194 AGRICULTURE. 



facts, but which shall be a caricature. From the backward 

 arable practice of grazing and dairying districts from the 

 wayside cows of arable districts from wheat-fields sacri- 

 ficed to hop-gardens from desolate lands, the improvement 

 of which has been impeded by difficulties of tenure and 

 mixed and imperfect ownership from some sacrifices to 

 the picturesque and from more to the cherished feelings, 

 prejudices, if you will, of resident proprietors, which forbid 

 the absolute introduction of the rectangular system which 

 scientific precision would dictate any critic, viewing the 

 country from the window of a railway carriage, might 

 select a group of agricultural deformities. They would 

 bear the same relation to our general husbandry which 

 reports from the felon's dock and the police office would 

 bear to our general morality. A discerning " commis- 

 sioner " finds, in every district of Britain, some farming 

 practice carried to considerable perfection, or some agricul- 

 tural improvement urged to a considerable extent. The 

 British farmer has acquired a sort of prescriptive right to 

 be called pudding-headed, and beef-witted, and would 

 hardly know himself by any other description. He adopts 

 it with perfect good humour ; and yet, when he comes to be 

 looked into, he stands out as the man who, under some 

 disadvantages of climate and some of tenure, has urged a 

 limited area, of no exuberant natural fertility, to an amount 

 of produce hitherto unparalleled in the world's history 

 and is urging it onward still. There is talk, indeed, of 

 throwing land out of cultivation, but action is all the other 

 way. Never was the indomitable energy of the British 

 agriculturist more conspicuous than at this moment. A 

 fall in the value of every article of farming produce which 

 his experience gave him no reason to anticipate has dealt 

 him a blow under which he staggers. When abundantly- 

 stocked markets have reduced the price of goods below 

 the cost of production, the cotton- spinner takes to short 

 time, the iron-master blows out furnaces, and the collier 

 shuts up his pits for three days in the week. -Under 



