CATTLE AND SHEEP. 47 



and communicate with a drain. The more solid matters 

 are removed with the least possible labour, by means of a 

 shovel which exactly fits the trench. The fore parts of 

 the animals lie on the natural ground. The feeding beasts 

 are as prone to recumbency as in any well-littered stalls, 

 and, except on the east coast, we have seldom seen a 

 cleaner cow-house. The arrangement for bullocks is more 

 complicated, involving the necessity of a drain covered by 

 a bored flag or grating into the middle of each stall. We 

 are bound to admit that the tails, to the great injury of 

 their cleanliness, are apt to slip into the trench when the 

 animals lie down. We wish we could suggest a remedy 

 short of docking that ornamental member. On this farm 

 the proportion of arable land is very small, and every 

 straw is cut up for cattle-keep. The cow-house which we 

 have described is a great favourite of ours, because it solves 

 a difficulty which very much perplexes every improving 

 Midland and Western farmer, namely, scarcity of litter. 

 We are inclined to think that the sphere within which this 

 difficulty is felt is extending; the tendency of modern 

 agriculture being to longer courses, and to a less frequent 

 recurrence of straw-giving crops. The real vocation of 

 straw on farms having a large proportion of grass-land, if 

 not on all others, is to give bulk to more nutritive articles 

 of cattle-keep. When it is cut up and properly sugared, 

 cattle will eat it to the stumps. Box-feeding is a recent 

 practice, and highly commended. It must involve a liberal 

 use of straw or other litter. The idea that the animal 

 should be confined for months in a loose box, from which 

 nothing is removed, is not very comfortable; but the prac- 

 tice is connected with the consideration of the injury which 

 manure may suffer by exposure to the weather. We know 

 one spirited experimentalist who has gone to a very mate- 

 rial expense in roofing, in order that he may have the 

 whole of his manure under cover until it is laid on the 

 land. This is a strange innovation on the practice which 

 prescribed repeated heapings and turnings before the 



