Farmivfj of Hampshire. 
courses of brick, Avith a thatched roof ; by the stables, perhaps a 
little more substantial ; and by sheds, boarded at the back : all, 
after the first few years, wearing an air of desolation and decay, 
continually calling for repair, and never seemingly repaired ; 
the wooden walls incongruously patched, the roof with a thick 
coating of vegetation on it. 
Reading on the one side, and Basingstoke on the other, are 
the chief markets, the railway communication between them 
running through the most productive part of this district. 
Tlie labourer is not so well paid as farther south. The higher 
the poor-rates, the lower the wages, is, under a law of parochial 
settlement, the rule everywhere. The ordinary man has 9s. 
a-week ; the carter 10s. or lis., without beer except on extraor- 
dinary occasions. The latter and the ploughboys are hired by 
the year. In harvest some farmers give victuals and beer, some 
double wages. Reckoning a boy and a woman equal to one 
man, the manual labour per acre is about '06. Except on the 
Duke's and some other considerable properties, the labourer is 
very indifferently lodged. The boys generally live in the farm- 
house. The tithe is 6s., 7s., or 8s. per acre. The poor and 
other rates 3s. 6f/. in the pound. The rent of the heavy clays is 
from 15s. to 18s. per acre; of the better-working lands, 20s. to 
25s. Leases are not general, nor is there a demand for them. 
This whole description applies to " the woodland farmer " 
only. On some of the more easily-worked soils there are other 
rotations, if the word can be applied to an irregular mode — it 
cannot be called a system — of cropping, which varies with the 
climate, the soil, and the private opinion of the individual cul- 
tivator : such are — 1, fallow ; 2, wheat ; 3, beans ; 4, wheat ; 
5, oats or barley ; 6, clover. Or again, on lands still lighter — 1, 
roots ; 2, barley or oats ; 3, clover or peas ; 4, wheat ; 5, rye, 
oats, or barley. As the chalk is approached, the farms are 
larger, the occupier a man of more capital, the fields more 
open, the buildings, the stock, and everything on a more liberal 
scale. I might particularise the Duke's mixed chalk-and-clay 
farm at Wolverton, and others on the road between Sherfield 
and Basingstoke. But " the woodland farmer " is the man who 
gives its character to this natural division of the county. 
The Duke of Wellington's property at Stratfieldsaye, and in 
its neighbourhood, is the eminent instance of agricultural im- 
provement in " the Hampshire woodlands." The late Duke laid 
out the greater portion of the rental in permanent improvements 
on this extensive estate. He beg-an draining in the year 1820 ; 
and I have, this year, seen some of the park-drains, which 
were then put in, taken up. They are laid with mole-trap 
pipes, about a foot deep, just a-top of the clay. "They didn't 
