82 
Exmoor Reclamation. 
while below, the thin plantations have grown into luxuriant 
woods — home of woodcocks in hard weather, and of foxes all the 
year round. 
" The breeding stud of ponies," to see which was the prin- 
cipal object of my visit, " contained about 400 head. . Their 
produce, which had been, as already mentioned, improved at vast 
expense, averaged at auction as three-year-olds only about 11. 
apiece, a miserable return from 10,000 acres. 
" The farms, which varied in extent from 500 to 1000 acres, 
were principally occupied as store farms, with some dairies. 
The tenants were from Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, 
Derbyshire, and Dorsetshire. Modifications of the system of 
all those districts were tried by the tenants. The plan of 
reclamation then in course of trial was to burn the turf, dress it 
with 2^ tons of lime per acre, at a cost of 1/. a ton. Then, 
without other manure, to have a crop of turnips sown on the 
flat, eat the turnips off in winter with sheep, follow with seeds 
— a mixture of Timothy grass, clover, and Italian rye-grass — to 
be pastured for three years, then ploughed up and succeeded by 
a crop of oats. The next rotation was to be roots, supported 
by farmyard-manure of beasts fed during the winter." 
But very few tenants lived to see the end of this rotation. 
It was pretty on paper, but it had a fatal defect — it did not, and 
it could not, pay in a climate where growing wheat for sale was 
out of the question. A few small farmers still grow wheat for 
their own consumption, but it is generally very poor in colour 
and in quality. Some years after the foreign farmers had dis- 
appeared, the gradual rise of prices of stock and meat began to 
fill the pockets of the North Devon cattle and sheep producers ; 
at last a North Devon man took one of Mr. Knight's large farms 
near his house at Simon's Bath. He was, perhaps fortunately, 
not rich, and in the beginning held an auction every spring to 
let the summer grazing of some of his grass-fields. People began 
to get accustomed to the idea of an Exmoor farm ; and one by 
one men from the neighbouring parishes took, on leases varying 
in terms from 4 to 19 years, all the land that Mr. Knight had 
to let. The rents at first were low. Since the general re-settle- 
ment of the estate in the hands of the Devonshire farmers, 
hardly a case of re-letting a farm or an allotment in Exmoor 
has taken place without a considerable increase of rent. 
This increase has been accompanied in almost every instance 
by a fresh outlay of capital on the part of the landlord, to make 
the farm worth the new rent. The farms have seldom changed 
hands, and the outlay has been usually agreed upon, watched, and 
executed for the landlord by tenants who have made money on the 
farm, and who best know its capabilities and its deficiencies. 
