especially in the Counties of Surrey and Sussex. 
157 
Club, and has published one instance of a first-prize Shorthorn 
heifer which he sold to Mr. William Lunn, of Southampton, 
at 18 months 3 weeks old, weighing 98 stone 6 lbs., with a great 
weight of fat inside. 
In reporting on the farming of Surrey, in 1870, for the Bath 
and West of England Society (having previously reported upon 
it in 1854 for the Royal Agricultural Society), I described the 
example-farm of Mr. Cyrus Ellis, of Great House Farm, Ham- 
bledon, who was then, and still is, a producer of young beef 
on a Surrey sand farm. The soil generally is extremely thin. 
High Down, on the east side of the Farm, is a sandy heath 
which still defies the plough and can never be conquered but by 
a powerful combination of tillage and manure. Mr. Ellis has 
at the present time carried on his operations quite as far up the 
High Down as he can do with profit. He can do nothing without 
dung. The poor iron-sands of Surrey soon tell upon the pocket 
when mismanaged, which they easily may be in regard to the 
system of manuring. Artificial manures, for example, must be 
sparingly used on the poor sand. INIr. Ellis finds that super- 
phosphate of lime starts the young turnip-plants, but does not 
enable them to hold their growth. Nitrate of soda must be used 
moderately ; and, in short, after closely questioning his land on the 
best method of manuring it, the response is favourable to bulky 
rather than concentrated dressings. One-fourth of his land is in 
roots fed off by fatting sheep, or consumed by young bullocks. 
There are 6 cows ; and 30 calves are annually purchased for early 
fattening. The usual number of sheep wintered and fattened on 
the farm is 1^ per acre, besides almost half a store-lamb per 
acre wintered on turnips and kept through the summer on forage- 
crops. The effect of the cattle feeding is clearly seen in such 
results on land so thin. And possibly Mr. Cyrus Ellis might 
not have kept to the front as a distinguished member of a family 
noted for good husbandry if he had paid high prices for store- 
cattle instead of rearing calves at home. He and others in his 
neighbourhood still continue the practice here described. 
The following is extracted from the report referred to above ; 
— " By the plan of early fattening, Mr. Ellis avoids summering 
the cattle a third season, and gets rid of a difficulty which is 
always severely felt on the sand farms, of maintaining any con- 
siderable head of stock in the summer. The calves are allowed 
to run out in the arable fields as soon as the rye is ready for 
them : afterwards they get cake in the pastures. The 30 fatting 
bullocks are started on early turnips by the middle of Sep- 
tember." * 
* ' Journal of the Bath and West of England Society and Southern Counties 
Association,' vol. iii. third series, p. 15. 
