CLASSIFICATION OF IMPROVEMENTS 203 



creditable and bad management, they sought to secure 

 for the best and most skilful farmer a proportionate 

 reward. 



But the experience even of this scheme has not been 

 satisfactory. 



Mr Scott, who was one of the committee who drew it 

 up, now says : — " I have come to the conclusion that it 

 is quite impossible to fix a scale for compensation. I 

 thought it possible at one time, and helped to frame the 

 Newcastle rules, but I now believe that claims must go 

 to arbitration." "Taking lime, for example, on one 

 part of my farm it will last twenty years, and on 

 another part ten years." Other local experts agree that 

 no hard and fast line is possible. 



Mr Riddell's contention, that the arbitrator should 

 determine what is due to the tenant by a careful exam- 

 ination of the quality and condition and productive 

 power of the farm, comparing this result with the evi- 

 dence of its previous condition, and using the figures 

 as to outlay merely as evidence of what has been done, 

 and not as a mechanical measure of the result seems 

 sound, and should be the guiding principle of valuations. 



To sum up the evidence as to compensation for 

 improvements and the extension of the principle, while 

 there is much to be said for getting rid of classification 

 by schedules altogether, and allowing a perfectly free 

 hand to the tenant to carry out any improvement on the 

 understanding that he does so at his own risk, and will 

 receive nothing for it, unless it is held on a reference at the 

 determination of the tenancy to have added to the value 

 of the holding, great weight must attach to the evidence 

 of a general wish, on the part both of the tenant and the 

 landlord, that the more important improvements should 

 be carried out by the landlord, and this result will be better 

 obtained, and the relations of landlord and tenant more 

 readily adjusted, if the whole of the more permanent im- 

 provements, now set forth in the first part of the schedule, 

 should be put together with drainage inaseparateschedule. 

 The procedure of the Act as to drainage is too cumbrous, 

 and has been shown in evidence to have been for that 



