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58 



THE ILLINOIS FARMER. 



THE FARM. 



French and English Farming. 



The last published number of the Journal 

 of the Royal Agricultural Society contains 

 a few particulars concerning French and 

 English farming, which present the diflFerent 

 results obtaining in the two countries in a 

 peculiarly striking light. To raise corn, 

 the immediate food of man, has for years 

 been the prime object of the cultivator on 

 the other side of the Channel, and with a 

 bad effect on the land, because he has not 

 not suflSciently cared for keeping up the fer- 

 tility of the soil. The Englishmen, on the 

 other hand, by devoting a considerable area 

 to green crops and the raising of cattle, not 

 only maintains the fertility of his fields, but 

 produces more wheat from a smaller surface. 

 Taking England alone, a country not larger 

 than one-fourth of France, the produce is 

 38,000,000 hectolitres of wheat, 16,000,000 

 of barley, 34,000,000 of oats. France 

 produces 75,000,000 hectolitres of wheat, 

 and 100,000,000 of oats and other kinds of 

 grain. The difference is remarkable; and 

 the writer who is a Frenchman, stalies that, 

 "caking all products into account, animal 

 and vegetable, it appears that the produce 

 of England per hectare, nearly doubles that 

 of France." The French farmer contents 

 himself with an average of seventeen bushels 

 of wheat from his hectare, the English farm- 

 er reaps his sixty-five or seventy bushels 

 from the same extent of land. In the 

 United Kingdom there are 35,000,000 

 sheep; and France has an equal number; 

 but while on this side the Channel there are 

 31,000,000 hectares available for feeding, 

 on the other there are 53,000,000. The 

 sheep in France ought therefore to number 

 60,000,000, to be in the same proportion to 

 the land as in the United Kingdom. And 

 if the comparison be made with Englund 

 alone, the difference is yet more surprising. 

 In England, on 16,000,000 hectares, 30,- 

 000,000 sheep are fed; three times as mauj 

 as in France. And this is not all; the 

 weight of an English sheep is twice that of 

 a French sheep; so that an English farm on 

 an equal surface gives six times as much 

 mutton as a French farm. The result is 

 not less favorable to English skill and jndg- 

 ment, if we look at cattle. France posses- 

 ses 10,000,000 head of cattle, England 8,- 

 000,000 and yet more meat is produced 

 every year in England than in France. Of 

 the 4,000,000 head of cattle killed every 

 year by our allies, 2,000,000 are calves, 

 weighing about seventy pound each. And 



then your Frenchmen must have labor out 

 of his cattle, as well as milk and meat; so he 

 keeps his ox till it is too old, and kills it 

 when the meat is scanty and poor in quality. 

 The Englishman is content with milk and 

 meat, and kills the animals just when they 

 weigh heaviest. Hence it is that while the 

 4,000,000 head of cattle killed yearly in 

 France average no more than 100 kilogram- 

 mes per head, the 2,000,000 killed in the 

 United Kingdom average 250 kilogrammes 

 per head. Two million cattle on this side 

 of the Channel give 100,000,000, kilogram- 

 mes more of meat than 4,000,000 on the other 

 side. In other words: "with 8,000,000 head 

 of cattle and 10,000,000 hectares of laud, 

 British agriculture produces 500,000,000 kilo- 

 grammes of meat; while France with 10,- 

 000,000 head of cattle, and 68,000,000 hectares 

 of land, produces only 400,000,000 kilogram- 

 mes." — [Chambers' Journal. 



-—^ 



Profitable Farming. 



A gentleman farmer, we do not mean one 

 who puts on airs, or farms at the expense of 

 money made in other callings, but an earn- 

 est, self-reliant, enterprising man, one who 

 farms for profit and wins, wrote us last 

 November, as below: 



"My carrot crop has just been harvested. 

 I employed a practical surveyor to measure 

 oflFjust one half acre on the west side of the 

 field you saw, and the carrots were all sold 

 by the pound, and I was satisfied of the 

 weight, and found it to be 21,250 pounds. 

 This lot was entered for the premium offer- 

 ed by our Society. They required all to be 

 weighed, and thinking it less trouble I sold 

 them on the lot for one-half cent per pound, 

 and received $106,25 in cash for the half 

 acre, besides nearly enough tope to feed 

 to pay the harvesting. Nothing more was 

 done after you saw them than harvesting 

 and loading teams on the lot. I am sorry 

 that I did not thin one row so as to compare 

 the difference. If any one had told me two 

 years ago that a crop would grow like this, 

 standing, as they did, about ten to the foot 

 in the row, I should not have believed it; but 

 I am now convinced, after two trials." 



We had visited this gentleman a few days 

 before. The carrots of which he speaks 

 were exceedingly thick-rowed, not more 

 than twelve to fourteen inches apart, and 

 the carrots a real thicket in each row; 

 two or three to an inch, as it appeared to 

 us. His doctrine was, that they must be so 

 thick in order to shade the ground. They 

 served, as he thought, as a sort of mulching 

 to keep the ground moist. We thouf fat 



