260 
Fanning of Oxfordshire. 
and delivers his corn himself. He also spends the " straw, chaff, 
and cavinjr" in the yards, leaving the manure for the new tenant. 
Can anything be more wretched, or more conducive to ill-feeling 
between the out-going and in-coming tenant than the early entry 
of the one and the deferred departure of the other ? How much 
better are the covenants where the out-going tenant gives up pos- 
session of everything at Michaelmas ; the incoming tenant threshing 
and delivering the crop, taking the straw, &c., for his trouble. 
In Oxfordshire the usual covenants are that the out-going tenant 
should be paid for all operations of husbandry performed in the 
preparation of the ground for root-crops or fallows. The turnips, 
&c., are valued by tlie number of ploughings, hoeings, and cost of 
manuring, and not by the worth of the crop. Fallows are paid 
for in a similar way, and thus the land is often ploughed in wet 
weather, and little attempt is made to clean it, as the price 
depends more upon what has been done than on the manner in 
which it has been performed. The price allowed for ploughing 
of course varies on different soils. It may be as low as '6s. or 
as high as 12s., and even 14s., per acre. The in-coming tenant 
takes to all, or only half, the hay and wheat-straw at a spending 
price, and the out-going tenant retains the rest of the produce. 
The consumer, of course, crams a lot of half-starved cattle into 
the yards, and the poor things to sustain life devour almost every 
blade of straw, reducing the quantity of manure without im- 
proving its quality. 
When a suivey of the English counties was made in 1770, 
the rental of Oxfordshire was put down at 19*. 6c?. per acre. 
In 1809, after seasons of scarcity and war-prices, Arthur Young 
calculated the average rental of land at 22s. The rental of the 
county may now be reckoned between 285. and 30s. per acre. 
The rich red land in the north of Oxfordshire lets at from 30s. 
to 45s. per acre ; the stonebrash from 18s. to 25s. ; the clay 
farms from 20s. to 25s. ; the sands and gravelly loams at about 
30s. ; and the Chiltern district may average 18s. per acre. The 
rent of clay farms, as before observed, has not advanced in pro- 
portion to the other soils ; indeed, within tlie last few years the 
annual value of such land has decreased. Neither has the meadow- 
land participated at all equally in the advance of rent. Some 
rich grass-lands are mentioned by Arthur Y oung as letting for 
60s. an acre ; and though some few meadows still command 
that sum, the general rent varies from 30s. to 50s. per acre. 
The production of sainfoin, green-crops, and root-crops, renders 
the farmer less dependent on the meadows for the support of his 
stock, and much of the grass-land, for reasons already stated, is 
less productive than formerly. 
Tlie great and small tithes of a farm amount to about a 
