The Agriculture of Staffordshire. 
313 
I have described what may be called for this district an 
arable and sheep farm. The great autumn fairs held at 
Newhavcn (in Derbyshire) and at Calton are supplied with 
their eighteen-month-old colts from these farms, which generally 
maintain one or two breeding mares. Two localities, usually 
isolated and solitary, become once a year scenes of considerable 
animation. The great supplies of stock, however, are not drawn 
from the farms referred to, but from those which cover by far 
the larger portion of the district, where the stock kept in summer 
must be annually reduced, because the land is almost entirely in 
grass, and provisions are scarce in winter. One such farm, 
rather exceptional in size, consists of 400 acres, on which a 
dairy of 120 cows is kept in the summer, GO or 70 of which are 
sold in the autumn and replaced ready for turning out on the 
customary day (May 18th). There is no arable land, and there 
is no farmyard : the stock, both young and old, is tied up in the 
winter ; wheat-straw is purchased from a distant district for litter, 
and for chaff to mix with bran, cake, bean-meal, &c. On this 
particular farm 100 Leicester lambs are bought in autumn and 
sold fat in June or July ; no calves are reared ; it is more 
general to keep one ewe to about two acres, and sell the lambs 
in the autumn (this refers to the limestone ; on the moorlands 
the number of sheep is very small). On a moorland grass-farm 
about one- fifth is mown for hay, and about 15 cows and 20 
ewes are kept during the summer, and the usual proportion sold 
in autumn. Instead of selling the sheep, some farmers send them 
for the winter to other districts from about 10th October to 25th 
March. The sheep are either pure Leicesters or crossed with 
Cotswolds or Lincolns ; rams of considerable value are some- 
times bought, and few traces remain of the blood of the " old 
limestones " and native breeds. The calves are generally reared 
and sold at the fairs referred to. The variations of practice are to 
reduce the dairy in favour of rearing stock for sale at 18 months, 
and to graze the richest pastures with fatting oxen. A cow 
calving in April will make from 3 to cwts. of cheese, and in 
winter, when cheese-making is over, butter-making begins, and 
the milk is thus disposed of until within ten or eleven weeks of 
calving. The quantity, though small per cow, is large in the 
aggregate ; it is taken to Leek, which is the great market of 
the district. The dairies are replaced in spring from Leek and 
other fairs. In the " moorlands " small mixed hardy cows are 
preferred to the larger shorthorns. A deficiency of springs in 
some neighbourhoods has been overcome by the artificial 
"meres," which are constructed with clay, puddled with a layer 
of lime to keep off worms, &c., and the bottom paved with 
stones to strengthen it. On some parts of the limestone 
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