M.— AGRICULTURE 251 



at present commands at that time of year. Obviously the argument is 

 open to criticism, because we cannot have it both vsrays. If we equalise 

 supplies we are likely to equalise prices, and no one would suggest that 

 winter lamb can be produced at the same cost as summer lamb. 



There is another possibility to be kept in mind. If means are found 

 for placing New Zealand and South American lamb on the British market 

 in such a state that it compares with our own summer lamb in freshness 

 and condition, we shall be driven to concentrate more exclusively on 

 summer production. In a world perfectly organised this would seem to 

 be the natural way of exploiting fully the difference in the growing 

 seasons of the Northern and Southern hemispheres. 



Still, there is something to be said for two crops on farms where the 

 grass land is all of good quality and there is no possibility of putting the 

 ewes on to inferior, cheap pasture for the greater part of the year. In any 

 case, there is no likelihood of winter supplies even approaching summer 

 supplies, and the overhead costs are not greatly increased when the double 

 crop of lambs is raised. 



Need for greater prolificacy. — Perhaps a more hopeful way of making 

 better use of the ewe's capabilities of production is by securing an increase 

 in the lamb crop. The lamb crop for Great Britain, calculated from 

 numbers on the farms on June 4, is only about 102 per cent., i.e. almost 

 exactly one lamb from one ewe. Even allowing for the fact that a good 

 many lambs are sold as early fat lambs before June 4, and for the large 

 numbers on poor hill grazings where we do not want twins, this is a very 

 poor result. On good lowland, a ewe rearing only one lamb will put on 

 weight during the suckling period, and, unless shells to be sold for slaughter, 

 this represents wasteful use of grass. A ewe of a good milking type 

 can well rear two lambs on reasonably good grass, and if this were secured 

 as an average on good land, our lamb crop over the country as a whole 

 should be about 150 per cent. This would either give an increase of four 

 or five millions on our present total, or allow of our present numbers to 

 be reared on a much smaller area of land. This, surely, is one of the 

 developments we may anticipate, and I think that we may also expect to 

 see an increase in the practice of breeding from ewe lambs, so that under 

 good conditions the almost unproductive period from twelve to twenty- 

 four months may be eliminated. 



Milking Ewes.— I sometimes wonder if we shall not return some day to 

 the old system of milking sheep. A ewe which has had her lamb taken 

 away in mid- June is just at the very height of her milk production, and 

 would give a good deal of milk for a couple of months. Last summer in 

 Norway I was told that girls in the saeters on the mountains each milk 

 and make the cheese from a flock of sixty goats. It occurred to me that it 

 would be just as easy to deal with a flock of twice the number of half-bred 

 ewes on good enclosed land. The invention of a cheap and simple milking 

 machine for sheep and goats might make the idea feasible, even in a country 

 like this where we have come to despise small contributions to income, 

 particularly if they involve work on Saturday afternoons or Sundays. 



But in suggesting the possibility of a return to the old system of milking 

 the ewes, I have in mind much more than the question of securing an 



