Breeding, Rearing, and Feeding Horses, Cattle, and Sheep. 91 
country would greatly benefit, and we should hear less of the 
unprofitableness and uncertainty of horse-breeding. 
Cattle. — The correspondents are unanimously of opinion that 
cattle cannot be bred and reared with profit on every farm, and 
they are substantially at one on a point of even greater importance. 
With very few exceptions they believe that more cattle and 
sheep might be bred and reared if the farmers had more security 
for outlay on the land, more and better house-accommodation, 
and farmed their land better. Several of the gentlemen assert, 
too, that breeding, rearing, and feeding might be practised on the 
isame holding much more extensively than has hitherto been 
the case, and with profitable results. From my own experience 
and observation, I believe that more of this sort of farming would 
leave better returns than are at present in many instances ob- 
tained. But, before recording the views which I have held 
strongly for years on this question, let me glance at the substance 
of what the reporters say. The Messrs. Booth are wai-m advocates 
of more extensive cattle breeding and rearing, especially where, 
I as in their part of the country, there is a considerable portion of 
grass land. Mr. McCombie, M.P., also favours more attention to 
breeding and rearing. Mr. J. D. Dent holds that farmers would 
make better returns by breeding more cattle, and feeding them 
high all along, so that they might go off matured at two years old 
or little more. Mr. Gilbert Murray says that as breeding and 
feeding on the same holding pay best, farmers should adopt 
that system as far as the nature of the holding will at all admit. 
Mr. John B. Booth states that there are many farms in York- 
shire and Durham with grass land suitable for breeding, yet on 
these there is not more than one calf bred now where ten were 
j fifteen or twenty years ago. He adds that " a great proportion 
I of the land is now grazed by third-rate Irish cattle, which, in my 
I opinion, do not pay the farmer nearly so well as he would get 
paid by keeping a good lot of dairy cows, making butter, and 
breeding and rearing his own stock for his farm ; to say nothing 
of the losses which occur from the importation of diseases, such 
as pleuro and foot-and-mouth disease, on to the farm through 
purchasing." Mr. James MoUison, after advocating outdoor or 
indoor feeding of stock on almost every holding, goes the length 
of saying that wherever " stock can be fed, present circumstances 
strongly recommend that they should also be bred, and the 
rotation of cropping made as suitable as possible for so doing." 
Mr. Finlay Dun says, " to buy rather than to breed the live- 
stock of the farm is desirable where the land is heavy and 
retentive, rich and well adapted for feeding purposes, producing 
irritant herbage which scours or otherwise injures young animals, 
or causes cows or ewes to abort." There is much force in the 
