27? 
for Agricultural Purposes. 
That hill farm consists of 232 acres, and is let for only 75/. But, as the 
farmer observed, 100 acres are a steep slope, covered With rough grass and 
short furze, worth about 5s. an acre. Now there are two copious springs 
gushing forth near the brow, which might be turned along the wild land, 
and thus for 21. or 3/. an acre the worthless slope would be converted into 
catch meadow, which elsewhere would be worth 60s., and even in that 
secluded spot 40s. an acre : so that the value of this farm might be raised, 
for 300/., from 76/. to 250/. yearly. There are several practices of English 
farmers changing the nature of land at a moderate cost — transformations 
of soil which I have brought before the Society — but no discovery has sur- 
prised me so much as the marvellous effect of hill-side irrigation. In West 
Somerset a mere rill is made to produce on the barren flank of a moor more 
abundant herbage than the old grazing land cf Northamptonshire yields. 
The method seemed to me capable of wide application, as it requires but 
trifling outlay. There is no doubt that it might be greatly extended in its 
native district round Exmoor, and I should thiuk also in Wales. There are 
many tracts in the North of England, and many valleys in Scotland, which, 
if they were in Somerset, would be covered with catch meadows. 
The very first volume of the Journal (1840) contains two 
articles on this subject, the one being Mr. W. Paxton’s account 
of the formation of an Economical Water Meadow at Bicester, 
Oxfordshire, and the other Mr. John Evelyn Denison’s deeply 
interesting paper on the Duke of Portland’s Water Meadows at 
Clipstone Park, Nottinghamshire. The latter is no doubt the 
most stupendous undertaking in artificial irrigation ever carried 
out in this country, and deserves more than a passing notice. 
The Clipstone Water Meadovvs were formed in the heart of 
Sherwood Forest, so famous in old English traditions as the 
haunt of Robin Hood. Mr. Denison in his report says : — 
The eye, after wandering through the glades of the forest, and resting on 
the brown carpeting of fern and heather with which it is clothed, is amazed 
at coming suddenly in view of the rich grass of the meadows, extending for 
miles before it, laid in gutter slopes and artificial terraces, and preserved in 
perpetual verdure by supplies of water constantly thrown over this surface. 
The land immediately occupied by these meadows was in its wild state aline 
of hill-sides covered with gorse and heath — a rabbit warren, over which a 
few sheep wandered — and a swampy valley below thick set with hassocks 
and rushes, the favourite haunt of wild duck and snipe, through which 
the little stream, the Mann, wound its way in its descent from the town of 
Mansfield. The whole tract, both upland and lowland, was of very little 
value. The valley was in many parts from 9 to 10 feet deep in bog, and 
almost worthless. The hill-sides varied in quality, but 80/. a year would 
have been a full rent for the 300 acres. Indeed, the whole of the Clipstone 
Park farm, when taken in hand in 1816, containing 1,489 acres, had been 
let for 346/. In 1819 it occurred to the Duke of Portland to carry the 
stream over the sterile hills, and to drain the bog in the valley. No less 
than 300 acres were by this means reclaimed, and converted to fertile water 
meadows. His enterprise did not stop here. A large reservoir of 70 acres 
was constructed above the town of Mansfield to secure the means of work- 
ing the mills of that town and of irrigating the meadows in dry seasons. 
In his prize report on the Agriculture of Nottinghamshire, 
