SALISBURY PLAIN.—STRANGE DESERT CHARACTER OF THE SCENERY.—THE AGRICULTURE.—SAINFOIN AND LUCERNE.—LARGE FARMS.—EFFECT ON LABOURERS.—PARING AND BURNING.—WHEN EXPEDIENT.—EXPENSE.—SHEEP-FOLDING.—MOVEABLE RAILWAYS AND SHEDS.

June 17th.

“Standing across the downs: course E. by N., muggy weather and light airs,”—regularly at sea, without chart or compass. A strange, weary waste of elevated land, undulating like a prairie, sparsely greened over its gray surfaces with short grass, uninhabited and treeless; only, at some miles asunder, broken by charming vales of rich meadows and clusters of farm-houses and shepherds’ cottages, darkly bowered about with the concentrated foliage of the whole country.

For long intervals we were entirely out of sight of tree or house or man, or even sign of man, more than an indistinct cart-track or trail. Had you any idea there was such a desert in England?

The trails run crookedly, divide and cross frequently, and only rarely is there a rude guide-post. Twice or thrice we were as completely lost as Oregon emigrants might be in the wilderness, and walked for miles with only the dim, yellowish spot that stood for the sun in the misty firmament, to be guided by. Large flocks, with shepherds and dogs, we sometimes saw, and here and there a square clump of beech or fir trees, intended probably as an occasional retreat for the sheep. More rarely a great farm-house, with stacks and stables and great sheep-yards, always so sheltered about by steep slopes and trees, close planted upon some artificially-elevated soil, that we came by chance and unexpectedly in near proximity before we saw them. Occasionally, too, even on the downs, and entirely unenclosed, there is cultivated land and very large breadths of some single crop, much of good promise, too, but the wheat universally infested with charlock.

But the valleys are finely cultivated, and the crops, especially of sainfoin and lucerne, which is extensively grown here, very heavy.

Sainfoin and lucerne are both forage crops, somewhat of the character of clover. Sainfoin only succeeds well, I believe, on chalky soils or where there is much lime, and has not been found of value in the United States. Lucerne has been extensively cultivated in some parts, but not generally with us. I have heard of its doing well in a cold, bleak exposure upon our north-eastern coast, but it should have a warm, rich soil, deeply cultivated, and be started well clean of weeds, when it may be depended upon to yield three to five heavy cuttings of green fodder, equal in value to clover, or three to seven tons of hay, of the value of which I am not well informed.

The valley lands are sometimes miles wide, and cultivation is extended often far up the hills. The farms are all very large, often including a thousand acres of tillage land, and two, three, or four thousand of down. A farm of less than a thousand acres is spoken of as small, and it often appears that one farmer, renting all the land in the vicinity, gives employment to all the people of a village. Whether it is owing to this (to me) most repugnant state of things, or not, it is certainly just what I had expected to hear in connection with it, that labourers’ wages are lower than any where else in England—seven, and sometimes six, shillings ($1.68 and $1.44) being all that a man usually receives for a week’s work.

We saw seven ploughs at work together, and thirteen swarths of lucerne falling together before thirteen mowers, thirteen women following and shaking it out. It is not uncommon to have four or five hundred acres of wheat or two or three hundred of turnips growing on one farm. One down farmer has eight hundred in wheat annually. The prairie farmer would not despise such crops.

As there is no chalk soil in America, I will not dwell long upon its peculiarities or the system of agriculture adopted upon it. The manner in which the downs are brought into cultivation may, however, afford some hints of value for the improvement of other poor, thin soils. “The sheepfold and artificial manures are looked upon as the mainstay of the Wiltshire down farmer. When the downs are first broken up, the land is invariably pared and burnt, and then sown with wheat. Barley is usually taken after wheat, and this is followed by turnips eaten upon the ground, and succeeded by wheat. It then falls into the usual four or five-field course, a piece being laid out annually in sainfoin, to rest for several years before being broken up again. The sheepfold is shifted daily until the whole space required to be covered (i. e., manured) is gone over. Turnips and other green crops are consumed where they grow, which saves the labour of taking home the crop and fetching back the manure. The sheep are made the manure carriers for any portion of the land on which it is thought desirable to apply it. Much of the corn crop is stacked in the distant fields, as it would be almost impossible to carry it home so far, with the despatch necessary in harvest operations. In many cases it is thrashed where stacked, a travelling steam-thrashing machine being hired for the purpose. The straw is carried out and spread on the grass-lands from which clover hay had been cut the previous year. Only a small proportion of the root crop is carried home for consumption by cattle, the number of which, in these large farms, is quite inconsiderable.”⁠[15]

Sheep-folding, and paring and burning, are both processes nearly unknown in America, and which will probably be advantageously employed in some situations among us.

