Agriculture and the House of Russell. 
131 
implements in husbandry, and, wliere practicable, they were set 
to work. This occupied the time till 3 P.M., when there was 
another big dinner at the Abbey ; and at 6 o'clock an adjourn- 
ment was made, as before, to the farmyard, where his Grace's 
tups were offered for the ensuing season at fixed prices, and when 
there were two or more claimants the hiring was determined 
by lot. 
On the third, fourth, and fifth days — for the " sheep-shearing " 
usually extended from the Monday to the Friday inclusive — 
very much the same programme was gone through. Prizes ' 
(amounting to about 125 guineas) were given by the Duke for 
cattle and sheep, and for ploughing competitions, in which ox- 
ploughs took part, three oxen being considered as equal in 
expense to two horses. The conversation at the dinners (at one 
of which the Duke's cups and other prizes were distributed) 
was, we are assured, "entirely agricultural," and was not infre- 
quently productive of challenges : as when Mr. Coke ^ " offered 
a bet of 100 guineas that he would stock 100 acres with South- 
down wethers against another 100 acres to be stocked by any 
four New Leicester breeders " — -the respective merits of these 
sheep being hotly contested at the dinner-table ; or when some 
Herefordshire breeders undertook to produce better cattle than 
any county in England — a challenge which was at once taken up 
by Sir Robert Carr on behalf of his county, Sussex. 
At the farm, amongst other exhibits shown from time 
to time, we find " two remarkably fine and fat cows, which had 
been fatted by poor feed " ; and " Mr. Chaplin, from Lincoln- 
shire, exhibited some extremely fine sheep of his own breeding, 
which were highly approved of." Ploughing competitions 
usually formed part of the programme, as in 1800, when there 
were "five different ploughs — namely, a Northumberland, a 
Surrey or Ducket's, a Bedfordshire, a Norfolk, and a Scotch one 
— on which experiments were made in sowing turnips, by 
making the furrows wide apart." At another time, a dressing- 
machine was produced which " completely dressed a bushel of 
wheat in six minutes"; or the "capital mill," built by the 
Duke, and worked by two horses, with two men to supply it, was 
set to work to thresh corn, which " undergoes every operation — 
the chaff goes one way, the dirt or dust another," the corn 
' On one occasion Mr. Garrard exhibited a model of a piece of the loin of 
a fat three-shear wether, which had taken a premium in the previous year, 
and wo are told that " the fat measured seven inches " I 
^ At the Sheep Shearing in 171)0 Mr. Coke olTered the Duke 150 guineas 
for a Southdown ram, and Mr. Artluir Young remarks that this was " an ad- 
vance in the estimation of that race." 
K 2 
