454 
FavndiKj of Dorsetshire. 
will scarcely permit themselves to doubt. Mr. T. H. Saunders 
has broken up about eighty acres of this land with very good 
effect. It was first thoroughly drained, then pared and burnt. 
The first crop taken was turnips, for which the land received 
1 quarter of bones, a little guano and superph< sphate. Upon 
these sands the turnip is subject to the club-f.H>t, and the land 
after the first year was fallowed to prevent it. 12 or 15 dung- 
put loads of chalk per acre were afforded it, but it was found 
that the land would not grow corn. Cereal crops progressed 
well till they got into ear, when they dwindled away to a mere 
nothing. The remedy for this was found to be lime, which, 
besides improving the wheat crop, produces good turnips ; and 
now the heath, which formerly grew only heath and furze, pro- 
duces good rye, Avheat, and Dutch clover. 
Under VVareliam Heath lie the rich clay pits which supply the 
Staffordshire merchants with the materials for their wares. The 
top clay is cast upon the heath in large heaps as worthless. 
Upon these clays and sands look down chalk hills ; the three 
great constituents of the most fertile soils here meet, and yet this 
is one of the most barren spots in the county. The Dorchester 
and Southampton Railway skirts the heath, and a tramway used 
for the conveyance of the clay traverses a considerable portion of 
it ; and, that nothing in the shape of incitement to reclamation 
might be wanting, in the village of Stowbarrow that old-fashioned 
and almost extinct disease tlie ague is very prevalent. 
That the reclamation of heaths and other " improvements still 
to be effected" will be permitted long to remain works unde- 
signed, the progress of the county in the past forty years forbids 
us to doubt. If in that pleasing retrospect our thoughts rest 
only on that part of the county where the poacher and the deer 
have given place to the honest labourer and the peaceful flock ; 
where out of tlie forest and the waste there has sprung up the 
tall chimney of an experimental farm, which has engaged the 
attention of tlie whole country — we may surely find even here 
sufficient to satisfy us that the history of the past may be our 
hope and confidence for the future. 
