98 
The Farming of Cheshire. 
dreds of cottage tenants (and, I hope, pay some attention to their 
habits, wants, and feelings), and I am decidedly of opinion that no 
able-bodied labourer ought to have less than half an acre of land, 
which will enable him to raise potatoes sufficient for his own con- 
sumption and to fatten a couple of pigs, besides growing a little 
bread-corn ; and I think it would be for the general good of the 
agricultural community if every cottager with a family was en- 
abled to keep his cow." 
Irrigated Meadows. 
In addition to the natural water meadows on the principal 
streams, which have already been noticed, there is a consider- 
able extent (many hundred acres) of meadow land along the 
numerous small rivulets which intersect the county ; and con- 
siderable ingenuity is frequently displayed in subjecting these 
lands to occasional irrigation. The water is dammed up in 
situations where it cannot injure the surrounding land, and con- 
veyed along the sides of the banks to the parts intended to be 
flooded. In many instances great improvement is effected by this 
process, but in others it is decidedly injurious. Where land is 
already full of water from the want of proper drainage, it cannot, 
I conceive, be benefited by having more water brought upon it ; 
for although, immediately after irrigation, the herbage may have 
a green and luxuriant appearance, it becomes coarser every year, 
with an increasing mixture of rushes and other aquatics. If the 
same ingenuity were exercised in draining and laying the ground 
perfectly dry for a fortnight, after being irrigated for a week or 
nine days, and this process were to be repeated three or four 
* times during the winter, the land would unquestionably be much 
improved; and we should not hear so many complaints of artifi- 
cial watering, or irrigation, being injurious. We should also bear 
in mind that this description of land is frequently in situations 
where manuring would be very expensive, and therefore never 
likely to have much applied : it is evidently, then, of great advan- 
tage to be enabled to enrich such soil by irrigation. 
Pasture Land. 
There is, perhaps, no county in England where the pas- 
ture lands (particularly the poorer soils) have been so much 
improved during the last ten or twelve years as in Cheshire; 
and this principally by the application of what is termed " bone- 
dust." This extraordinary manure has a peculiar effect upon 
the poor clay land j)astures, for on the application of boiled 
bones a sudden change takes place in the appearance of the fields, 
and instead of the carnation-leaved, or " pink grass," which so 
