Oil the A(jricultiiral IniprovemcnU of Lincolnshire. 313 
which circumstance the name is derived. As you follow the small 
but rapid rivers, you frequently see, along the sides of the valley 
which rise steeply above, clear spaces opened in the high bank of 
oak-coppice covered with grass of emerald-green by the hill tor- 
rents, which have thus been guided and distributed along the slope. 
The ease with which these catch- meadows are formed is remark- 
able. A hill-farmer at Winsford showed me a field so steep that 
one could not climb it without the aid of the hands. It had been 
rough ground, worth bs. an acre : he had limed it, and allowed his 
labourers to break it up and take potatoes for two years ; after which 
time they returned it to him, with the water-gutters traced along the 
slope : so that, instead of waste at 5s., he obtained, almost for 
nothing, a field bearing perpetual grass, worth certainly 40s. an 
acre. Great as the change is, and strange as it appears, the 
practice is a part of every-day farming in this hilly district, and 
these catch-meadows meet you at every turn ; indeed the word 
meadow here means only watered grass land. Mr. Roales has 
formed them from the moor on Brendon Hill, and Sir Thomas 
Acland near Dunkerry Beacon. Mr. Blake, of Upton, has 
brought less than 400 acres, which had not let for 1^. an acre, to 
produce him 1200/. a-year, chiefly by catch-meadows, which he 
formed out of moor-land, and lets each year as summering ground 
to the low-land farmers. There are some beautiful catch-meadows 
at Cutcombe Pass, on very high ground, south of Dunster Castle. 
In Devonshire, too, Mr. Hoare, at Luscombe, near Dawlish, has 
made them from very poor land, on which he turns the water, first in 
the winter to feed, then to mow, and then three times afterwards in 
the summer to feed off the herbage in the course of each year. I saw 
some also at Mr. Turner's, of Barton, near Exeter; and the late 
Mr. Bulteel made them, I believe, largely near Plymouth. On one 
farm at King's Brompton, near Exmoor, the tenant had drained 
a piece of moor-land, collected the runnings into a reservoir, which 
the present Lord Carnarvon had built for him, and used the water, 
which had been poison above, as food for the field below. For 
it is remarkable that water which has flowed over a bog is injuri- 
ous, but, brought by under-drains from the same bog, is nutritious. 
I do not mean that these catch-meadows were all made without 
expense ; but, where the land is previously dry, 2Z. or 2>l. per acre 
would be a fair estimate of the cost : and in order to show what im- 
provement may be effected by catch-meadows, I will only mention 
one case, pointed out to me by a farmer at Winsford, as perfectly 
easy to be carried out upon a neighbouring farm. That hill-farm 
consists of 232 acres, and is let for only 75/. ; but, as the farmer 
observed, 100 acres are a steep slope, covered with rough grass 
and short furze, worth about 5s. an acre. Now there are two 
copious springs gushing forth near the brow which might be 
