The Farmer 



case of a farmer with land adjacent to coverts, 

 that reasonable compensation shall be paid for 

 damage done by pheasants; but in the event 

 of rabbits coming out of the said coverts in 

 their thousands and devastating the surround- 

 ing fields, the farmer can put in no claim — the 

 Ground Game Act is supposed to afford him 

 sufficient protection. It does not however do 

 so. Take the case of a small farmer whose 

 whole time should be given to the cultivation of 

 the soil : how can he find opportunity to snare 

 rabbits, or to shoot them ? On the first shot the 

 rabbits all retire to the wood, where he cannot 

 follow them. A large farmer can employ a 

 rabbit catcher ; this a small farmer cannot do. 



The branch of Agricultural Reform that rests 

 entirely with the individual farmer is that of 

 cheapening the cost of production ; we are not 

 an economical race, and there is room for 

 enormous saving in this direction amongst the 

 general run of farmers. 



Co-operation would materially help to this 

 end. English farmers must remember this 

 indisputable fact : that without unity they will 

 never be in as strong a position as the highly 

 organised foreign farmers ; the advent of a 

 tariff, even were it double the amount any 

 government would dare to impose, could not 

 alter this fact. 



I have endeavoured in this chapter to point 

 log 



