Aug. 31. and Sept. 1.- The Mount, near Wilton; J. H. Flooks, Esq. - This is a pretty little villa, recently built, and laid out by the proprietor, a gentleman who is very extensively employed as a land agent, surveyor, architect, landscape gardener, builder, and, in short, as an adviser in most descriptions of rural business. He has also extensive brick fields, and, till lately, farmed on a large scale; one of his concerns being a renter of the grounds on which sheep fairs are held. Mr. Flooks holds two fairs, one at Wilton, and the other at Britford. The former is one of the largest in England, and is held in a field of thirteen acres, near Mr. Flooks's house. This field is laid out into ninety-six compartments, parallelograms, like the beds of a garden, separated by main and subordinate grass walks. In the centre of the field, where the two main walks cross each other, is a small portable wooden house, in which Mr. Flooks sits three or four days, both before and while the market is being held, with a plan of it before him, in order to let out, either entire compartments, or any part of them, to farmers or dealers who have sheep to expose for sale. For this purpose he has a number of clerks and assistants, who, like aid-de-camps on a field of battle, are continually running to and fro. The compartments are either let to farmers for their lives, or singly at so much per day, per market, or per year. This mode of letting has brought Mr. Flooks into personal contact with all the principal sheep dealers in the West of England, and with almost every farmer within a circuit of nearly fifty miles in diameter. We have seen the list of bad debts made amongst these men, in sums from one shilling to two or three pounds, the names arranged alphabetically; and it is really frightful from its magnitude. There is a sufficiency of wicker hurdles (from 800 to 1000 dozen, and four times that number of shores and shackles, that is, stakes fand ties) on the field, to divide the ninety compartments into ten subdivisions each: so that 900 persons may have 900 separate flocks exposed for sale at the same time. There are usually from 90,000 to 100,000 sheep penned at one time.
