SHORTCOMINGS OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 9 



we had expected. With regard to meadow hay Mr. Middle- 

 ton has necessarily had to compare a poor quinquennium 

 on our side with an exceptionaUy favourable one in Ger- 

 many. Also, it should be borne in mind that the German 

 figure includes the aftermath — in some rare cases even 

 also a third cut — as against our generally only one cut, 

 after which stock is as a rule turned out on the grass. 

 Wheat, once more, is in Germany a crop reserved only for 

 very good soil, which is invariably manured. The popular 

 breadcorn crop in Germany is rye, which, under proper 

 cultivation, has proved anything but the " miser, grudging 

 rent and tithe/' for which it is given out in the well-known 

 song of " John Barleycorn." Mr. Middleton does not give 

 the figure for rye. That cereal is so much cultivated in 

 Germany, not only because in Germany inferior soil pre- 

 ponderates — soil which will not bear wheat — but also because 

 it is reckoned the safer crop, among other things in view 

 of the severe winter — which kills our English breeds of wheat 

 — and as admitting, in Germany, of later sowing, up to 

 Christmas {Christkindelkorn) , which is a liberty that you 

 could not there take with wheat. Spring wheat is but 

 little cultivated. A further point in favour of rye in Ger- 

 man eyes is the superiority of its straw and its bran. There- 

 fore in comparing wheat crop with wheat crop we pit our 

 omnium gatherum against the German elite. 



After all that has been said and written in this country 

 about rye as an inferior breadcorn, to which Germans have 

 repHed with the assurance that they prefer ryebread — 

 which is not quite strictly correct ; for the preference is 

 to a great extent utilitarian — it may be worth mentioning 

 that rye is in Germany much valued as breadcorn on account 

 of its keeping quality, which, however, is in great part 

 attributable to its being, as a common practice, baked 

 with leaven instead of with yeast. I have never heard of 

 wheaten bread baked with leaven. Probably that would 

 make it, hkewise, keep better. Rye bread, baked with 

 yeast, is more palatable than that baked with leaven ; but 

 it soon gets dry and stale. Of course, rye is in ordinary 

 times cheaper than wheat (the proportion used to be as 



