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The CoMitry Gcntkuiaiis Magazine 



time, are more comfortable, because being 

 impervious to moisture and heat, they are 

 warm and dry in Avinter, and cool during 

 summer. The rooms can be papered over 

 the bare walls, no lath or plaster being re- 

 quired, though a coating of plaster will in no 

 way affect the concrete, if it should be pre- 

 ferred. 



An important element, of course, in the 

 process of building is the concrete or cement 

 itself It is burnt down from stone some- 

 what in the same way as lime, but, of course, 

 is of an entirely different nature. When the 

 cement is to be used it is mixed with rough 

 sand, generally for ordinary purposes in the 



proportion of eight pailfuls cf sand to one of 

 cement. The two are mixed simply in the 

 ordinary way, water being poured over the 

 sand and cement until they are in a semi- 

 liquid state. When the sand is very sharp 

 and shelly, the concrete can be made in the 

 proportion of nine pailfuls of sand to one of 

 cement ; while in other cases, again, where 

 the sand is of a soft inferior description, one 

 pailful of cement is necessary to seven pail- 

 fuls of sand. The securing purity of cement 

 thus becomes very necessary, but a London 

 firm, ^Messrs Hilton & Anderson, gives a 

 guarantee along with the cement of its 

 strength and purity. 



FARM COMPETITION IN ENGLAND. 



INVESTMENTS in land, says the Pall 

 Mall Gazette, yield a very moderate per- 

 centage as it is. Yet we can hardly help 

 suspecting that the soil is actually over-rented, 

 and that in the inevitable course of things 

 landlords Avill be compelled to submit to a 

 reduction. Excessive competition for farms 

 must be forcing up rents unnaturally. A 

 great Yorkshire farmer, giving his evidence 

 the other day on the question of game 

 preservation, incidentally stated a suggestive 

 fact. He said that in practice in this matter 

 of game no tenant could stipulate for re- 

 stricting covenants in his lease ; that the 

 landlords knew that if one man objected to 

 their conditions, there were plenty of others 

 eager to accept them. It is evident that if 

 competition is so keen as to compel farmers 

 to keep silence in a matter on which they feel 

 so strongly as the over-preservation of ground 

 game, it must exert its influence on the rents 

 they emulously offer. The truth is, the de- 

 mand is on the increase while the supply is 

 not. The farming class is prolific and elastic ; 

 the land to be farmed is pretty nearly a fixed 

 quantity, for the margin left for reclamation 

 is not very appreciable. Farmers shew the 

 attachment to districts that cats do for places. 



Their natures are strongly conservative ; 

 with some reason they shrink from changing 

 the system of cultivation they have been bred 

 to, and leaving the neighbourhood of the 

 markets with which they are hereditarily 

 familiar. A man accustomed to raise hops 

 and fruit in the suburban districts of Kent, 

 or cabbages and carrots in Esssx, who is 

 always shooting truck-loads of town manure 

 over his soil, or flooding it with Barking 

 Creek sewage, would be utterly depayse on 

 the starving soil of Dorsetshire. Conceive 

 the shock of mental paralysis that Avould 

 strike the Dorset man were he transported to 

 a holding among the high farming of the 

 Lothians ; while in most instances the caution 

 of small agricultural capitalists would be 

 simply scandalized by the suggestion of 

 emigration to the colonies. You might as 

 well suggest Erie stock as an eligible invest- 

 ment to a trustee of the old school. So 

 whenever a farm appears in the market, men 

 from the district swarm round it, and their 

 competition is stimulated by the presence of 

 that growing class of reckless fancy farmers, 

 who are helping to raise rents generally. 

 Landlords in all parts of the country have 

 been congratulating themselves on the 



