152 
On Green or Fodder Crops, 
marketed that these crops have frequently proved the most 
remunerative of any on the farm. Mr. Charles Randell, of 
Chadbury, Evesham, in his evidence before the Royal Agricul- 
tural Commission, stated that the only way in which he had 
steered clear of a large annual loss, in the four years 1876 to 
1879 inclusive, was by increasing the growth of other than 
ordinary crops. During the five previous years of 1871 to 
1875, he said that his sales of seeds and A'egetables only 
amounted to an average of 87Z. 145. ?>d., but during the four 
years ending with 1879, these returns had averaged so much as 
551/. 2s. 2c?. per year. 
Mr. Randell's farm is 570 acres in extent, yet he told the 
Commissioners that it was by paying some attention, which he 
was now doing; in an increased desfree to other than ordinary 
farm crops, that he hoped to see the way to steer clear of losses 
in farming in future. What is still more to the point, he gave 
an example of his practical working of his theory by showing 
what an extraordinary good return he had realised from a 
16-acre field in that special year of depression 1879. Early 
cabbages were first grown and marketed, and they realised 
520/., which was 32/. lOs. per acre. Then a second crop was 
raised, partly of cauliflowers and partly of cabbages and cabbage- 
plants, the sale of which caused the total returns for the yea? 
from this particular field of 16 acres to amount to 852/. 10s. 
The cost of producing these crops, including manure, labour, 
rent outgoings, and everything, amounted to 580/., leaving a 
net profit of 272/. 3s., or 17/. per acre. Moreover, it appears 
that the same field was in the following spring made to mature a 
crop of early peas, the pods of which were picked and sold in 
June for 16/. 5s. per acre, and Mr. Randell, at the period of 
giving his evidence, expected to net a second heavy return from 
the field for the year 1880. This illustration may perhaps be 
commended to the serious attention of those who so persistently 
declare that high farming cannot be made a remedy for agri- 
cultural depression. 
The fact that prejudice, rather than a wise dispassionate judg- 
ment, often influences the farmer in the kinds of crops he elects 
to adopt, and the order of cropping employed, has frequently 
been admitted, and an unnatural bias or wrong impression too 
frequently also is allowed to operate in preventing the inquiry 
being as much as entertained, whether anything new or un- 
common recommends itself to his attention. The Scripture 
maxim, " Prove all things, hold fast that which is good," ought 
more thoroughly to be reduced to practice in British husbandry, 
no less than in a great many other matters — not, perhaps, to the 
extent of making the farmer a perpetual and extensive experi- 
