86 
Pleasure Farming. 
recognised fact, although one not to be exaggerated in import- 
ance, that a good many persons who fill up their agricultural 
returns every June are holding land only as an incident 
of their residence. Until we can get some reasonable amend- 
ment of our census classification — such as Germany, for 
example, possesses — we shall not know with any precision 
what are the various businesses other than agricultural which 
our land occupiers pursue. But till that day arrives, a minor 
degree of interest attaches to the somewhat unusual investi- 
gation the Board of Agriculture has embarked on last year in 
asking the occupiers of Great Britain, by way of postscript to 
their statement of crops and stock, to indicate the cases where 
their farming operations were carried on for other than 
business purposes. It may be confessed that the occupier 
confronted with this query may often have had some difficulty in 
logically deciding where farming for profit, and the receipt of 
income however small, ceased, and where amateur farming or 
the use of land for pleasure or residential amenity began. But 
partial as this inquii-y is, it is not without interest to learn 
from the Agricultural Returns for 1907, that 5^ per cent, of 
the holdings over an acre recorded in Great Britain were not, 
in the opinion of their occupiers, “ farmed for business.” Of 
the 28,403 persons out of 510,954 so classifying themselves as 
amateurs in agriculture, 24,224 are met with in England alone. 
Only about 2 per cent, of the holdings in Scotland are shown 
here as pleasure farms. Were the acreage rather than the 
number shown, the small area thus occupied would be more 
evident. Holdings of over fifty acres are accounted for as 
pleasure farms only in comparatively rare instances — although 
there are apparently 2,635 such farms shown in the returns. 
Non-business holdings are much more numerous in the smaller 
grades, and, as would be expected, the Home Counties generally 
are most prominent in “ pleasure farming.” One-fourth of the 
Surrey occupiers and one-fifth of those of Middlesex are of 
this type, while half of the very small number of agricultural 
holdings lying actually within the County of London are so 
classed. 
CO-OPERATION AND AGRICULTURAL 
CREDIT. 
Among the distinctive movements of a practical and non- 
political character which have distinguished the past agricultural 
year must be placed the further development of the practice of 
co-operation in England. Not only are new local societies 
gradually coming into being, but the lesson of organisation 
