AGRICULTURE 



discoveries in Australia and California, and the generally favourable seasons. 

 In spite of deplorable losses from rinderpest, pleuro-pneumonia, and foot-and- 

 mouth disease, the numbers of cattle and sheep increased and agriculture 

 flourished. Wages, however, did not rise as quickly as the prices of com- 

 modities, and in the early seventies there were numerous strikes of farm 

 labourers that were unprofitable both to employer and employed and 

 created much ill-feeling on either side. 



The general depression in the price of cereals, owing to imports from 

 the United States, combined with the wet seasons, culminating in the disas- 

 trous year of 1879, occasioned great losses among arable farmers. In the 

 Vale, in order to meet the altered circumstances, much of the heavier clay 

 arable land was laid down to permanent pasture. In those cases where 

 suitable mixtures of seeds were employed, and where the land was clean and 

 in good heart, and so maintained by liberal manuring, useful pastures are now 

 the result. On the hills, however, the soil does not adapt itself to pasture, 

 the newly sown herbage being in a few years smothered by blackgrass (Agrostis 

 stolonifera) and other natural and worthless weeds, and most of that which 

 was laid down in the eighties, and intended to form permanent pasture, has 

 either been broken up, or else, producing practically no crop, is now merely 

 a run for stock. The general absence of springs on the hills also makes them 

 unsuitable for grazing, necessitating constant hauling of water at a time when 

 horses and men are urgently required on the arable land. 



By the courtesy of Major Craigie, C.B., of the Board of Agriculture, the 

 following statement showing the variations in area of the cultivated crops and 

 the numbers of live stock of each kind in the county as returned to the 

 Board is given. The period embraced is from 1875 to 1905 taken at 

 intervals of five years, and it indicates, in a graphic manner, the way in 

 which agriculturists have adapted themselves to the new conditions conse- 

 quent on the depreciation in the value of cereal crops, and the variation in 

 the numbers of live stock of the various descriptions kept under the altered 

 circumstances of farming practice. 



TABLES SHOWING THE ACREAGE UNDER EACH CROP AND THE NUMBER OF LIVE STOCK IN THE COUNTY 

 OF GLOUCESTER IN EACH OF THE UNDERMENTIONED YEARS. 



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