are surrounded by sheds 

 for shelter, the open space is dish-shaped, 

 thinly sprinkled with earth, and thickly 

 covered with straw, which is renewed from 

 time to time as the cattle trample it into 

 manure. The roofs of all the surrounding 

 buildings are provided with gutters, and 

 the rain is carried into underground drains. 

 The liquid manure is pumped back upon 

 the prepared dung-heaps. These yards 

 are attached to all root-feeding farms, and 

 by their appearance and the quality of the 

 cattle fed in them a fair opinion may be 

 formed of the management of the tenant. 

 In stalls the cattle are tied by the head 

 under cover, with more or less straw un- 

 der them according to the proportion of 

 arable land. On the ' box system' each 

 beast is penned in a separate compartment 

 under cover, and supplied from day to day 

 with just as much straw as will cover the 

 solids and absorb the liquid dung. By the 

 time the beast is fat his cell is full of solid 

 well fermented manure, of the most valua- 

 ble description for clay land. The cattle, 

 whether in yards, stables, or boxes, and 

 all are often to be found on the same farm, 

 ought to be bountifully fed with sliced or 

 pulped roots mixed with chaff, hay, oil- 

 cake, linseed, or corn. The extra buildings 

 make boxes the most expensive plan, but 

 in no way do the animals thrive better, 

 and where there is an ample supply of 

 straw it is the most advantageous method 

 of manufacturing manure. Box-feeding 

 affords one more instance of the antiquity 

 of many modern agricultural practices. 

 In Sir John Sinclair's ' Statistical Survey 

 of Scotland,' published 1795, we read that 

 in the Shetland Island of Unst, 'The 

 method of preserving manure is by leav- 



