416 
Farm Reports. 
British agriculture, Aylesby and Riby, like Skipworth and 
Torr, are names wliich will always be associated with advanced 
ideas of good farming and successful breeding. 
Aylesby was held successively by the two Skipworths, father 
and son, in the days of the Bakewell Ram Club, when Leicester 
sheep-breeding was a contest for giants. It consists of 940 acres, 
and is held under Mr. T. T. Drake, of Amersham, Bucks, at an 
annual rental on a Ladyday entry, with a very liberal tenant-right 
agreement, and no out-going crop. 
The Riby farm has been in Mr. Torr's family for about a 
century and a half; it measures 720 acres, and is held under 
Col. Tomline, M.P. for Grimsby, at an annual rental, on a May- 
day entry, with an out-going crop. Rothwell consists of 420 
acres, and, being a parsonage farm, is held under the present 
rector, who, it is almost unnecessary to say, has only a life-interest 
in it. Mr. Torr also occupies 200 acres of marsh-land, mostly 
his own property, at Immingham and Stallingborough, on the 
banks of the Humber. The whole of the land at present in Mr. 
Torr's occupation therefore measures 2280 acres. The propor- 
tions of grass and tillage are the following : — 
Aylesby .. 
Eiby 
Eothwell .. 
Marsh -land 
Aylesby is about five miles west of Great Grimsby, and the 
village is situated just on the commencement of the chalky 
gravel or rubble which stretches as a kind of fringe along the 
foot of the Wolds. North of the village, as may be seen in 
the map, lies a mass of clay, which forms the subsoil of the great 
portion of the strong land on the farm ; and there is an outlier 
of the same subsoil south of the road called Barton Street. This 
road may be taken as a very convenient, and it is certainly a very 
natural, line of division, to assist us in describing the physical 
features of the district. It runs along the line of a dry valley, 
and divides almost completely the strong land from the light, 
the only exception being the outlying patch of clay just men- 
tioned. This clay is one of those glacial drift-deposits to which 
geologists now give the name of boulder-clay, but which in 
former days were known by various names, such as till, erratics, 
diluvium, and so forth. It is the same as that termed " plastic 
clay " by Mr. John Algernon Clarke in his prize essay on the 
' Farming of Lincolnshire ' in the 12th volume of this Journal. 
The section beneath the map of Aylesby and Riby shows the 
Tillage. 
Grass. 
Total. 
700 
240 
940 
GIO 
110 
720 
404 
16 
420 
200 
200 
1714 
5GG 
2280 
