Farm Accounts. 123 



To a certain extent this will be the case also with farmers' 

 accounts. In pointing out the peculiarities of the plan I recom- 

 mend, I would wish it to be understood that under varying cir- 

 cumstances the details are capable of alteration and improvements 

 which experience will readily point out. 



Considering the great importance of the subject, we should 

 expect to find much useful information already made public, 

 and systems laid down, which, after mature consideration and 

 lengthened experience, have been proved the most practicable ; 

 and yet, with the solitary exception of the system advocated by 

 Mr, Morton in the ' Cyclopaedia of Agriculture,' which is in 

 many points extremely good, I cannot refer the reader to any 

 plan that can be recommended. Much has certainly been written 

 about farm accounts from time to time, but to very little purpose, 

 the plans proposed being either too diffuse for men actively 

 engaged all day in the fields, or too intricate for ordinary minds 

 to comprehend ; or, on the other hand, they are too primitive to 

 be of much service, failing to afford any explicit statement of 

 the profit and loss upon the whole year's transactions. 



Accounts of the first kind have usually emanated not from 

 well-informed practical men who understood the difficulties they 

 had to encounter, but from accountants or men of mercantile 

 talents, who, being familiar with their own kind of accounts, 

 fancied that the farmer had only to alter the items to make them 

 equally applicable to himself. Nothing is more absurd, as there 

 is no parallel between the two cases. Farmers require simple 

 accounts, calculated to prove all that can be proved, and yet so 

 easy to keep, requiring such a short time daily to work up, that 

 it will be a pleasure rather than a toil to attend to them. With 

 these few preliminary remarks we proceed to explain the system 

 of accounts acted upon and taught at the Royal Agricultural 

 College, 



A farmer's accounts should be made up once a year. Any 

 period of the year may be chosen, though it is best to choose 

 the time when there is least corn in the rickyard, and least live- 

 stock in the yards. Lady-Day (March 25th) is a very desirable 

 period, especially in cases where the entry on the holding dates 

 from that time. 



A valuation should be carefully made of the live and dead 

 stock, and of those acts of husbandry for which the farmer 

 would be entitled to make a claim as an outgoing tenant. 



On the College Farm the stock is estimated by a regular valuer, 

 but in ordinary cases the occupier himself will be able to arrive 

 unassisted at a very close approximation to the truth. 



The amount of the valuation, together with any floating cash, 

 represents the real capital of the farmer, and forms a starting 



