36 AN AGRICULTURAL FAGGOT. 



century, but its common use and its perfected form come 

 within the period under review. The elevator was first 

 patented in 1853, but did not come into general use for 

 another decade or more. In 1883 a sheaf-binding appa- 

 ratus was applied to the threshing machine. The exhaust 

 fan was introduced for dressing corn after 1853, and the 

 improvements which have been made in this branch 

 alone would take a book to describe. I need only mention 

 the substitution of rollers for stones in milling to indicate 

 a revolution which ruined hundreds of country millers, 

 and, as some think, has been a questionable boon to 

 bread eaters. The turnip cutter was introduced, I 

 believe, about fifty years ago, the chaff cutter in 1847, 

 and the corn-grinding mill in 1857. In the department 

 of the dairy, mechanical ingenuity has been very active 

 during the past twenty years. All kinds of improvements, 

 or alterations, have been made in churns. The most 

 remarkable invention was the centrifugal cream separator 

 introduced in this country at the Kilburn Show in 1879. 

 Its principle has been applied in various ways, and latterly 

 a machine has been devised in which the milk goes 

 in at one end, and the butter issues at the other. A 

 mechanical milking machine is also one of the latest 

 inventions. 



The change which has taken place during the past half- 

 century might perhaps be concisely summed up by saying 

 that the balance of power has shifted from the corn 

 grower to the stock breeder and the dairy farmer. In 

 some calculations which I made in 1895 I estimated the 

 annual receipts for the farm crops of the United Kingdom 

 at £64,000,000, for meat and live stock at £89,000,000, 

 and for dairy products and eggs at £41,000,000. The 

 development of stock-breeding has been very great, in 

 spite of the disastrous and discouraging effects of out- 

 breaks of rinderpest, foot-and-mouth disease, pleuro- 

 pneumonia and other diseases. The increase in the 

 national herds and flocks has been already noted, but 



