Tlie Agriculture of Staffordshire. 
295 
four-horse plough, turning the first furrow, which is afterwards 
broken by cultivators and dragged to pieces, and the rubbish 
burnt or removed ; 40a-. an acre covers the first expense. The 
land is then limed, and ploughed, and planted with potatoes. 
Oats are sometimes grown as a first crop ; but a good liming 
and a year's cultivation in roots are the best way to destroy the 
excess of vegetable matter in the land. High farming must 
immediately follow, and must be continued on this light soil, 
which contains no accumulated store of fertilit}^ Turnips, 
artificial manures, and sheep, and the aid of the great towns near, 
with that of the increasing population of the collieries, are the 
means by which this land will be made productive. 
The numerous small occupiers have used the spade with 
great success ; and by sometimes buying manure, by keeping a 
pig, and wasting nothing, they soon make the poorest land rich. 
The colliers are attached to their garden-plots, where they work 
after spending the day in pits 250 yards below the surface. 
This deep subsoil ing of theirs is not beneficial to cottages, roads, 
or any sort of buildings, which crack and sink when the opera- 
tion is carried on beneath them ; but it seems to suit the gardens, 
for they look well. One of the effects of the mining is to lower 
the surface, as the earth bends down into the place filled by the 
seam of coal. 
Small freeholders are always found on the edges of extensive 
commons, where they have settled sometimes from remote 
periods, gaining the freehold by twenty years' uninterrupted pos- 
session. The original home-built hut of turf or wood is in time 
replaced by a more substantial cottage. I saw a unique dwelling 
on the Chase, which was simply a railway carriage, abandoned 
probably by some insolvent company, and now set on a brick 
foundation, and furnished with a chimney and other conveniences 
for habitation, by a man who farms his own little manor, and 
who, I venture to say, will never become bankrupt! On the 
roadside in Needwood Forest, there are a number of small plots, 
mostly in pasturage, with neat brick houses, held by freeholders, 
who were originally squatters ; their small domain is generally a 
paddock, surrounded by a good quick-hedge, trimmed neat and 
level. A cow is generally kept. I met with one case where the free- 
holder had irrigated his two or three acres of pasture from a small 
brook. On Whittington Heath, near Lichfield — a waste of 450 
acres of light dry land, which boasts its native breed of sheep — 
there are several of this industrious class ; they invariably give 
their consent to the enclosure by private Act of Parliament, 
which can be obtained on gaining the permission of the pro- 
prietors of three-fourths of the parish. Their little domains are 
then increased by the new allotments. 
VOL. V. — S.S. X 
