The pastures bore very bad crops, and many acres of them produced an abundance of fern.

The stock consisted of dairy cows and heifers of all ages (reared to feed on the common) of no particular breed; the heifers were generally sold with their first calves. The sheep consisted of Down ewes for breeding, and the custom was to sell the wether lambs and draft ewes in the autumn of each year, and to put the ewe lambs out to keep for the winter.

The land was generally admitted to be the worst as a farm in that part of the country. It is a mixture of gravel, clay, and sand, on a subsoil of stone, flint, and clay, with a bed of green sand below: it is several hundred feet above the level of the sea, and the climate bad, crops coming to harvest later than on most other farms even in the immediate neighbourhood.

Although I was born and lived 30 years in the middle of the farm, I had the opinion of two men eminent as farmers before I took it. One of them was, and still is, a land-valuer and appraiser of much experience. Their valuations, made at different times, were nearly the same about 50l. per annum below the price asked for it. They advised me not to take it, and predicted my speedy failure if I did. They considered a considerable quantity of the land entirely useless.

With this information and advice I went to the steward, and, as I could not get any abatement, I agreed to take the farm, and was promised a lease of 14 years.

I bought the crop of 1837 at a valuation. The wheat was estimated at 20 bushels per acre, the oats at 23 bushels per acre, and the barley at 22 bushels per acre. In each case the estimate

was rather above the quantity realised.

I determined to begin with spirit as well as with caution, and obtained, as often as I could, the opinions of my farming friends; but found that my own experience, on a few acres I had previously farmed, was generally of the most service to me.

The fences were exceedingly bad, even the boundaries; the fields were very irregular in shape and size, but the whole was tolerably level.

I commenced grubbing fences and old hedge-rows on the best arable, and increased the available measure of that part at least two acres; at the same time I began grubbing furze, and digging a piece of about 30 acres of the best of the common, employing every man I could get, and expended nearly 3001. the first winter, besides my ordinary wages. I tried various ways of getting this piece into cultivation; some was dug with the spade, but, in consequence of the furze, fern, and heath-roots, was turned over very coarsely; some was mattocked four inches deep; and some was pared and the turf moved off, and then mattocked and the turf moved back, and left on the top for burning. The whole was rather roughly performed, and, when finished, was sown to oats, which were, at a great expense with harrows and hoes, covered, and came up remarkably well, and looked all that could be wished for ten days or a fortnight, when they gradually became blue in colour and stunted in growth. It was a wet feeding season, and they rallied a little, and produced 15 bushels per acre, which was not very encouraging. I also employed a double strength of horses and oxen in cleaning the land found in cultivation, and, having previously used bones and other artificial manures on a very small scale with great success, of course, I applied bones on this land for all root crops, which answered well.

My stock consisted of a breeding flock of Down ewes, and in this instance I continued the custom of my predecessors of selling my draft ewes and wether lambs in the autumn of each year, and of putting my ewe lambs out to keep for the winter. The latter part of the plan I very soon discontinued, finding it more profitable to keep them on the farm, even if I had to buy food for them. My cattle were Herefords. I had been for some years previously an admirer and a keeper of that breed, and had a few good animals, which I increased as fast as I could, till I had a full stock (consisting of dairy or breeding cows, oxen, steers, heifers, and bulls). I reared all my calves, making the dairy business a secondary consideration. In 1841 I gave 50l. for a bull-calf at Hereford fair, which sum was the best laid out of any money I ever expended in stock. After I purchased him, on the same day he obtained the first prize at the show of bulls under 1 year old ; 22 competed. My plan was criticised; but, after making many careful calculations, I was convinced that it was more profitable than letting a dairy. I did not fat many beasts (in that, perhaps, I erred), but sold most as barren cows, bulls, and oxen, which I generally worked two or three years. I cannot make any comparison of my stock with my predecessors, because I always occupied some pasture land, in addition to the farm they had.

In order to expedite the clearing of the common, I offered any person as much as he wished to cultivate and crop with potatoes, for two years, gratis, upon condition that, in case I chose to take it at the end of one year, I was to pay 21. per acre for it. This plan answered my purpose well, and I had a considerable quantity cleaned in this way. The best oats I ever grew, indeed the only crop I ever grew profitably on the new land without lime, was after one crop of potatoes. In 1845 the potato disease appeared, and deprived me of this mode of cleansing.

I continued to employ all the men I could get in each winter,

All th

and at other times, when labour was scarce, digging, mattocking, and paring and burning, the common land. I found that the paring and burning was the quickest way of cleansing. Some men could not use the breast-plough, and some disliked the spade. I had one man in particular, with only one arm, who worked at mattocking for twelve winters in succession, and sometimes in summer also. From the beginning to the end he never left my service, except for a temporary purpose, so that I could not confine myself to paring and burning. I did not value the ashes much, and was apprehensive that burning would deteriorate the land; but it did not do the harm I expected, as subsequent experience has proved; besides, some of it could not be pared. Where the strongest furze grew, it could only be mattocked, which was done roughly at 3d. per perch, or 21. per acre. The parts less encumbered with furze were pared with difficulty. All the land was covered with fern, and much of it with furze and heath. Paring and mattocking, to the depth of 3 inches, leaving the turf on the top to be burnt, cost 6d. per perch, or 41. per acre. Burning the turf was so difficult, in consequence of the sand in it, that I could not get the men to undertake it by measure, and, strange to say, it cost me, in some instances, as much as 47. per acre, including throwing the ashes: the surface being very uneven, it could not be cut thin, and, of course, the burning was more difficult. The expenses attend ing the bringing the worst part into a state to plough properly were over 101. per acre. One piece, less encumbered than the rest, I ploughed, then rolled it, and allowed it to remain nearly a year, and then found it impossible to cut it across with the same implement, and was obliged to give 11. per acre to have it cut in pieces with sharp mattocks. It took about two years to rot the turf.

