436 Indications of tJie Fertility or Barrenness of Soils. 
I then manured it with good farm-yard manure, at the rate of 16 
cart-loads to the acre — certainly more than 20 tons. I planted 
it with wheat on the first two days in March last. The wheat 
came up very strong, and hjoked well for a few days : it then 
began to lose plant, and looked very sickly all the time till 
harvest. I did my best by hoeing it, but to no purpose. When 
harvest came I had the worst crop of wheat I ever saw, but a 
heavy swath of weeds, and those of almost every kind. I am not 
alone in this case ; for many of my neighbours had fields of wheat 
last season that were planted at Michaelmas, and a little after 
(on fallows), which were no better than mine, but weeds there 
were in abundance. The hedges and timber grow well on this 
soil ; the hawthorn very strong. The wild tansey, the wild withey, 
and the horse-mint, grow here very well. It is also very subject 
to wild mustard. 
I have now said what my actual experience as a farmer has 
taught me, and will next endeavour to communicate what I have 
learned by observation in travelling about as a farmer. I always 
found there was much to be gained by watching the operations of 
other people. The first piece of land that excited any degree of 
interest in me as to its good or bad qualities was a rabbit-warren, 
about five miles from Marlborough, in Wiltshire. The first time 
I saw this land I was on my road to school. I thought little of it 
then ; except noticing the few elder-bushes that were to be seen, 
and the rabbits which were in abundance: still I remembered 
the bushes were on the brow of the hills, and that the rabbits 
made their holes amongst them, and that the chalk looked 
white there. In a very few years after, this warren was let as 
a farm and broken up. I passed through this warren many 
times afterwards, at all seasons of the year. Those places where 
the bushes stood were to be seen at a great distance, and looked 
as if the land had been chalked. In summer the crops showed 
these places very much. Scarcely anything grew on them for a 
few years : while on the land where the chalk was not to be seen 
the crops were excellent ; turnips and seeds as well as the corn. 
I always considered this difference to arise entirely from the chalk 
being mixed with the top-soil, partly by the rabbits and more by 
the plough, in consequence of the top-soil being shallow there : 
this fact also caused the variation in colour from the better parts, 
which was a dark, hollow, light loam. The chalk-hills in this 
neighbourhood — in fact, all the chalk-hills that I have seen — 
show the worst face on the sides and brows of them, and are less 
fertile than the tops or the bottoms, whether used as pasture or 
arable. These observations will apply to the same formation in 
Berkshire, which I have mentioned before. 
I will next describe a district of country which I have been 
