248 jf7ie Evolution of Agricultural Implements, 
In the best examples of these machines, two masticating 
cylinders, each consisting of a series of saw-like discs, separated 
by washers, work into each other so closely that the prickles 
of the gorse cannot escape between them. This mill, already 
in extensive use, ought to encourage the growth of gorse on 
such tracts of land as are incapable of supporting other crops, 
the butchers’ meat and dairy produce of gorse-fed animals being 
of superior quality. 
Class VI. — Dairying Appliances, 
British Dairying, like British Milling, is just now under- 
going certain revolutionary changes, of which, interesting as 
they are, it would be impossible to give any adequate account 
in an essay not specially devoted to the subject. In the matter 
of daily ing, too, agricultural and mechanical considerations are 
so inextricably mixed up, that to attempt an exhaustive account 
of dairy appliances, without lengthened reference to the agricul- 
tural conditions with which they are correlated, would render 
such descriptions unsatisfactory and even unintelligible. All 
that can be done, under these circumstances, is to indicate 
the character of the revolution in question, and to name, 
without describing in detail, the instruments by which it is 
being carried out. 
Twenty-five years ago, hardly any foreign butter or cheese 
was imported into this country, but not a hundredth part of the 
butter eaten in London is now of British origin. Great Britain, 
indeed, buys yearly 16,000, OOOL worth of butter and cheese 
from the foreigner, having lost a trade during the period in 
question which is nearly equal to half her cotton imports. 
Nor is the reason of this lapse very far to seek. The attention 
of British breeders for many years past has been almost exclu- 
sively given to the improvement of meat-yielding animals, while 
the improvement of the milch cow has been correspondingly 
neglected. In the endeavour to produce beef commanding high 
prices, dairy produce has been considered a matter of minor 
importance, and the foreigner has thus gained a footing in 
our markets from which he might easily have been excluded if 
breeding for milk, instead of for meat, had been the order of the 
day among English farmers during the last quarter of a century. 
Now, however, when beef is landed as cheaply as it is grown 
in England, the farmer has begun to realise that a wide field 
is open to the dairy-farmer, and to ask the breeder on the 
one hand, and the mechanician on the other, for assistance in 
cultivating it. 
