70 
Farming of Cambridgeshire. 
in good store order all winter, and sold in the spring. Those 
who have any high land, with good grazing ground on it, fatten 
them in the summer ; but the greater portion of them are sold and 
sent into the fine grazing counties of Leicester and Northampton. 
The fen land does not answer well for grass, consequently but 
little grass land is found in the district, only on the uplands, and 
here we have some very fine grazing land. In the whole of this 
fen district the surface soil consists of a light, porous, vegetable 
matter, through which the water most easily percolates, until it 
reaches the clay ; and so freely does it do so that in digging the 
holes for claying, the water appears to keep trickling from the 
pipes or hollow tubes of the undecomposed vegetable matter : 
as soon as you get into the clay no water oozes out ; it is as it were 
impervious to wet, but the water lies as in a sponge in the vege- 
table mould above. 
The great difficulty in describing the system of cropping pur- 
sued in this district is that no regular or uniform system is 
adopted. They have so much natural or virgin strength, that 
with some farmers it appears their whole study is how to tame it 
down ; and this they endeavour by making wheat succeed wheat, 
then oats, again wheat (with some), wheat again, then oats, then 
wheat, then seeds, then wheat, then oats, then wheat ; and by this 
time they may have got it so full of couch or twitch grass as to 
be induced to give it a rest, by following the old plan which used 
to be, after cropping some years, to lay it down with clover and 
grass seeds for three or four years ; then to pare and burn, to take 
a crop of rape ; then pursue another course or round of cropping. 
But this plan is fast giving way to the practice of letting them lie 
only one year in layer, which is mown for hay, and the after- 
math fed with sheep. The plan pursued by the best farmers of 
this district is to fallow with rape or turnips, to which a dressing 
of bones is applied ; and this is quite a new feature in fen- 
farming, but it is found that bones answer exceedingly well for 
rape or turnips on this soil. The rape is fed off with sheep, and 
this is done without hurdles. The rape is so strong and luxu- 
riant, and stands so high, that the sheep eat as it were their way 
in, the outer boundary of the rape acting as a wall or fence 
against them. A portion of the turnips are drawn off for beasts in 
the yards. Sometimes wheat is sown after rape, but generally 
oats, as they are fearful it should be too strong for wheat ; there- 
fore we may say, 
2nd crop, Oats. 7 th crop, Wheat. 
3rd „ Wheat. 8th „ Seeds one year. 
4th „ Oats. 9th „ Wheat. 
5th „ Wheat. 10th „ Oats or Fallow. 
6th „ Oats. 
