Nettlecombe Court is a seat of great extent; and, though we took an extensive drive every day while we remained there, we did not see all the farms. The drives are exceedingly varied and beautiful, and exhibit fine combinations of pasture and woodland, comfortable cottages, and most substantial farmhouses and farmeries. The skill of the farmer is chiefly displayed in the management of cattle and sheep, and of water meadows. The farmers know nothing of the culture of turnips on raised drills, or indeed of drill culture generally; and, with as fine a subsoil as can possibly be desired, they only plough four inches deep. They understand, however, the use of lime, which they mix with the soil of the headlands and hedge wastes previously to spreading it over the general surface; and this mixture prevents the lime from separating and sinking into the soil, which it has a constant tendency to do, from the difference in its specific gravity. The same effect will be produced by scattering the lime, in a state of fine powder, on a naked or turnip fallow, the soil being also in a state of powder, as is done in Northumberland and Scotland, in the beginning of summer. Here the lime is laid on, and ploughed in, during autumn; and hence the very judicious practice of previously mixing it with dry soil. The water meadows on the Nettlecombe estate amount to upwards of 500 acres, which have been chiefly formed under the direction of the present baronet, by his very intelligent steward, Mr. Babbage. To Mr. Babbage we are indebted for the model of a very ingenious window fastener of his invention, which we shall hereafter figure and describe; as well as for the dimensions of a number of large trees, and some interesting information on planting and agriculture generally. It is here found that, when the larch is planted along with the Scotch fir in mixed masses, the timber of the former becomes invariably rotten at the heart, even when the trees are only 20 or 30 years old; while on the same soil, planted in masses by itself, the larch produces perfectly sound timber. This is confirmatory of the experience of Mr. Gorrie in Scotland, and it seems also in favour of the excrementitious theory.
