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banked, and a proper drainage obtained, they would be as well worth three or four pounds per acre."

Border of the Thames.-P. 220. "In many of the parishes on the Middlesex border of this river also, there are meadows and pastures, though of small extent, which are occasionally laid under water by floods in winter; and sometimes, though in a less degree, in summer. Perhaps there may be one hundred acres which are sometimes overflowed by particularly high tides. The water drains very readily off much of this land at the reflux of the tide, particularly so much of it as lies adjoining to the river. But some parts of it are situated rather more distant from the Thames, and the surface being nearly level, the water is more interrupted, and consequently runs very slowly off."

Borders of the Coln.-P. 221. "There are extensive meadows and pastures on the borders of this river, the whole way from Staines to Harefield. The soil is of a black, peaty, tender nature, and but little above the level of the river. Such of them as are inclosed and drained, are very fertile; but much the greater part of them are Lammasmeads, and one of the necessary consequences is, that the ditches are so much neglected as to be nearly grown up.

"The pastures are more than half covered with mole and ant hills; and, in some places, gravel has been dug from. them in such quantities as to leave them under water.

"The drainage being wholly neglected, the land is consequently filled with water, and thereby rendered unsound. No farmer would hire it, if he were obliged to continue it in its present condition, at any price; but, if it were inclosed, and properly drained, the produce would yield from five to eight pounds per acre.

"The whole of the several tracts of grass land included in the foregoing description, contain about 2500 acres. They are subject to be flooded by sudden and heavy rains, even during the spring and summer months; and, when that happens early in the year, the water deposits among the growing grass quantities of sand, mud, slime, sticks, and weeds, which afterwards impede the operations of the scythe; and, above all, reduces the hay in value below the price of straw. When such a flood takes place after the grass is cut down, and before the hay is carried away, it frequently floats the whole summer's produce on the surface of the water. The occupiers of these lands have only the entire produce of them four months in a year; which, together with the risk of suffering such serious losses during that time, keeps down the rent and produce of this soil shamefully below that rank in the scale of productiveness,

which, from its natural fertility, if aided only by a little art, it would be entitled to possess.'

Isle of Dogs.-P. 223. "The isle of Dogs, containing about 1000 acres, lies at the south-east corner of this county, and would be overflowed every tide, were it not secured by an embankment. This ground is divided by ditches, which empty themselves through sluices, at low water, into the Thames, and keep this tract of land sufficiently dry."

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Upland Meadows and Pastures.-P. 223. "About seven-eighteenths of this county, or 70,000 acres, consist of grass land of this kind, great part, or nearly the whole of which, exhibits the usual marks of the plough."

Even where the surfaces of old grass lands are marked by the plow, the herbage is as natural, as where no such marks appear; and as it is on commons, sheep walks and

wastes.

Man, it is true, can now cultivate herbage,-can make "artificial grasses"!-But if the soil be suffered to remain, only a few years, undisturbed, nature will not fail to treat silly man as a bungler; and cover the ground with a valuable assortment of natural plants which are better adapted to the soil, situation, and climature *.

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Sheep Downs.-It has been shown, aforegoing, that the writer of the Report, under review, ranks sheep walks with wastes. In page 127, he opens a section on Sheep Downs" alone; which he extends through five or six pages; without proving any thing (it will not to be too severe to say) but his own deficiency in correct knowledge concerning them.

MANAGEMENT of GRASS LANDS.-P. 225. "Meadow land in the occupation of cow-keepers, is generally mown two or three times in a summer. Their great number of cows enable them to dress it every year, and they are studious to procure their hay of a soft grassy quality, not letting it stand till the seedling stems rise, but mowing it two, three, or four weeks sooner than it would be advisable to do for the support of horses. This land lies near the town, as at Islington, Mary-le-bonne, Paddington, &c. and is usually mown the first time in each summer early in May."

HAYMAKING.-Mr. Foor's systematic account of this operation

*For an ample proof of the correctness of the above position, see my YORKSHIRE; section, Cultivated Herbage; subsection, mixed perennial Ley. And for farther observations on the subject,-see the NORTHERN DEPARTMENT (of my present work); " County," Northriding of Yorkshire.-See also the ensuing article, Young's Sussex, in this volume.

operation is inserted, in p. 106, aforegoing. Mr. Middleton has copied much of it, without the accustomed marks of quotation; and has added to it some remarks of his own, and several notes from the margins of the former reports. I perceive nothing, however, among those additions, of sufficient interest to be noticed, here; saving an error of a learned annotator, concerning the heating of hay. This note-upon-note writer asserts, p. 247, that "it is the moisture received from the atmosphere, and not the sap of the grass, that is the general cause of the heating of hay. If the grass is dead, which it soon is in dry weather, and has not been wetted by rain, it may be early stacked with safety. But though it were never so dead and discoloured, if it has been drenched with rain, and stacked without being skin dry, it will most certainly heat."

No fact in rural affairs, I believe, is better ascertained than that it is the natural juice, the sap of herbage-which generates heat-even unto flame; and that "water wet," as an unlettered hay farmer would say,-begets "mould and muck."

