330 



Farming of Lincolnshire. 



3. The peculiarities^ ivhether advantageous or defective, in the 

 agricultural management. 



The general farming of Lincolnshire has been affirmed by an 

 intelligent observer to be superior to that of the far-famed East 

 Lothian, and mainly because the barren wastes of the former 

 have been artificially made to emulate the native productiveness 

 of the latter district ; and if the luxuriant grazing lands constitute 

 *'the glory of Lincolnshire," the Heath, Cliff, and Wold hills 

 must be considered imperishable monuments of the energy and 

 ability of its cultivators. Mr. Pusey, in his paper on the agri- 

 cultural improvements of this county,* has contrasted the state of 

 these high lands in 1842 with what it was prior to 1800; but a 

 repetition here of some of the facts is absolutely necessary, in 

 order to give a just distinction and prominence to the merits of 

 the farming in 1849^ as now to be detailed. Although the oolite 

 limestone and chalk ranges are entirely disconnected and distant 

 from each other, still, as they have undergone a contemporaneous 

 improvement, and exhibit a similarity in their systems of hus- 

 bandry, it is proposed to notice them successively, and afterwards 

 to describe the farm management of adjacent districts. 



The chalk Wolds — which, constituting much the largest and 

 most important district, demand the first attention — were, in the 

 middle of the last century, a succession of rabbit-warrens from 

 south to north. Fifty years ago they had been so far improved 

 that many thousands of acres of open field were subdivided by 

 enclosures, and the four-field system of cropping had established 

 itself over large breadths of land. Still, warrens overspread a 

 wide tract of the loftier hills, and the surface was covered with 

 gorse for many miles. Fences, however, have since then extended 

 rapidly in every direction, and all the open fields have disappeared, 

 a great part having been enclosed within the last thirty years. 

 The gorse has been grubbed, the rough sward burned, and all 

 the warrens, with one or two exceptions, have been brought into 

 good cultivation. No portion of the ground has been allowed to 

 remain (as on the Downs of southern England) a tract of sheep- 

 walks in its primitive vegetation of heath and fern, but the highest 

 points are all in tillage, and the whole length of the Wolds is 

 intersected by neat white-thorn hedges, the solitary furze-bush 

 appearing only where a roadside or plantation border offers an 

 uncultivated space. And the whole of the improvements have 

 been accomplished on a grand scale : the holdings are large, 

 there being scarcely a single farm under the size of 300 acres; 

 many contain 800, ICOO, 1500, and more acres, and there is one 



* Journal, vol. iv., 1843. 



