Report on the Farm-Prize Competition of 1885. 
575 
The tenant has clone all fencing and temporary buildings at 
his own expense. 
Rotation of crops : — 
Seeds laid down for 1, 2, or 3 years. 
Potatoes and roots. 
Oats or wheat sown down again. 
Mr. Scotson sows 11 pecks of wheat to the acre, and, as the 
result, it everywhere showed the weak straw and small heads of 
which we have complained elsewhere, and largely conduced to 
the feeling of disappointment experienced by the Judges in 
July, when their expectations of extraordinary crops formed in 
April were not realised. 
The first year's seeds are cut twice, and sometimes three 
times ; tlie second year they are often cut twice. 
After the first cut of hay, some more alsike clover and Italian 
rye-grass is sown, and it is considered that this helps the next 
crop. Seeds cost a little under 20s. the acre. Italian rye-grass, 
red clover, alsike, cow-grass, foxtail, and white clover, is the 
mixture used. 
Mr. Scotson has managed the farm 30 years, and for the last 
20 years on his own account. 
Crops. — The old pasture joining the farmhouse was rather 
rough and not very attractive looking. 
Four and a half acres of mixed winter wheat, after oats, looked 
promising in April, but wanted rolling. In July it was an 
ordinary good crop of barely 5 quarters to the acre. 
Thirty acres of barley, mixed Awnless and Hallett. This 
field varied from good loam to poor moss ; it is said to have 
been greatly improved by the town manure which the tenant 
has applied. The greater portion of this crop was inferior and 
full of annual weeds, heavy, and laid on the south side, but 
could hardly average a fair yield. 
Two acres of potatoes (after grass cut on June 1st) was a fair 
crop, considering how late they were put in. The headlands 
were dirty and untidy. A small piece of oats was good. 
Thirty acres of oats on the opposite side of the London and 
North-Western Railway were a very good, level, clean crop, 
partly Webb's, and the top part of the field another variety. All 
were good, except a small portion on the west side, where the 
soil was thin and close to the rock. 
Thirty-one acres of first year's seeds adjoin the last field to 
the south. From here a good crop of hay had been carted. The 
clover-root looked a little patchy. At the south end of this 
field a paddock was fenced off, and the above-mentioned 60 
