Typical Farms in Fast Anglia. 
503 
fens is effected by conducting the water in the smaller water-courses, or 
dykes, to common centres, where it is pumped up into the larger water- 
courses or levels as they are called, whose beds are raised up with em- 
banked sides to a height sufficient for the discharge of their contents into 
the ocean. 
A drainage rate is levied throughout the district and the pumping is 
done by steam. Formerly windmills were largely used, hut these have 
almost entirely given place to steam engines. 
Mr. Martin’s farm is 200 acres in extent, 190 being arable and 10 grass. 
The annual payments are as follows : — 
Rent 1 
Drainage rate 
Ordinary rates 
Artificial 
manures 
Labour 
Labour 
per acre 
£ s. 
185 17 
£ .«. 
17 10 
£ s, 
25 17 
£ t. 
65 0 
£ 
300 0 
£ s. 
1 10 
No statement was made as to cakes or corn bought for feeding, and 
the labour bill has in some years been as high as 39s. 9d. per acre, when 
what is termed claying was being done. Claying means trenching up clay 
from below to spread it on the surface. This is an expensive operation, but 
one that tends to the production of great crops of grain and roots generally 
throughout the fen soils resting on a clay subsoil. 
Mr. Martin can farm as he likes, with power to sell off produce. Ilis 
ordinary course of cropping is green crop, wheat, oats, wheat, clover, 
wheat. It is sometimes varied to green crop, oats, wheat, clover or beans, 
wheat. 
There were on the farm — 
15 horses. i 14 pigs. 
10 cattle. I And 200 head of poultry. 
The ploughing is all done with two horses ; the soil being easy to work, 
four horses are considered sufficient to work 100 acres. Mr. Martin breeds 
a number of heavy horses, and the brood mares are of a very superior class. 
square miles. The whole country is traversed by well-dyked rivers, canals, 
drains, and trenches. Standing on the margin of the flat, or walking on the 
long, straight roads or dykes, cheerfulness is not the prevailing impression 
made on the mind. The ground looks as level as the sea in a calm, broken 
only by occasional dreary poplars and willows, and farmhouses impressive in 
their loneliness. The soil of these fens, ere the crops grow, is often as black 
as a raven, the ditches are sluggish and dismal, and the whole effect is sug- 
gestive of ague. Windmills of moderate size stand out from the level as con- 
spicuous objects ; and here and there the sky-line is pierced by the ruins of 
Crowland Abbey, Boston Tower, and the massive piles of the cathedrals of 
Ely and Peterborough on the margins of the flat. Yet it is not wit hout charms 
of a kind, as when at sunset sluice and windmill and tufted willows, com- 
bined with light clouds dashed with purple and gold, compose a landscape 
such as elsewhere in Western Europe may only be seen in the flats of Holland. 
The same impression, in less degree, is made on the banks of the Humber, 
where the broad warped meadows won from the sea by Nature and art lie 
many feet below thetide at flood ; for, walking in the fields behind the dykes, 
when the tide is up, good-sized vessels may be seen sailing on the rivers above 
the level of the spectator’s head. An old and entirely natural loamy silt, some- 
what of the same character, follows the course of the Ouse, and, to a great 
extent covering the fertile Yale of York, passes out to sea in the plains that 
border the Tees,”— E d. 
l L 
