344 



Farming of Lineal iishire. 



the inferior grass lately broken up. It forms an excellent corn 

 soil, but the system of cropping is very various and irregular. 

 When freshly ploughed up the first crop is sometimes wheat and 

 then seeds, but as often the first crop is oats, followed by a second 

 crop self-sown; generally speaking, beans come after wheat, 

 and a dead-fallow before it. Coleseed or rape is occasionally 

 grown on the best marsh lands, but the clay is very shy at pro- 

 ducing green vegetables — it lacks the carbon and humus of the 

 peat fens. A lew potatoes are cultivated, but no woad or other 

 uncommon crop. Improvements have been made by the ap- 

 plication of lime, and also by the use of artificial manures, 

 bones and linseed oil -cake being more generally purchased than 

 an3^ihing else of the kind. A more extended adoption of the 

 frequent-drain system is much required : the open drains are 

 sufficiently good to allow hollow drains of a moderate depth to be 

 laid ; and from what has been already effected there is every 

 encouragement to proceed with the improvement. 



A singularity deserving to be mentioned is the existence of a 

 rabbit-warren in this district ; it is situated at Saltfleet, on the 

 sandy margin of the sea. 



The average rental of this portion of the marsh district may ba 

 stated at from 4Qs. to 455. and bOs. It was remarked that on the 

 Wolds restrictions as to cropping were being broken through ; but 

 here the case is otherwise. Upon the hills the tenants are finding 

 out that, as they can get nothing from the sod except in return 

 for what they put in, to be bound down to certain crops is at once 

 to limit their enterprise and profit : here, on the other hand, the 

 proprietors are interested in preserving the natural fertility of 

 their soil, and imagine that by holding the tenants to a certain 

 number of grain crops, a fixed course of management, or other 

 burdensome restrictions, they are guarding their land from dete- 

 rioration, in all probability forgetting that hindrances of this kind 

 are bars to industry, and that it is not by the prevention of growth 

 on their land, but by the investment in it of the farmer's capital, 

 and by his remunerative management of it, that their property is 

 made to retain its productive powers. 



Coming southward to Alford, tScc, the same relative position 

 of the soils is maintained, the heavy land between the marshes 

 and the wolds assuming the name of the Middle Marsh. Like 

 the same soil further north, immense tracts of it have been broken 

 up, and during the last 20 years many thousands of acres of 

 rich maiden earth have been brought under the plough. About 

 one-third of the Middle Marsh and half of the Marsh probably 

 remain under the sward. Along this low land, and further south 

 upon the edge of the Fens, the occupations are much smaller than 

 upon the hills, being principally in the hands of small free- 



