of the farm, the surplus increasing his capital of fifty pounds; if corn continues to sell at a high price, he struggles on; two or three years of falling price shew his want of capital; he takes French leave, and the landlord has another opportunity of setting his much injured land to the best and fairest bidder. All this would be avoided by obliging the tenant, in the first instance, to secure the payment of the rent half yearly, as it became due. SECT. 2. Nature of Tenures, State of Leases, &c. LEASES were heretofore granted for thirty-one years; they are now mostly granted for lives, except in some, where clauses are introduced against alienation, against breaking but a certain quantity of land, and against making a peel or birch fallow, viz. ploughing up stubble after harvest, and sowing with a winter crop. Leases contain only the usual clauses between landlord and tenant. All parish taxes and county cesses are paid by the tenants; the coming-in tenant paying all county charges ordered to be levied at the preceding assizes. Why? He receives all the benefit and advantage of roads, bridges, &c. &c. &c. SECT. SECT. 3. Proportion of Working Horses and Bullocks to the size of Farms. To a farm of one hundred acres, half arable, and half meadow and pasture, one plough of four bullocks, and one of four horses is in general use; when both are called out, the practice is to yoke two bullocks and two horses to each; a more destructive practice could not be; they do not step together, and they break the spirit and step of each other. Much diversity of opinion is about the preference to be given to horses or oxen in agriculture; the reporter supposes, that the keep through the year of four oxen is equal to the keep of two horses worked in a plough without other assistance; the following table is the best calculation in his power: S. d. £. s. d. 30 0 0 30 0 0 600 If a bullock by any accident should get lame or unfit for work, he may be fattened for the butcher; but a lame horse is worth no more than his hide. It has of late become much the fashion to cry up horses for the plough; I saw at the ploughing match some time since at Mr. Shaw's two beasts of the Right Hon. John Foster's, that did their work without a driver as expeditiously, and as well as the best pair of horses. SECT. 4. General size of Fields-Nature of Fences -Mode of Hedge-rows and keeping Hedges. FIELDS are of various sizes, from the peasant's potatoe garden to the large sheep-walks of twenty thirty, forty or fifty acres; but in the tillage parts the practice runs into long small inclosures, producing great waste of land, and expence of keeping up; at the foot of this section is a plate to shew the comparative expence. In all uplands, good quickset hedges form the divisions, but in many cases they are greatly neglected; the most usual kind of fence is a bank raised from a dyke, six feet wide, and five deep; in the centre of the face of the bank a row of thorn quicks is placed horizontally, four in every foot; with these, elm and ash seedlings, cut short, are placed at indeterminate distances: when the the bank is finished, it is topped with dead bushes to protect the quicks, &c. There are two things in this practice to be corrected; first, when the bank is high enough to receive the thorn quicks, they should be cut short and dibbled in, so as to stand in a perpendicular situation; the rain will then help the roots, and shoots will grow upwards; thorn quicks should not be placed nearer than one foot, the intervals with one slip or cutting of evergreen or other privet ; at every three feet a seeding barberry. The thorns will then have room, and grow upright, whilst the bottom is covered with perpetual verdure; if some attention be paid to the pruning of the thorns for three or four years, and confining them to a single stem, it will be well rewarded, as they will, in that case, have made an impenetrable staking not passable to man or beast. It is a general practice, where hedges are to be kept shorn, to cut them over at three feet high, and so clip the shoots; this produces a bushy top, and, in a little time, an open bottom. Every cutting of an old hedge should be obliquely, and close to the bottom; if done with a an adze should follow to smooth the roughness of the cut, particularly round the edges; this will encourage copse to grow, which may then be formed with the sheers into whatever shape the owner pleases. Many cut their old hedges at a foot or eighteen inches from the bottom half through, then saw, lay them, and cover the trunchion and tops with a heavy scouring from the dyke, so completely as to exclude all possibility of vegetation in the mutilated smothered hedge, producing the natural consequence, languishing and death. When a hedge wants to be renewed, and its vigour restored, the better way is, first, to dig away the earth at back, eighteen inches broad, down to the bottom of the hedge; such parts, as are to be layed, should be bared from all branches, and, when half cut, layed obliquely backwards, so as that the shoots of one shall not interfere with the other; they are to be pegged down, but no covering of clay, sods, or scouring should be admitted; by this a young hedge, eighteen inches broad, will be obtained; the lopping of the old hedge will raise a staked one to protect the young shoots. Every farmer should have a nursery for thorn and crab quicks, and for the trees to be planted; nursery gardeners grow them so thick, they are in general not worth planting; they have promising heads without roots. To raise thorns, haws should be gathered when dry and ripe; it is usual to put them into dry pits for fifteen months, then taken out, and spread in beds lightly covered with earth; they will be up in April. For many years I have practised the raising of thorns by cutting off half the roots; these divided into lengths of one inch, and covered with one inch of earth, will produce |