12 
Large and Small Holdings. 
eggs, are more healthy and do ever so much better than when 
they are kept in large lots on the same ground. 
It is in eggs rather than in fowl-rearing that most money 
is made from poultry, and in eggs the common cross-bred 
fowl of the little farmer will beat the prize-winners of the 
most improved breeds. Nothing pays so well for minute care 
and attention as poultry, and this the large farmer's wife 
cannot or will not give. The barn-door fowl of the large 
holding is classed with the store-pigs of the straw-yard ; both 
are valued for consuming grain and offal that would otherwise 
be lost. If their profit is small, their cost of maintenance is 
still less. Constant watchfulness, warm roosting, and regular 
feeding, combined with an intelligent knowledge of the manage- 
ment of the different kinds of fowls, pay well on most farms. 
This costs the large farmer money, but it is " all in the day's 
work " on the small farm ; and that day's work, however long 
and tedious, is seldom credited with much cash. So after all, 
it is a question of time and labour ; and when the small farmer 
charges nothing for his wife's time, and is satisfied with verv 
modest earnings for his own labour, he can certainly produce 
these small articles at a cheaper rate than the occupier of larger 
holdings. iSo doubt his success in providing these small 
articles is not due to superiority of quality or great increase of 
produce, but rather to the slight remuneration which the little 
farmer is content to receive for his labour and care in the pro- 
duction and distribution of his goods, 
AREA OF FARMS. 
England. 
In Februarv of the present year Major Craigie read before the 
Royal Statistical Society an elaborate paper on " The Size and 
Distribution of Agricultural Holdings in England and Abroad." 
It gives a most complete, detailed, and accurate account of the 
sizes of farms in England and on the Continent ; and a vast 
amount of labour, time, and research must have been spent 
upon its compilation. The question of England being the 
country of large holdings is thus disposed of : — 
" At the outset of this enquiry, we see that in this United Kingdom — a 
country of large farmers as we are often told it is — a fourth of our ' farmers' 
are petty occupiers of no more than 5 acres of land, and those who farm less 
than 50 acres constitute nearly four-fifths of the entire body. 
" In Eni'land a'.one the 5-acre men and those below them make up 30 per 
cent., and the class below 50 acres 71 per cent, of the whole, while barely one 
holding in everj* hundred exceeds the dimensions of a 500-acre farm." 
