Northern District. 
257 
mixed ; downs, water-meadows, reclamation of wastes, improve- 
ment of poor soils, have all been so fully and so ably discussed, 
that the reporter on Hants must submit to the imputation of 
saying again, what has been better said before. But my repe- 
titions, whatever they are, at least are those of an eye-witness. 
Every detail is the result of personal inquiry, or has been under 
the personal observation of the writer, who has traversed, with a 
special view to this Report, the length and breadth of the county, 
noting and narrating what he saw and heard. 
A more unfavourable time for making agricultural observa- 
tions there could not be. We have just gone through one of the 
wettest, coldest, and most ungenial seasons on record. The 
spring was remarkable for its backwardness ; during the summer 
there was a succession of heavy rains and storms of wind, with 
but little sun and no heat. The seasons were out of course. 
Summer heat and winter cold were identical in temperature. 
At 5 P.M. on 6th of August the thermometer, at Newark, stood 
at 54"^ ; on 6th of December, at 6 P.M., it was only two degrees 
lower. During the whole of the summer and autumn, there were 
just ten days for haymaking, and the same number for wheat 
harvest. Turnips and all roots were only half a crop, and only half 
cleaned in spite of repeated hoeings and much expense. The 
consequences pervade the whole agricultural system. The land 
is foul, the flocks are poor. No one class of farmers has escaped. 
The lowland occupier, who has had his meadows unseasonably 
summer-flooded, and his grass filled with grist, so that nothing 
will touch it either standing or cut, envies his brothers on the 
downs — laudat diversa sequentcs ; but they, having bad hay, poor 
sainfoin, and no turnips, have sold their sheep at a great sacrifice, 
or else have double stocks on their hands with half their usual 
quantity of feed. Heavy-land farmers have not been able to get 
on their fields. A dry day now and then simply showed them 
that the ground would not work. Where the seed has been got 
in, the soil was not pulverised, and the grain not well covered. 
It has since had to endure a succession of severe frosts. Those 
who waited, are likely to have as good a plant, or better, than 
those who hurried the seed in earlier, after a fashion. 
NOKTHEKN DlSTPJCT. 
This is too heavily timbered for agricultural purposes. The 
double rows of timber-trees, with brushwood between, grow- 
ing in the enormous hedgerows which enclose arable fields in 
some of the strongest land, right and left of the Loddon, are 
hardly to be equalled elsewhere. These, pernicious enough 
to cultivation anywhere, are here doubly injurious from the 
nature of the soil, which requires the fullest possible amount 
