22 The Agricultural Holdings {England) Act, 1883. 
yearlj tenancies. This provision as to improvements executed 
after the commencement of the Act is a complement to the 
retrospective enactment (§ 2) giving tenants like security for 
improvements executed before the commencement of the Act. 
It can only apply to permanent improvements and drainage if 
the landlord stands by and neglects to avail himself of the 
sjifeguards furnished by §§ 3 and 4. As to temporary im- 
provements, one of the first results of the Act may possibly 
be the service of many notices to quit, the effect of which will 
be (§ 59) at once to prevent a yearly tenant from claiming com- 
pensation for any temporary improvement afterwards made by 
him, except for manures, that is, as the Act defines " manures," 
in Nos. 22 and 23 in the Schedule. Section 59 also lays down 
the general rule that yearly tenants cannot obtain compensation 
for temporary improvements (except manures) made within one 
year before they quit their holdings, or lessees within one year 
before their leases expire. With all these checks upon the 
operation of this retrospective enactment, its practical effect will 
probably be small, at all events in the case of yearly tenancies ; 
and it is questionable whether for such results it was worth 
while to make so serious a departure from sound principles. 
However this may be, it will be necessary to bear in mind the 
effect of § 5 upon all current contracts of tenancy terminating 
after January 1, 1884. 
We come now to contracts of tenancy beginning after 
January 1, 1884. Here § 5 is expressly limited to temporary 
improvements made after that date, and it enacts, as in the case 
of current tenancies, that the agreed compensation for such 
improvements shall only " be deemed to be substituted for 
compensation under the Act " if it is a " fair and reasonable 
compensation, having regard to the circumstances existing at 
the time of making such agreement." In other words, a yearly 
tenant or lessee is to be relieved from a bargain deliberately 
entered into, and acted upon probably for years without com- 
plaint, if, when he leaves his holding, he or his representatives 
choose to say that the agreement was not so favourable to him 
as it ought to have been ! 
But what is "a fair and reasonable compensation, having 
regard to the circumstances existing at the time of making the 
agreement"? This is the difficult question which valuers will 
have to answer. It is eminently a question for experts. The 
Courts of Law have no means of deciding it except upon skilled 
evidence. The Lincolnshire land agents and valuers, through 
their Association, acting in concert with the Lincolnshire 
Chamber of Agriculture, have adopted the following scale of 
allowances as " fair and reasonable compensation " for the eight 
