Ohiluari;. 
181 
In 1860, he sold a property that he had inherited from" his uncle, 
and bought Cassencary, in Kirkcudbrightshire, though he never 
farmed there. When his lease of Baldoon came to an end in 1865, 
his farming operations were confined to Langley Park. When that 
lease also expired in 1870, he took a lease of the Northbrook farms 
at Micheldever for his eldest son, Mr. J. A. Caird, and farmed 
there for some time, retaining a share in them until a few years 
ago. Thus he was always practically engaged in agriculture, whicli 
gave to his writings and utterances on the subject a greatly 
enhanced value. He liked nothing better than a day’s farming, and 
was, until quite recently, a great walker. He would tramp from 
field to field of his estate, noting the results of the various manures 
and croppings ; and there was hardly a point of agricultural practice 
on which he could not give an opinion from his own long and varied 
experience. 
Sir James’s contributions to agricultural literature were many 
and important. In addition to his early writings and reports already 
referred to, he wrote in 1859, after a visit to the United States, a 
book on “ Prairie Farming in America ; ” in 1 868 two papers by him 
“ On the Food of the People,” read before the Statistical Society, 
attracted much attention ; in 1869, after a second visit to Ireland, he 
wrote a pamphlet on the Irish Land Question ; and in 1883, after his 
tour in India as a member of the Famine Commission, he published 
“ India, the Land and the People,” which had a considerable circu- 
lation. 
But it will hardly be too much to claim for this Journal that 
the most historically important and valuable of Sir James’s literary 
labours appeared in its pages. No one who had not had his 
unique experience as a practical agriculturist and as a man of afiairs 
could have written with so much authority and completeness the two 
articles on the “General View of British Agriculture,” and on 
“ Fifty Years’ Progress,” which appeared in the numbers of the 
Journal for October 1878 and March 1891 respectively. In the first 
paper (subsequently republished in a separate form under the title 
of “The Landed Interest,” and translated into both French and 
German), Sir James gave a lucid and comprehensive description of 
the present state of agriculture in the United Kingdom, for the in- 
formation of the Agricultural Congress which met at Paris during 
the International Exhibition of 1878. The paper discussed our 
home and foreign supplies of food ; the changes and progress in agri- 
culture in recent years ; our soil, climate, and crops ; the distribu- 
tion of landed property ; the relations of landowner, farmer, and 
labourer ; land improvement ; the varying values of land ; the 
Government in its connection with agriculture ; and many other 
kindred subjects. The second paper was contributed to the first 
number of the new Quarterly Series of the Journal at a moment 
when the Society had just completed its fiftieth year of corporate 
existence, and it contained a concise general survey of the 
changes which had taken place in the farming conditions of the 
country during the half-century of the Society’s life. These papers, 
