308 On the A(jricultural Improvements of Linculnskirc. 
agreement, as at Brocklesby, to bone the land in every rotation. 
Another feature of Lincolnshire farming; is, that not only is the 
whole farm in fields, but that, however lar<>;e the farm, all the 
fields are treated equally well : while on other parts of the chalk- 
hills an outlying field may be used for twenty years without any 
manure, because it is too distant from the yard for the carriage of 
dung, and lighter manures are not bought for it. The third point 
is, that not only are all the fields of a farm farmed by an equal 
standard, but that the standard of the district is a very high one. 
On every part of the southern chalk-hills there may be individual 
farms as highly manured as the Lincolnshire Wolds, but I know 
of no part where so heavy an outlay on manure is the universal 
rule of the country. 
The Yorkshire wolds, I may add, have been treated almost in 
the same manner, and this outlay appears to answer in the hands 
of one Yorkshire and of two Lincolnshire farmers, who have 
settled upon our southern chalk-hills. A lesson from these wolds 
might thus be read, I should think, wherever the chalk stretches, 
oven as far as Dorsetshire ; but the example of Lincoln Heath is 
capable of an application far wider. In 1780 it was a tract of well- 
known desolation for nearly 70 miles, as Young informs us. VVithm 
twenty years nearly the whole of it was enclosed and studded with 
buildings ; now it is a pattern of farming. Might other ranges 
of heath, as yet equally dreary, be rendered in the next 20 years 
not less cheerful or fertile ? I believe that they might : and as 
heath-land forms a large portion of our Improveable wastes, which 
in England amount to 4,000,000, and in Scotland to 6,000,000 of 
acres — as whoever recommends an improvement is hound to show 
the means of its execution — and as 1 should not presume to re- 
commend this change without having examined many heaths for 
the purpose, I may be permitted to enter into some detail on the 
improvement of heaths. 
Since it is better to speak of individual cases than to deal with a 
matter vaguely, 1 will mention first an extensive tract of heath 
which fills the western end of Somersetshire. These moorlands 
occupy a wide range of hills, or rather low mountains, interrupted 
only by deep, narrow, and beautiful glens ; of which the sides, 
almost too steep to be climbed, are feathered with oak coppice ; 
while the bottom is occupied by streams which dash along rocky 
beds, sometimes in a continuous waterfall. The wild stag has not 
yet disappeared, and is often followed in a straight course of 
20 miles across these western highlands. On returning to the 
Exmoor country in 1841, I was surprised to find that moors which 
had formerly appeared to be fitted only for the pursuit of the 
blackcock and the deer, consist in great part of sound land — not 
in my own opinion merely, butiii that of the farmers, one of whom 
