218 
The Past Agricultural Year. 
vegetating ; and, before it was possible to hoe the crop, annual 
weeds nearly covered the ground. Now we come to the second 
season — misnamed that year, Spring — and, finishing the answer 
to your question as to the effects of winter, the history of this 
piece of cabbages shall be completed. The weeds among them 
continued to grow in spite of all endeavours to keep them down 
by hoeing, and after a heavy expense had been so incurred, 
all hope was abandoned, and the lambs were put on to eat 
autumn-planted cabbages, spring-sown thousand heads, and 
weeds together, in the hope that the land might afterwards be 
got fit to grow barley. 
" To go back now to your question as to the effect of the severe 
winter upon live stock : Cattle had to subsist almost entirely 
on dry food during the winter, and for a month longer than 
usual, consequently the great crop of hay of 1878 was nearly 
exhausted. Sheep eating frozen roots made little progress, even 
with a liberal allowance of cake, corn and chaff; and, even where 
the roots — swedes and mangolds — had been stored, the severity 
of the weather prevented sheep thriving as usual, and the ' tegs,' 
when sold out in the spring, did not come up to the weight of 
former years. In the breeding flock the losses of ewes were 
considerable, especially where they had been kept mainly upon 
dry food. This was apparently owing to crushing each other 
at the troughs, so that they produced dead lambs, themselves 
dying afterwards. Those farmers who suffered from this cause 
will probably take care to guard against it in future by using 
racks instead of troughs, so constructed as to prevent such 
crushing. 
The Spring Season. — " Returning to the second season, more 
disastrous in its effects than the frost of winter, let me 'show 
how where cabbages did and did not succeed, the mangold 
crop was a success. Two fields, each 17 acres, were treated dif- 
ferently. One had been heavily manured and steam-ploughed 
after harvest, and so left until the last week of March, then 
simply stirred by a chisel-tined drag, harrowed, rolled down, 
and drilled. Here, although some annual weeds appeared, there 
were not more than could be got under in spite of weather. On 
the other field about 15 tons per acre of mangolds had been 
carted on the stubble in the previous autumn to be consumed by 
sheep with cake and corn, to assist in the preparation for the next 
mangold crop ; 30 loads per acre of burnt soil from sheep sheds 
and yards were ploughed in at the end of March. The land 
worked down fine and firm, and was planted with mangolds 
on the 1st and 2nd of April, a mixture of 4 cwt. fish guano and 
2 cwt. Peruvian guano per acre being harrowed in on both fields. 
There was this difference in the result : the mangolds came up 
