JOURNAL 
OF THE 
ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 
OF ENGLAND. 
I. — On the relative Profits to the Farmer from Horse, Cattle, 
and Sheep Breeding, Bearing, and Feeding in the United King- 
dom. By W. Macdoxald, Editor of the 'North British 
Agriculturist.' 
Inteoductiox. 
There are few more popular agricultural subjects than the one 
of which this paper treats ; but neither the time nor the space 
at my command enables me to furnish what might be termed an 
exhaustive report upon it. The more one studies the subject, 
the larger it grows. The Council of the Royal Agricultural 
Society of England resolved to devote a portion of the ' Journal' 
to the question, with the view of ascertaining, as far as possible, 
the cause of so many farmers giving up horse-breeding within 
the last fifteen or twenty years ; the cause of sheep displacing 
cattle to some extent ; and the reason of so many farmers, in 
comparatively recent years, ceasing to breed cattle, and buying 
in stores to fatten. Further, the Council were naturally desirous 
to ascertain whether the present scarcity and very high price 
of horses would not, in the opinion of practical men throughout 
the kingdom, warrant increased attention to the breeding and 
rearing of horse-flesh ; whether, keeping in view the rise in the 
price of beef and mutton, the trifling advance in grain prices, 
and the growing demands of the British population, farmers 
might not, with profit to themselves and advantage to the com- 
munity, produce more butcher-meat ; and whether breeding and 
fattening could not, in these days of disease, be more extensively 
practised on the same holdings. 
A comparison of the profits from horse, cattle, and sheep 
VOL. XII. — S. S. B 
