574 
Agriculture of North Wales. 
forjfotten that their improvement was greatly promoted by being 
adjacent to, and connected with, good roads to the metropolitan 
market, whilst Wales has been, from its great distance, shut out 
from the same market, or at all events labouring in that respect 
under great disad%'antages. The facilities of steam navigation have, 
however, opened to Wales, within the last twenty years, a market 
in the manufacturing districts equal to the metropolitan one, the 
beneficial effects of which are just making themselves visible ; as 
it is, the agriculture of Wales will bear a comparison with the 
agriculture of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire at the time of Arthur 
Young's earliest-agricultural tour : under these circumstances let 
us therefore indulge in the pleasing hope that a similar beneficial 
change will develop itself in Wales in the course of the next 
twenty years. 
In the days of our Saxon ancestors, whose agricultural wealth 
mainly consisted of herds and swine, it was customary with them 
at the latter end of the year to slaughter immense quantities of 
stock, which was salted and used for winter provisions — the want 
of green crops forcing such a measure upon them — the store 
stock only being reserved, such as cows in calf, yearlings, two-years 
old, (Sec, it is evident that, with fat cattle, there was no other 
course to pursue, as they would loose during the winter all the 
flesh and fat put on during the summer months. On the moun- 
tains in the western part of North Wales a similar system is 
pursued, the only difference being that, instead of fattening and 
slaughtering the animals, they are drafted off and sold to the 
farmers possessing richer lands on the eastern sides of the countrj', 
and the English borders, where they are finally fattened off for 
the butcher ; a good portion are also sold off as in-calf cows, about 
a month or six weeks previous to calving, generally at the third 
or fourth calf, when they have assumed the highest value as 
milkers. Cattle bred on the mountains find their way gradually 
to Llangollen, Chester, or some other border fair ; a yearling 
heifer will probably change hands three or four times before it is 
finally disposed of at its highest value, cither as a milker or fat 
beast in some of the richer border districts. As a general rule, 
however, mountain-bred animals frequently change hands; it 
usually occurs that they are taken from a poor to a better district 
at every transfer of ownership ; of course a considerable number 
of the produce are killed when calves. How far is this practice 
justified? is the next inquiry to be made: the answer is brief; 
under existing circumstances there is no other course for the 
mountain farmer to pursue. My Dolgelly friend has described 
the course of sheep husbandry on the hills, with this exception, 
that large numbers of lambs are drafted off at the latter end of 
spring or beginning of summer, which are fattened in the more 
