102 Report on Farm Prize Competition in the Isle of 3Ian, 1877. 
bred between Shropshire and Leicester ; of these, 12 lambs had 
been sold at 35s. He employed one man at 17Z. per annum, 
with food in the house, and the field work was done by hired-in 
workers at Is. per day. We considered this farm to be under 
most careful and economical management. 
Mr. Teare is an exceedingly earnest hard-working man, of an 
old Isle of Man family, proud of his holding and most anxious 
to improve it to the utmost of his power. 
With this inspection our duties of judging were finished. We 
drove on to Ramsay through a beautiful country, rich in its agri- 
cultural aspect. VVe passed some fine farms and saw some 
beautiful pastures stocked with both fine cattle and sheep. From 
Ramsay we drove through Laxey, and saw its wondrous water- 
wheel. It is 72 feet in diameter, and capable of pumping 250 
gallons of Avater per minute from the lead-mine from a depth of 
400 yards. From Laxey we went on to Douglas, where we got 
a steamer for Liverpool. 
We left the Isle of Man favourably impressed with much we had 
seen. Its natural beauty is very great. A great portion of the soil 
is rich, and with such a mild climate its agricultural resources 
must be large. It is a matter of regret that the Prize Farm Com- 
petition was so limited, as these contests tend much to improve 
the agriculture of a district. No better illustration of this can be 
given than the high state of cultivation of the farms in the 
Lancashire districts where such competitions have been longest 
in vogue. But it must be borne in mind that the farmers of the 
Liverpool district possess many advantages which the Isle of Man 
farmers do not enjoy. The rent of the land, judging from the 
average of the farms we visited, is high in the Isle of Man. 
Then in regard to the disposal of farm produce, the advantages 
are entirely on the Liverpool side. The Isle of Man farmers 
must either rear or purchase cattle to consume straw and-turnips 
to supply manure for the farms, while the sums realised off the 
farms near Liverpool, from the sales of hay and straw, are very 
large, the price of straw now being far above its value for 
manure. No district could possess greater facilities for the dis- 
posal of, or command a better market for, every kind of farm 
produce, and also for obtaining supplies of manure. The large 
sums there realised for straw and hay are impossibilities to the 
farmer in the Isle of Man; but he might possibly compete suc- 
cessfully with the very earliest varieties of potatoes. With high 
farming there is always a proportionate amount of extra risk, and 
when a disastrous season like the present one ensues, there is a 
much greater loss. A careful economy pervades the Isle of Man 
system of farming, and what may be described as an agri- 
