The Past Agricultural Year. 
contrasted, he replies, " I cannot help you. The wet, cold season 
has told on all land — clay (drained and undrained), gravel,^ 
sand, and chalk — alike. Strange to say, some dry lands seem 
to have suffered more, especially in quality of both wheat and 
barley, than heavy clays. Grass-land farmers are not much 
better off. Feeding, dairying, and young cattle have all done 
badly. Sheep almost everywhere are more or less affected by 
the rot." If any lessons at all can be gathered, they are, a& 
regards the winter and early spring months, in the words of a 
Lanarkshire correspondent (1), early and comfortable housing 
of all cattle on the farm ; and (2) early securing and storing 
all green crops before winter against loss, however promising^ 
the season may appear to be. The advantages of covered yards 
for stock, and of energy and activity at harvest-time whether of 
corn or roots, are undoubtedly among the experiences of the 
period we h<ave passed through. And, as to land drainage, 
whether an overwhelming and continuous downfall of rain has- 
or has not made clay-land — drained and undrained alike — 
equally unmanageable and unproductive during 1879, we are 
not likely any the more to lose our confidence in it as a neces- 
sary first step to good and economical management, whether of 
soil or manure, in all ordinary seasons. 
The two principal lessons of the year appear to me to be 
represented best of all in the letters from Mr. C. Randell, of 
Evesham, and Mr. G. Brown, of Watten ; and they point 
to liberty of action, as affording at once the opportunity and 
the stimulus of the tenant-farmer in all cases of unusual difficulty, 
whether due to weather or to markets or disease. Mr. Randell 
in particular advocates liberty for the cultivator to choose what 
crops he shall grow and how he shall dispose of them ; and 
Mr. Brown gives an admirable example of what activity and 
resolution may accomplish in the circumstance of a most 
difficult harvest-time. 
I cannot do better, in conclusion, than recommend any one 
who may have followed these pages hitherto, to turn back to 
the beginning and read once more the communications from 
Mr. Randell and Mr. Brown, which head the long series of in- 
structive and valuable reports of which this paper for the most 
part consists.* 
* It is hardly fair to the hay- and corn-drying machine of Mr. W. A. Gibbs, of 
Gillwell Park, Chingford, Essex, which he has been for many years urging on 
the attention of the farmer, that this reference to its efficacy, as one of the lessons 
of the season, should be placed only as a footnote to a page. It will, however, 
perhaps be more likely to catch the eye by its separate position here. And it is 
very desirable that it should not be passed over. A model was exhibited at 
Kilburn, and the machine itself was shown in operation not far from the Show- 
yard. There is now ample testimony to its efficiency, and, though I cannot yet 
speak from personal experience, there seems to me no reason now to doubt that 
