92 
The Labour Bill in Farming. 
a pair of horses ; but usually the horses are not so powerful in 
that case. 
" A thoroughly efficient Aberdeenshire ploughman, with his 
two horses and swing-plough, will, I should imagine, till a greater 
extent of land, and in a more satisfactory style, than any other 
team of equal power extant ; that is, a single man (paid at a 
comparatively high wage) and two good horses will be found 
cheaper far than any of the miserable devices that exist in some 
parts of England with underpaid labourers, one driving the 
team, another holding the stilts of the plough, and so on. The 
cost of a ploughman and pair of horses per day, doing hired 
work, is 95. and IO5. Steam-cultivation is not yet so far intro- 
duced as to have sensibly affected the cost of horse-labour ; but 
it will be and is being heartily welcomed by all intelligent 
farmers as an aid to deeper and more thorough cultivation — on 
the principle that for an increased outlay they will reap a larger 
return. 
" A point worth noting in our farming is the very large ex- 
penditure systematically made for extraneous manures,— bone- 
dust, guano, phosphates, &c. A trustworthy estimate is that the 
average expenditure yearly for such manure in Aberdeenshire 
is equal to from a third to a half of the entire rental of the 
county." 
A Forfarshire tenant, on a friend's estate in that county, gives 
me the benefit of his experiences upon the cost of labour on a 
farm of 300 acres, with an average production from grain-crops 
of five quarters an acre. This is the farmer's mode of showing 
the outlay for manual labour : — " Divide the 300 acres into six 
parts, three of them in grass, to be pastured with either sheep or 
cattle. Then : 
£ «. d. 
1-3. Labour, outlay in looking after stock and keeping up 
fences on 3 acres of pasture, at 6s 0 18 0 
4. An acre of oats, labour, outlay in ploughing, harrowing, 
sowing, cutting, and carting 2 2 0 
5. An acre of turnips and potatoes. Crop, 20 tons of turnips 
per acre and 7 tons potatoes. Cost to plough, harrow, * 
grub, clear the land of weeds, sow, thin the turnips, 
&c. ; plant and dig potatoes. Total expense of working 
per acre 3 116 
6. An acre of barley — manuallabour upon 2 2 0 
Total cost of working G acres of the above farm .. £8 13 6 
Upon this basis of calculation the total labour bill would 
amount to 433Z. 15s. upon the 300 acres, and would work out to 
11. 8s. \\d. per acre — a low average contrasted with this item of 
expenditure in some of the English farming-accounts already 
given, and especially low if the crops here mentioned represent a 
