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surrounding, and even more remote districts, will gradually be felt, and found to prove highly beneficial to them.

"The last class of wastes necessary to notice in this place, is, that where the surface is composed of a dry, inveterate brown peat, of two or three inches in depth, and lying immediately on the granite and whinstone rock, or rather the loose flat stones answering to such characters. This peat having all the appearance of the red bog in a dried and compressed state, is seldom found to yield any thing but a strong luxuriant growth of ling, or black heather, and which is generally pared close to the stones or rock, for the purposes of fuel. In this appropriation, this class may be said to have attained the very acme of its nature, as it appears to be invincibly opposed to every effort of improvement by planting, or by any other means for the purpose of cultivation.

"The ancient moorlands in the district will be found very nearly to agree with the description given in Class No. 3, with the addition only of their surface generally having been left under ridge and furrow, and consequently bearing evident marks of a former cultivation.

"The present value of these lands may in general be rated at from 4s. to 68. per acre. It will be difficult to affix any thing like a standard value for the intercommonable lands, but on considering the relative value of the different classes, and placing the two last at Q, unless for the purposes of turbary, the preceding ones will rank at five, eight, and twelve shillings per acre, and all applicable to the purposes of feeding sheep and store cattle. No doubt ean possibly be entertained as to the propriety of enclosing and cultivating these old moors and waste lands; but until some farther disposition is manifested in the country to improve and cultivate such as are already held in severalty to particular estates, it will be idle and fruitless to suggest any measures for enclosing and cultivating those intercommonable lands, which at this time occupy so large a portion of the area of the district."

P. 278. (Dartmore.) "The forest of Dartmoor rises with a bold majestic grandeur over all the surrounding heights, which compose an extremely rough and broken region in this part of the county of Devon. After attaining the summit of this waste, it is found to spread generally (at least in comparison with the leading features of the country below) into an extended plan, and so much of this stupendous eminence as is called The Forest of Dartmoor, is divided by certain meets and bounds from the commons belonging to the surrounding parishes, and which, by calculation from the map of the moor, made by Mr. Thomas

Gray,

This

Gray, in 1796, is found to contain 53,644 acres. forest belongs to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, as appurtenant to, and parcel of the Duchy of Cornwall.

"The duty of the Surveyor on this occasion is deemed to be exclusively confined to the examination of the native properties of the forest, and how they may be most effectually and permanently improved to the public benefit, the advantages of the revenues of the Duchy, and above all, to the melioration of the climate of the moor, and consequently to that of the country below."

Neither in the Reporter's description of his Dartmore,nor in the means of improvement which he proposes,-can I perceive that Dartmore which I have traversed, again and again, in different directions; and seen from different points of view, I apprehend, every square mile of its surface. Nor can I discover any thing peculiarly applicable to its melioration;-the draining of its bogs excepted; and this is a species of improvement which is, now, pretty generally understood.

MANUFACTURES.-Formerly, different branches of the woollen manufacture,-mostly, it would seem, of the lighter kinds, florished in different parts of Devonshire; and some of them have lingered on to the present time. Women have, there, been employed, as weavers, during a length of years.

The mischiefs of complicated machines of manufacture, that are worked by water and children, to the exclusion of women, are shown in the following extract.-P. 464. "The want of employment for the females, particularly in the western parts of the county (and where they are not so much in the practice of making bone lace as to the eastward), is very much felt and complained of. About fifteen years since, it is notorious, that a good spinner would earn 38. 6d. per week; her time is now, through the general failure of that employment, too frequently spent in rummaging about for a few loose sticks in order to procure a scanty supply of fuel."

In the Vale of Exeter, lacemaking still florishes.

FISHERIES.-P. 75. "The herring fishery which was formerly carried on in these parts" (N. Devon.)" to a considerable extent, is now, from the caprice of that animal in forsaking the shores of the district, in a great measure lost, not only as a valuable supply and change of food for the inhabitants, but as an object of no small moment in curing for exportation."

P. 76. "A few herrings are still found to frequent the coast in the fall of the year, but they are very small both in size and quantity, and even this supply is equally uncertain."

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The salmon fisheries, too, have declined, in the north, as in the west, of the County;-owing, as the Reporter imagines, to the nefarious practice of destroying the young samlets, in their passage from the breeding grounds to the sea. And to that unpardonable crime, the decline is no doubt, in some measure, to be ascribed.

SEA EMBANKMENT.-At the mouth, and on the banks, of the joint estuary of the Taw and the Torridge, an extent of unembanked saltings, or mudbanks open to the sea, and of a superior quality, is said to be ripe for embankment. - This is a subject to which Mr. Vancouver has paid much attention (see EASTERN DEPARTMENT-Vaterlands of Cambridgeshire); and his observations concerning it, in the volume under review, are entitled to transcription.

