Improvement of Peaty Ground. 



407 



This statement^ coming from a man of business, acquainted 

 with the practice which he describes, is well worth attention. 

 The benefit effected is very great in proportion to the cost and 

 labour incurred ; for the cost is only 54.?. per acre, and it is 

 nearly repaid at the end of the second year. There is a marked 

 improvement in the quality both of oats and of wheat, and in the 

 latter grain a great increase of quantity. Indeed it hardly appears 

 how it could be worth while to grow wheat at all on such land 

 before the clay is laid on, whereas afterwards the produce, 30 

 bushels of good wheat per acre, is rather high. This Lincolnshire 

 method appears, therefore, to be the cheapest of all improve- 

 ments, w^here the clay is found under the soil, though even so 

 deep as 4 feet, and its effect is supposed by Mr. Cooke to last 

 fifteen years. It has also the strong recommendation of being 

 not an experiment, but a practice. The great extent to which it 

 has been carried, and its efficacy, are thus described by Mr. 

 Morton, in answer to an inquiry which I addressed to him : — 



" The fens of Lincolnshire have been increased in productiveness at 

 least 100 per cent., merely by applying to the surface of the peat the clay 

 which is found at depths varying from 2 to 5 feet below it. 



" This application is made thus : — Trenches, parallel to one another, 

 are made, 1 1 yards apart and 3 feet wide, down to the clay ; and then 2 

 feet in depth of the clay is thrown out, one half on each side. The effect 

 of this, after the second year, is greatly to increase the productiveness of 

 the soil — in many cases to double it. 



" This mode of improving peaty soils extends over a very large dis- 

 trict; indeed it is equal in extent to the extent of the fens, for, although 

 the whole of the fen-land in Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Hunting- 

 donshire, and Cambridgeshire, has not been so treated, yet there is 

 scarcely a farmer but what has and is now proceeding with this most 

 important improvement. I have witnessed this operation for the last 

 15 years ; and I believe it w^as begun long before. Mr. Wingate's 

 estate at Leake has thus been clayed once every six years, and each repe- 

 tition has the effect of adding to the permanent productiveness of the 

 peaty soil." 



This operation of claying peat is one of the methods by w^hich 

 English farmers have for many years been silently changing the 

 face of the country, which now constantly come to our knowledge, 

 but for which they have not hitherto received the credit due to 

 them : its effect is so wonderful that I ought not to withhold a 

 further account of it which I have obtained from Mr. Wingate 

 himself, whose farm at Leake is mentioned by Mr. Morton : — 



"Dear Sir, — I will endeavour to describe to you what we have done in 

 our east fen since its great improvement by drainage, confining myself 

 to that land which I consider decayed vegetable matter on a clay or 

 silty subsoil at various depths, and which had been under water generally 

 for ages in the winter season, and getting partially dry in the summer. 



