300 THE BOOK OF THE LANDED ESTATE. 



large quantity of grass which would otherwise have been eaten up by 

 cattle. 



From this statement it appears that the cost of maintaining one horse 

 is 31, 10s. a-year. In some years, however, they have cost less than 

 this per head, and in others more, according to the value of hay and oats, 

 and also as they happened to require more or less attendance of the far- 

 rier ; but the statement given may be taken as a fair average of the 

 expense of maintaining one horse in a medium way, so as to be in all 

 respects in good working condition. But besides this, there must be 

 taken into account the expense of the men who work the animals. The 

 wages of an able ploughman may be taken at 30 a-year, and the value 

 of his cottage and garden at 4 thus making 34 as the cost of each 

 man for a pair of horses. The half of this sum taken as the expense of 

 the man in attendance on one horse, and added to the sum already given 

 as the cost of maintaining one, gives 48, 10s. per horse per annum. On 

 a farm of three hundred acres arable, ten horses would be required, and 

 five men, to work it properly. Now, if the cost of maintaining one horse 

 is 48, 10s., including the proportion of cost for attendance by the man 

 who works it, then ten will cost 485 a-year, or a sum equal to about 

 32s. 4d. of rent on each acre of the land operated on. This, then, is about 

 the average cost of horse-power, as it is applied in the performance of farm- 

 work at the present time and it is certainly an expensive power. No 

 wonder, therefore, that farmers are calling out and asking how soontheycan 

 be relieved of such a heavy burden on their farms. The annual* expense 

 of maintaining horse-power for the working of farms in the mean time is 

 perhaps nearly equal to the amount of their rents, and of itself would 

 form a fair income to the tenants. When we view the subject in this 

 light, as of course it ought to be viewed, it shows us how much behind 

 we still are in our appliances to agriculture. We are now well advanced 

 in the nineteenth century, and while manufacturers and most people 

 in other occupations have called in the services of steam-machinery, 

 whereby they are enabled to perform their works at a tithe of what 

 such cost previously, and also in a much superior way, agriculturists 

 are still plodding on in the footsteps of their forefathers, cultivating 

 the land by the old-fashioned horse-plough at an annual expenditure 

 nearly equal to the annual value of the land cultivated. This being the 

 state of things, the question is, What can be done to obviate the necessity 

 of keeping horses on farms ? The direct answer to the question is 

 Adopt steam-machinery. The greater part of farmers concur in this, 

 and a large proportion of them have adopted it for thrashing purposes ; 

 still the great drawback is, that it has not yet been made fairly available 

 for all the purposes of the farm. The fault of this cannot be said to 



