256 
Farming of Kent. 
applied per acre. Five-fingers 4c?, a bushel ; 120 bushels to the 
acre. Muscles are generally bought by the waggon-load for 
about 2O5., and 150 bushels applied per acre. Chalk is exten- 
sively used on heavy soils, particularly on pastures, and is attended 
with very beneficial results. Frost and rain soon render it friable, 
when it easily works into the soil. 16 or 17 tons are commonly 
put upon an acre ; but it will not require repeating for upwards of 
twenty years, and then in smaller quantities. Artificial manures 
are but very little used. 
The implements of this district are those common to the 
county. The Kentish turn-wrist plough is in universal use here, 
as it is throughout nearly the whole of the county north of the 
Weald. Four horses are almost invariably employed, driven in 
pairs abreast in summer; but in winter, when irreparable injury 
would be done by poaching the ground, they are driven singly in 
the furrow. Two-horse ploughs have been tried, but not found 
generally to answer. The average depth of ploughing is about 
6 inches. 
There are scarcely any cattle bred in this district : what few 
are fatted are of various breeds, but the Welsh predominate. 
The prevailing breed of sheep are the " improved Kents," either 
pure or crossed, and are highly approved. Hirings are generally 
yearly. Rents vary from 30a-. to 50s. per acre, not including 
wood-land, which is much lower, and difficult to state. Parochial 
rates, 45. to 5s. ; tithes, about lis. for arable, and 4s. Q)d. pasture, 
per acre. These charges, however, vary considerably in different 
parishes ; our statements respecting them cannot therefore be 
rigidly exact. Size of farms vary from 100 to 500 or 600 acres. 
Farm-buildings are generally not convenient, many of them being 
of old construction, and having no adequate provision for econo- 
mising manure. Horses are generally soiled in yards during 
summer, a practice that is gradually spreading over other parts 
of the county. About Whitstable land-springs abound so much 
that, in consequence, few houses have cellars. The water is 
hard, and strongly impregnated with iron. Boring for water is 
common, and very successful. Considerable improvements ^have 
been effected of late years by the removal of hedge-row timber, 
straightening fences, making larger enclosures, and the introduc- 
tion of draining, in all of which departments very much yet 
remains to be done throughout this district.* 
I come now to describe the farming of an isolated portion of 
this county, in which tlie London clay is extensively developed — a 
district which occupies a prominent and interesting space in the 
* I am indebted to Mr. F. Murton, of Whitstable, for much information 
relative to this diitriot. 
