The Past Agricultural Year. 
241 
-of good clay f.irms on wliicli the yield of all kinds of corn is put at less than 
one quarter per acre. Meadows near the Thames were in many instances 
tlooded to such an extent that portions of the crop which had been cut wore 
-carried away or completely spoiled, while other portions, varying from 2 or 3 
to 50 or 60 acres on a single farm were left uncut. 
The fruit-crop has proved a very bad one. Altogether the season has been 
most disastrous to the English farmer ; a result due, I believe, to the special 
■character of the weather we have experienced, viz. excessive rain and the 
absence of sunshine. 
W. BULSTRODE. 
Buckinghamshire. — Woohton, near Bletcliley. 
For over forty years my regular practice has been to winter my ewe flock 
by a run in the grass-field in the daytime, and folding them in the yard at 
night, feeding them in cribs with bean-straw. They had always done well, 
giving a good healthy lot of lambs. In the autumn of 1878 my ewes were 
•imusually strong ; and I treated them in every respect as I had done in former 
jears. They remained healthy and strong throughout the winter, yet they 
gave me a poor fall of lambs — 20 per cent, either dead, or so weak that they 
•could not live, and 80 per cent, that did live were unusually weak, and did not 
do well till I had weaned them. The weakness of the lambs must have been 
■caused by the cold winter ; but why it should have been so I cannot under- 
stand, for the ewes came out strong at lambing time, with a full supply of 
milk about them. My tegs that I \A\i upon swedes, cake, corn, and hay for 
the winter suffered by cold the most, for 1 lost some 10 per cent, of them by 
inflammation of the lungs. I lost by the same cause only 1 per cent, of my 
ewe-tegs that are kept for stores ; they lay all through the winter in the grass- 
fields, receiving ^ pint maize daily, and some hay when the ground was 
covered by snow. All that was the matter with my sheep through the winter 
was inflammation of the lungs, and the curious fact is that the ewe-tegs that 
were left in the field to take care of themselves suffered the least. 
I have no fallow, my land being now all seeded down for permanent pasture. 
William Smith. 
North Norfolk. — North Walsham. 
1. Live-stock. — Our farm contains between five and six hundred acres arable. 
We farm under no particular course, but grow from one-fourth to one-fifth of 
our land with roots, part mangold and part swedes. No sheep are bred, and 
but few kept, the soil being more adapted for cattle-feeding, carrying about 
200 head between the autumn and spring, fattened for the London and local 
markets. Our experience of the two past seasons has been anything but 
pleasant or profitable. Our cattle retained their health through the winter ; 
but, although fed extravagantly high through winter, they fattened very slowly. 
This we attributed to the inclemency of the weather and the want of more 
I shelter, our yards being too large in proportion to the sheds, causing a further 
[ loss in straw for bedding, and a still greater one in the destruction of manure, 
1 the continued rains and snow washing away its more fertilising ingredients. 
I We are now building more shedding, indeed covering in the greater jjortion of 
; the yards, to prevent a repetition of this loss, which we believe, during the 
past three seasons, has more than equalled the cost of the buildings now in 
hand. 
2. Crops. — We had a good crop of corn in 1878, and secured the greater 
VOL. XVI. — S. S. R 
