AN IDEAL DAIRY FARM. 3 



mown twice in the year ; but then they are frequently dressed 

 with the rich manure produced by a herd of dairy cows that are 

 most generously fed with cake and various sorts of corn all the 

 year round, in addition to which some 400 tons of stable 

 manure are brought each year from London, where Mr. Barham 

 keeps 130 horses in connection with the great retail milk trade 

 of the Express Dairy Company, of which he is the managing 

 director. Mr. Barham believes in developing the utmost capa- 

 city of his land by frequent dressings of rich manure. 



Pasture and Meadow. 



The farm consists of 120 acres, no of which are in perma- 

 nent pasture and meadow, and 10 in prolonged arable culture. 

 The pastures are dressed whenever they need it with horse 

 manure from town, and probably they are dressed at times when 

 no one would say they really needed it. To dress pasture land 

 with horse manure is excellent farming practice, particularly 

 where cows eat the grass. Such manure as this from the London 

 stables is as good as could be found of its kind, richly com- 

 pounded of the fertilising elements nitrogenous and phosphatic 

 elements which are so excellently suited to promote a rich, 

 varied, sweet, and abundant herbage, amongst which white 

 clover is conspicuous on suitable soils. But this is not all the 

 benefit resulting from such dressings of manure. We know 

 that mineral superphosphate will promote the growth and im- 

 prove the quality of the herbage of old grass land, particularly 

 on a strong, damp soil ; but it is purely a mineral manure, 

 whereas that from the stables is a vegetable manure, which, 

 containing the elements of hay as well as of corn, supplies 

 the earth with the properties which cropping and grazing 

 take out of it. 



And, again, it is well known, too, that land manured with 

 the solid excreta of horses produces a herbage that is pecu- 

 liarly acceptable to cows, so that such land will graze off 

 much cleaner and leveler than it would if dressed with excreta 

 from the cow-sheds. Marked instances of this have come within 



