a small quantity of exceeding good meadow about Cobham.

In the parish of Oxted Mr. Wm. Saunders, of Stone Hall, (whom I have before had occasion to name,) has a large allotment of water meadow belonging to that farm, which has been formerly made at a very heavy expence; but he is far from being such a convert to the system, as to ascribe to it all the advantages which its advocates endeavour to maintain. He knew the farm before the meadows were flowed systematically, and he was acquainted with their products; and although he admits that the grass springs earlier, and is greatly increased in quantity, yet he is very well satisfied that it is so much lessened and reduced in quality, that it does not nor cannot fat so much stock as it had used to do within a given period.

Indeed, it is pretty evident from the present appearance of particular large spots over which the water never flows, (and which exhibit the remains of the ancient herbage,) that the quality of it was once uncommonly fine and good, but that the flowing or irrigating had destroyed that particular sweet herbage, and introduced or brought on a species coarse and long, very productive, but certainly not by any means so profitable for cattle, and can only answer where hay can be sold for the London or some other great market. In these ideas Mr. Saunders is by no means singular, for several other farmers who had tried the system upon a small scale, found the same results, and have let their works go to decay.

In the parish of Tanridge, however, Mr. Tirrell, Mr. Hollamby, and Mr. Wm. Steer have each of

them very capital water meadows, and which the two former regularly irrigate, and when I looked over them early in the spring of 1803 when there was scarcely a blade of grass elsewhere, their meadows were in a high state of vegetation and over my shoes in grass. To them it pays well, because they are not restricted from selling their hay, and the barracks at Croydon afford them an extraordinary good market.

At Crowhurst and Lingfield along the sides of the river are some very good natural meadows, particularly Broad Mead in the latter parish, but not being in severalty they are but indifferently managed; they, however, contrive to flow some of them at some particular seasons of the year, when such a quantity of water as may be wanted for that purpose can be spared from the mills, which greatly conduces to increase the produce. There are several parts in those parishes, that would pay infinitely better in pasture than as they now are under the plough, but the great uncertainty under which they labour with regard to their tithes, deters the tenantry and even many of the proprietors from attempting any expensive and permanent improvement. I could name one gentleman who, as a farmer in the latter parish, ranks as high as any man in the kingdom, and as a grazier inferior to few, with a spirit to undertake, and a capital to execute whatever plans would tend to the improvement of his farm, and with a command of water that would enable him to irrigate a great part of it, now suffers his grass fields to lay idle and unproductive, and his corn land to yield barely enough to supply him with fodder and to cover his expences; when,

with a little exertion, the latter would, as some of them did this season, 1803, produce him six quarters per acre of fine marketable wheat;-and this on account of the unsettled state of the tithes. A considerable part of the several parishes of Godstone, Horne, Burstow, Horley, Charlwood, Newdigate, Ockley, Ewhurst, Okewood, Cranley, Cowfold, &c. &c. being flat, of a strong tenacious soil, too moist for the plough, but not too much so for meadows, (because in a state of arable, and under corn, moist lands are extremely apt to swell greatly in hard frosts, and subsiding again in a thaw leave the roots of the corn quite bare upon the surface; which is not the case when under grass, because they are generally so compressed by treading and rolling, and the matting together of the roots of the perennial grasses, as to prevent the frost from taking such effect upon them,) might be easily converted into very good permanent pasture, and pay in my opinion better upon an average of years, than under corn. Indeed, Horley common of itself, was it inclosed, and proper sized ditches sufficiently deep carried round the inclosures, would naturally become as fine meadow as any in the kingdom. The same may be said of great part of Peas Marsh between Guildford and Godalming; and as that tract of common is about to be inclosed, it will naturally find its value as such, and in all probability be so employed.

In the management of the meadows and pastures throughout the county I have seen nothing new; many of the noblemen, gentlemen, and principal farmers, paying more or less regard to the proper dressing, picking, weeding, bush harrow

ing, and rolling; and many paying no attention at all to any of these things, either in their meadows or their pastures. Some again there are, who think they cannot overdo it, and therefore on indiscriminately, 40, 50, and even 60 large cart loads of the best and most rotten dung to the acre, upon cool, old, meadows. Such was the case in the parish of Albury, where one gentleman dressed a piece of meadow ground in the winter of 1802, with 40 large loads of rich spit dung equal perhaps to between 50 and 60 cubical loads, when half the quantity repeated at a proper interval, say the third year, would have been of more permanent benefit to the field, and been after each dressing, more productive of good hay. At Petersham, Wandsworth, Battersea, Dulwich, and Streatham, I observed similar errors, and this under a mistaken notion of making the fields for ever, or, as some expressed it, that they would not want dressing again for one while. Probably in this idea they might be also mistaken, for if the soil was near the gravel so as to cause it to burn, and the succeeding summer should prove hot and dry, this superabundant quantity of dung would rather tend to destroy the herbage altogether, in the same manner as an overdose of otherwise salutary beverage would tend to destroy the constitution; why then, if a little will be sufficient to encourage the growth of plants, are we so covetous as to force them to a premature vegetation, and thereby become, as it were, involuntary instruments in shortening their existence?

In many of the upland grounds in the county, and in the parks in several parts of it, that have

perhaps been for a series of years depastured by sheep, cows, horses, or deer, I could not help remarking the extreme poverty of the major part of them. Sometimes, indeed, the ant or mole hills, the black thorn, the bramble and brier, are removed from the interior as well as close to the fence or hedge, and all is left smooth; but the grass is generally so choaked up with moss and bent, matted and interwoven together, as greatly to reduce its value, and were it left to grow for hay would not yield half a load per acre. I have been told very frequently in the course of this survey, that such grass is always sweeter for cattle, and makes mutton so much the finer flavoured. I will, for the sake of argument, admit that to be the case, but is there no difference in point of value to a proprietor, whether one or two acres will suffice to fat an ox or a sheep, or whether it must require six or eight acres, or, indeed, whether any number will fat him or them at all? I apprehend, it requires no extraordinary capacity to answer such a question. But if I am asked how such land is to be brought about so as to effect such a purpose, my answer is, by stating what has been done in similar cases, and leaving the party at liberty to adopt it or not as he pleases,

Those who are best skilled in this part of husbandry, dress their meadows or pastures every other year, at least where the scythe goes over; but where they have a good bottom upon a kind, moist, loam, every third year is thought sufficient. No doubt the rich particles of the dung spread upon the surface is filtrated through it, and carried down into the earth by rain, or by the melting