FOREWORD 



Faem buildings and what are generally known as "permanent improve- 

 ments " to farms, such as water-supply, drainage, fencing, roads, shelter- 

 belts, wood-lots, and so forth, are, as Mr. Cleghorne rightly intimates in 

 the preface to this book, matters of the first importance to owners or 

 occupiers of land. The necessity for certain buildings and other works 

 of au engineering character on a farm is of course evident to everybody 

 connected with land, for, without them, farming except of the most 

 primitive type would be impossible, but probably few people — even 

 experienced farmers — fully realise the immense influence the laying-out 

 and development of a farm has upon the quantity and quality of the 

 produce obtained from it or on the cost of working it. Unless a farm has 

 been laid out and subsequently developed so as to permit of the carrying 

 on to advantage of the style of farming for which it is best adapted by 

 the soil, climate, and other factors affecting agriculture, it will obviously 

 be impossible to make the best of it. 



Owing to the manner in which they occur, the benefits arising from a 

 well-selected and developed farm, or the losses occurring from the reverse, 

 are apt to escape immediate attention, but they are none the less real, and 

 the fact of the arable land being cropped to a little better advantage, or 

 the stock thriving a little better, or the carrying capacity of the veld 

 being slightly increased, or of economies being effected in manual and 

 animal labour, or in various other directions, may mean all the difference 

 between profit and loss on the year's working. 



In South Africa the early settlers devoted great attention to the 

 selection, laying-out, and development of their farms, and particularly to 

 the location and designing of farm houses and buildings, and the beauti- 

 fying of their surroundings, as may be seen from the distinguished old 

 homesteads still happily remaining in the neighbourhood of Cape Town. 



Unfortunately, the care and taste displayed by the original settlers and 





