Go I The Price of Imported Grain. 
the appeal the Court stopped the Counsel for the defendant so soon as 
he had stated the facts of the case, and called upon the Counsel for 
the plaintiff to substantiate the judgment. He contended that if the 
defendant's predecessor had not brought the land into cultivation, the 
thistles would not have grown, and the nuisance would not have been 
created, and that the defendant, by entering into occupation of the 
land with the nuisance upon it, was under a duty to prevent damage 
from thereby accruing to his neighbours. The Court, however, 
which consisted of Lords Coleridge and Esher, made short work of 
the argument, and in a very few words allowed the appeal. " I 
never heard of such an action," said Lord Coleridge ; " there can be 
no duty as between adjoining occupiers to cut the thistles, which 
are the natural growth of the soil." S. B. L. Druce. 
THE PRICE OF IMPORTED GRAIN. 
It might be not unreasonably maintained that the price of grain 
whether home-grown or imported — is a subject in which the Britis 
farmer is year by year becoming less interested. There are, n 
doubt, those who believe that the growth of — at any rate — whea 
for sale will soon die out almost completely, and that the cultivation 
of corn-crops, so far as it exists at all, will be carried on chiefly for 
stock-feeding. That time, however, has not yet quite .arrived, an J 
while we grow, as we did last year in Great Britain, about 32 million 
quarters of cereals (wheat, barley, and oats), the market price of 
grain will not altogether lose its interest or importance. 
It is scarcely necessary to observe that the published average 
prices of English grain are not looked upon by farmers generally 
with that respect which all right-minded persons would naturally 
desire to pay to official figures. The reasons for their mistrust are 
various. The chief is that the officially collected retuims do not 
represent altogether the sale of more than a fourth of x the year's 
crop. For irrstance, in 1889, the total yield in England and Wales, 
and the quantity accounted for at the returning markets, were, in 
round numbers, as follows : — 
Wheat Bahley Oats 
qrs. qrs. qrs. 
Total vield .... 8,87<;,000 7,448,000 9,532,000 
Quantity returned at markets . 2,945,000 3,329,000 415,000 
It will be seen, therefore, that while the total produce was nearly 
26 million quarters, the average price was taken from the sale 
of (>.', million quarters, or about one-fourth of the whole crop. 
As a matter of fact the case is really worse than these figures 
represent. It is admitted that the returns from the markets include 
a certain, and possibly a large, percentage of re-sales, so that the 
actual quantity of corn accounted for — if that which appears more 
than once in the figures be deducted — is to some unknown extent 
