The Making of the Land in England. 
367 
necessary for their acquirement. This reasoning seems to be 
sound, for it is notorious that the rents of these fine soils 
covered with the best natural pastures have hardly yielded to 
the pressure of bad times, while rents enhanced by improve- 
ments have gone to pieces, and in many cases down to zero. 
Such examples as these are, however, of very limited amount, 
though possibly there is not a county in England that is 
entirely devoid of them. They will be found for the most part 
in the Midlands, and on the spots where the Kimmeridge clay 
and greensand come to the surface, as well as in river valleys 
and flats which for years have had the fertilising washings of 
the surrounding slopes brought down upon them by the action 
of frost and water. But even in the finest grazing pastures in 
Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, whatever may have been 
the practice fifty years ago, it would be wrong to conclude that 
at the present day the extraordinary richness of their grasses is 
due entirely to nature. 
Some few years ago Sir John B. Lawes commenced a scien- 
tific enquiry into the causes of the fertility and the feeding 
properties of the best land near Market Harborough, and 
for this purpose he desired to select for examination portions 
of fields on which no artificial food had been consumed. After 
long search none could be found absolutely free from this dis- 
qualification. Upon the greater portion of this magnificent 
district it turned out that linseed or cotton cake was in common 
use and in considerable quantities, dissipating the general idea 
that the " rother's side is larded " solely by natural grasses. A 
little help no doubt goes a long way on such pastures, but the 
grazier has proved that it is better to give it — possibly with 
the view of early maturity — than to rely exclusively on what 
the landlord's freehold furnishes in return for the rent. 
Passing then from the cream of the English soil, we come to 
the considerations of some instances selected for the purpose of 
showing the extraordinary and unsuspected outlay which has 
been continuously going on in order to produce or to maintain 
the rent-roll of purely rural estates. 
It has been found no very easy matter to arrive at the par- 
ticulars, or even the sum-total of this outlay, so as to get at a 
statement of averages. A vast amount of the improvements 
of the land has been due to sentiment and not to economical 
calculations. Arthur Young suggests the morning stroll of the 
owner, and his casual and unpremeditated conception on the 
spot of some operation which would improve the natural features 
of his estate, and perhaps employ his people, as the origin of 
considerable outlay. Of such probably no very accurate 
accounts are now to be found. Much of it perhaps might be 
