400 
Farming of Dorsetshire. 
land that " where Nature has done much, man does little :" and 
the " altered aspect of vegetation' ' would, certainly as regards 
artificial crops, be pronounced largely in favour of the chalk 
district. An eminent land-surveyor, who has had acquaintance 
with nearly every county in England, and who has been more 
engaged under the Enclosure Acts than any other person in the 
county, declares, that from Woodyates to six miles beyond Dor- 
chester (nearly the entire length of the chalk district) there is no 
better farming in the kingdom. The soils on the chalk vary 
greatly, as many as a dozen different qualities being discernible 
in one field ; and a newly-ploughed hill side will exhibit every 
tint, from chocolate colour to white. 
The best land is usually managed upon the Norfolk four- 
course ; the thinner and poorer soils being left two years in 
grass. On a section of his farm, at Bryanstone, the Right Hon. 
Lord Portman adopts the following shift : — 1, wheat ; 2, turnips 
or mangold and swedes ; 3, barley or oats, with seeds sown ; 
4, seeds, mown once, rape and turnips, fed for wheat. On the 
larger and poorer portion, the rotation is, 1, wheat sown with 
sainfoin ; 2, half roots, half sainfoin, mown ; 3, half oats or barley 
and seeds, half sainfoin, mown ; 4, half seeds, half sainfoin, 
mown ; 5, wheat after rape and turnips, fed off. On another 
portion of the farm, chiefly grass, the arable, well-manured, 
grows alternate root and grain crops ; the occasional change 
of peas and late turnips instead of roots is found advan- 
tageous. The point in which his Lordship's practice differs from 
that of most of his neighbours, is his mode of managing his 
downs ; by regularly folding and manuring on the grass-land 
when the arable is too wet for sheep, downs — which once 
used to be let at 2s. Q>d. or 55. per acre, after sheep, fed with 
oil-cake and corn, have been folded two seasons in succession 
upon them — have made as good dry meadows as can be found, 
and have occasionally been sufficiently productive of grass to 
give a crop of hay, but generally they liave not been mown. 
Another portion of the downs after enclosure has been manured 
with farm-yard dung, and has afforded the means of keeping two- 
year old heifers and cows where store-sheep only were kept. On 
the meadow lands, his Lordship's practice is to mow two years 
and feed one, dressing from time to time with farm-yard manure 
all meadows not subject to floods. A portion of the meadows is 
folded by sheep, and the portion more particularly appropriated 
to dairy purposes is regularly manured by the milhiiif/ pound — a 
contrivance of his Lordship's that has been found to answer 
extremely well. The " milking pound " is formed of a number of 
larch frames, wattled with hazel and mounted on low wheels. It 
is easily drawn from place to place by the dairyman's pony, by 
