- 344 - 



turally, and if the yearly tenant merely failed to cut them down 

 and stop their growth, it would be very difficult for his landlord, 

 if not impossible, to hold him responsible according to the English 

 common law for permitting waste upon the holding. 



Besides the common law, however, custom must be taken into 

 account; for it is well known that the custom of the country still 

 plays an important part in the relationship of landlord and tenant. 

 Unless a statute or a written agreement forbids, the custom of the 

 country will prevail. Now universally throughout England we may 

 observe that the possession of foul land at the expiration of a te- 

 nancy is a just and proper item which either the landlord or the 

 in-coming tenant may advance as an act of dilapidation and claim 

 damages therefore. What effect in practice the possibility of such 

 a counterclaim may have upon a bad tenant, it is difficult to say. 

 The tenant who was utterly heedless as to the condition in which 

 he left the holding would probably be one who had no claim to 

 compensation for unexhausted improvements to advance, and who, 

 perhaps, was more or less in an insolvent condition and for whom 

 therefore a counterclaim for dilapidation or an action for damages 

 in regard to the condition of the holding would have no terrors. 



Finally, there is the written agreement to be considered. During 

 the last two years many new written agreements have been entered 

 into between landlords and tenants as a result of the new condition 

 obtaining under the Agricultural Holdings Act 1908. What those 

 conditions are have been previously discussed in the 1907 and 1909 

 editions of this Journal. 



We may observe, however, that many of these fresh agreements 

 have contained a clause wherein the tenants undertake to cut or 

 destroy thistles, docks or other noxious weeds twice per annum, 

 before the same have flowered, and to remove them from the 

 holding. 



Where a tenant has entered into such a written covenant, he 

 will of course be responsible to his landlord if he fails to carry 

 out his agreement in this respect. " 



JOHN PERCIVAL. " Couch " or " Twitch. " - - The Journ. of the 

 Board of Agriculture, Vol. XVI, N. 4, pp. 279-282. London, 

 July 1909. 



The terms " couch, " " twitch, " " scutch, " and " whickens " 

 are often applied by farmers in a general sense to several peren- 



