300 On the Agricultural Improvements of Lincolnshire, 
first who ventured a heavy outlay upon his land : his yearly bill 
for bones alone was from 1500/. to 1800/. A friend, who staid at 
his house for three days about 1835, tells me that he thought Mr. 
Dawson's management the perfection of farming ; and you might 
see a single field of 350 acres in turnips. He died a few years 
since, and left a large fortune. Such instances, of course, are 
uncommon ; but I believe that what Arthur Young observes, in 
his ' Six Months' Tour,' is perfectly true, — namely, that large 
fortunes can only be made in farming by the spirited cultivation 
of land which had been previously ill-farmed, or of absolute 
waste. The three points of ordinary chalk-farming in Lincoln- 
shire are, first, thorough chalking of the land, repeated when the 
first covering of chalk is worn out ; secondly, boning the whole of 
the turnip crop, at 12 or 16 bushels per acre, to which farmers 
are often bound by their agreements ; thirdly, keeping always in 
winter a large number of horned cattle in the yards, which, being 
fed on oil-cake, convert the straw into excellent dung. This 
practice, though almost unknown in the south of England, is 
common in the eastern counties and in the Lothians, but with an 
important difference. In the eastern counties the beasts receive 
turnips drawn from the land, and m the Lothians are fed mainly 
on turnips, which in the North growing more slowly are more 
nutritious than in the South. But on the light lands of Lincoln- 
shire the farmers say that their weak soil cannot spare the turnips 
— that is, cannot spare the manure which the sheep would make 
from those roots upon the land where they grow. Instead, therefore, 
of drawing home their turnips, they purchase large quantities of 
oil-cake (80 tons perhaps, upon a large farm costing 600/.), by 
the aid of which their beasts thrive on the straw, and the manure 
is at the same time enriched. This peculiar practice appears to 
me so important that I inquired into its details. The cattle are 
bought in November, and kept loose in separate yards, 10 or J 5 
together ; and such is the abundance of straw, that I have seen a 
gate hung between two of these yards nearly 3 feet high, that it 
might have room for opening at the close of the winter. The 
number of beasts thus wintered upon a farm of 1000 acres varies 
from 70 to 100, or more. There are two kinds of beasts pur- 
chased, and hence two kinds of management. Generally young 
beasts, two year olds, are bought in for about 8/. a head — no 
small outlay of capital m addition to the ordinary stock of a farm ; 
and, without of course attempting to fatten them, the farmers give 
to each about four pounds of linseed cake daily. They are thus kept 
growing, perhaps slightly improving, through the winter ; and 
when they are sold in the spring, the increase in their value is 
expected just to clear the cost of the cake they have eaten, though 
it has been also stated to me that if the beasts repay half the cake 