I will state here how I was misled by a good Wiltshire farmer. I had a piece pared and burnt, and an abundance of ashes produced. I intended to have spread them, and to have drilled a small quantity of bones with the turnip-seed, but he entreated me not to waste the bones, as he would guarantee a first-rate crop of turnips with the ashes alone, if drilled with the seed. I tried his plan on part of the field, and bones on the other part, and found the bones, 12 bushels per acre, produce a very good crop; the ashes alone (except where the fires were) produced nothing-absolutely nothing. I invited some of my neighbours to see the effect of bones, as none had been used in the parish at that time but by myself. They ridiculed the idea that 12 bushels of bones to an acre had made the difference, and for many years afterwards some looked at my crops with as little belief as ever in the virtue of bones; but now the same parties use a little artificial manure occasionally. Eighteen or twenty years have worked a change.

After taking off the first crop of oats on the first piece of 30 acres, I ploughed it, and found much of the turf as sound as ever, and the fern-roots so thick that I could scarcely work the drags on it. After picking up and burning hundreds of loads of roots, principally of fern, I sowed it to oats the second time, and had a better crop than the first-21 bushels per acre. I was now convinced that nothing could be done with it profitably without lime or some artificial manure. Wherever I used lime for corn and bones for roots, it answered admirably, so that I was encouraged to hope that it would ultimately pay. I used a Londonmade manure one or two years before, and now tried it again, but was not satisfied with it. It was called "Carbonated Humus."

As the practice adopted with the first piece was continued with very little variation till the whole was cleared, I will state inore particularly my management of it. After the second crop of oats was off, I fallowed it, and commenced by liming one part at the rate of 30 quarters per acre: the other part I prepared for swedes, which I drilled with bones, about two quarters per acre. They were tolerably good, and were fed on the land, which was sown the following year (after being well manured from the yards) with vetches, rape, and turnips. Most of the limed part was also sown to rape and turnips; and in the autumn the part that had been limed and sown to green crops, and had been well trodden with sheep, was sown to wheat, and produced a good crop. The part limed, and not sown to a green crop, was very light and unfit for wheat; I therefore sowed it to rye, which answered remarkably well, and from that time till the whole was brought into a regular course, I have grown rye on part of my wheatfield, if found to be loose and light, which was generally the case on the parts which had not grown turnips or rape. I have always found rape after swedes the best preparation for wheat, and in that way I have grown upwards of 40 bushels per acre in a very good season. In the year 1854, I grew, on 109 acres and 12 perches, 1046 sacks and 2 bushels. The crop of 1837, which I bought, and the two first crops of my own growth, did not average 120 sacks a year. The crop of 1837 had a great quantity of smut in it, and I was told that I should always have smut in my crops ; but for the whole twenty years I have not seen as many smutballs. I always dress my seed wheat with one pound of blue vitriol in four gallons of water to four bushels of wheat. I invariably sow or drill my wheat and other corn on ridges 33 feet wide; whereas my predecessor sowed on ridges 8 feet wide, by which a loss was certain of some bushels per acre. Some of my neigh

bours adhere to the same plan now on land quite as dry as mine.

As I began to grow more straw and of better quality, a question, often before discussed, became important to me, i. e. which was the most profitable way of using it for food. A friend of mine, a most intelligent man, a large and good farmer, with whom a mutual feeling of interest had long existed as to the result of our farming operations, often called my attention to the matter, and we found that we could not keep our cattle in condition through the winter on straw alone: they lost in the winter the gain of the previous summer. My friend tried brewers' grains, mixed with cut straw; they were very palatable to the cattle, but the supply was uncertain, which made it inconvenient. We came to the conclusion that swedes would be the best thing to depend upon, if they could be reduced to a state that, when mixed with chaff, the cattle could not separate it. An applemill was tried, and used by my friend some time, but was found unsuitable. Surely "necessity is the mother of invention." Mr. Moody, whose name is now familiar throughout England, was one of our friends, and often joined us in the evening; and, being of an ingenious turn of mind and equally interested in the cause, we advised him (not being mechanical ourselves) to make something that would answer the end we had in view. He promised to try, and in a short time produced a cumbrous, clumsy machine, made principally of wood, with which swedes could be crushed with difficulty, and this was the first step towards the completing of "Moody's Cutters." From time to time improvements were made till he produced a perfect machine for horse-power, which I use to the present time, and which I think is not equalled by any for crushing swedes in order to mix them with inferior food. About this time also (1839) another practice was commenced by my neighbour, and then by myself, of mixing green crops with straw for cattle; and we have continued the plan to the present time, as occasion required, although some gentlemenfarmers, in their public speeches, many years afterwards, took the credit to themselves of introducing the practice.

In 1841, I went from the Liverpool Agricultural Meeting to Scotland, in company with two first-rate Wiltshire farmers. We had heard much of the excellence of the farming there, and of our own ignorance; we determined to see for ourselves. We were well introduced, and spent a few days with some eminent agriculturists very agreeably. Perhaps we ought to have remained longer; but during our stay we saw nothing worth our imitation, except their turnip-culture and the threshing by steam. We saw some very bad management, particularly in haymaking. As to rearing and feeding store-cattle and the management of sheep (an

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