io STORE CATTLE 



additional thousand pounds of cereals might have been obtained 

 even* other year. This increase, even allowing for the yield of 

 straw, was not likely to be of enough value, nor was it desirable 

 that it should be so costly as to pay for the outlay on horse and 

 manual labour, manure and seed to say nothing of the interest 

 upon the extra building accommodation usually wanted for such 

 cultivation. The very best of this land, w^hich was supplied by 

 nature with watering places, yielded the primest beef, or, in 

 exceptional cases, mutton; acres not quite so perfect fed milk- 

 giving cows ; another class, generally because it was not watered, 

 supplied hay for the wintering of farm stock and also for the 

 large numbers of horses wanted for industrial purposes in our 

 large cities. Land of the highest natural fertility was, then, one 

 of the two classes of soil left unmoved by tillage implements. 



Let us now consider the other class. This second class of 

 land was left uncultivated because it did not pay, even when 

 prices for agricultural produce were good, to move it with 

 implements of tillage. It might be that the land w r as inaccessible, 

 that it was not of such a nature as to yield plant food ; it might 

 be too dry or too wet but, for one reason or another, it did not 

 pay to work it. Prices of produce, which must always fluctuate 

 to a greater or less extent, obviously make the degree of worth- 

 lessness, which constitutes uncultivable conditions, a changeable 

 factor. 



Such land (and even the most worthless yields some produce), 

 since it would not return anything to the good farmer who 

 tilled it assiduously and with skill, was the justifiable prey of 

 the land-robber; and husbandmen, good or bad, will always 

 continue to steal from it. 



Between these two classes of land, the best and the worst, lies 

 the greater part of our food-producing soil; the fields which 

 will yield abundantly when well worked and manured, but 

 lack the inherent fertility to produce largely when unculti- 

 vated. Even of this land there w r as always a certain proportion 

 under permanent grass; a small, but appreciable, proportion 

 of grass, of course varying in extent with circumstances, has 

 always been, and is always likely to be, found on most English 

 farms. Our climate is so changeable, the formation of our 



