AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
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AGRICULTURE IS THE HOST HEALTHY , THE MOST USEFUL, AND THE MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN - Washington 
PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY ALLEN & CO., 189 WATER ST. 
VOL. XI.] 
NEW-YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1853. 
[NUMBER 5. 
m*FOR PROSPECTUS, TERMS, $c., 
SEE LAST PAGE. 
LETTERS FROM PROF. NASH.-No. 3. 
VISIT TO MR, MIL WARD-THE DUKE OF PORTLAND’S 
WATER-MEADOWS. 
London, September 8,1853. 
While at the meeting of the Royal Society, 
at Gloucester, I had the good fortune to be intro¬ 
duced, together with the Hon. Stephen Salis¬ 
bury, of Worcester, Mass., to Mr. Milward, one 
of the Stewards of the Society. After some 
conversation on the object of our visit to Eng¬ 
land, Mr. Milward invited us to visit him in 
Nottinghamshire; said his place was distant 
from London about one hundred miles; ap¬ 
pointed a day when he would be at home; 
directed us with regard to our best way of get¬ 
ting to his place; and received our promise to 
visit him on the day appointed. The great 
object of our visit was to see his farming. Mr. 
Milward resides at Thurgaston Priory, a few 
miles from Newark, where he cultivates some 
five hundred acres of excellent land, and lets to 
others about three times as much more, making 
in all about two thousand acres. On reaching 
the place at the appointed time, we were most 
kindly received by Mr. and Mrs. Milward, and 
hospitably entertained at their house. On the 
morning of the next day, Mr. Milward, with a 
fine pair of horses and a driver, took us over 
his land, showed his crops, and explained his 
mode of cultivation. There was nothing very 
peculiar about it. He said, this liquid manuring 
might do; he did not know: it must be tried fur¬ 
ther. Guano was good; he did not know how 
far it would be wise to import it. He had a high 
opinion of bone-dust for the wheat crop, but it 
must be applied to the previous turnip crop, and 
that crop must be fed off on the ground. Farm¬ 
yard manure was the best, after all, carted on in 
the old way, and thoroughly incorporated with 
the soil. He said, If you will manage to make 
a great deal of farm-yard manure, put it on 
plentifully, and then keep the ground clean, you 
will get good crops. He referred to his own 
crops as proof. They were good. We had seen 
no better wheat, barley, and oats, nor so good 
turnips. 
Mr. Milward is one of those men with whom 
it is a happiness to fall acquainted; is a large 
landholder, carries on a large farm, hunts foxes 
occasionally, is a judge of the county court, 
holds an important office in the Royal Agricul¬ 
tural Society, is now actually building a beauti¬ 
ful church mostly at his own expense, can do 
almost any thing, and talk well on nearly every 
subject; in short, is a sort of universal genius, 
just what the English call clever. This word, 
you are aware, is not used ny tnem as by us, 
In America, a man is clever , if he means no 
harm. Here he is not clever unless he is capa¬ 
ble, smart, and talented. To abstain from mis¬ 
chief is no part of cleverness, in the English 
sense. The greatest rascal may be the cleverest 
man in the land. An omnibus-driver told me 
that a clever man is one that cheats like mis¬ 
chief %ud gets rich. He said he was not clever; 
if he had been, he would not be driving from 
Pall-Mall to the Bank all his life. This man 
pointed out the house of Mr. Hudson, the Rail¬ 
road Ring, and said that he was the cleverest 
man in all England. I do not believe that Mr. 
