2 
Large and Small Holdings. 
to the welfare of the country will not be the purport of this 
paper ; neither shall I be expected to dilate upon the social 
and moral advantages which will flow from a larger number 
of our citizens having a more direct and permanent interest in 
the soil of this country ; but I may be expected to contrast the 
amount of produce, and the modes of culture usually practised 
upon these different holdings. I found, however, at the outset 
of my enquiry, that no practical data, no published statistics and 
no reliable records were available for such a contrast. Sundry 
interesting statements as to the yield of certain large farms, 
a few shadowy figures, and a great many estimates of what 
could or should be grown upon small farms, might be collected, 
with now and then a startling record of some * wonderful crop 
produced upon an allotment. But, as a rule, few farmers keep 
accurate accounts, and it may be said that small farmers never 
do. Even the very interesting reports of the Judges of the 
Royal Agricultural Society's Prize Farms fail to record many 
£ s. d. facts, which can serve the purpose of an exact com- 
parison. The most successful competitors do not care to have 
their balance-sheets made public ; and therefore, instead of 
giving, as I should like, a statistical contrast of the amount 
and value of the products of the two sorts of holdings, I must 
content myself with compiling a few remarks, gathered from 
the opinion and experience of many large and small cultivators, 
and from the written statements of some able and practical 
exponents of English and foreign agriculture. 
Unless there is some sort of classification of the different 
sized holdings which prevail in England, no comparison can 
be attempted. At the various Chambers of Agriculture last 
year, this subject of large and small farms was thoroughly 
discussed. In an instructive paper read before the Lincolnshire 
Chamber, Mr. S. B. L. Druce contended " that a farm of 500 
acres and over may be rightly called large ; a farm of 100 and 
* As aB example of tho great crops which are sometimes grown upon allotments'. 
Lord Wantage, in an admirable article on " Small Farms ' in the' Fortnightly' of 
last February, gives the following yield of a Berksliire allotment. Throe quarters 
of an acre in 1885 grew wlieut which was sold to the miller for H., which, 
reckoned at 32s. per quarter, is 4G bushels per acre. In 1886 there was a crop of 
barley of 53 bushels per acre. This year winter beans and vetches are ))!anted, 
which are expected to yield, altlioui;h the most precarious of crojis, 48 buslieLs 
per acre. As the wheat-straw was used for thatching the cottage, and the barley- 
straw sold off, there appears to be no manure ust;d for these cereals. Further 
on. Lord Wantage records the fact that the rotatiim of three white-straw crops in 
succession beggared Norfolk in the last century ; but if my county could liave 
produced such yields of grain as this Berkshire allotment, the late Lord LeiccstLr 
would have had no need to revolutionize the system of agriculture which then 
prevailed, for with all our modern improvements Norfolk can give no such corn 
crops as are here recorded; 
