Farm-Prize Competition^ 1880. 
491 
ending 1879. A glance at this Table will, I think, reveal 
some useful information. It will be noticed in the column of 
corn-crops that their cultivation has seriously declined, and that 
this decline has been steadily progressing through the whole 
period ; so that in 1879, 25,000 acres less of cereals were grown 
in the two counties than in 1870. During the same period the 
acreage of green crops appears to have remained pretty nearly 
stationary, but tlie acreage of rotation-grasses shows an equal 
decrease to that of corn. 
In 1870, the percentage of land under rotation-grasses was 
kigher in Cumberland than in any county in England with the 
exception of Cornwall, viz. 12"06 per cent. These rotation- 
grasses have, however, now given way to permanent pasture to a 
considerable extent, as is evidenced by the increased area of 
the latter, which had risen from 23'07 per cent, in 1870 to 
33*1 in 1879 ; an increase not equalled by any county but 
Monmouth. 
Indeed, a glance at the line devoted to permanent pasture 
shows how much the tendency must recently have grown to 
throw aside the plough. When it is observed that these two 
€»unties in the ten years ending 1879 had thrown about 
123,000 acres into permanent pasture (presumably land which 
liad previously been cropped), we have an evidence of the 
silent working of economical laws and forces, and of their 
influence on the agriculture of our land. 
But such changes as those indicated could scarcely have taken 
place in regions less adapted by Nature for pastoral husbandry, 
and this leads me to devote a few words to the climate of the 
district. 
It is well known that a portion of the Lake district has the 
perhaps unenviable notoriety of receiving a larger amount of 
rainfall than any other part of Great Britain, or even of Europe ; 
bnt the prodigious torrents which are precipitated over some of 
the central masses of these mountains seldom extend beyond 
their flanks, and as far as the rainfall of the whole district is 
concerned, it will be seen from the Table which I have drawn up 
on page 492, that in the larger part of it it is by no means ex- 
cessive. It will be noticed, however, that it has this character- 
istic — even at Carlisle, which gives a smaller average than any 
of the places tabulated — that the rainfall never drops to the 
level of the droughts which occasionally afflict the midland and 
eastern counties, whilst its maximum limit (at least in the 20 
jears named) has not equalled the fall in many less purely 
pastoral districts in England. 
The seven rainfall stations given in the upper part of the 
Table, viz. Carlisle, Silloth, Cockermouth, Braystones, Penrith, 
