The Past Agricultural Year. 
221 
inferior in quality, and damaged after cutting by continued 
rains. Wheat is 25 per cent, less than the average of the last 
thirty years, and of indifferent quality. Beans are a failure, and 
peas planted after them are only half a crop. 
" Enough of complaining ; there is a somewhat brighter side 
to the picture, and it must be shown. 
" 1. The one field of mangolds produced 40 tons per acre, the 
other, of mangolds and swedes mixed, 32 tons per acre. 
" 2. It has been said that the field of cabbages — 16 acres — 
was sold at a high price ; it may be added that after cabbages 
the same field produced 8 acres of cauliflowers, 5 acres of cab- 
bages again, and 3 acres of cabbage-plants ; all of which also 
were sold at satisfactory prices ; leading, with other considera- 
tions, to this conclusion — that where soil and situation enable 
us to do so with advantage, the old routine or course of crop- 
ping should be given up, growing instead anything that will 
pay. On this farm the production of vegetables and fruit has 
been increasing. Some ten years since, 80 acres of land were 
added to it, of which 25 acres were in tillage. Twenty acres 
were at once planted with fruit-trees, apples, and plums, and the 
whole 25 acres laid down to grass. Pasture and trees are doing 
well, thanks to folding twice a year by sheep eating oil-cake, 
corn, and roots. Five acres of poor clay-land have been given 
up this winter to plum-trees and black currants. The field 
upon which the early cabbages were grown last year will now 
be sown with peas of one of the most popular kinds, with a view 
to selling green if a satisfactory price can be obtained ; if not, 
they will be harvested, in the hope of finding purchasers next 
year at one-half the price (32s. per bushel) now paid for the 
seed. With regard to the arable land generally, it seems 
desirable upon this farm to ignore all system, using the small 
portion of light land mainly for the growth of vegetables and 
seeds to sell, and roots for sheep, with occasional crops of corn, 
making the best clays grow corn more frequently, and leaving 
the worst two years in grass instead of one. 
" And, to complete this brighter side of the picture, the 
sheep are sound. They have been, as usual, between hurdles all 
the year, having an allowance of dry food, with access at all 
times to salt. That this is a preventive to the rot would appear 
Irom the following instance of immunity from it on very dan- 
gerous land. In September last, when culling out the breeding- 
ewes intended for sale, twelve were found which, for various 
reasons, were unfit to breed from, with a view to ascertain 
whether with dry food — clover-chaff, oil-cake, and maize, with 
salt — they would take the rot upon land where, without such 
food, they certainly would not escape it. They were at once put 
