172 
Farming of Wiltshire. 
power; there are some few hand thrashing-machines introduced, 
and many portable machines let on hire, in the same manner as 
the drills. 
Winnowing-machines, with the fan and Amesbury- heaver, are 
used for dressing corn. There have been lately many new imple- 
ments introduced in the different branches of farming, but those 
enumerated are the principal kinds in general use. 
Drainage. — The condition of this division of the county as to 
moisture may be said to be good, as the natural formation of the 
country is well calculated to carry off the surface-water ; and the 
substrata being generally porous, drainage is seldom required 
except on the heavy lands, which do not form a very large por- 
tion, and the principal part of that has been under-drained. 
North Wilts, or the Oolite District. 
North Wiltshire differs very much in appearance from the 
southern division of the county. Instead of the open down coun- 
try of the latter, the whole consists of enclosures, some of which 
are very small ; and in many places the hedgerows are so thickly 
stocked with trees as to give the appearance of an extensive plant- 
ation when viewed from a distance. 
There is great variety of soil in this part of the county, as might 
naturally be expected from the various strata of which it consists. 
On the borders of Gloucestershire, a narrow belt of oolite, with 
its subordinate formations of forest marble and cornbrash (all three 
being generally known to farmers by the name of stonebrash), 
extends from the neighbourhood of Bradford to the extremity of the 
county near Cirencester. The land here is for the most part arable, 
upon which sheep-farming is practised after the same manner as 
in South Wilts. The soil is generally thin ; some poor cla3S are 
also met with here ; but there are notwithstanding some ricii gra- 
velly loams upon the alluvial soil, composing the banks of the 
Avon and Thames rivers. Within this belt there is a much broader 
tract of deep clayey land known by the name of Oxford clay. It 
commences beyond Chippenham, and proceeds north-eastward 
throughout the county, passing by Malinesbury on one side and 
Wootten Basset on the other. A great part of the soil upon this 
stratum is of the very worst quality.* Between the Oxford clay and 
the chalk hills of the southern division there are tvyo other strata 
of some extent, viz., coral, rag, and Kimmeridge clay. The soil 
upon the first of tlirse resembles that of the oolite, forest marble, 
and cornbrash, and is known by the same name; the last resem- 
bles llie Oxford clay, but is of a better quality. There is a small 
quantity of sandy soil near Calne, but it is by no means so fertile 
* This obdurate clay wears the same appfaiance. and bears deservedly 
the same eliai acter, wherever I liave seen it in Beikshire, Buckingham- 
shire, and Lincohiiliire. — Ph. Pusev. , 
