2 BRITISH DAIRYING. 



events when the farmer happened to be his own landlord ; but 

 for all that it was not too generally done. 



Whenever we happen to drop on a period of handsome and 

 sustained profits the seventies were one of this sort there 

 soon sets in a tendency, in some quarters, in the direction of 

 ideality in farming : the word may be taken to mean improved 

 or model buildings, probably new ones, well-trimmed fences, 

 new gates, good roads, bigger crops, better live stock, smarter 

 equipments, and so on. 



It is generally a good sign when such improvements are the 

 rule rather than the exception, for the men who make them 

 have money to spend and encouragement to spend it From 

 this point of view, therefore, reasonable ideality in farming is 

 not a thing to be laughed down, for it is the substance of money 

 made and the evidence of more that is expected. 



A Model Farm. 



In the month of October, 1891, I went to see the model 

 dairy farm which is occupied by Mr. G. T. Barham, at Finchley, 

 near London. It is an ideal dairy farm to all intents and pur- 

 poses, and a practical one too, and therefore I cannot, perhaps, 

 in a chapter like this, do better than describe it. The situation 

 of the farm is just about perfect, and is therefore ideal ; indeed, 

 no farm can be ideal unless it has an ideal situation. It is 

 amongst the rolling loams of Middlesex, sloping to the south, 

 well enough timbered to make it handsome and almost park- 

 like ; it runs alongside a magnificent road, and is in sight of the 

 suburbs of London ; the land, not naturally the most fertile to 

 be found in England, is of that free and open kind which so 

 willingly responds to liberal treatment. It was too late in the 

 season to inspect its herbage botanically, for the pastures and 

 aftermath had been eaten off tolerably bare. But the soil is of 

 a nature to nourish a variety of the more nutritious grasses, and 

 it does well in a " dropping season," along with the genial 

 warmth which characterises the southern counties. 



The meadows yield very large crops, and are commonly 



