THE EXTENSION OF PASTUEES. 3 



the means of setting farmers' finances straight for the year. 

 Now the corn rotation is looked upon almost as a necessary evil. 



The very diminished capital in the hands of many farmers 

 renders it impossible for them to tiU their land efliciently, and I 

 am persuaded that the only way of ensuring justice being done to 

 their holdings is by laying down a considerable proportion of the 

 land to grass. -^ 



Not the least of a farmer's anxieties is the grave difficulty as 

 to labour. Formerly it was urged that work for the rural 

 population ought to be found on the land. On their side the 

 labourers have solved the problem by refusing to live and work in 

 the country. Landowners and farmers have been privileged to 

 educate the labourers' children, with the result that the latter 

 remain long enough at school to acquire a distaste for agricultural 

 life, and the pick of the boys and young men flock into towns, 

 leaving the feeble, incapable, and infirm to work on the farms. 

 So that, having paid an education rate, in addition to other heavy 

 burdens, farmers find that the efficiency of labour is diminished, 

 while the cost is seriously augmented. Few farmers would object 

 to pay the increase in wages were it possible in return to obtain 

 as good a day's work from the men as their fathers gave for less 



1 Although Colonial farmers have been eager purchasers of our stock and implements, 

 they have not hitherto manifested any anxiety to adopt our agricultural system. There 

 are portions, however, of Canada and the Eastern States of America which are rapidly 

 passing into the conditions which prevail in England, and the accomplished Professor 

 of Agriculture at the Guelph Agricultural College in Ontario created a considerable 

 sensation by calling the attention of farmers in the Dominion to the necessity of following 

 the English lead in the laying down of land to pasture. In a Lecture delivered by 

 him. a copy of which he has been good enough to send me, are the following re- 

 marks •— ' We are bound to produce cheaper and in greater quantity. It is not so 

 much the area which is troubling, but the "per acre per annum," than which there 

 is no truer gauge of national or individual weUheing. Towards this end I respect- 

 fully submit that permanent pasture will have a great deal to say. As a stimulus to 

 healthy appreciation of the importance of permanent pasture, and as one of the best 

 possible ways to impress our people, I may ask why it is that Britain, with all her age, 

 experience, and wealth of other things, has already placed half her arable under this crop. 

 It is not altogether because of outside competition in other crops, nor of climatic trouble, 

 but because she knows of no better way to conserve, to wait, and to make money by doing 

 little at the least risk and outlay. Britain has never hesitated how to " hedge in her 

 agriculture when troubles arose, and to-day her farmers make more revenue per acre per 

 annum on the best pasture than from any other source.' 



*E 2 



