Oil tho Farmhig of Huntingdon. 
257 
The cfittle consists of fourteen breeding cows, mostly pure- 
bred Shorthorns ; and a pure- bred bull is kept, to which the tenants 
on the property have access at a nominal charge. The stock 
both in winter and summer average about 100 head, a great 
part of which are turned out fat either from the pastures or the 
stalls. Cake is used on the grass for both beasts and sheep ; a 
practice whicli though not leaving a direct profit in beef and 
mutton, does so in an improved pasture, which in a few years 
shows the beneficial effects of this kind of management. 
A great number of pigs are bred and fed on this farm ; not less 
than seventy were on the list when the writer visited the yard. 
The land produces a large quantity of straw, but this being 
of inferior quality as fodder, the store beasts always receive with 
it during the winter an allowance of either roots or oil-cake. 
The wheat is of fair quality, and iij good seasons produces froia 
four to five quarters per acre, but the finer varieties of white do 
not succeed, as they appear to be peculiarly subject to blight and 
mildew. The barleys are seldom of a malting quality, being 
generally lean and light to the bushel ; they produce from five to 
six quarters per acre. Both barley and wheat are put in with 
the drill ; two bushels of the latter and three of the former being 
the quantities of seed used. The grass land of this parish is 
good, well managed, and laid out in large enclosures. , We are 
indebted to Mr. Heathcote's steward, Mr. Reid, for much of the 
foregoing information. 
The great modern improver of fen-lands in this county, is- 
W. Wells, Esq., of Holme Wood House, who owns upwards of 
8000 acres, chiefly consisting of fen, and whose drainage opera- 
tions in connexion with the once celebrated Mere of Whittlesea 
have had the effect, as described in the 21st vol. of the Journal 
of this Society, of " blotting out from the map of England one 
of its largest inland sheets of water, converting its bed into the 
site of thriving farms, and reclaiming the surrounding peat bog.'*^ 
Camden, writing in the seventeenth century, describes the Mere 
as " that clear lake so full of fish, called Whittlesmere, six miles 
long and three broad, in a moorish country ; " but Parkinson, in 
his ' General View of the Agriculture of the County,' drawn up 
for the consideration of the Board of Agriculture, and published 
in 1811, saj's that Whittlesea and the other Meres were then "so 
much filled up with mud, and grown up with aquatic matter, 
that they were of but very little value as fisheries, either to tho 
proprietors or the public." * Indeed, when taken in hand by ]Mr. 
Wells, the !Mere v/as principally noted for the large flocks of 
wildfowl which frequented its sedgy bogs, and was dreaded hy 
* Parkinson's ' General View,' p. 20. 
