and Machinery at Bristol. 
135 
the system has already produced on the manurial condition of the 
land, I can point to numerous cases where the sum expended 
yearly on purchased food has recently been equal to, and has 
sometimes exceeded, the rent of the land, and this on farms where, 
previous to the sale of milk, no artificial food was ever purchased. 
As an illustration, I may mention, amongst others, the case of a 
farm of 132 imperial acres in East Cheshire, of which 35 acres 
are tillage and 97 acres are old pasture ; about one sheep to 
2 acres has always been wintered on the grass-land ; six or 
eight cow-calves were reared each year to keep up the stock. 
Ten years ago, 21 cows were considered a full stock, for the 
last two years 40 cows have been kept, exactly the same acre- 
age being under tillage. The number of calves reared yearly 
is now 12. The farm is within two miles of a railway station, 
and within twenty miles of Manchester, where the milk is sent ; 
nearly the same quantity of milk is produced in the winter as in 
the summer months. To keep up this supply the cows must calve 
at different periods throughout the year : they are highly fed ; 
during the winter large quantities of Indian meal and grains 
are used.* Some of the older cows and the light milkers are 
drafted out to the butcher before they are quite dry, and replaced 
by others, either recently calved or at the point of calving. The 
tenant has erected a fixed steam-engine which drives a grinding- 
mill, chaff-cutter, root-pulper, and other machinery. Nearly all 
the farm has been boned ; independently of this, there can be no 
question as to the benefit the land is deriving from such a system 
of management. Had there been no other method of disposing 
of the milk except by converting it into cheese, it is highly 
probable that the farmer would have had little money to spend 
on the purchase of artificial food for his stock. In point of pro- 
gressive improvement, dairy farms contrast favourably with those 
principally under tillage, where the results of a cycle of unfavour- 
able seasons, occurring at a time when the farmer has been beset 
by the difficulties of the labour question, has resulted in leaving 
the generality of tillage farms both in a lower manurial condi- 
tion and in a worse state of cultivation than previously, and the 
tenant a poorer man also. On the stronger description of un- 
drained tillage lands, landlords have had considerable difficulty 
* Indian meal and grains do not make the best food for milk-cows. The addi- 
tion of decorticated cotton-cake to Indian meal has proved in practice very useful 
as a food for milking-cows ; wliich is intelligible enough, if it be borne in mtrid 
that Indian meal is comparatively poor in nitrogenous constituents, in which 
decorticated cotton-cake abounds.and that for the production of the caseine or curd 
in milk, food is used which, like decorticated cotton-cake, contains nitrogenous 
compounds analogous to caseine in considerable proportions. The supply of decorti- 
cated cotton-cake to milk-cows at the same time materially increases the value of 
the dung of cows fed upon this description of food. — A. V. 
