CHANGES IN AGRICULTURE. 143 



and Scotland. In other respects the annual 

 home growth of corn keeps steady, barley alone 

 showing a gradual increase. The production 

 of wheat within these islands appears to have 

 reached its limit, and is gradually giving place 

 to a more profitable management. The growth 

 of barley, the dairy and market-garden system, 

 fresh milk and butter, veal and lamb, and beef 

 and mutton of the finest quality and early 

 maturity, and vegetables, and hay and straw, 

 are every year enlarging their circle around 

 the seat of increasing populations. These are 

 the articles which can least bear distant 

 transport, and, therefore, are likely longest 

 to withstand the influence of foreign com- 

 petition. 



This country is becoming every ten years Country 



becoming 



less and less of a farm, and more and more of a less of a 



farm and 



meadow, a market-garden, an extension of town more of a 



garden. 



into country, and a place of public parks and 

 pleasure grounds. The deer forest, and grouse, 

 in the higher and wilder parts of the country, 

 and the picturesque commons in the more 

 populous districts, are already, in many cases, 



