694 
The late George Turner. 
I may make ; " and then follows a rather hopeful account of the 
yield in Devonshire last year. Nor does he bate one jot of 
hope, or even confidence, for British agriculture generally. 
" 1 have just heard," he says, " of a letter received by a neigh- 
bour, from a man who emigrated from an adjoining parish to> 
this two years ago, wherein he sa_ys that beef is from lOjrf. to 
14fZ. per lb., and bacon and lard 9rf. in America, so that impor- 
tations of meat will not ruin us." The quotation is made, not 
for the likelihood of the American report, but for the insight 
which it gives into the heart and strength and hopefulness of a 
veteran agriculturist. " Lean cattle are selling very high, and 
leave but little margin for the grazier. Sheep are also dear, but 
wool low. Pork cheap, but the mechanics will not eat it 
because it is so. The labourers are better off than ever, having 
high wages and a cheap loaf. 
" I enclose a copy of a letter of mine," he adds, " to the 
' Western Times ' of Exeter, which you can do as you please 
with. I do not now attend the Council of the Royal Agri- 
cultural Society, of which I am by twenty years the senior 
member, being the only one left who helped (in my parish) in 
my humble way, to form it with those great and good men, the 
late Duke of Richmond, Lord Spencer, Messrs. Handley, Pusey, 
Hobbs, Ransome, &c. ; and I had been an exhibitor up to 1881, 
having won nearly 600 prizes from different societies ; but I am 
now content to criticise other judgments." 
His letter to the ' Western Times ' is quite worth repro- 
duction here, both for the portrait of himself which unwittingly 
the writer gives, and for the good advice with which it ends : — 
" I quite agree with Lord Ebrington that the British farmer has 
nothing to fear from the importation of animal food from 
Australia, nor do I think from any other country. I also 
believe that you will never see beef and mutton lower than at 
the present time, nor will you ever see wheat at a higher average 
price than at present ; and I will briefly state my reasons fo-r 
thinking so. In the first place, our population is increasing 
at least 500,000 a year, every one eating more animal food ; 
next, we are 6,000,000 deficient of sheep ; 2,000,000 acres of 
poor land are out of cultivation already, and 200,000 of the best 
are taken up by railways. I have farmed (sometimes largely) 
for sixty-five years. At the beginning I got more manual 
labour done for one shilling than I now get for two, and if 
the poor land only just paid at the time, when the produce 
sold at one-third more, it must be worthless now ; and all 
the thin-skinned soils that won't grow grass are dear at 
any price. But I firmly believe that the best land in a 
short time will be worth more than ever it was, and that we 
