SECRETARY'S REPORT. 285 



The farm prizes, or "Prime d'Honneur," are announced as 

 ".For the best managed farm, on which the most useful improve- 

 ments have been introduced." Nor are those prizes confined to 

 the large and wealthy owners of estates alone, whose great out- 

 lays may effect wonders in a short time, without regard to profit. 

 They fall wherever they are thought to be most deserved by an 

 impartial committee ; often to those who have worked their way 

 up amid a thousand obstacles, introducing improvement after 

 improvement in the shape of better stock, better implements, 

 and greater skill in management. 



In the department of the Ardennes, for example, in the 

 northern division, once an unbroken forest, and famous in the 

 earliest records of the middle ages, on a poor soil, lying in a 

 series of lofty plains, known as the " chain of the Argonne," 

 consisting of broken rock, falling under the influence of the 

 atmosphere into a kind of clay earth, the report of the compe- 

 tition for the gold medal describes the labors of competitors in 

 detail, though in this locality the award turned on the intro- 

 duction of a beet distillery as a basis for the production of roots, 

 stock, manure and grain, on ordinary land, moderately good. 



A farm of 1,000 acres, 770 of which were arable, and on 

 which $12,000 had been spent in the last ten or twelve years, 

 in improvements, carried off the palm. The rotation here was : 

 grain, 360 acres ; rape seed and roots, 180 acres ; lucerne, 

 sainfoin and clover, 180 acres ; beans, 25 acres ; fallow, 25 

 acres. The inventory of 1860 exceeded that of 1849 by $22,000. 

 The accounts were kept in the most scientific manner. From 

 them it appears that the erection of the beet-root distillery cost 

 $3,020 ; that, with a working expense of 26 cents a day, the 

 juice got from 5 tons 16 cwt. of beet, making about 2,100 

 gallons, is distilled. The spirit amounts to from 6| to 5i per 

 cent, or an average of two cwt. of beet produce 11-|^ gallons of 

 pure alcohol. 



Most of the competitors were owners of small farms. " The 

 lineaments of wretchedness are uniform," showing against what 

 obstacles, in the shape of poor and hungry soil, they all had to 

 contend with. The general course of improvement was neces- 

 sarily about the same, the first step being thorough drainage, 

 and then deep ploughing and complete cultivation ; then the 

 collection of vegetable matter for compost ; then the cultivation 



