500 Report on the Liverpool Prize-Farm Competition, 1877 — 
no district of England could we have met with a kinder recep- 
tion, and at the same time have had our duties lightened by a 
more frank and manly spirit, than was shown by the farmers in 
every class of the competition, to all of whom we wish every 
success - S. D. Shirriff. 
T. P. OUTHWAITE. 
J. D. Ogilvie. 
XXV. — Report on the Liverpool Prize-Farm Competition, 1877 
— Dairy and Stock Farms. By John Chalmers Morton, 
Northchurch, Berkhamstead. 
A REPORT of farm management which has been profitable 
during the past few years ought to have some interest for 
agricultural readers ; and as ample profit has unquestionably 
been realised of late years on most of the dairy and stock 
farms which have competed for the Society's prizes at the Liver- 
pool Meeting, a detailed account of the management, not only 
of Messrs. Lea and Roberts, Messrs. Mackereth and Hollings- 
head, and Mr. Edwards, who have been successful in the three 
several classes of farms, but of many others in those classes, 
who have been making money, while farm-tenants elsewhere 
have too generally been losing it, would, I believe, command 
attention. It is not, however, intended to do more in this 
Report than state so much of each case as has appeared 
to the Judges to justify their awards, prefacing the statement 
with some reference to the causes to which, as it appears to 
them, the general agricultural prosperity of the district, and the 
especial success of the winning occupations, have been owing. 
Generally speaking, the prizes have been awarded to those 
tenants whose farm-management — at once of old standing and 
promising to last — has yielded the largest produce with most 
profit to themselves. And among the leading causes to which — 
apart from the principal conditions of climate, soil, and markets 
— their success and the general agricultural prosperity of the dis- 
trict are due, reference must be made (1) to the economy of labour, 
and (2) to the liberty permitted to the cultivator ; both of which 
are remarkable in such parts of Cheshire and Lancashire as we 
have visited. Taking the latter of these conditions in the first 
place, we were not unfrequently told, on walking over a farm — 
some of it old pasture, much of it pasturage as good as if it 
were of old standing, and perhaps not one-half of it arable — 
" There is not a field but I can do with it just as I please ; 
break up this old grass, or this ten-year-old pasturage as good as 
any of it ; take wheat after wheat after wheat, if I think proper : 
