Report on the Farm-Prize Competition of 1886. 571 
position — Agricultural — it is not because it has dropped behind, 
but because other counties have pushed forward, and the course 
of events are tending to equalise the arts of cultivation 
throughout the kingdom." 
There cannot, however, be much doubt that during the last 
century and the beginning of the present, her agriculturists have 
been the pioneers in adopting principles and practices, sound 
and profitable, which, spreading to other localities, tended greatly 
to the material progress and improvement of the art throughout 
the kingdom. I may instance the introduction of the turnip 
as a field crop early in the last century, by Lord Townshend at 
Rainham, the importance of which step may be best measured 
by imagining what this country at the present day would be 
without turnips. The wits of the day dubbed his Lordship 
" Turnip Townshend," a sobriquet he had little cause to feel 
aggrieved at. Later on he was referred to by a local poet — 
" Thus Townshend gave the master key 
T' unlock the stores of husbandry ; 
Who, like Triptolemus of old, 
From clods made rustics gather gold : 
Friend patriarchal to our county. 
Still as we taste, we own thy bounty." 
In 1789 the Swedish turnip was first grown in the county by 
Dr. Miles Beevor, of Mulbarton House, he having received the 
seed through the Swedish Ambassador. About the same date 
the corn drill was introduced, and we find that by 1804 its use 
was pretty universal. A rational rotation of cropping, known 
as the " Norfolk System of Husbandry," was practised early 
in the eighteenth century. On this, Arthur Young in 1804, 
wrote : — 
" If I were to be called on to name one peculiar circumstance which has 
done more honour to the husbandry of Xorfolk than any other to be thought 
of, I should, without hesitation, instance the rotation of cropping. I should 
not hazard perhaps too bold an assertion were I to declare that, till the 
accession of his present Majesty, there were to be found few just ideas on 
this subject in the works on husbandry of any author preceding that period; 
if anything tolerable occurs, it is mixed with so much that is erroneous that 
credit cannot be given even for what is good. The fields of the rest of the 
kingdom presented a similar exhibition : right courses hardly anywhere, 
perhaps nowhere, to be found. But, in West Norfolk, the predominant 
principle which governed their husbandry at that period, as well as ever 
since, was the careful avoiding two white com crops in succession. Tiunips 
were made the preparation for barley, and grasses for wheat." 
Young in respect to the Husbandry further wrote, thus : — 
"The farming mind in this county has undergone two pretty considerable 
revolutions. For thirty years, from 1730 to 1760, the great improvements in 
the north-western part of the county took place, which rendered the county 
in general famous. For the next thirty years, to about 1790, I think they 
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