44 



Farming of Lancashire. 



the fence ; and where land is divided into small fields, as in Lan- 

 cashire, the acres that are lost by this old system must be very 

 considerable. 



' Implements. — The use of good agricultural implements has 

 been rapidly increasing during the last few years ; Finlayson's 

 cultivator, and a turnip-drill for sowing two drills at once, intro- 

 duced from Berwickshire, are in common use in the neighbour- 

 hood of Lancaster ; and within the last few years there have 

 been between thirty and forty thrashing-machines worked by 

 horses set up in the same district. These are also brought from 

 Scotland, and cost about 40/. The Norwegian harrow, Cros- 

 kilTs clod-crusher, Ducies's drag, with various grubbers and cul- 

 tivators, and drills for seed, I have met with on the farms of 

 gentlemen and large farmers, such as Mr. Patterson of Holbeck, 

 and Mr. Smithies of BickerstafFe, but many of these are too costly 

 for general use.* The one-horse carts which prevail throughout 

 the county are very good, and the iron ploughs are generally 

 superseding the wooden ones. On the cheese-farms the old 

 stone weights are making way for the iron lever-presses, and 

 there is throughout the county a general improvement in this 

 respect. The small moveable tram-road used by Mr. R. Neil son, 

 Mr. Wilson Ffrance, and the Rev. W. Hornby of St. Michael's, 

 is on level land a very valuable acquisition to the farmyard, and 

 in our wet climate the greatest convenience in getting turnips off 

 the land. The railway, which consists of a light bar of iron 

 placed longitudinally on wood, in pieces of 1 6 feet in length, costs 

 complete, about lis. 6d. per piece, and the waggons about ol. 10s., 

 but this of course depends upon the price of iron and timber. It 

 is some credit to the mechanical genius, now first applied to agri- 

 culture in this county, that at York the prize tile-machine for mak- 

 ing draining pipes was the production of a Lancashire workshop, j 

 In the art of Reclaiming and Cultivating Waste Lands, no doubt 

 " much has been done, but more remains to do." Besides the 

 mosses and high lands of the county, which, as we have seen, are 

 gradually changing their barren nature into fruitful soils, there 

 exist also large tracts of land by the sea-coast, which at present 

 form part of the shore, that might, by embankments, be recovered 

 from the sea. 



In the year 1820 Mr. Edward Dawson of AldclifFe Hall, near 

 Lancaster, received from the Society of Arts their large gold 



* The former gentleman has used for the first time this season Garrett's Corn-Drill, 

 which he considers a very excellent implement. In a short note addressed to me on the 

 subject, he says, " We only use two-thirds of the seed which is used in broadcast, and 

 our crops look remarkably promiswg." — June 2. 



i See Report of Implements at the York Meeting, 1848. Journal of the Royal 

 Agricultural Society. 



