Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/393

Rh the work was done piecemeal at times when the men would otherwise have been idle. Were any strict account to be framed, the reclamation probably did not pay its way for many years, and it has only become possible again because of modern advances in science and machinery. As examples of the type of land, I may instance the Bagshot Sands on which, in north Surrey, in Berkshire and Hampshire, and again in its southern development in the New Forest, lie so many thousands of acres of uncultivated heath. No systematic reclamation has taken place, but everywhere farms have been carved out on this formation often by the industry of squatters, and within reach of London the vast supplies of town manure which used to be available have converted some of it into fertile land. The crystallization of common rights into charters for public playgrounds, its growing appreciation for residential purposes, will now always stand in the way of the utilization of most of the Bagshot Sands for agriculture, but further afield there are many areas of similar character. The Lower Greensand is perhaps equally discounted by its residential value, but on the Tertiaries of Dorset, the Crag and Glacial Sands of Suffolk and Norfolk—the brakcrag [sic], the Bunter Beds of the Midlands, lie many expanses of waste that are convertible into farming land, just as Lincoln Heath and much of the beautifully farmed land of Cheshire have been gained for agriculture within the past century. Equally possible is an attack upon the sandy areas, warrens or links, behind the sand-dunes on many parts of the English and especially the Welsh coasts; not all of them are wanted for golf, and many can be fitted for market-gardening. Of old the only way of dealing with such land was merely to clear it, burn the rubbish, and start upon the ordinary routine of cultivation, but for a long time on such a system the crops will hardly pay their way from year to year, and the permanent deficiencies of the soil in lime and mineral salts remain unrepaired. In Cheshire the enormous value of marl and bones in such a connection was early recognized; it has been the later discovery of the potash salts that renders reclamation a commercial proposition to-day. The method that is now followed is to begin by clearing the land of shrubs, burning off the roughest of the vegetation, and turning over a shallow layer in the summer, leaving the heathery sod to the killing and disintegrating action of sun and frost until the following spring. The manure is then put on—lime or ground chalk or marl as before, basic slag and kainit, and the sod is worked down to a rough seed-bed on which lupins are sown, to be ploughed in when they reach their flowering stage. The growth of the lupins makes the land, they supply humus to bind the sand together and retain moisture, they draw nitrogen from the atmosphere and with the phosphoric acid and potash form a complete manure for succeeding crops. Sometimes a second crop of lupins is ploughed in, but usually the land is put immediately to an