acre, with about 28 s. as an average. Very few farmers own their 

 holdings, as the coal and other minerals underlying have a tendency 

 to elevate the price, which ranges from . 20 to . 100 an acre. 

 Taking the country through, probably the average of arable and 

 pasture farms would be about 21 s. per acre. 



4< Changes in farming. Agriculture is subject to all mutations of 

 time, climate, and circumstance. Nature is one prolonged change, 

 a wearing out and renewing of life, and every violent fluctuation 

 of the market produces some corresponding reaction in farming. 

 It is somewhat difficult to define when modern farming was shaped, 

 for even as I write there are great changes taking place, the result 

 of which we cannot foresee . 



" The first great change was precipitated in the eighties and nine- 

 ties, when, owing to the very low price of wheat, the stiffer soils 

 went out of cultivation. In the nineties it was the continuous cry 

 that the derelict lands of Essex should be settled by the unemployed. 

 Land was laid down to pasture with the primary object of saving 

 the labour bill, the older style of mixed farming being considered 

 to employ more labour than grazing and feeding. To-day, labour- 

 saving machinery has entirely altered the situation, and by the irony 

 of fortune many of those farms which were laid down to grass 

 employ more labour in dairying than they would if recovered to 

 the plough. Thus, if on a farm of 300 acres there is kept a 

 herd of fifty to sixty cows it would require at least five men to 

 deal with the cattle milked twice daily, apart from those employed 

 for other purposes, whereas on a mixed holding three to four pairs 

 of horses, with a man for each, would easily do t'ne work, unless 

 the soil is very heavy, when the horse-power would be augmented. 



" The increase of the fresh milk trade has been rapid, and a 

 goodly proportion of the rent is earned by the milch cow. Labour- 

 saving machinery is almost universally employed, the capitalisation 

 in this respect being very much heavier than it was twenty years 

 ago. In the olden days the seed was sown by hand, and the wheat 

 was hoed in spring; it was cut by hook or scythe, and the labour 

 rewarded at a fixed price per stock. In these more prosaic times 

 the sowing is performed by machinery, the hoeing is not so fre- 

 quently done, and the binder cuts and binds without extra labour 

 being employed. To the invention of the binder we owe cheap grain. 

 Steam power is used where the fields are large enough and work 

 is behind. It costs about the same as horse labour per acre, but 

 one plough does nine times as much in a day as a pair of horses. 