Paring and burning.—“All soils,” says Sir Humphrey Davy, “that contain too much dead vegetable fibre,” (such as the sour black soils of our reclaimed swamps,) “and all such as contain their earthy constituents in an impalpable state of division, such as stiff clays and marls, are improved by burning.” It is therefore a common practice in the stiff-clay districts as well as upon the downs of England. In Suffolk, for instance, it has been adapted with most successful results, the effect being to render the heavy clay soil light, friable, porous, and highly absorbent of gaseous matters. It increases the efficiency of drains, (by letting water more rapidly into them,) and, being more friable, the land works better and at less expense. It further promotes vegetation by converting into soluble matters available to plants, vegetable remains; which, in consequence of the usually wet, impervious nature of the soil, have become, as it were, indigestible, and therefore inert and useless. It is also advocated as being destructive of the roots and seeds of weeds; of insects, their larvæ and eggs; and, as is pretty clearly demonstrated, it enables land to bear the same crop in quicker succession, by its supposed effect upon the exudations left by former crops.⁠[16] In executing the process, the surface, generally to the depth of three inches, is ploughed or pared up (there are instruments made on purpose for it) and allowed to dry. It is then thoroughly harrowed and made fine; and in the downs the vegetable matter is raked out so far as practicable, and thrown into small heaps; a little earth is thrown over these and they are fired, the grass forming the fuel. The remainder of the earth which has been ploughed up is shovelled on as soon, and to as great a depth, as it can be without danger of extinguishing the fire.

In the clay districts and where there is much timber growing, brushwood is laid in rows, and the pared soil heaped over it, the sod being thrown as far as possible nearest the fuel, and the fine earth thrown over all to prevent too quick a fire.

The burnt soil is spread again over the field and ploughed in. The first crop following is usually turnips. The cost of the operation is reckoned, in Suffolk, (where it is called denturing,) to be only about four dollars an acre, of which one-third is for fuel. Supposing the expense of labour to be doubled and that of fuel halved for the United States, it may be expected to cost us six dollars an acre. The effect, probably, is never lost to the land; but in those parts of England where it is most practised, I believe it is usual to repeat the operation once in seven years, or at the beginning of every rotation. By feeding turnips upon the ground the autumn following the burning, it is sufficiently stocked with manure to require no further application during the course. Caird mentions crossing a field in which this had been repeated, burning every seven years, and no other application of manure than what arose from the consumption of its own produce on the ground being made, without any diminution of crops for fifty years.

On the downs, however, paring and burning is not usually resorted to, except at the first breaking up of the original soil, fertility being afterwards sustained by bones and guano, or by feeding off the crops of herbage at the end of every rotation by sheep; of which operation, common in all parts of Great Britain, I shall presently speak.

In land greatly infested with weeds, or grubs or wire-worm, in black, peaty soils, and in many stiff-clay soils, particularly where they are to be prepared for gardens or orchards, I have no doubt paring and burning often might be profitably performed in the United States. In thin, sandy soils it is likely to be injurious. If the soil has not a pretty thick old sward, it will be best to sow some grain crop upon it the year before burning, that the roots and stubble may afford fuel. Old pasture will be most readily burnt. In England, clay is sometimes charred in pits, and, after being mashed fine, applied broadcast or drilled with seeds, as a manure. It is sometimes found surprisingly effective, probably owing to its absorbent quality; but it is an expensive operation, and has not generally recommended itself.

Sheep-folding is the practice of enriching a portion of ground by confining sheep upon it. Thus, in Wiltshire, the flocks are pastured during the day upon the beak-land and kept at night upon the comparatively small portion of ground which it is desired to manure, and which thus receives the benefit of the fertilizing droppings which have been obtained from the pastured ground; or a portion of a field of sainfoin, or clover, or turnips, is enclosed by a moveable fence, (either iron or wooden hurdles or strong hempen nets fastened to stakes,) and the sheep confined to it until they have eaten the crop clean, (they will eat the turnip in the ground,) and left upon it a large amount of excrement; the fence is then moved on to a fresh spot, where the process is repeated, and so on day after day until the required space has been travelled over.

Sometimes naked ground or stubble-land is thus served; turnips or sainfoin being brought from where they grow and fed within the hurdles, which are daily moved on a bit. Latterly, moveable sheds with slatted floors, running upon plank railroads, which are easily taken up and relaid across the turnip fields, have been tried. The object is to avoid driving carts to take the crop off, or the treading of the sheep to feed it, on the ground, upon heavy clay soils, in which the pressure of these operations must be very objectionable. Twelve sheep are kept in each shed-car, and the turnips pulled and thrown in to them. The expense of drawing off the crop and returning the manure is avoided, and the sheep have shelter and a dry bed, while the ordinary custom subjects them to danger of foot-rot and other diseases, and also must be attended with some waste of the crop.