Light ploughs are generally preferred to others; and almost all are procured from England or Scotland. Those made by Mr. Small, of Ford, in Scotland, are held in most esteem. The horses being small and not strong, four are required to turn a furrow four inches deep.. Some harrows are of a good construction; but many of them are too light, and consume in time more than they save in labour. The roller, varying in weight from five hundred to one thousand pounds, is often used after a sowing of grass seed: and, when followed by a brush harrow, is a valuable implement in spreading manure. Drilling and hoeing machines are not very common.

The proper construction of wheel carriages seems little understood. Cart-wheels are invariably very narrow and generally small. In getting in a harvest, I observed many sledges to one cart; frequently no cart at all. Crops.of small fields are often carried home upon men's shoulders; and this is the usual way of collecting a tithe.

Dressing corn by fanners is the practice on most farms. A few but not many threshing machines are in use.

For live stock farmers rely more upon importation than their own rearing.

The usual number of horses allowed for husbandry, on the low land farms, is one team of two or three horses, from thirteen to fifteen hands high, to thirty acres of tillage. The upland farmers use double the number, but of a smaller size, and of the native breed, which appears similar to that of North Wales. Horned cattle are numerous; but the old stock, for want of care, is nearly lost. They were short legged and thick bodied, and more profitable to fatten than reserve for milk. Twelve quarts of a rich quality was the average return, producing nearly two quarts of cream, yielding sixteen ounces of butter. A few barrel-churns are used, but plungechurns are the most common.

Sheep are fed chiefly on the up-lands. The ancient stock is very small and hardy, much like the south-down of England, and endures the severest weather. When fat, their usual weight is from five to eight pounds per quarter. Their meat is excellent. This is still the breed upon the uplands and mountains; but in the low lands a larger sort has been introduced. Two pounds and a half is the average weight of the fleeces of

the small sheep, and six or seven pounds of the large ones. It is not of the finest or longest staple. The sheep are not washed previously to their being sheared. Besides the two sorts already mentioned, there is a peculiar breed called Laughton, having wool of a light brown or snuff colour. These are not accounted hardy, and are more difficult to fatten than the other sorts. The cloth made of their wool is much liked by the natives, and on this account only, is the breed preserved. A writer of the sixteenth century says, "the Manks sheep are exceeding huge, with tails of an almost incredible magnitude: the hogs are monstrous.* Sheep, in this country, are subject to a peculiar and fatal disease, called by the natives Ouw, supposed to be owing to the eating of the hydrocotyle vulgaris, marsh pennywort. Its leaf is said to corrode the liver; and, on opening a sheep that has died of the disease, to be found attached thereto, transformed into an animal, having apparent life and motion, but retaining its primitive vegetable shape. Dr. Withering attributes the rot in sheep to a flat insect, the fasciola hepatica, fluke,

*Hollinshed's Chronicles, Vol. I. p. 38.

which is found in wet situations, adhering to stones and plants, and likewise in the livers and biliary ducts of sheep affected with this complaint.

Almost every cottager keeps one or two pigs. They are reared on the offal of the houses, run about the lanes, and are killed at the age of ten or twelve months. Potatoes and grains contribute to their maintenance in summer; and potatoes, either boiled or raw, with some little corn, is the food used for fattening them. Their average weight is fifty pounds per quarter, and their price does not much exceed half that of beef or mutton.

Poultry, though numerous, does not exceed that limited quantity which the farmer can keep with little expence. Geese and ducks are common, but turkeys are not plentiful.

The country is sufficiently populous for the extent of cultivated ground; but, the herringfishery engaging the attention of so many men and small farmers during the summer or autumnal、 months, is a great check to agriculture, and renders labour scarce. Another bad effect of it is, that it teaches habits of so much irregularity and idleness, that the people employed in it never

become good labourers, and are, generally speaking, a very lazy and drunken class. The custom is greatly felt by those who have much corn to reap or grass to cut: the getting in of the harvest is very tedious, for want of sufficient hands; and it is often much injured by the weather. I have known hay cut for many weeks before the farmer could get it carried, and sometimes not stacked before the end of September. The women, unaccustomed to the irregular lives of the men, partake not of their indolent disposition. Four-fifths of the farming business fall to their share. They are reckoned very expert in reaping and in digging potatoes, and perform not amiss many other parts of husbandry. A mower cuts in a day about three quarters of an acre of grass; and five female reapers, with one to bind, cut an acre of corn. The practice is to cut the corn as close to the ground as possible. Stocks of wheat consist of ten sheaves, and are never topped: stocks of barley have twelve sheaves, and are covered. The average produce of an acre is sixty sheaves; but their number varies greatly. Mowing corn has been tried, by way of experiment, but is not much practised. Hours of work are from six to six,