Fifty Years' Progress of Britwh Agriculture. 33 
has been largely employed, but as yet more as an auxiliary than 
in superseding the ordinary working stock of the farm. It is 
invaluable in enabling the farmer to overtake the preparation 
of his land for crops during favourable weather ; and where 
deep ploughing is required to bring up fresh and to bury ex- 
hausted soil, no implement can effect the object so cheaply and 
expeditiously. But it is a costly implement, and, except on large 
farms of heavy land, it is more prudent for the ordinary farmer 
to hh-e, when he requires it, than to purchase. 
The variety of implements and machines now used in Eng- 
lish agriculture will be understood from the fact that the number 
D 
of such articles exhibited at the last Show of the Royal Agricul- 
tural Society at Windsor exceeded 7,400. Many of these were 
in use in the early years of the Society, but additions and im- 
provements are every year being made to them. 
Within recent years the system of storing, in silos or 
stacks, green grass or fodder of any kind has been success- 
fully introduced. In wet seasons for hay-making this practice 
is found very convenient, and, though the nutritive quality of 
the grass is not increased, it may be safely preserved in this 
way in such seasons. Coarse grass which could not otherwise 
be utilised can by this process be turned to good account. It 
is claimed as especially useful on dairy farms, as winter pi"o- 
vender for cows in milk, when green food cannot otherwise be 
profitably grown. 
The future of the landed interests, and of the public in 
regard to the supply of food, may be briefly considered. There 
are good signs of returning activity in trade, and with a popu- 
lation increasing at the rate of nearly a thousand a day, there 
must be a growing increase in the consumption of bread and 
meat. Bread was never more plentiful and cheap, and any 
l'eturn to the prices that ruled twenty years ago can neither be 
expected nor hoped for, seeing the vast change and economy 
in the cost of transport and the ever-widening fields of colonial 
and foreign production. In the last ten years the growth of 
wheat in this country has declined 30 per cent. It has a 
wider climatic range of growth than any other cereal. Other 
kinds of corn remain much as before. Barley, except the fine 
malting quality, meets with severe competition from Indian 
corn, which, in its various uses, prevents any considerable rise 
of price in barley. Oats, which are still largely grown in Scot- 
land and Ireland, seem likely to maintain their place. The 
dairy and market-garden system, fresh milk and butter, veal 
and lamb, beef and mutton of the finest quality and early 
maturity, vegetables, and hay and straw are every year enlarg- 
VOL. I. T. S. — 1 D 
