25 
The Agriculture of the Cotswolds. 
case where the soil is of only moderate fertility and chiefly in 
arable cultivation, the farms are large, and must be so since 
small holdings on this land will not bring in sufficient return 
to support the cultivator. On the Cotswolds the average farm 
is from 400 to 600 acres. There are some few holdings of 200 
acres, which is about as small an area as is economically 
profitable, and others of 1,000 acres or more held by men with 
the necessary capital. This is not a district where small 
holdings of 30 to 80 acres are found, and it may safely be said 
that so long as the County Council is the medium through 
which such small holdings are supplied in the county, and so 
long as persons conversant with agricultural facts have to deal 
with the question, they will not be put forward as an economic 
proposition on the Cotswolds. 
The nature of the fences is indicative of the fertility of the 
soil, and where the land is of better quality hedges are found 
dividing the fields, but walls built without mortar of the thin 
beds of stone lying close to the surface are the general rule. 
When well put together they make excellent and lasting fences, 
and are cheaply maintained. 
In comparison with the light hill lands on other formations 
the Stonebrash contains a very small quantity of sand, and does 
not plough so easily as might be supposed. It does not go 
down kindly to permanent pasture, which is generally confined 
to the valleys and those parts where the clays and marls of the 
Upper Lias, Fuller’s earth, and Forest marble are exposed, and 
in order to make up for the deficiency it is customary to have 
a proportion of the arable land in sainfoin, which forms a 
most useful temporary pasture. From 10 to 15 per cent, of 
the arable area is usually in this crop on hill farms, being cut 
for hay the first year, and kept down four to six years, or as 
long as it will stand, the feed being highly esteemed for sheep, 
another field being sown every year to take its place when 
worn out. It is generally remarked that whereas formerly 
sainfoin was often profitably kept down ten or more years it 
now seldom stands more than four or five years, and one of my 
correspondents attributes this deterioration to the English 
sainfoin having been crossed by bees with the French variety. 
With this exception the course of cropping does not vary much 
from what is customary on land of similar fertility in other 
parts of the country. On the better soils the well-known 
Norfolk four course system is practised, viz., wheat, followed 
by roots consumed on the land by sheep, barley, or oats with 
seeds mown for hay the next year and broken up again for 
wheat in the autumn after the hay is off, but this is more often 
varied by leaving the seeds down a second year and making it 
a five course rotation. On these arable hill farms a greater 
