29G On the Agricultural Improvetncnts of Lincolnshire. 
tated in the same neig:libourhoo(l, by a process which, until it was 
shown me by Mr. Cliiklers, I could not believe to be practicable. 
The site is over the borders in Yorkshire, but the operation ought to 
be j)ut on our Society's records. Mr. Gossip having purchased, about 
Hatfield Chase, 4000 acres of worthless, deep, quaking bog, 
devoid of any mineral matter, for a trifling sum, found that near 
it, in the bed of a river which had been abandoned when a straight 
cut was made for draining the level, he possessed a deep and ex- 
tensive bed of warp with which the deserted water-course had been 
silted up during the temporary return of the waters when the 
works were destroyed ; and he conceived the plan of spreading 
this deposit over his barren waste. On visiting the spot we found 
a quarry of several acres excavated to the depth of 30 feet in the 
bed of warp — the loaded earth-waggons being drawn up an in- 
clined plane by a steam-engine fixed at the quarry's mouth, tra- 
velling thence along a railroad over the moor, and depositing their 
loads, in a regular coat 8 inches deep, upon its surface. When 
they had thus covered the bog on each side of the railway, as far 
as it reached, an enormous but manageable machine proceeds to 
the extremity, takes up each piece of the railway as an elephant 
might with his trunk, and deposits them in a fresh line upon 
the uncovered morass. ^I'hus you see the thick sheet of firm and 
fruitful soil steadily spreading over the hopeless quagmire ; and 
you pass, at a single step, from the Bog of Allen to the Vale of 
Aylesbury or of Whitehorse ; for you not only see oats sown in 
March upon land made in February, but beans, the surest sign of 
a good staple, upon the new soil of the former year. 
The expense is about 1 5/. per acre, the first cost of the land 
was 3/. ; and it is now well worth lbs. to rent. This is not, how- 
ever, an example which can be followed ; for scarcely could such 
a mine of soil, capable of supporting vegetation at once, be worked 
elsewhere to such a depth, though Mr. Everett informed me 
of one such deposit found in the United States. Nor, indeed, 
could water- warping itself be generally adopted, though along the 
banks of the Trent, Air, Dun, and other streams of the Humber, it 
has been followed up with great spirit since Mr. Young's time, to the 
extent of 50,000 acres, if I am rightly informed ; and the tide has 
been thus set to work upon land near Gainsborough, whicfi is 20 
miles up the Trent, and 60 miles distant from the open sea. It is by 
simpler processes, however, that farmers generally must be con- 
tented to work ; and in the fens of southern Lincolnshire may be 
seen an excellent example of changing the soil, not indeed by 
laying down another upon it, but by tempering the surface anew 
with a material which nature has hidden beneath it. I mean the 
claying of peat, which has been described in our Journal, but 
must not be omitted from the great improvements of Lincoln- 
