38 
Farming of Cambridgeshire. 
am indebted to Mr. Deck, of Cambridge, for two sections of the 
soil of this county, which I have annexed. 
The principal rivers are the Cam or Granta, and the Ouse : 
the latter river is navigable from Cambridge to Lynn, in Norfolk, 
to which port large quantities of the grain-produce of this county 
hitlierto have been sent by this navigation ; but it will soon be a 
question whether the corn-produce will not in future travel to 
London by the railroad. 
The southern and central part of the county, extending from 
Ickleton to the north side of Newmarket, is light land, consisting 
of chalk, sands, tender loams, and gravels. 
The eastern side of the county, adjoining parts of the counties 
of Essex and Suffolk, up to Chevely, near Newmarket, is heavy 
clay land of various qualities, nearly the whole of which district 
requires draining. 
The western side of the county, adjoining Bedfordshire, Hert- 
fordshire, and Huntingdonshire, consists of a tough tenacious 
clay, of little value on the hills, but the flats are good, strong, 
deep, staple lands. 
In the northern part of the county the Isle of Ely is situated, 
which consists of the fen district, an accumulation of vegetable 
deposit resting on the fen -clay. 
I will divide the county into four districts, and treat of the 
system of farming, carried on in each, by itself. 
Few counties, if any, have improved more in cultivation than 
Cambridgeshire has lately done. All the open common-fields 
have been enclosed (with the exception of five or six parishes), 
and instead of a system of cropping so exhausting to the land as 
a fallow and two white-straw crops in succession, with other men's 
flocks of sheep eating up your food and preventing imj)rovement, 
we now see the land farmed on the four-course system — the best 
that can be adopted, unless on very fine land. Large flocks of 
sheep (not barely kept in existence, as heretofore) are fattened 
with corn and cake for the London markets, thus enriching the 
land and increasing its productive powers. In the faim-yards 
and sheds we now find beasts fattening on corn and cake, &c., 
raising large quantities of rich and valuable manure to be carried 
back to the land again, to stimulate and renovate her for greater 
exertion, when she will, with much more gratitude than mankind 
generally evince, exert herself to repay, with interest, the kindness 
and attention shown her. But formerly, in these yards you found 
only a few straw-fed cows nearly starved to death, and verifying 
the old adage, that " if an animal eats straw, it voids straw." 
Comparing the present system witli the former, it is astonishing 
to mark the increased wealth our present improved system brings 
to the state; not only thus largely increasing the national wealth. 
