22 THE STATE AS FARMER 



add nothing to the nation's supplies of the 

 best food. The eating of meal and such 

 products should cease when eating does not 

 yield both better flavour and a decided 

 surplus in food. There is a time in all such 

 feeding efforts when marking time super- 

 venes and labour and all contingent expenses 

 are practically thrown away. There is a 

 physical as well as a psychological moment ; 

 and it is of the utmost importance that 

 those who direct the production of a nation's 

 food supply should make that moment their 

 first study. It occurs in all stock, but in 

 the pig it takes its simplest form, being free 

 from such intricacies as milk and eggs and 

 wool. There may be special considerations 

 for extra time, such as in the case of the 

 York ham, but they must be justified by 

 the extra price of such delicacies. The 

 sausage may have its rights, too, but they 

 do not neutralise the more fundamental ones 

 of the streaky rasher. 



The question of the more important items 

 in our food supply, beef and mutton, is equally 

 one for very large national treatment. It 