Milward is clever, in the driver’s sense of the 
term, for I conclude that he is more famous for 
spending money generously than getting or 
hoarding it. But he is clever in both the Ame¬ 
rican and the true English sense—kind-hearted 
and talented ; a man with whom you would like 
to converse all day; one from whom a foreigner 
might be constantly learning. This opportunity 
we hgd; for after he had showed us his own crops, 
he carried us on past the fine fields of his neigh¬ 
bors. Between driving his own horses, and 
posting, a remarkably pleasant but expensive 
mode of travelling, he took us a round of not 
less than fifty miles. In the course of it, we 
passed through Lord Masters’ estate, over that 
of the Earl of Scarboro’, through the park of 
the Duke of Newcastle, to tho Duke of Port¬ 
land’s manor. It was this especially that wo 
wished to see. In passing through the park of 
the Duke of Portland, in our way to his water- 
meadows, which were the great object of our 
visit, we passed by the scene of the real 
or fictitious Rorin Hood’s exploits. Here the 
Duke has recently erected a monument, in the 
form of a good sized two-story dwelling-house, 
occupied as such, I believe, by ono of his de¬ 
pendants, with nothing peculiar in its appear¬ 
ance, except that it is of tho most durable 
materials, and built with uncommonly thick 
walls, as if to be the most enduring memorial of 
the Robin Hood locality. On the front of it are 
inscribed these words: ‘ 1 Immemor Struis domos 
sepulchri,” which may be liberally translated: 
“Build houses as if you were to live for ever,” 
or, in other words, “build for posterity;” a 
maxim which Englishmen seem to apply to all 
their structures. 
We came at length to the famous water- 
meadows, one of three hundred acres, the other 
much less. Here, at the lower and smaller mea¬ 
dow, we stopped. A river, of a good size for a 
mill-stream, with rather impure water, passes 
through a considerably wide valley. Owing to 
a fall at some distanco above, it was possible to 
turn this river out of its course, and carry it 
along the side-hill at a level twelve or fifteen 
feet higher than the natural bed of the river. 
It might then be led out of the new channel, 
and made to irrigate the land between the new 
and the old channels. But would it be of any 
use to carry water upon land already so full of 
water that it was good for nothing ? Such were 
the Duke of Portland’s reasonings, as I under¬ 
stand, thirty years ago. Some experiments which 
had then been made satisfied him that irrigation 
would be of little use unless a large portion— 
nearly the whole—of the water let on could pass 
freely through the surface, and be carried off 
through the sub-soil. This land, he thought, 
should be underdrained, or irrigation would be 
useless. There was a difficulty. The original 
bed of tho river was too high to admit of the 
tiles emptying themselves in it. If the Duke 
of Newcastle, who held below, would join with 
him, the bed of the stream could be lowered, 
and the mud taken from it be of much value for 
their uplands. The Duke of Portland sent him 
a proposition, to the effect that it might be done 
to their mutual advantage. He received a reply 
that did not please him. Great folks sometimes 
have their hearts at variance, as well as smaller 
ones. All this was very much as happens on a 
smaller scale with two farmers, the one below 
acting the dog-in-the-manger part, in refusing 
to go into an improvement which would be 
mutually beneficial; and I wish that the one up 
the valley could always come off as well as the 
Duke of Portland did. He found, that by drain¬ 
ing his land into a broad, shallow well, on the 
side of the river, just where it enters the Duke 
of Newcastle’s land, and then raising the water 
out of this well into the river by artificial means, 
he could make his improvements independently 
of his noble neighbor. Accordingly, he turned 
the stream out of its old channel; carried it 
along the slope above the land to be irrigated; 
and then, aftor thoroughly draining his meadow 
into the well, made use of a small portion of 
the water in the new channel, to turn a wheel 
by which the water from the v/ell is raised 
and thrown into the old and lower channel of 
the river, just where it enters the Duke of New¬ 
castle’s land. It works to a charm. The wffieel 
used to raise the water is of iron. This, to¬ 
gether with the machinery connected, looks as 
if he had built it immemor sepulchri, or to last 
for ever. Night and day, summer and winter, 
w'ith no cessation it does its work; and it re¬ 
quires but a small part of the water from tho 
new bed of the river to turn it, probably not 
more than one tenth of the whole, leaving all 
the rest for purposes of irrigation. The land 
below 7 the new bed of the river is laid out in a 
succession of sloping terraces. From the river 
(in its new channel) the water flow's evenly over 
the upper terrace. At the lower edge of this, 
it is intercepted by another channel, over which 
it flow's again, and irrigates the second terrace, 
and so on, till the whole is irrigated. By means 
of sluices and gates, he has perfect control of 
it; can let the w 7 ater on or shut it off at plea¬ 
sure ; and can irrigate any portion of it without 
