4.12 Farming of Dorsetshire. 
farm. My attention was especially attracted by a large erection 
used as a rick barn, which I learnt was found of great service 
in " catching " harvest weather. This building, which was 40 
feet long, 25 wide, and of considerable heiglit, was composed of 
larch poles, wattled with furze, and roofed with half-inch boards 
covered witli hroicn paper nailed on, and tarred and dusted with 
gritty sand four times. The run of the roof was 3 inches in the 
foot, and, notwithstanding the fragile nature of its covering, the 
high winds, which here sweep along with great violence, could 
not unroof it, nor could the rain penetrate it. When it is con- 
sidered that 1 cwt. of the paper, at a cost of 42s., will cover 
2590 square feet of roofing, the extreme cheapness of this 
building may be easily estimated. 
The West farm, which is principally clay, is under the same 
management as the hill, the chief peculiarity of system being 
the aiTangement for conveying liquid manure in underground 
clay-pipes for distribution at various parts of the farm. Mr. 
Huxtable mentioned the result of an experiment which seems 
important. He carried on for six or seven years the practice of 
keeping his dairy beasts in houses, only turning them out once 
a-day for exercise. This at first was found profitable in many 
respects, but ultimately the constitution of the cows and of their 
progeny became so enfeebled, and the development of tubercles 
in the lungs of the calves so marked, that two years ago the 
practice was altogetlier abandoned, and now his breeding stock 
and cows are kept principally in yards with sheds attached, their 
food being taken to them. This practice has been found to 
answer so well, that in future it will be wholly followed. 
A great many oxen — fully as many again as there were twenty 
years ago — are kept in the c halk district. In the neighbourhood of 
Dorchester they are bought three years old, worked two years, 
then grazed or sold out. A large number of young beasts are 
bought and sold out as three-years old, with calves at their sides, 
for the supply of the dairies, which generally do not breed 
enough to keep their numbers intact. 
The proportions of arable, meadow, and pasture, on a farm of 
500 acres, which would be about the average area of a corn and 
sheep farm, would in the clialk district be probably 300 acres in 
tillage, 60 dry and watered meadow, 100 ewelease or sLeep 
sleights (varying much in quality from the generally undulating 
surfaces of this description of pasture), and the remaining 40 in 
cowlease ground, home crofts or lambing closes, paddock, and 
homestead. But on the larger farms, of 1200 or 1500 acres, a 
much greate)' proportion of down land or sheep pastures will be 
found, with perhaps a good breadth of coppice and woodland, 
the convenience and value of which the farmer knows how to 
