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HERTFORDSHIRE;

WITH THE RANGE OF CHALK HILLS WHICH FORM THE MOST NORTHERN BOUNDARY OF THE DEPARTMENT THAT IS NOW COMING UNDER VIEW.

THE COUNTY OF HERTFORD covers much of those calca

rious grounds, which extend, in a southwesterly direction, from the northwest point of Essex, through parts of Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire, to the southeast point of Berkshire.

In Hertfordshire, the chalk rarely rises to the surface; being principally buried under soils and substrata of different qualities and depths:-a circumstance, this, which belongs more or less to almost the entire range: thus giving character to a peculiar species or variety of ENGLISH TERRITORY.-The other chalk hills of the kingdom mostly rise, abruptly, above the adjacent noncalcareous lands;calcareous soils being exposed on the surface; as they are toward the two extremes of the range now under notice.

This NATURAL DISTRICT, 66 one and indivisible," is unfortunately allotted among the seven Counties above named; and is, of course, more or less noticed,-in fourteen Reports to the Board !

In the Reports from three of those Counties, principally situated within the Midland Department,-namely Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Bedfordshire,-I found some useful information relating to the natural district now in view, and the extracts I took from them may be considered as prefatory to that which the Hertfordshire Reports may furnish.

THE SOUTHERN MARGIN OF HERTFORDSHIRE combinés with the upper grounds of the County of Middlesex; there being no natural, nor agricultural, line of distinction between them.

"GENERAL

"GENERAL VIEW

OF THE

AGRICULTURE

OF THE

COUNTY OF HERTFORD,

WITH

OBSERVATIONS ON THE MEANS OF ITS IMPROVEMENT.

By D. WALKER,

NO. 14, UPPER MARY BONE STREET.

DRAWN UP FOR THE CONSIDERATION OF

The Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement.

1795."

HIS is the "original Report," on quarto paper, from that County. It has not, consequently, been published. Judging from the matter and manner of this sketch Report, Mr. Walker is a professional man of superior intelligence in many particulars relating to rural concerns. His QUALIFICATIONS, therefore, as a Reporter of rural information, are admissibly good; and had he appropriated sufficient length of time to a survey of the County, and paid due attention to the revision and digestion of the materials collected, he would, I doubt not, have been able to send up to the Board of Agriculture a satisfactory Report of its practices.

The performance before me, however, bears no evidence of such a proceeding having taken place. The topics touched upon are few, and the information concerning them is mostly general. A very small portion of the few pages which constitute the Work, relate, especially, to "the County of Hertford;"-excepting some valuable observations on soils and manures.

The dissertations are in general superior, in their manner, to the flippant and futile remarks that are found in most of the productions with which the shelves of Agriculture

B 3

have

have been loaded during the last half century. They elicit, however, little that is new. They are frequently commonplace, observations, which apply not, particularly, to the established practice of the County under Report.

Some instances of individual practice are noticed; tho seldom in a way that entitles them to a place, here. On the established practice of the County, in regard to the OPERATIONS of AGRICULTURE, Scarcely any thing worthy of notice appears.

The number of pages eightysix. No map or other engraving. Yet, in the letterpress, the plan of a farmyard is referred to..

NATURAL ECONOMY.

SURFACE.-P.

URFACE.-P. 9. "The uneven surface of the county, varied through its whole extent with hill and dale, affords natural drainage, and all the various aspects under heaven.” WATERS.-P. 7. "The principal rivers are the Lea and the Colne; and these are composed of many inferior streams, most of whose sources lie within, the county, and join the principal rivers at different distances from their source.

SOILS.-P. 10. "The prevailing soil is a strong, red, shelvy clay, intimately mixed with flints covering chalk, generally of an excellent quality, which lies at different depths from the surface, and points out to the husbandman a never-failing and unrivalled source of improvement."

"The remaining soils consist of the various gradations of loam from the strongest to the weakest kind, more or less intermixed with gravel, principally of the flinty sort, and with chalk, which (though there are exceptions to this general rule), may be said every where to obtain, and no where to predominate: a small portion of moor, or peat earth, in the beds of some of the rivers and low meadows adjoining thereto, the quantity and depth of which has not. yet been ascertained, nor, as far as I have been able to learn, converted in any one instance to the valuable purposes for which it is adapted: and a soil widely differing from all the rest, very fortunately of no great extent, and confined to one corner of the county, consisting of a hungry clay or loam, full of small blue pebbles, and only fit for the growth of underwood.

