Report on the Farm-Prize Covipetition of 1886. 
631 
being of course well kept the previous winter. He keeps no 
mares specially for breeding, but covers all his fillies, cart and 
nag, at two years old. 
Pigs, 13 stores. None are bred on the farm, but a few are 
bouo-ht to consume the offal, and 4 or 5 are fattened out for 
home consumption. 
The following are the notes, abbreviated, which we made in 
walking over the farm in May. 
" Land sown with and in preparation for roots, very clean 
indeed, free from couch, and little sign of annual weeds. All 
the barley very promising — vigorous plant and plenty of it, 
colour good, and free from weeds. Wheat after beans, thin and 
some weeds ; wheat after clover, vigorous and good colour, but 
somewhat wanting in plant, one field particularly good, de- 
cidedly the best plant we had seen in our inspection. A field 
of clover and rye-grass, an excellent piece, as good as any, if not 
the best, we had seen. Winter beans very short, not likely to 
come to much." 
In July the following live-stock were on the farm :■ — - 
Two-year-old bullocks — Irish . . . . 40 
Lambs 240 
Horses as before. 
The fatting sheep grazing in May had been disposed of, and 
the bullocks and lambs above-mentioned had been purchased. 
The barley crops were good, had been shortened in straw bv 
the drought, but the yield would doubtless be satisfactory. The 
wheat after beans was still a trifle thin, but well headed and 
would yield well ; that on the clover layer was very good for 
the year; while the piece that looked so well in May had 
grown to a magnificent crop. The seed was Webb's " Kinver 
Giant," evidently a long-strawed variety ; but the heads were 
also a great length, though rather loosely set, and the plant as 
thick on the ground as a wheat crop well could be. It was the 
bulkiest piece we had seen. 
For anything stunted in May the season was not recuperative, 
and the winter beans then looking badly had not recovered, and 
were a very moderate crop. 
Root Crops. — Twelve acres sown with mangolds did not plant 
well, and were redrilled with swedes, but owing to the drought 
the latter had not made an appearance above ground at our last 
visit. The other mangold piece, 16 acres, was a fairly good plant, 
not quite so close in some places as might have been wished 
for, but well forward. The swedes had come up somewhat 
irregularly in one of the fields, patches being fit for the hoe, 
with others scarcely out in rough leaf, but the dropping weather 
