40 
Relative Profits to the Farmer from 
Some farms are imliealtliy for breeding cattle, and young stock do not 
thrive well, and losses are considerable : on all such, buying is better than 
breeding. 
In our county, the wold and other light soils are much more adapted for 
breeding sheep, being much better suckling land. The marsh and fen land, 
on the contrary, is better for growing and feeding sheep. 
Horses are not good stock on land ; they graze the pastures badlj"^, and are 
not good manure-makers. There is greater risk from the numerous causes 
which render horses unsound, and horse-dealing does not commend itself to 
many farmers. 
To the English farmer, sheep are the more profitable, except in certain cir- 
cumstances, where land is well adapted for cattle-breeding, and not so good 
for sheep ; but generally sheep pay best ; they grow fleeces, cattle do not. 
Some " horsey " men, who seem to have a passion for horses, will extend 
the breeding of them to as large an extent as they well can, but not to the 
exclusion of the other classes of breeding. 
A few cattle-breeders have been known to relinquish or lessen that branch 
of their business, and to breed sheep more extensively. 
Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire horses. Shorthorn cattle, and Lincolnshire 
" Long-wool " sheep for this part of the country. Downs and Short-wools are 
better adapted for some soils. 
Feakcis Sowerby. 
25. HowGiLL Castle, Peneith, Cumbekland. 
I decidedly think farmers could breed more stock with profit by the drain- 
age of wet natural pasture and the top-dressing thereafter with lime or bones. 
Farms contiguous to large towns, and consisting of rich, high-priced land, 
render purchasing preferable to breeding horses. And, on the other hand, 
on soft, grassy, coarse-herbaged, low-priced farms, it is better to breed them. 
Land rented, say from 21. 10s. to 51. per acre, can be turned to more profit- 
able account in fattening than in breeding cattle. Farms designated as 
turnip and barley farms, have, as a rule, an acreage in turnips largely out of 
proportion to the acreage in pasture. And as all such farms, to be kept in 
first-class condition, demand the consumption upon the fields where grown 
of all the turnips that can be spared from the making dovvn of the straw into 
proper manure, the folding on of sheep is practised. Fattening in such cir- 
cumstances yields a better return than breeding ; hence purchasing of sheep is 
resorted to. Further, when such farms adjoin large towns, where hay almost 
always conunands a good price, the seeds or young grasses are generally 
reserved and cut for hay ; and wherever such is the case, sheep cannot be 
bred and reared for lack of pasture, but must be purchased for consuming 
tlic turnips. 
Scarcely under any circumstances do I believe the breeding of horses to be 
more profitable than that of cattle or sheep ; and only on high-lying situa- 
tions, say from 700 to 1000 feet above the sea-level, and where the soil is of 
a soft marshy nature, producing rough coarse herbage, is it that the breeding 
of horses equals that of cattle or sheep. Still the fear that it is unwise " to 
pack all our eggs in one basket," induces me to recommend, on almost all 
farms of any extent, mixed breeding, and I practise what I iireach by breeding 
a few horses, a number of cattle, and a large lot of sheep. 
Sheep, as a general rule, pay better than cattle, chietly from the light ex- 
pense in attendance ; and also from the fact that in open winters, and where 
there is an average amount of natural or artificial shelter, with some heath to 
