294 
Agriculture of Hertfordshire. 
50 tons of green fodder. Growth is much assisted by cloudy 
and showery weather, and is checked by a dry scorching season. 
The quantity of stock maintained is 18 or 20 horses and 15 
beasts ; they eat the rye-grass with avidity, and the oxen need no 
other food while it lasts. They are fattened off on swedes, 
chaff, and 2 lbs. of linseed-meal, or 6 lbs. of oilcake. A lot of 
Welsh cattle, bought in the autumn of 1862 at 61. 6s., which had 
the run of the Park in the winter, were fed on sewage-grass from 
April till the autumn, and then received the mixture of roots 
and cake as stated above, realised, at Christmas 1863, the average 
price of 20Z. 10s. 
At the Home Farm the urine from 30 shorthorned cows is 
collected in a tank, diluted with water pumped from the river, 
and directed over 4 acres of Italian rye-grass. The cows graze 
over 30 acres of pasture during the night in summer, and are fed 
in yards on the rye-grass during the heat of the day ; and this 
34 acres of land suffice for their maintenance, without other food, 
until autumn. The total acreage of the Farm (exclusive of the 
Park) is 231 acres of arable and 120 acres of grass ; the whole 
of the grass, except the 30 acres, is mown every year for hay. 
The winter stock consists of 120 head of cattle in the yards, and 
a flock of 250 pure Southdown ewes and their progeny. The 
arable land is well and highly farmed, without much regard to 
rotation. About one-third of the land is in roots, and a good 
crop of these is, on this light, gravelly soil, considered essential 
to good after-crops. Two covered homesteads were erected on 
this farm three years ago, on an excellent plan combining 
economy, convenience, and comfort for a large herd of cattle. 
We give the following detailed account of the farming of 
Richard Oakley, Esq., of Lawrence End, as an example of what 
may be done on heavy land by summer feeding and early 
folding. 
The corn crops on this farm are very heavy : 10 quarters of 
oats per acre after wheat are often grown in a locality where half 
that quantity is the general average. We believe Mr. Oakley 
finds, under his system of high-feeding, that the barley crop is 
getting too strong for quality. He will probably have to crop a 
little faster with corn. 
Mr. Oakley writes — 
" I have in my own occupation about 1200 acres, about 1000 acres of winch 
are arable, chiefly a heavy loam ; the rest, grass of a poor, weak kind ; but 
with liberal supplies of cake or corn I manage to fatten some well-bred, 
moderate-sized Herefords, which greatly improves the grass. 
" My principal crops are wheat and barley : but I sow some 30 or 40 acres 
of black Tartarian oats, top-dressed, after clover-lea wheat. I do not sow red 
clover oftener than once in 8 or 10 years, substituting trefoil to be fed off with 
sheep on cako or corn ; the land ploughed up early in summer and sown with 