"These soils (the two last excepted) have been indiscriminately scattered by the hand of sportive nature all over the face of the county; and frequently, very frequently,

they

they may all be found in the small compass of a field of four or five acres. Uniformity of soil is scarce any where to be met with, except in the low flat lands by the river sides, and in dells, the staple thereon, frequently to a great depth, having been washed down from the uplands by the heavy rains from time to time for ages past, and there deposited."

Having described the nature of the substructure of the Soils of Hertfordshire (as under the next head) the Reporter adds, p. 11. "This general rule admits, however, of many exceptions; the chalk, in several parts of the county, is covered for many acres together with a great depth of earth, which often renders the question of a chalk basis uncertain; and the downs skirting the county towards Cambridgeshire, are for the most part a continued bed of hurlock, or bastard chalk, covered with a very thin staple, producing sweet but scanty herbage for sheep, and incapable of any further improvement.'

For the rental value of the Hertfordshire soils, see the article Rent, ensuing.

SUBSTRUCTUE.-P. 10. "Having thus attempted to give the only general description of the infinitely varied and mixed soils of Hertfordshire which the nature of the case will admit, the now prevailing practice of sinking pits, for the purpose of chalking the surrounding land therefrom, enables me to give a tolerable idea of a section of the soil, to the depth of 40 or 50 feet. In general, the basis of such section will be found to consist of a deep bed of chalk; the superstructure, an irregular indenture of chalk and earthpillars; the earth-pillars broadest at top, and narrowing as they descend; the chalk-pillars broadest at the bottom, rising conically, and narrowing as they ascend to the surface: the chalk-pillars frequently ascend to the surface, make part of the staple, and the whole extent of the apex is visible in ploughed lands. The earth-pillars have been found to descend 50 feet and upwards, to the no small mortification of the chalk-pit diggers, who are frequently obliged to abandon a pit which they have sunk in an earth pillar, to the depth of 20 feet and upwards, and sink in a fresh spot with better hopes of success:" -a loss of labor which a boarer might have prevented.

POLITICAL

The

* GEOLOGY.-This is an interesting fact, well described. chalk, probably, was first molded, and the earth deposited among the roughnesses of its surface. But not, I think we may safely conclude, in their present situation, which is far above the reach of alluvial deposit.

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POLITICAL ECONOMY.

APPROF

PPROPRIATION.-Common Fields.-P. 48. "The land is generally inclosed, though there are many small common fields, or lands lying intermixed in small pieces, the property of different persons, which are cultivated nearly in the same way as inclosed lands; the larger commou fields lie towards Cambridgeshire."

Common Pastures.-P. 50. "There are several small commons and wastes from 20 to 50 acres, and some considerably larger, the whole may contain 4500 acres: great part of these are the sheep downs skirting the county next Cambridgeshire, and other similar sheep downs producing. sweet pasture on a very thin staple. These sheep downs, if not overstocked, are valuable in their present state, as they afford pasture for sheep in the spring and summer, and the sheep are folded every night on the light land fallows adjoining, and manure them with their dung. It is the opinion of woolstaplers that the wool of sheep so fed, is longer in the staple (?) and finer in the thread, than of those fed in inclosures and better land."

"Crown Lands."-Mr. Walker speaks, at some length, on these waste lands. But his remarks cover the crown lands of the kingdom, and have no particular relation to the County of Hertford. He properly recommends the sale of those lands.

To the appropriation of common lands Mr. W. has assigned several pages; in which the effects of inclosures, on cottages, are more particularly dwelt on. important remarks, we find the following general, well conAmong a variety of less ceived, and not easily controvertible, observations:

P. 53. "As the county of Hertford is by far too narrow and unproductive a field on which to investigate the actual state, and determine the claims of cottagers at large, I must beg leave to refer to what experience has taught me of the actual state of cottagers, as far as my experience has reached. Where wastes and commons are most extensive, there I have perceived the cottagers are the most wretched and worthless accustomed to relie on a precarious and vagabond subsistence, from land in a state of nature, when that fails they recur to pilfering, and thereby become a nuisance to their honest and industrious neighbours; and if the father of a family of this sort is withdrawn from society for his crimes, his children become burthensome to the parish. It may truly be said, that for cottagers of this description the

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