270 
Farming of Hampshire. 
and robbin<^ the cultivator of the fruits of his labour. They are 
mostly plantations of fir and larch, and, as such, are crops, just 
as much as corn or roots. The wastes are those higher portions 
of the country which are covered, with erratic sand and gravel, 
and if they do no good, at least they do no harm. 
The average size of farms is from 200 to 250 acres, increasing 
in size as you go westward and approach Romsey and the chalk. 
Three-fourths of the land is arable, and one-fourth pasture. 
About Redbridge are some extensive salt marshes, flooded at 
every spring-tide. They are mown in the summer, the farmer 
seizing the interval between two spring-tides. Cows and horses 
(chiefly colts) are turned out at other times. They would be 
very valuable if the salt water could be kept back, and projects 
of embankment have been at different times entertained by the 
proprietors, but the great expense required has hitherto been an 
insuperable obstacle. 
On the arable the rotation is again four-field. Spring beans 
and peas are sometimes sown together, and called " pulse ;" but 
this crop fouls the ground. The wheat is sown on one earth, the 
presser following the plough on the clover-leys. The ploughing 
is very seldom done with four horses : three are generally used, 
either in line or unicorn fashion, with one on the land side ; and 
sometimes only two. There is not the same nervous apprehen- 
sion of treading the surface as in the north, where the feeling 
seems to be, " never mind how hard you pound the pan with six- 
teen iron feet in the furrow, but, whatever you do, turn up a 
light seed-bed." The drill is generally used for the spring-corn, 
but the wheat is often sown broadcast. Where the land is clean 
and free from annual weeds, hoeing is omitted for corn-crops, 
but roots are horse and hand hoed twice or thrice. Swedes, 
both here, and generally, throughout the county, are not pulled 
and pitted even on the best farms. The farmyard manure is 
applied to the clover-leys, and artificials to roots. The dress- 
ing of chalk is from 20 to 30 tons per acre, and requires renewal 
once in twenty years. Its total cost in the field is about 5^. 
per ton. About Romsey they apply 36 tons. It is submitted 
that on those peaty lands this is in excess, though there may be 
something defective in the nature of the chalk at Brook, which 
supplies this neighbourhood. It may be questioned, too, whether 
the better method of applying chalk on an absorbent soil is 
not in small doses at correspondingly shorter intervals. The 
other principal chalkpits are Oslebury, Henstead, and Compton, 
the Henstead chalk being preferred, as soft, soapy, and coming 
soon to hand. 
Permission is very generally given by the landlords to sell 
hay and straw at the great towns, as at Southampton and Ports- 
