amateur or professional, of that day. Drill husbandry, the cultivation of the Swede turnip, the substitution of the Southdown for the long-legged Wiltshire sheep, were then leading subjects for discussion; and it is remarkable that the introduction of improved implements and practice rests throughout this Report with amateurs, whilst the management of the most common and essential operations of husbandry in the present day will be found to be completely at variance with that of some of the best practical farmers who gave information to Arthur Young.
The name of Mr. T. Greg, of Coles, near Westmill, often quoted by A. Young, deserves a passing notice. Prompted by Mr. Coke’s (Lord Leicester’s) example, Mr. Greg first undertook, by the aid of Hill’s scarifier, to apply to his own wet tenacious clays the principles of Norfolk husbandry. He abolished the bare summer fallow, ploughing but once for a crop, and that only in winter, using the scarifier, the drill, and the horse-hoe freely to complete his operations.
In proof that improvements in husbandry were early introduced into Hertfordshire, A. Young, quoting Mr. Rooper, of Berkhampstead, says that clover and turnips were supposed to have been introduced by Oliver Cromwell, who “gave a farmer named How a 100l. a year on that account,” and that there had been little change in the course of cropping for one hundred years.
The climate of England, though it may have undergone some changes, must be essentially the same as when Fuller said of Hertfordshire, “It is the Garden of England for delight; men commonly say that such as buy a house in Hertfordshire, pay two years’ purchase for the aire thereof;”—a salubrity due to the geological condition of the greater part of the county, gravel upon chalk.
Rainfall and Percolation of Water.
The following tables of rainfall and mean temperature were kindly furnished by those gentlemen by whom the registry has been kept. The column Dalton’s Gauge, under the head “Hemel Hempstead,” refers to a rain-gauge, suggested by Dr. Dalton and kept at Apsley Mills for twenty-nine years last past, which only registers that portion of the rainfall which percolates 3 feet of soil. Its construction is described in ‘Ree’s Cyclopædia’ under the head Evaporation. It is calculated that the amount so collected represents the quantity which sinks through the surface soil to the springs, which supply the rivers and give power to the mills.
