Af/riculture of Nottiiit/liamshire. 
5 
appreriated throughout the county that we feel convinced we 
should not be deemed to have done our duty if we had not thus 
alluded to it. 
That a great and important change throughout the district has 
been wrought during the last half century is an indisputable fact, 
and as such it cannot be uninteresting to investigate more closely 
the causes which have produced it. The improvements which 
have been introduced were obliged to be not only gradual but 
expensive. When the forest land, as it is termed, is first broken 
up, the colour of the soil, often nearly pure sand, or mixed with 
gravel, is yellow and unpromising to the eye ; neither does it 
assume the appearance which usually indicates fertility until it has 
been under cultivation many years. To enter into details of the 
various means, so far as labour has been employed, which have 
been adopted for bringing these soils into cultivation, would be to 
ring changes on grubbing and ploughing, and would not only be 
tedious but unprofitable. It is more to our purpose to observe 
that the actuating principle has been to furnish food for sheep. 
The Spaniards have a proverb, which it is to be feared is almost 
lost to their recollection now, that " wherever the foot of the sheep 
touches, the land is turned into gold and however rhetorical 
such proverb may be, it contains, we believe, the operative cause 
of all the improvements which have taken place during the period 
to which we have alluded. On land which will bear to be trodden 
by sheep at all seasons, which is the case here, no mode of im- 
proving poor soils has yet been found so effectual ; consequently, 
the first object of the occupier Is to furnish food for his sheep at 
all seasons ; and as the turnip forms, in a great measure, the object 
in question during six months of the year, it is to the production 
of that root especially that he directs his attention. 
It is to the introduction of the swede turnip that the improved 
state of farming in Nottinghamshire must be mainly referred. 
This it is which forms the farmer's sheet-anchor during at least 
4 or 5 months, and those the most trying of the year, for the 
support of his stock. 
This invaluable root was, if we are rightly informed, introduced 
into this county about the commencement of the present century, 
by the late Colonel Mellish of Blyth; and small portions of seed 
were distributed by him to tlie leading agriculturists of that 
neighbourhood; but as the improved mode of growing turnips in 
drills was then quite unknown, the success attendant upon the 
first essays of these gentlemen is said to have been very hmited : 
neither were the results of their efforts of so much value to the 
animals for whose sustenance they were provided, as might have 
been supposed. Besides, no implement for cutting the turnip was 
at that time thought of; and we have been informed by an eye- 
