STALL-FEEDING. 
415 
them. 5th. A quicker return upon your capital in consequence of 
the less time an animal will require to fatten when the food is 
brought to it, compared with the time necessary for that purpose 
where it has to gather its food in the fields. 
Now, almost any one of these advantages — and they might be 
still further multiplied — would be sufficient, one would think, to 
induce every farmer to try the experiment upon a small scale, and 
it is upon a small scale only that we would recommend experiments 
in agriculture to be tried ; but the experiments should be repeated 
for at least four years, and not less than three failures ought to 
occur before any agricultural experiment be deemed not to have 
succeeded. 
If our readers be induced to try the experiment of stall-feeding 
on a small scale and in the ordinary and long accustomed method, 
we do not hesitate to say that they will soon become stall-feeders 
upon a large scale, and with all the improvements with which 
modern skill has invested the subject. 
We have no fear that, where ten beasts are subjected to the 
system this year, next year twenty beasts will be tied up, and the 
food will be rye-grass, grown — -forced would be a better word — 
upon the system of Mr. Dickinson, of Curzon-street, May-fair. 
We well remember the excitement this gentleman created at the 
meeting of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society at Beverley, in 1845, 
when he stated that he had grown eight or ten crops of rye-grass on 
the same land in one season, and when he produced, as a sample 
of his fourth cutting of that year, a bundle of grass then measuring 
from three to four feet in length. We well remember this, and we 
remember also the incredulity with which his statements were 
received. There was, however, upon the face of Mr. D.’s state- 
ment so much candour, and the evidence of the bundle of grass was 
so palpable, that, astounding as his statements were, there was 
nothing left for those who gave any consideration to the subject 
but to believe that which he had asserted, and to give him the 
credit, certainly his due, of having turned over a new leaf in the 
history of agriculture, and of having discovered a method of culti- 
vating rye-grass infinitely superior to any thing heretofore known. 
We have recently had the opportunity of inspecting Mr. Dickin- 
son’s modus operandi ; we have seen and satisfied ourselves that 
at this moment (May 22) his second crop of grass is ready for the 
scythe, even before the first is consumed ; — we have seen of how 
much value to him 24 hours are in the growth of his crop — and 
we have learnt how by a succession of experiments, minute and 
inexpensive it is true, but not therefore the less important, he has 
arrived at the conclusion he has, and to which he is fast bringing 
the many, very many practical agriculturists of all grades, who 
