The Past Agricultural Year. 
245 
tlun could not be done in the sprinn; or summer, especially where the laud 
was not drained. 1 have been long euor.gh in mv I'arm to get my ditches and 
water-courses well out, and to drain most of the laud to a depth of 4 feet 
G inches. It has also been drained with the old turf or wedge drains some 
years ago; these we cut asunder and fill up with broken chalk down to the 
deeper tile-drains. This plan carries the water oft" very quickly', and I begin 
to think almost too quickly, for I am afraid the water takes some of the 
])roperties of the manure down with it, the benelit of which is lost to the laud. 
This evil, however, we must not mind so much as stagnant water, which is 
injurious in xny year, and more in a year like the present. Mangolds did not 
like their circumstances at all, and not more than a fourth of the ground sown 
remained with a crop of mangolds on it. Swedes and turnips did better and 
grew away well; but the continued wet prevented their being sown so soon 
as usual by nearly a month. The weeds started and raced with the young 
plants. Labour being plentiful, we could check this by hoeing, but it did not 
kill them. I am speaking only of my own farm and of croj^s grown on the 
level land below Chichester. I hear they were very bad on the hills and in 
sandy land. I think I should have stated that where roots were sown after 
once ploughing in summer they looked best ; in other years we could get 
nothing worth speaking of without two or three plougliings, 
C. J. Drevvitt. 
Dorsetshire. — Waterston, Dorchester. 
1. Live-stock. — The winter of 1878-79 was the most trying for sheep I 
ever experienced. My stock consists of 950 flock ewes and about 400 hoggetts ; 
the latter were kept on roots and hay (swedes from November to May) and 
did fairly well ; the roots were pulled beforehand, but not cut for them. Tlie 
ewes were well kept, and fed as carefully as possible on turnips and hay, 
with a run on old pasture part of the day, till the end of Januarj'. If the 
turnip land was wet, they were not allowed to lie on it. About a week 
before they commenced lambing they were given some old hay on grass ; and 
a yard was prepared to put them in by night, should the weather be rough. The 
first part of the lambing time it was very cold, but dry ; the lambs came 
strong, and the e\ves were healthy. We generally lose some ewes at this 
period from straining. When the snow came, with cold rain and wet and 
mud under foot, we found a change ; lambs were born apparently healthy, 
but died when two or three days old. Ewes did not get over their difliculties 
so well. A plentiful supply of straw was at hand, but the latter part of 
the lambing was not nearly so good as the beginning. There was a large pro- 
portion of twins, or the crop of lambs would have been very deficient ; as it 
was, we were 150 short, and lost 4 per cent, of ewes. The sheep did badly 
all the spring. They were well supplied with swedes, hay and grass, and had 
the run of the young clovers, and ihe mothers of the wether lambs had oats 
for a time, but never did so well as usual. When put in the water-meadows 
in April, both ewes and lambs scoured very considerably. We lost lambs 
continually. 
I believe the swedes, although not rotten, were of inferior quality, from tlie 
effects of the severe frosts ; and all green food, turnip-tops, clovers and grass, 
from lack of sun and the low temperature which prevailed all the spring, 
were not so wholesome or nutritious as is generally the case. Fortunately 
the previous year's hay was both good and plentiful, and the sheep were supplied 
with it for nearly seven months. My sheep stock had most attention, caused 
me more anxiety, and I think sufiered more from the past untoward season 
than anything else. Many ewes pined away and died in the spring from the 
