Report on the Exhihition of Live-Stocli at Taunton. 597 
provided for. In others these subdivisions were made in 
accordance with the views of the occupiers. Stock and granary 
Ijooks were, as a rule, also kept. Beyond this, in the present 
position of Agriculture, it is difficult for the farmer to go ; a true 
system showing the exact return on every item of farm pro- 
duction requires an amount of calculation and trouble utterly 
incommensurate with the total proceeds of a farm. 
Nothing more remains to be added, except our acknowledg- 
ment of the courtesy we received from each and all of the com- 
petitors during the different inspections. Whatever changes may 
be going on around them, the unostentatious and genial manners 
that English farmers are generally accredited with have been 
fully developed, and remain still unimpaired, in the favoured 
county of Somerset. j ^^^^^ j^^^^^ 
E. Little. 
T. P. OUTHWAITE. 
XXI. — Report on the Exhihition of Live- Stock at Taunton. 
By C. B. Pitman. 
That the Society's visit to Taunton would be a financial success 
had never been anticipated ; but its pecuniary loss would doubt- 
less have been fifty per cent, less than it actually was if the 
weather had remained as fine on Wednesday and the two following^ 
days as it had been on the Monday and Tuesday. The torrents 
of rain which fell during Tuesday night and continued over the 
following day until Thursday morning, reduced the yard to a 
most pitiable condition ; and it argues much for the pluck of the 
West Country people that the attendance was not even smaller 
than the turnstiles showed it to have been. This contretemps 
— it is bad to borrow from the French, but here we have a 
word most aptly designating the thing — was all the more to 
be regretted as the yard was beginning to fill very well, for 
on the Tuesday there were nearly 2000 visitors more than on 
the corresponding day at Bedford. Moreover, all who were 
present at Taunton will admit that the Society could not have 
had a better site for the Show ; and it was generally agreed that 
the yard was the " prettiest," excepting, perhaps, that at Canter- 
bury, in which an exhibition had ever been held. The beauty 
of the vale of Taunton Dene is proverbial, and the town of 
Taunton is situated in the most beautiful part of it, while in this 
part of Somersetshire, at least, agriculturists have not been back- 
ward in learning the lessons which it is the Society's business to 
teach. Much of the grass land near Taunton lets for hi. or 6/. 
an acre, and it was upon some of this land that the exhibition 
