l88 SHEE? . BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 



true, gloomy. He is depressed by low prices, and holds only a 

 small stock of good hay, while the root crop is fairly abundant. 

 Corn is cheap, and cake to some extent participates. He, 

 however, cannot fear over-production, for he is millions of 

 heads below the sheep census of a generation since. Rents 

 have come down enormously. Two farms which I have in 

 view, formerly let at ^"1,400 and ^"1,200, have been re-let 

 respectively at 500 and ^"400, and such cases are no doubt 

 common. 



It is probable that the present tenants of these farms are 

 much better off than if they held land for nothing in Australia. 

 At what price per acre, I would ask, ought we to value the 

 mere fact of being in England? Surely it is worth several 

 shillings per acre to be within eighty miles of London, or fifty 

 miles of Birmingham or Manchester. It would be difficult to 

 say how much ; but surely land rented at los. per acre for 

 sheep-farming in England must, in hundreds of cases, be 

 better than free land at the Antipodes. Climate alone is a 

 consideration. An American once said of our climate " that 

 we are always grumbling about it, but it was the only thing 

 we ought to be proud of." The remark was sufficiently 

 caustic, but from a grazier's point of view there is much truth 

 in it. 



I am sorry to hear loud complaints from the North of Scot- 

 land as to this branch of pastoral industry. There is, however, 

 a great lesson contained in this distress, as it appears to be in 

 a measure due to outraging the inexorable laws of nature. 

 Generation after generation, lambs have been reared and 

 removed from the great grazing grounds of Sutherland. 

 Bones have been removed, and wool, and with them phos- 

 phates and potash, and the pastures have become seriously 

 injured. The area is too large, and the depletion has been 

 carried out too long, for individuals to meet this call, and the 

 dilemma is a serious one, indeed. No one can lay this 

 grievance to the door of " the bad times " it has been caused 

 by wilful, albeit ignorant, waste, and, even when the times 



