in the midst of a well-kept garden, with the
regular three sitting-rooms of a suburban
villa, reminded us that times were changed
since Bakewell received crowds of visitors of
the highest rank, including royalty, "clad in a
brown metal-buttoned coat, a red waistcoat,
leather breeches, top boots, sitting in the
chimney corner of his one keeping room,
hung round with dried and pickled specimens
of his famous beasts." The book-shelves in
one of our friend's rooms are filled not only
with works on agriculture, but with histories,
biographies, novels, and poems. The
windows, fringed with monthly roses, look out
upon the gardens, across a fence to where a
steep hill of pasture rises, once a deer park,
still studded over with fine trees. There
Suffolk horses, a long-tailed gray mare, some
dairy cows, and Southdown sheep are feeding,
and are chewing the cud in the shade.

Our first visit was to the farm buildings,
divided by a road from the nag stables and offices
of the house, which therefore is not troubled
with either the smell or the dirt of the farmyard.
A picturesque untenanted dovecote,
half-covered with ivy, is the only remaining
monument of the farming days when five
year-old mutton was fed, and wooden ploughs
were used. Pigeons don't pay in cultivated
countries. On one side of the occupation road
leading to the first field of the farm, were
the sheds for carts and implements; on the
other the cattle yards, the feeding houses,
the cart stables, the cow-house, and the
barn-machinery and steam-engine. One-
horse carts were the order of the day,
a system far preferable to waggons, when
each horse is well up to his work. Our
friend's horses are always in good
condition. The implements made a goodly
display, eight or nine of Howard's iron
ploughs, light and heavy, harrows to match
the ploughs, a cultivator to stir the earth,
and a grubber to gather weeds, drills
and manure distributors, and horse-hoes, a
Crosskill's clod-crusher, and a heavy stone-
roller, a haymaking-machine and horse-
rakes. These were all evidently in regular
use; some for strong clay, others for light
sand.

The cattle yards form three-sided squares,
the open side facing the road and the sun, the
other three sides bordered with covered feeding-
sheds, or verandahs, about which there was
nothing remarkable, except that the roofs were
all carefully provided with spouts, by which
the rain that would otherwise flow into
the cattle yards and saturate the straw, was
effectually carried away into the main drains.
The floors of these yards are dish-shaped,
slightly hollow. In winter a thin layer of
mould, covered daily by fresh straw, imbibes
every particle of liquid manure. Under the
treading of the beasts, which are turned in
as soon as grass fails, there to feed on hay,
turnips, and mangold wurzel, or corn, or cake,
in turn, according to relative price and
supply of the last—nothing is cheaper than
oil-cake when it can be bought at a penny
a pound—the straw made on the farm is
converted into manure of the richest quality,
which is in due time returned to the fields.

In every yard was an iron tank filled with
pure clean water, by a tap and ball, which
regulated a constant supply from a spring-
filled reservoir, established on the hill that
overlooked the Grange. These iron tanks
were substitutes for those foul inky ponds,
to be found as the only drinking places on
too many old-fashioned farms. In the stable,
which was carefully ventilated, we found a
team that had done a day's work of ploughing,
munching their allowance of clover and
split beans. They were powerful, active,
clean-legged animals, as unlike drayhorses
as possible; the harness of each was
neatly arranged in a harness-room, not
tumbling above the dirty stable, as too often
seen. The feeding house, where twenty-five
beasts could be tied up and fed, was placed
conveniently near the granary, and here again
at every beast's chain-pole a perpetually full
tank was to be found. The doors opened, so
that the manure of the feeding houses could
straightway be added to the accumulation of
the yard.

Our Bedfordshire farmer does not indulge
in fancy, in purchasing his cattle. Noblemen
and owners of model farms adhere rigidly to
some one breed, Devons, Herefords, or Scots,
and have to pay an extra price to make up
their number. He purchases every spring
or summer, at the fairs where cattle are
brought from Scotland, Ireland, Wales,
Devonshire, Herefordshire, and Yorkshire, for
the purpose, one hundred good two-year-old
Devons, Herefords, or Short-horns, or three-
year-old Scots or Anglesea runts. These he
runs on the inferior sward until winter; then
takes them into the yards and stalls, and
feeds them well with hay and roots—not
exceeding a hundred-weight of turnips a
day—more would be wasted; to this he adds
from time to time linseed and barley meal,
in preference to oil-cake, which he generally
reserves for sheep. He has experimented
with cooked food, but has not found the
result in weight pay the cost and trouble.
In the spring these beasts are put on the
best grass, and sent off to market as fast as
they become ripe, having left behind them in
the yards a store of manure available for all
the land within easy carting distance.

On our autumn visit we saw in the empty
yards and in the styes a few pigs of no
particular breed, but all of that egg-shape which
betokens rapid fattening. As there is no
dairy, the Beds farmer finds it does not pay
to breed pigs or feed more than just enough
to consume what would otherwise be wasted.
Lastly, we came to a compact building
forming the one side or wing of the cattle
yards, marked by a tall chimney: here
was a high-pressure steam-engine of six-horse