On the A(jricultural Improvements of Lincolnshire. 309 
said lo me, " Here was land enough idle to employ the surplus 
population of England." The expression, I now believe, would 
be literally true if applied to the country at large. On the Exmoor 
wastes you find the heath growing knee-high — a proof that 
the land has strength ; you frequently find tall ferns mixing their 
bright green or yellow fans with these purple bushes : yet fern 
is an unfailing sign that tlie land has depth as well as goodness, 
and wherever ferns grow, unless indeed the elevation be too great, 
wheat might be rea])ed. But in that neighbourhood there 
is a wonderful indifference in the owners to the use of their 
land ; which struck me the more, because I had not yet observed 
it elsewhere. These moors are divided into large sheep-walks 
for neighbouring farms. The sheep, a dwindled breed, are kept 
for their wool, and are sometimes left to die on the hills, of old 
age, in the snow. The rent may be 1,9., or perhaps 2s., an acre. 
Sometimes you find a large piece of the best land enclosed with 
a high fence, and you hope that the owner is about to begin tilling 
his freehold. On the contrary, the object of this improvement is 
to keep out the only sign of farming, the sheep, and to preserve 
the best of the land (because where the land is best the covert 
is highest) an undisturbed realm for the blackcock. Every 
blackcock killed by an owner of these moors has cost more, I 
was convinced, than a full-fed ox: though, indeed, it is nothing 
new that sporting should impede farming. The New Forest was 
made for the deer, and Henry I. afforested 70,000 acres of fens, 
" doing," as Dugdale says, " for the pleasure of hunting, much 
harm to the commonwealth. ' In later times, when it was pro- 
posed to lay the Fens dry, the fenmen opposed the scheme obsti- 
nately, and their main argument (as I found in a curious old 
pamphlet) was the destruction that would fall on the wild-ducks 
and other water-fowl. In the last generation we have seen how 
rabbits resisted the long-woolled sheep ; and now blackcocks 
and grouse, I believe, are the main impediment to the extension 
of cultivation. On the Somersetshire moors the sheep are indeed 
generally admitted, but the rent of the land, as I have said, is Is. 
or 2s. an acre — quite sufficient for such feed as the animals find. 
Yet there is land so let, for which I know that in Berkshire 30Z. 
an acre would be a fair price ; and if the landlords in Somerset- 
shire sold some of their moors at a rate calculated on the 
present rental, that land I found, on riding over it, would be 
as cheap as any that can be obtained in the backwoods of Canada 
— not only as cheap, but more easily cultivated, near a much 
better market, and, above all, at home. Nor is this goodness of 
moorland confined to Somersetshire, as I have since ascertained. 
I may mention Tansley Moor, near Matlock, in Derbyshire, co- 
vered with heath, but also with fern. • It seemed to me to require 
