Seivage- Farming. 
397 
keeps upon the land, and the quantity of manure which he can 
thus apply to it. The fertility of the 23,370,502 acres in the 
hands of Eno^lish farmers is thus dependent on the li), 821, 863 
sheep, 3,706,641 cattle, and 1,629,550 ])igs, which, according to 
the statistical returns just issued by the Eoard of Trade, are kept 
on English farms (1869) ; a number which, calculated wholly as 
sheep,* amounts in food-consuming and therefore manuring-pro- 
ducing power to as nearly as possible two sheep per acre over 
the whole area of the enclosed land in England. Taking 1,141,996 
agricultural horses into account, we may say that the whole farm 
stock of this country is less than five sheep to every two acres in 
the hands of English farmers. 
" VYe have, however, omitted all reference to another resident 
animal of the greatest food-consuming power, for whose mainte- 
nance indeed all these acres and all this live stock are owned 
and cultivated. Nearly one-third of the live stock of this country 
is mankind! In 1809 there were in England 20,658,599 of 
' man,' and he consumes not only the produce of all these acres, 
and of all these cattle, sheep, and pigs which are maintained upon 
them, but imported food as well, to the extent of two-fifths of the 
estimated quantity of our home-grown meat. A creature of such 
great powers of consumption ought, according to all the analogies, 
to be of corresponding agricultural value as a fertilizer. If, leaving 
out of consideration the products of respiration, excrement be just 
the food of an animal minus its growth, then on the ground of 
both these elements of the calculation man ought to be the very 
best farm stock we have. He is not only a much better fed 
animal than a sheep, but he takes much less out of his food. 
Bread and beef are better Ibod than grass and turnips, and the 
growth taken out of these several rations is much less in the former 
case than in the latter. The population fed on bread and beef 
does not increase in number, and that is, virtually, in total weight, 
more than 2 per cent, per annum, whereas the 'population' fed 
on grass and turnips increases in weight at least 30 to 50 per 
cent, within the year. A sheep builds its whole weight of body 
out of the food of eighteen months. The average age of man in 
England is rather more than forty years, and the weight of his 
body at death is all that he has saved out of all the food he has 
consumed during the whole period of his life. On any ground, 
therefore, we ought to anticipate the superiority of man to sheep 
as a manure-producing animal for farm use. 
" And it is worth while to compare the two species further. 
So far as England is concerned, although the sheep ' population ' 
* That is putting cattle of all ages as equal to six, pigs as equal to two, and 
horses equal to eight sheep a-piece. 
