Farming of Lancashire. 



9 



farms: but from Whalley to Manchester, through Accrington, 

 Haslingden, and Bury, and still farther to the east by Colne and 

 Burnley, the land is mostly kept in pasture. This is altogether a 

 coal district, and consequently a thickly peopled one ; the farmers 

 find a ready sale for their milk in the towns and villages, and 

 hence there is little stimulus to exertion. Draining is more or 

 less required throughout the whole ; the soil is a cold tenacious 

 clay, and the country has a bare and dreary appearance : the land, 

 being divided into small properties and holdings, lets high; 21., 

 31, and 41. per acre being a common rent. A population such as 

 the whole of this is, employed in hand-loom weaving and mills, 

 is not likely to advance much in agriculture ; still there are in- 

 stances of improvement by the owners of the soil. Sir Robert 

 Peel has drained almost all his land, to the amount of 1000 acres, 

 in the neighbourhood of Accrington, under the direction of Mr. 

 Josiah Parkes, at a depth of 4 feet, and at various intervals, with 

 lj-inch pipe, tiles, and collars, which are made at an old- 

 established pottery at Oswaldtwistle, close to his property ; other 

 tileries are about to be erected in this district, which will tend to 

 improve the quality and lower the price of this necessary article. 



On leaving the hilly districts and descending into the low 

 country to the westward, the first important feature in an agricul- 

 tural point of view is the cultivation of Chat-moss; this is a large 

 bog or morass, situate about 7 miles to the westward of Man- 

 chester ; it is 5 miles long from east to west, and about 3 miles 

 broad from north to south, covering an area of about 6000 acres. 

 The Liverpool and Manchester Railway passes through, or 

 rather over it, from east to west. Much variety of opinion pre- 

 vails as to the origin of these mosses ; some carry their formation 

 as far back as the general deluge, but the more probable theory is 

 that they have been caused by the natural decay of primeval 

 forests in the valleys or hollows, from which the water had no 

 escape ; a few trees blown down or felled would readily choke up 

 the outlet of a small stream with little or no fall, and when decay 

 had once begun its ravages in a forest so situated, it would pro- 

 ceed with an ever accelerated rapidity until the whole was reduced 

 to a mass of decayed or decaying vegetable matter. 



The surface of Chat-moss is a sort of long, coarse, sedgy grass 

 and heath, tough enough to enable a man to walk upon it in most 

 parts ; but it was given in evidence by Mr. Giles before the 

 Committee of the House of Commons, preparatory to the 

 making of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, that a boring- 

 rod, when forced through the surface vegetation about the centre 

 of the moss, would sink with its own weight to the depth of 

 34 feet. At that depth there was a vein of 4 or 6 inches of clay ; 

 below that 2 or 3 feet of quicksand ; and at the bottom of all, hard 



