Farming of Lincolnshire. 



375 



Warp lands are in o^eneral much over-valued ; it being the 

 opinion of those best able to judge, that when wheat is at 60«. 

 per quarter, the rent of the general quality of warp ought not to 

 exceed 21. per acre. Abutting on the Trent, where potatoes are 

 largely grown because of easy shipment, and on the natural 

 warp, where wheat and potatoes " is the course, the rent is 

 necessarily higher. It is difficult to say from whence the mud 

 or warp is derived, which has been deposited in a vast bed of 

 more than 16,000 acres in extent and more than 2 feet in thick- 

 nesSj and still leaves the H umber no clearer than before. Do 

 the tide-waves wash the falling material of the Yorkshire cliffs 

 into this estuary, or is the warp brought down by the tributary 

 rivers ? The H umber is comparatively clear at its mouth, and 

 the land-floods always hinder the process of warping. Doubt- 

 less the tide scours its thickening slime from the bottom of the 

 estuary, this again being slowly and imperceptibly supplied by- 

 mineral and animal matter both from the rivers and the sea. 

 Freshwater floods drive back the tidal warp by their violence, 

 thus lessening the amount of deposition in the works ; but the 

 sediment they contain, after mingling with that already in the 

 Humber, is taken up by the tide and carried back again into the 

 rivers. It is from this intermixture that the peculiar fertility of 

 the alluvium is derived, the Humber forming a vast receptacle 

 exactly adapted for the mingling of the various marine substances 

 with the mineral and earthy matters of the Ouse and Trent 

 waters, and for receiving the exuviae of myriads of animalcules 

 that float in the fresh and salt streams, and perish where they 

 meet.* 



Attention is next requested to a few cursory remarks upon what 

 may be termed the Western district, including the clay and other 

 soils west of the great oolite range between the north-western dis- 

 trict north and Grantham south. Although the lias formation 

 constitutes a large proportion of the rich pastures and dairy-lands 

 of Leicestershire and other counties, there is but little dairy pro- 

 duce made upon it in Lincolnshire. Cheese is rarely manufactured 

 in any part of this county ; and in the division now under review 

 butter is scarcely ever made much beyond the supply of domestic 

 wants. The proportion of grass-land northward of the Foss 

 X)yke is small, and the land is cultivated for wheat, beans, oats, 

 barley, and seeds. Perhaps the most general course of cropping 

 is after the four-field system. Rape is much grown on the stiff 

 soil for feeding off", but none for seed. Barley on the lighter 

 lands produces on an average about 5 quarters per acre ; 

 wheat generally yields 3^ quarters. Liming is done on the 



* For an admirable account of the process of "Warping, and the chemical analysis 

 of the new-made soil, see a Paper by F. J. Herapath, in the Journal, vol, xi. part i. 