Mr. Middleton's leading remark, to the section under consideration, is perfectly just.-P. 237. This branch of the rural art has, by the farmers of Middlesex, been brought to a degree of perfection altogether unequalled by any other part of the kingdom. The neat husbandry, and superior skill and management, that are so much, and justly, admired in the arable farmers of the best cultivated districts, may, with equal justice and propriety, be said to belong, in a very eminent degree, to the hay farmers of Middlesex."

The neighbourhood of London, where, and where only, hay farming, on a large scale, is a separate branch of business, where hay fetches a price at market, according to its quality, and of course where the farmer's profit principally depends on the method of manufacture,-is certainly a proper place in which to study the process.

LIVESTOCK.

CATTLE. Breed.-P. 327. "This county is not distinguished by any particular breed of neat cattle, as belonging peculiarly to itself; for most of the calves bred here are suckled till about ten weeks old, and then sold to the, butchers, for the supply of the London and other markets, in the article of veal.

"In the pleasure-grounds of gentlemen, the Suffolk,. Alderney,

derney, Jersey, Guernsey, Welsh, and Scotch breeds, are mostly to be met with. The Holderness short-horned breed are almost the only sort kept by cow-keepers for the produce of milk for sale. The farmers in the more distant parts of the county have a mixed breed, consisting of all the foregoing kinds, which are employed by them in suckling."

Cows for Suckling.-P. 327. "This practice is well know to be more profitable than grazing, and less so than the dairy. The latter is pretty nearly excluded from the domestic economy of the farm-houses in this county, as the farmers' wives, for the most part, have neither inclination, industry, nor skill, sufficient for the management of a dairy; and in suckling, the business is performed by men, as the women (even the servants) will not go into a dirty cowhouse, and submit to the drudgery of milking, and attending the calves."

Cows for Milk.--Mr. Middleton has paid considerable attention to this prominent subject of practice, in the metropolitan County. He has extended his article to nearly a sheet of letterpress in length; including various extracts from former Reports. The fresh matter, which is entitled, I conceive, to a place here, as an addition to Mr. Foot's account (p. 108, aforegoing) I here subjoin.

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P. 329. Mr. Baird says, that round Hackney, Islington, Paddington, and several miles thereabouts, the cowkeepers engross every inch of land they can procure. Some of these men have remarkable large stocks of cows. of them (Mr. West, of Islington), has, on different farms which he possesses in that neighbourhood, very near eight hundred.

One

"The cow-keepers breed very few cattle, and those only from favourite cows (which become so merely from their giving much milk), and with very little attention to the choice of their bulls. Even in summer, and when the grass is in the greatest plenty, the cows are regularly fed with grains, which, though the quantity of milk is thereby increased, by no means add to its quality.' The general allowance is forty-five quarters of grains per week (at 18. 10. per quarter) to every twenty-five cows. They are given them twice a day, and they have, besides, two meals of turnips and hay. Some cow-keepers have tried salt mixed with the grains, more with a view to preserve the grains longer in a sound state, than from any consideration as to the health of their stock, or the improvement of the quality of the milk. It is acknowledged that the cows eat the grains so mixed with great avidity; but the proprietors

proprietors not getting an adequate return for their trouble and expence, I do not find that it is now much practised.'"

P. 335. "The milk is always given in its genuine state to the retail dealers; and, as it is sold to them by the cowkeepers after the rate of two-pence and 1-8th of a penny per quart, and is retailed by them at three-pence halfpenny per quart, the profit is surely so large as ought to prevent even the smallest adulteration.* But when it is considered how greatly it is reduced by water, and impregnated with worse ingredients, it is much to be lamented, that no method has yet been devised, to put a stop to the many scandalous frauds and impositions in general practice with regard to this very necessary article of human sustenance."

P. 336."Five or six men only are employed in attending near three hundred cows. As one woman cannot milk more than eight or nine cows twice a day, that part of the business would necessarily be attended with considerable expence to the cow-keeper, where it not that the retailer, as before observed, agrees for the produce of a certain number of cows, and takes the labour and expence of milking on himself.

"Every cow-house is provided with a milk-room (where the milk is measured, and served out by the cow-keeper), and this room is mostly furnished with a pump, to which the retail dealers apply in rotation; not secretly but openly, before any person that may be standing by; from which they pump water into the milk vessels at their discretion. The pump is placed there expressly for that purpose, and indeed is very seldom used for any other. A cousiderable cow-keeper in Surrey has a pump of this kind, which goes by the name of the famous black cow (from the circumstance of its being painted black), and is said to yield more than all the rest put together.

"Where such a pump is not provided for them, things are much worse; for in that case the retailers are not even careful to use clean water."

P. 337. "A cow-keeper informs me, that the retail milkdealers

* If the article were delivered, ready-milked, to the sellers, at their own homes, and retailed, there,-such a profit would indeed be exorbitant. But considering the laboriousness, or let it be put, the slavishness, of the trade of a London milk seller,-of a woman who can bear on her shoulders a limited quantity, only,-exposed in the winter season, at untimely hours, frequently in the severest weather, her proft at those prices, with the privilege mentioned, may not be too great. It is not the material alone, but jointly with the labor bestowed upon it, that gives the fair selling price of a commodity. A few pounds of iron, when wrought into watch springs, may perhaps be worth a hundred guineas.

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