in 1850 than to-day, the efforts of the
Royal Agricultural Society to raise the general standard of farming
had not yet borne much fruit. In many counties, side by side, were
farmers who used every modern improvement, and those who still
employed the methods of the eighteenth century: on one farm wheat
producing 40 bushels an acre, threshed by steam at a cost of 3s. 6d.,
on the next 20 bushels to the acre threshed by the flail at a cost of
9s.[639]

Drainage in the counties where it was needed had made considerable
progress, the removal of useless hedgerows often crowded with timber,
that kept the sun from the crops and whose roots absorbed much of the
nourishment of the soil, was slowly extending, but farm-buildings
almost everywhere were defective. 'The inconvenient ill-arranged
hovels, the rickety wood and thatch barns and sheds devoid of every
known improvement for economizing labour, food, and manure, which are
to be met with in every county in England, are a reproach to the
landlords in the eyes of all good farmers.'[640] The farm-buildings of
Belgium, Holland, France, and the Rhenish Provinces were much
superior. In parts of England indeed no progress seems to have been
made for generations at this date. Thousands of acres of peat moss in
Lancashire were unreclaimed, and many parts of the Fylde district were
difficult even to traverse. Even in Warwickshire, in the heart of
England, between Knowle and Tamworth, instead of signs of industry and
improvement were narrow winding lanes leading to nothing, traversed by
lean pigs and rough cattle, broad copse-like hedges, small and
irregular fields of couch, amidst which straggled the stalks of some
smothered cereal; these with gipsy encampments and the occasional
sound of the poacher's gun from woods and thickets around were the
characteristics of the district.[641]

Leases were the exception throughout England, though more prevalent in
the west.[642] The greater proportion of farms were held on yearly
agreements terminable by six months' notice on either side, a system
preferred by the landlord as enabling him to retain a greater hold
over his land, and acquiesced in by the tenant because of easy rents.
In spite of this insecurity of tenure and the absence of Agricultural
Holdings Acts, the tenants invested their capital largely with no
other security than the landlord's character, 'for in no country of
the world does the character of any class of men stand so high