166 Notes on a Report of the Kilburn Exhibition 
form. Amongst the sheep, not even the popular Shropshire can 
shake his admiration of the Southdown, which he describes as 
superb, and maintaining the first place for their perfect shape. 
We need not go fully into the report on seeds, implements, 
and the waggons used for the carriage of meat, but a portion of 
the report on the use of feeding-stuffs and artificial manures will 
probably be of some interest. 
" For some time the English farmers, paying higher than 
other nations for their land and labour, have recognised the 
necessity of getting heavier crops, and for that purpose of freely 
manuring the land with other materials than those produced 
from the farm itself, as is done by those cultivators who only use 
stable or farmyard-dung. Bone-dust or crushed bones, mineral 
phosphates, guanos, and other artificial manures, were employed 
in England before being generally introduced into other coun- 
tries. Very soon came in the practice of treating phosphates 
with sulphuric acid, to render the phosphoric acid more readily 
available. This was making an advance to the land which 
could be repaid at once, and not by annual instalments. 
" England in all its manufactories of manure has placed the 
whole world under contribution to enrich its soil, and hence it 
is that her crops of every kind are about a third more than are 
produced from an equal area in France. She obtains phosphates 
from our southern coasts, guanos from the Pacific, and bones from 
ancient burial-places, or distant fields of battle, such as Egypt. 
" The trade in chemical manures is much larger in England 
than in France ; though we have houses of equal scientific worth, 
and which conduct their business as well as any English establish- 
ments. It is in the ignorance of our cultivators that our in- 
feriority in this respect exists. The French farmer, not knowing 
what an artificial manure should be, allows himself to be cheated ; 
and, when he is cheated, he includes all the manufacturers and 
dealers in his abuse, which is as persistent as it is unreason- 
able. From cattle-food as well as manure England enriches her 
soil at the expense of other nations. The quantity of oil-cakes 
consumed in Great Britain is very large. The oil is produced 
without robbing the soil ; it is not so with the other substances 
which are found in the fruit or grain from which oil is derived. 
All these tropical regions which export oil seeds or fruit send 
away a portion of their fertility. France retains a portion of 
it, as Marseilles is a great centre of the production of oil from 
seed ; but the principal part of the cake manufactured there 
comes to England in the same way as the linseed-cakes from 
the departments of the north and north-west. England also 
largely manufactures oil from seeds, but retains the oil-cakes^ 
besides importing from abroad about 100,000 tons a-year." 
