78 
Exmoor Reclamation. 
he persisted year after year in arable cultivation, would have 
laid down three times the area of well-limed permanent pasture. 
Mr. Knight broke up the pan before described with heavy sub- 
soil ploughs, drawn by teams of bullocks at a vast expense, and 
with complete success, so far as making the land perfectly porous 
and dry for all time ; for he converted the mixed peat, pan, 
and yellow clay, when dressed with lime, into a dark fertile soil, 
which to this day produces admirable pasture. The land which 
was broken up forty or fifty years ago, and then injured by over- 
tillage, in vain attempts to grow corn-crops, having then been 
liberally dressed with lime, forms the staple of the best grass- 
land on Exmoor ; and the subsoil-ploughs, which it would not 
pay to work with bullocks, now form a useful addition to the 
earth-stirring apparatus set in motion by the steam-cultivator. 
A large herd of West Highland cattle, introduced as better 
calculated to brave inclement winters on the higher ranges of 
Exmoor than the native Devons, throve at first amazingly ; but 
the calves, running with their dams on the hills, grew up wild 
as the red-deer, and proved unmanageable and unprofitable. 
Mr. Knight also established in the inclosures at Simon's Bath a 
large breeding-stud of Yorkshire mares, for which he provided 
English thoroughbred sires, and even joined in the costly ex- 
periment of importing from Dongola several stallions of the 
breed from which the traveller Bruce chose his .war-horse.* 
But although Mr. Knight was an excellent judge of horses, 
and spared no expense to obtain blood, bone, and quality, and 
although he succeeded in producing many excellent horses, he 
failed, as everyone who has attempted a great stud of half-bred 
horses has failed, to make a profit by it. 
The attempts to farm on Exmoor were persevered in with 
lavish tenacity long after everyone, except the owner, had become 
convinced that wet tracts could not be broken up by o^-teams 
with any prospect of profit ; and that to attempt to turn the dry 
land, however fertile, into sheep and corn farms, on the four- 
course-system, was simply impossible in that climate. 
In 1842 Mr. Knight, then seventy-six years of age, feeling 
himself unable to continue the exertions and exposure necessary 
for carrying on his Exmoor farms, retired to Italy, where he 
died at Rome in 1850. He placed the management of his 
property in the hands of his eldest son, the present proprietor, 
* " After the publication of ' Bruce's Travels,' Mr. John Knight being at the 
houee of Sir Joseph Banlcs, Lords Morcton, Ileadley, and Dundas be ing also of 
the parly, tlio conversation turned on IJrucu's dc'Scri|)tion of the l)ig Nubian blood 
horse, and ended in cucli writing a check for 250Z. and handing Ihcni over to 
Sir Joseph on account of the expense of bringing over some specimens of the 
Dongola. The best of thoi-o found their way to the E.\moor breeding stud." — 
Sidney's 'Book of the Horse.' 
