4 
Agriculture of Nottinghamshire. 
attaining to a higher elevation, and are more rounded in their con- 
tour, yet seldom so high as to be seriously inconvenient to the 
farmer, at the same time never sinking into tameness of outline. 
The highest ranges, moreover, being planted, afford a valuable 
shelter to the corn as well as stock ; and although they may 
harbour more of game and rabbits than the occupier might wish, 
still they are of unquestionable utility on the points to which we 
have alluded. 
Neither is this extensive district, forming an area of fully one- 
third of the county, by this transformation at all denuded of that 
natural beauty with which some sanguine minds may have been 
pleased to invest it when regretting the change, which by them is 
regarded as merely utilitarian : on the contrary, one can hardly 
picture to the imagination a more delightful country than the 
western half of Nottinghamshire, with its rising forests of thriving 
larch and oak timber, upon which are bestowed as much care as 
if they were but shrubberies instead of vast plantations resembling 
forests. 
And here it is only due to advert in a summary way to the 
material share which the present Duke of Portland has had in 
promoting these improvements. So prominent a part has his 
Grace taken for many years, in contributing not only to the 
beauty of the district in which his estates lie, by planting and 
otherwise adorning it, but also in taking a most decided lead in 
the march of agricultural progression ; that the mention of the 
name of the Duke in this place, while it cannot appear invidious 
to others, will only be just to him. 
Of the long Ime of water-meadows running for miles through 
the Duke's property, a description has already appeared in the 
Society's Journal in vol. i. for 1840, from the pen of Mr. Deni- 
son, so complete, as to require but a slight notice to be taken of it 
in this Essay. The superior and spirited manner in which the 
farming has for many years been conducted under the constant 
and even daily supervision of his Grace at Clipston, is known too 
far to allow any eulogium of ours to appear needful ; yet as Ijis 
Grace was, we believe, one of the first to adopt extensively bones 
and other light manures as a tillage, and has been for a long 
series of years ever ready to make any experiments, the pursuit 
of which might tend to advance the interests of agriculture, 
spending most freely large sums of money for the promotion of 
su( h objects, it is most assuredly due to his Grace to acknowledge 
in how great a degree, not this county only but the country at 
large, is indebted to his science, skill, and enterprise. Whatever 
the late Earl of Leicester did for Norfolk the Duke of Portland 
has done for Nottinghamshire, and so generally is his liberality 
