SOILING, OR HOUSE FEEDING. 195 



A. B. has fourteen acres. He keeps four cows and a horse. 

 The sales from the produce of his cows amounted in the year 

 to 17, beyond the supplies of his family. Under the system 

 of house feeding, he says he can keep four cows where he could 

 keep only one before. Such a place as this, it is clear, should 

 not be burdened with a horse. Each acre of his land, he stated, 

 gave him a profit of 5. 



C. D. cultivated eight and a half acres, in potatoes, flax, oats, 

 turnips, &c. &,c. He kept two cows, but had wisely sold his horse. 

 He paid 9 15s. rent, and had cleared, in the previous year, 

 43, exclusive of butter used in his family. His oats were a 

 magnificent crop ; and where they had been manured with the 

 water in which his flax had been rotted, the beneficial effects 

 of the application were most striking. He raised two pigs. 



E. F. occupies nine acres. Had last year three cows j this 

 year he is keeping four ; sold last year about 40 of produce, 

 exclusive of butter. His cows produce about seven pounds of 

 butter each per week. 



All this is spade husbandry and house feeding. I shall pro 

 ceed to give some other statements, which did not come under 

 my particular observation, but with which Mr. Blacker was kind 

 enough to make me acquainted. 



G. H. stated that he had fed his stock of four cows and two 

 calves upon one acre and two roods of land * all summer, being 

 about one rood and four perches for each cow, after allowing for 

 the calves, and had three roods of turnips, and one of rape, for 

 winter. His whole occupation amounted to eight acres and 

 three roods of land. His stock, of four cows and two calves, he 

 stated, late in the autumn, had been fed, through the summer 

 and up to that time, upon clover and vetches, on the same piece 

 of ground which formerly, in grazing, kept only one cow, and 

 that poorly. This man added that he was satisfied that there 

 was no way in which land could be made to produce so much, 

 or by which it could be brought into such heart, as by the soil 

 ing system, and four-course rotation of crops. He was just 

 beginning to feel the benefit of it, his land being now all per 

 fectly clean, every inside ditch levelled, not a spot in the whole 

 that was not productive, and not any of it whatever in pasture. 



* I suppose, in these cases, the Irish acre is intended, which, to the English 

 statute acre, is as the square of 14 to the square of 11, or as 196 to 121. 



