Farm-Prize Competition, 1880. 
495 
rock. As the cLay or the sand predominates, it f(^ms the wheat 
or the barley-soils, if the elevation suit those crops ; but at the 
higher levels, where the cultivation of wheat ceases or is pre- 
carious, these variations of subsoil, in connection with the depth 
and kind of soil, form the gradations of the different qualities of 
the upper and inferior grass-lands."* 
But there are other points in connection with the farming of 
these counties which at the present time should engage the 
attention of the agricultural world. I do not believe a district 
in England could be selected where farmers and landlords have 
been so little "hit" by the prevailing "agricultural depres- 
sion " of the last few years as the counties of Cumberland and 
Westmoreland. And this leads me to notice a few of the pecu- 
liarities of farm management and country life. 
Nothing perhaps strikes a traveller from the southern counties 
more, when visiting the farms of the north, than the contrast 
which the homesteads of the one offer to those of the other. 
That snugness and air of comfort which he has been wont to 
associate with the very name of " farm " in the south is rarely 
found in Cumberland or Westmoreland. The neat trim garden, 
the sheltering trees, the cosy buildings which often lend them- 
selves to picturesque treatment, the comfortable yards with 
cattle ruminating in the clean straw ; these are objects which 
the eye in vain seeks in these counties. Instead of these 
delightful pictures, which have reconciled many a man to an 
unprofitable pursuit, an aspect at once gaunt and dreary is 
imparted to many of the houses by the absence of all attempt to 
render them attractive in appearance. A stone-built dwelling, 
covered with whitewash and roofed with the grey slate of the 
district, with scarcely a patch of garden, and that neglected and 
desolate, with the midden-stead or " dung-heap " crowding 
itself almost upon the very door-step, and with the cattle all 
kept in close byres and stables ; these are some of the features 
of most Cumberland and Westmoreland farms ; and they offer 
a contrast to the southern districts which does not, it must be 
admitted, give them any advantage over those parts. 
Moreover, the byres, when visited, intensify the comparison. 
In many of these the scarcity of straw does not permit its use 
for anything but feeding purposes, and the poor animals stand 
on bare boards, or a stone floor, with a gutter behind their heels, 
from which their excrements are cleared night and morning in 
a perfectly unadulterated state. Much praise cannot generally 
* I am sure I shall be doing good service to the readers of this report by 
referring them back to the a(hnirable paper alluded to for an immense amount of 
usefid information, on which it is my province only to touch occasionally iu my 
descriptions of the competing farms. 
