1G8 
Notes on a Report of the Kilburn Exhibition 
table where the labourers of our farms seat themselves. None 
of these are fed by the farmer ; every one of them, somewhere 
near the farm, has his own private house, to which an English- 
man always clings, however small it may be. About these 
simple buildings are ranged a long belt of stacks, some of 
hay, some of corn. If the threshing has been finished and 
the straw consumed, the permanent steddles are ready for the 
future stacks. As necessary accompaniments to the stacks, 
rick-cloths are ranged with supporting poles to form, as it 
were, a temporary tent while the stacks are being built. By 
the side of the yards, and often communicating with them by 
a private entrance, is the farm-house, sometimes of a good size, 
but oftener uniting a modest with a neat and elegant appear- 
ance. Round the house, framed in verdure, is a garden full of 
charming flowers, almost always having a greenhouse, a verdant 
lawn, roads gravelled and inclosed with a neat fence, which 
the farmer, returning on horseback from his rounds amongst his 
meadows and his fields, opens with as much ease as any fox- 
hunter coming home to Leamington from the chase. This 
spectacle, which to eyes used to our French farms may appear a 
fancy sketch, is everywhere seen in England. 
" So marked a difference from our own habits must rest on 
some higher cause, which there is no difficulty in discover- 
ing. The general idea of the establishment depends upon the 
system of cultivation, and this upon the climate. The founda- 
tion of English agriculture is the production of live stock ; 
about three-fourths of the soil is devoted to its support, and 
only one-fourth to the plants which are directly used for the 
food of men. Pasturage is the foundation of all the farming ; 
this is naturally the product of a climate essentially favourable 
to the growth of grass, almost alwa^'s kept in a state of moisture 
by fog and frequent rain, never scorched up by a burning sun, 
and whose everlasting green, ever springing again during the 
grazing of the herds, makes the wealth of English agriculture 
and the reputation of her landscapes. Under this sky, nearly 
always overcast, is maintained a climate which escapes equally 
the excessive rigour of cold and the burning extreme of heat, 
and which animals are always able to sustain. 
" From all that has gone before, we can see that it is more 
easy to point out the differences than to institute comparisons 
between French and English farms. A French farmer lives in 
his steading, an Englishman lives near it ; the Frenchman 
boards and lodges most of his workpeople, the Englishman does 
not board or lodge any of them ; the Frenchman tries to put 
everything under cover, both crops and stock, the Englishman 
likes to leave all outside and to have no more shelter than is 
