On Bicaking-iip Doivn Land. 
85 
They wore first sown with rape or turnips, fed ofT on the hind; 
next oats, then turnips a<iain, manured with well-made farm-yard 
duno^, boned, chalked, or clayed until the l)arren wdderness soon 
became, and still continues, the fruitful field ; aOording- remunera- 
tion to the occupier, comfort to the labourer, and pouring out a 
blessing; upon the country. It is too generally taken for g:ranted 
that land in an impoverished or uncultivated slate is inf'eriorio that 
which has been well attended to, when the only real did'erence con- 
sists, not in the quality of the soil, but in the mode of treatment. 
Had the improvements in .agriculture, which have so long been 
carried on withsuccess in Northumberland, Yorlcshirc, Lincolnshire, 
Nottinghamshire, and Norfolk, been adopted on the poor soils in 
the South, the result, in all probability, would have been the same. 
It is quite clear to me that if no more capital had been expended on 
the soil of a great part of the more northern counties than has been 
laid out on the southern, and if that soil had been as hard cropped, 
the former district would have been as far inferior as it is now 
superior. A great portion of the land of the south downs and of 
the north wolds are, in manv respects, very similar : both are 
naturally of a light dry weak soil, of little value before cultivation, 
and exceedingly inferior to many others even when cultivated. 
They have each a substratum of excellent chalk, which contains 
the foundation of future improvements, and without the applica- 
tion of which all attempts at permanent improvement are vain. 
The two countries are contiguous alike to good grass-lands, the 
cattle from which, fed judiciously while consuming the straw, 
afford the advantage of excellent manure. There is in each dis- 
trict good inland navigation communicating with sea-ports, afford- 
ing an opportunity of obtaining various artificial manures from 
every place. Two districts, thus similar in their nature and re- 
sources, but so opposite in their mode of cultivation for the last 
half century, prove the many and great advantages of a good 
system of husbandi-y and the much-to-be-regretted results of a 
bad one. The one country continues to increase in fertility, the 
other still remains in a state of comparative sterility. The 
northern district, from ihe port of Hull alone, encourages com- 
merce to a large extent. The imports for 1841 amounted to — 
Linseed .... 120,865 quarters. 
Rapeseed . . . 77,380 
Oil-cake .... 8,346 tons. 
Rape-cake . . . 5,255 „ 
Bones .... 25,908 „ 
Total value £900,000. 
The southern district makes very little use of fctreign produc- 
tions for the improvement of its light poor soils; indeed it is 
