On increasing our Supplies of Animal Food. 



345 



II. Secondly; having attained a perfect fertility, our second 

 point is to develop it in the manner most useful to feeders of 

 stock. Having reached the highest capability of land to grow 

 plants, our next object must be so to select and so to culti- 

 vate the plants to be grown that there may be a maximum of 

 food for animals. Of course agriculture is not a merely meat- 

 producing art : it has other products, among which its profits as 

 a business lie. The methods by which the greatest weight of 

 meat is to be obtained are thus not likely to be adopted on a 

 large scale, or except for experiment. Possibly a climate may 

 exist in some parts of the country — in western Ireland for in- 

 stance — so unsuited for the growth of grain that meat might be 

 made the exclusive staple of agricultural manufacture, and there 

 perhaps farmers might be reasonably induced to pay exclusive 

 attention to the cultivation of those plants on which sheep and 

 cattle feed ; but here, grain and other crops for the direct use of 

 man have to be provided, and though, to be sure, our produce of 

 them is dependent on the manure made in meat manufacture, yet 

 to them directly, and not to the others, has the farmer hitherto 

 been forced to look as the source whence to meet the rent and 

 labour outgoings of the farm. In those cases where these are 

 large — where intensive farming prevails — it is still a problem for 

 solution how to convert green crops with sufficient profit to in- 

 duce their exclusive cultivation ; and this, not to speak of the 

 straw of grain-crops, which is, one might almost say, necessary to 

 the process, will long and perhaps always render a rotation of 

 both kinds on the land indispensable. 



There is indeed a state of things prevalent over a large part of 

 the island, which it must be acknowledged is easily productive of 

 both rent and profit, in which the land is made to yield but one 

 class of plants in constant succession — a class indigenous to the soil, 

 and thus requiring but little attention from the cultivator, and here 

 meat, or other animal produce, is the exclusive result of agriculture ; 

 but this system remains and will remain chiefly because its labour 

 outgoings are so small. Over large districts where it prevails, 

 a more artificial farming might be profitably substituted. 



it will be our first duty to compare grass and arable land in 

 reference to our particular subject. But I must confess that 

 it will not be any result to which that comparison may lead that 

 will justify or condemn the continuance of the former. It is the 

 value of the free produce — the worth of the remainder after all 

 outgoings have been deducted from the gross returns of the land, 

 except those for division between the only parties immediately 

 concerned in the proposition, that will determine whether the 

 condition to which those are owing shall continue. And it must 

 be confessed that over a large extent of good land now in pasture, 



