240 
Farming of Oxfordskire. 
Very little is made under cover, and hardly any buildings are 
spouted. The yards are also irregularly shaped and unevenly 
laid. Half-a-dozen pigs, and two or three dry cows, occupy a 
space that should contain twenty beasts. On most arable farms 
the question is, not how to make the most of the straio, hut hoiv 
the straw is to be trodden down. Coiisequently the yards are 
constantly littered with a most liberal allowance of straw, and 
the few animals that tenant the enclosure are almost hidden from 
view. The straw is enriched with little dung, and not being 
consolidated by heavy treading, the few soluble properties it 
possesses are easily evaporated or drained off'. The farm- 
buildings being too often situated at one end of the occupation, 
the cartage of manure is a very costly affair. It would be far 
cheaper and better on clay lands to reap the corn knee-high, and 
plough the stubble in, than to take the trouble of cutting it close 
to the ground and carting it home, thrashing it, throwing it into 
the yaixl, and bringing it back to the same field again a little 
darker in colour but no richer in nitrogen than when it left. 
Covered homesteads, loose boxes, or splined boards, are not 
required on the arable farms of Oxfordshire ; but on the pasture 
and dairy lands they would be very serviceable. It is not neces- 
sary to fatten cattle in order to make good manure. As stall- 
feeding in the majority of years does not pay, it becomes a 
question whether ai'tificial food is not dearer than artificial 
manure, or a ton of oil-cake, which passes through a bullock, is 
not a worse investment than a like value of guano or bones. But 
the Oxfordshire farmer need not become a wholesale winter 
grazier ; he may in his own way much improve the farmyard 
manure. There are now hardly any turnips removed from the 
land that will carry sheep, all the roots being consumed where 
they grow. The few cattle that occupy the yard subsist on the 
" straw, chaff, and caving " which the barn supplies. When only 
a few head of stock have to « nibble over a great extent of straw, 
they may find a sufficient quantity of sweet morsels to pick up a 
tolerable living. But if the manure is to be worth anything, 
then four times the number of cattle ought to be kept, and of 
course more nourishing food provided. Now if young stock, 
barren cows, or working oxen, were supplied with a bushel of 
roots a day, the consumption would not be very great ; or if the 
land was too poor to spare the turnips, or too distant to admit of 
carting at a reasonable cost, a daily allowance of 4 lbs. of oil- 
cake would be found to answer well, improving the cattle and 
enriching the manure. With the great facilities of always pro- 
curing a sup])ly of well-bred calves, young stock might be more 
extensively reared. In weaning calves, a liberal allowance of 
meal or oil-cake will make up for deficiency of milk. And 
