40 AGRICULTURE. 



stationary system, have been overwhelmed ; have disap- 

 peared from the scene ; having commenced with property 

 and ended with debt. Our remarks apply with increased 

 force to the second and third rate grazing-lands of the 

 Midland District. A few years ago we should have looked 

 for the least improved district of agricultural England 

 from the top of Robin a-tiptoes, on the confines of Rutland, 

 Leicester, and Northampton. No prospect could, in an 

 agricultural point of view, be more melancholy. Large 

 spongy pasture fields, so encumbered with vast ant-hillocks 

 that nothing but an accomplished hunter could gallop 

 among them with safety, bounded by rambling fences 

 land of considerable power and inconsiderable produce. 

 " I went by the field of the slothful ; and lo, it was all 

 grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face 

 thereof, and the fence thereof was broken down. Then I 

 saw and considered it well : I looked upon it, and received 

 instruction."* 



The stall-feeding of cattle is no modern invention, 

 though, as a general agricultural practice, it may almost 

 be said to be new in England. The " stalled ox" is cited 

 as a luxury in the Book of Proverbs. The difference 

 between stall-fed and grass-fed oxen is marked in the daily 

 consumption of Solomon's household " Ten fat oxen, and 

 twenty oxen out of the pastures." But though stall-feeding 

 is now general as well as ancient, no agricultural practice 

 has proved a more fruitful occasion of controversy. Cooked 

 food and raw food, warm food and cold food ; open yards, 

 open sheds, and close cattle-houses ; tying by the neck 

 and turning loose in boxes : each of these practices has its 

 enthusiastic and unhesitating advocates. So also as to the 

 description of food. The object is admitted the greatest 

 produce at the least cost. One man would be ruined but 

 for gorse ; another cannot dispense with hay ; a third 



* We are told by a resident that something in the way of improve- 

 ment has been done near Kobin a-tiptoes, and that much remains to be 

 done. 



