368 
The Making of the Land in England. 
termed extravagant, and in respect of direct results, unproduc- 
tive ; but none can doubt that the finished charm and wealth 
of English scenery are traceable to such efforts, and that much 
of the value (the residential value certainly) of rural property 
has resulted from them. It is doing scant justice to our ances- 
tors to discredit or forget their practical regard for ornament 
and progress as they understood it, and ungraciously ascribe its 
economic effects entirely to the " natural increment of value." 
Fortunately, however, in some instances estate accounts have 
been kept and preserved in a manner sufficient to establish 
without doubt the contention that on a comparison of expen- 
diture with the present capital value, much less than is thought 
will be found left for the prairie value of the land. 
The county of Huntingdon is one essentially free from urban 
activity, and the local wealth which it creates. A considerable 
portion of it still shows traces of the forest with which it was 
once clothed. A large part of its north-eastern margin was very 
recently a fen sodden with moisture, or bright with water, skirted 
with reed and sedge. 
The residents are the successors of a generation who were 
content to sow the skirts of their highlands where they dipped 
into the fens with no nobler grain than oats, to see them 
too frequently ripening so late that the practice was to leave 
them standing till the water rose among them a foot or more 
in depth, waiting with patience till winter set in, and access 
to the crop was afforded on the ice. Then at last, equipped 
with poles and sleighs, the villagers entered on the untimely 
harvest, and, breaking off" so much of the crop as stood above 
the ice, they gathered it on the sleighs and removed it to the 
edge of the highland for storage. 
The woods are now fewer and far between ; the meres are 
bright, not with water, but with spring green and (in the absence 
of blight) with autumn gold. Spacious and substantial farm- 
houses and buildings have replaced the decoy and the charcoal- 
burners' camp, while the wattle and daub hut, with its thatched 
roof snug and picturesque, has disappeared for a modern brick 
substitute, answering indeed to the idea of decency and salu- 
brity, but at the cost of rustic beauty and some domestic 
comforts. 
Have these striking changes brought with them a corre- 
sponding financial return for the sacrifices which have been 
made for their achievement? Some answer may be found on an 
examination of a case in point. 
The Connington estate, the property of J. M. Heathcote, Esq., 
in Huntingdonshire, is situated on the borders of the higher 
lands of the Oxford clay formation, where it descends and 