P. 299. "From the attention which the author of this Report has had an opportunity of paying to the nature and formation, as well as to the mode of embanking, cultivating, and appropriating salt-marsh in this country, Ireland, Holland, and America, no instance has occurred, or cone within his knowledge, of any improvement being made on a crude, tough, black sea-mud. This substance when dry, is the most rigid and untractable of all argillaceous compounds; on the contrary, salt-marsh, properly so called, when ripe and ready for embankment, is the mildest, most temperate, and permanently fruitful soil of any in the universe; and which before its embankment is, or should be raised to nearly, if not quite, the height of the ordinary flow of the spring-tides. The sea-mud, on the contrary, is covered every twelve hours with a depth of twelve or fifteen feet of pure, or nearly so, sea-water, and when embanked, lies perhaps a little above the line of low water mark.

In proportion as all embankments from the sea have been made between these points of high and low water mark, they have answered or disappointed the views of the undertaker. Throughout all the seven townships of Marshland in Norfolk, the whole of which at different periods have been rescued from the sea, the earliest embankments, and those in the interior of the district, are uniformly lower in their general level, and of an inferior quality, to the level of country enclosed by a line of embankments made at a subsequent period. In this manner, the latter embankments continue on still higher plains to the present line of sea-coast, where the last of any importance that has been made, was effected by Captain Bentinck a few years since, by the enclosure of a very large tract (perhaps) twelve hundred acres. This lies upon a higher level than the interior enclosures, and soon after its embankment was esteemed. by far the best of all. "Throughout

"Throughout all the embanked marshes of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, a premature enclosure from the sea has never failed to disappoint the expectations from the enterprise. Had the lots below where the new Customhouse is built in Dublin, been left open to the tidal-waters (and which are there very turbid, and highly charged with sediment) from the end of the north wall and towards the sheds of Clontarff, and the expense of the enclosing mounds and walls been applied in continuing the north wall in a line nearly parallel with the south one, the waters of the Liffy, thus confined in their descent, would have scoured out and preserved a deep channel for their discharge into the bay of Dublin, and perhaps contributed to the removal towards deeper water, those bars so justly dreaded and so highly injurious to the shipping and commercial interests of that important city; at all events, the navigation and access to the port must have been greatly benefited by a work of this nature; and at this time, or perhaps a few years hence, such a deposition of sediment would have been made by the unrestrained flowing of the tides over what are now the old enclosed lots, as to have rendered them equally rich and fruitful with some of the most favoured spots in the neighbourhood of that metropolis.

"These observations may be considered as rather foreign to a report on the agriculture and internal improvements of the county of Devon; but the Surveyor has been led to the discussion, in order to illustrate his idea of the difference between salt-marsh, ripe and fit for exclusion from the sea, from that which may be prematurely enclosed, and also of embankments made with a view of enclosing portions of invincibly steril and shear sea-mud."-Those are well matured remarks which bring conviction to the mind, at sight. ROADS.-The following description of a washway road! is welcome to a place, here. See my MIDLAND COUNTIES, on such roads.

P. 371. "As to the application of water, as a means of preserving, it has been so far beneficial (if such it may be called) as to wash and scour away every particle of clay or loam which would have tended to unite the loose stones together, and wear them down to a more even and regular surface than is at present exhibited by most of the side-hill roads and lanes in the country. As there are but few wheel carriages to pass along them, the channel for the water, and the path for the pack-horse, are equally in the middle of the way, and which is altogether occupied by an assemblage of such large and loose stones only, as the force of the descending torrents have not been able to sweep away or

remove."

SOCIETIES.

SOCIETIES. P. 439. “An Annual Meeting of the South Devonshire Agricultural Society is alternately held at Totness and Kingsbridge. Neither this Society, however, or that formerly instituted in North Devon, are kept up with that spirit, perseverance, and liberality, which the nature of such institutions require, and by which they are conducted and preserved in other parts of the united kingdom.”

RURAL ECONOMY.

ESTATES.

TENANTED ESTATES.

STATES.-P. 80. "If we except a few individuals, who, in reference to others, may be considered as owners of large estates, the landed property in this county will appear to be very much divided; a large proportion of it being in the hands of a respectable yeomanry, and other estates belonging to the sees of Exeter, York, and Salisbury, the Dean and Chapter of Windsor, the Universities, and the Duchy of Cornwall, forming no inconsiderable part of the whole county."

TENURES.-Church Leasehold.-P. 84. "The church property, consisting of tithes and demesnes belonging chiefly to the see of Exeter, are frequently held in perpetuity by the nobility and gentry of the country, renewable with certain or arbitary fines: these are justly considered valuable possessions, and are by them disposed of in such a manner as comports with the general arrangement of their other property. An indulgence is sometimes given, and formerly went to a far greater length, enabling the widow of the last surviving tenant to the church-lands in possession, to hold over the estate so long as she remained unmarried; but as this in some instances led to intrigues of a loose and disreputable nature, great care is now taken by the Bishop, and those who have the management of these affairs, to prevent in future any disgraceful abuse of such humane and generous concessions."

Life Leasehold.-P. 81. "The mischievous consequences inseparably connected with, and resulting from, the want of agricultural knowledge in those who have the direction and management of such estates, and who, to cover the want of the necessary qualifications of a land agent, most commonly advise the proprietor to grant those lifehold tenures so frequently heard of in Devonshire and South

Wales,

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