5 2 



The motor has a limited use, being convenient, but is as yet some- 

 what complicated, and only to be trusted in skilled hands. In one 

 way the greatest of all changes has come through the Agricultural 

 Holdings Act. Agreements between landlord and tenant with regard 

 to repairs are still necessary, but the principle of free cropping has 

 been made law, and greater security has been provided for the 

 tenant who is a good husbandman and puts his capital into the land. 



" Everything, therefore, tends to encourage enterprise, for the 

 land is a poor servant if starved . 



" Specialised cropping. The tendency in farming is to specialise. 

 A man may be jack of all trades, but master of none; and while 

 it is not advisable to become dependent upon one market only, it 

 pays to exploit a speciality. Whether it takes the form of cropping 

 or stock-breeding is immaterial, but one generally finds that the 

 best farmers develop a particular line of farming. Edinburgh has 

 the second largest number of cows within the city boundaries of 

 any town in Great Britain and Ireland. Hence the opportunity of 

 farmers in the vicinity! They grow green crops, which they cut 

 three or four times a year, putting on the exceptionally heavy 

 dressing of 3 cwt. of nitrate of soda per acre after every cutting. 

 Many farmers grow seed under contract with the large seed firms, 

 and one finds that on the alluvial soils in the neighbourhood of 

 the Wash, where probably the highest farming in England is 

 pursued, the raising of seed is quite a small industry. Mustard, 

 too, is grown by contract with the large mustard makers, although 

 it is also used as a sheep food, or a green manuring crop ploughed 

 under to smother weeds. Probably few people know what woad is, 

 and that such a crop is grown. There are only two or three woad- 

 growers left. The substance of the plant is used to make fast 

 vegetable dyes in cloth, but the discovery of aniline dyes has greatly 

 limited its use. Lavender is grown near Mitcham, in Surrey, and 

 also round about London. Black peppermint, another plant that 

 gives an essential oil, is cultivated in Surrey and the southern 

 counties. 



" Hemp is produced in small quantities in Lincoln and the 

 southern Fen districts, and also in Dorset, but sugar beet cannot 

 be grown profitably in quantity until local factories spring up. The 

 cost of transport must be low. 



"In the Spalding neighbourhood the bulb and fruit industries 

 have striven to find a footing. Roughly speaking there are about 

 250 acres devoted to bulbs, the annual labour expenditure being 



