574 
JOURNAL  OF  HORTICULTURE  AND  COTTAGE  GARDENER . 
December  28,  1899. 
plain  that  form  the  graves  of  their  brave  descendants.  Thank  God 
that  the  race  of  “  never  know  they  are  beaten  ”  Britishers  is  not  extinct. 
It  is  a  fearful  game,  this  of  war,  and  we  mourn  as  a  nation — not  with 
loud  outbursts  of  grief,  that  is  foreign  to  our  nature,  but  with  deep 
inward  lamentation.  In  the  midst  of  our  tears  we  remember  with 
exultation  the  marvellous  deeds  of  heroism  always  to  be  found  where 
the  fight  is  the  thickest  and  the  carnage  the  bloodiest. 
There  has  not  been  much  of  “Merry  Christmas”  about  our 
gatherings  this  year.  We  cannot  pass  quickly  from  the  grave  to  the 
gay.  All  we  can  do  is  to  pray  that  the  new  year  may  dawn  more 
hopefully,  and  that  the  sun  of  1900  may  not  set  in  seas  of  blood. 
We  had  a  wonderfully  mild  winter  and  spring.  The  bitterest 
weather  came,  as  it  often  does,  in  March,  but  happily  it  was  not  of 
long  duration.  The  great  drawback  of  the  year  has  been  lack  of 
moisture.  There  was  not  sufficient  winter  rain  to  set  the  springs 
fairly  agoing,  and  there  came  no  weight  of  April  showers,  and  none 
of  the  rainy  J une. 
We  did  enjoy  a  real  old-fashioned  summer — “  days  of  cloudless 
beauty.”  There  was  only  the  regret  (and  that  was  a  sincere  one), 
that  the  growing  crops  were  suffering.  It  seems  a  strange  state¬ 
ment  to  make,  but  there  would  be  some  late-sown  Barley  that  hardly 
knew  what  a  good  rain  meant  ;  there  would  be  passing  showers,  nice 
enough  in  their  way,  but  tantalising. 
The  hay  crop,  though  not  so  abundant  as  we  have  seen  it,  was 
good  ;  and  more  than  that,  all  of  it  was  got  in  first-rate  condition — no 
waste  anywhere — and  who  but  a  poor  farmer  can  fully  estimate  the 
value  of  a  really  good  haystack,  sound  and  sweet  as  a  nut,  with  all 
the  flavour  and  virtue  left  in  ?  It  goes  as  far  again  as  inferior  stuff, 
for  cattle  will  not  eat  any  sort  of  rubbish,  and  the  faulty  locks  are 
quietly  dropped  outside  the  manger,  and  soon  trodden  into  manure. 
Wheat  glories  in  warm  dry  weather,  and  consequently  Wheat  was 
the  cereal  crop  of  the  year.  There  is  no  pleasanter  sight  than  a  large 
field  of  Wheat,  bright  and  clean  and  upstanding,  gently  swaying  with 
the  breeze.  Every  ear  has  a  chance  of  properly  filling  when  it  can  get 
its  meed  of  air  aud  sunshine.  No  laid  crops  ever  arrive  at  perfect 
maturity;  there  may  be  a  big  yield,  but  the  quality  is  far  from 
first-rate. 
Barley  is  a  fickle  crop — it  needs  moisture  and  warm  weather  in  its 
earlier  stages,  a  little  rain  to  prevent  it  becoming  too  dry  and  flinty, 
but  no  heavy  soaking  ;  its  colouring  is  too  delicate  to  stand  a  drench¬ 
ing.  This  year  we  have  good  quality  and  pretty  colour,  and  some  of 
us  thought  we  were  going  to  make  a  pot  of  money ;  but,  alas  !  there 
has  been  little  or  no  demand  for  English  Barleys  among  the  great 
brewers,  and  we  are  in  despair.  It  appears  so  many  of  the  sorts  now 
universally  grown  do  not  meet  the  requirements  of  the  brewers  of 
the  finest  ales.  There  is  a  difficulty  about  the  keeping  qualities ; 
so  foreign  Barleys  are  taking  the  place  of  English  in  the  great  houses, 
and  the  lesser  are  using — well,  possibly  neither  English  nor  foreign 
Barley.  We  had  better  not  inquire  further. 
There  seemed  at  one  time  a  chance  that  Wheat  would  realise  a 
go M  price;  it  certainly  went  up  for  a  short  time,  but  soon  fell  back 
again.  We  never  could  see  why  the  rise  came.  Of  course  it  was 
attributed  to  the  war  cloud ;  but  why  a  war  in  South  Africa  should 
affect  the  Wheal  supplies  was  one  of  the  things  we  could  not  grasp. 
However,  a  war  scare  always  has  that  effect.  War  and  high  Wheat 
prices  always  run  together. 
If  Barley  suffered  from  drought,  what  about  the  Oats?  Well, 
their  case  was  very  bad.  On  any  moderate  land  they  hardly 
made  way  at  all.  To  compensate  for  small  quantity,  the  prices  rule 
fairly  high.  So  far  there  has  been  found  nothing  that  can  take  the 
place  of  the  Oat  as  the  best  food  for  the  best  class  of  horses.  There  is 
something  in  the  Oat  that  builds  up  bone  and  tissue,  and  leaves  no 
superfluous  fat.  We  do  cot  bill  and  dress  horses  yet,  and  the  fatty 
matter  is  much  in  the  way.  A  plump  sleek  horse  looks  well,  but  it 
is  not  fat  that  endures  a  long  hard  day  over  fallows  or  Leicestershire 
grass. 
As  to  the  Potato  crop,  not  only  was  there  insufficient  moisture, 
but  the  muggy  weather  of  September  and  October  induced  disease ; 
and  of  those  that  are  not  actually  diseased,  few  samples  use  really 
well.  They  are  not  keeping  well,  and  those  farmers  who  are  disposed 
to  hold  will  find  plenty  of  employment  for  more  hands  than  they  can 
raise  for  sorting  purposes.  Let  us  only  hope  our  markets  will  not  be 
flooded  by  Continental  consignments.  If  we  can  keep  them  away 
there  is  a  prospect  of  better  prices. 
Alas  for  the  poor  sheep  !  For  thirty  years  the  Turnip  crop  has 
not  been  so  bad — indeed,  we  might  almost  write  it  down  as  a  failure. 
We  kept  hoping  against  hope,  and  the  talk  at  the  market  ordinary  in 
summer  just  ran  in  one  groove.  “  Did  you  get  the  thunderstorm  of 
last  week  ?  How  much  longer  will  your  Turnips  hold  out  without 
rain  ?  ”  We  always  hope  that  September  may  mend  matters  ;  days 
ought  to  be  cooler,  rain  ought  to  come.  But  alas  !  it  did  not;  and 
what  should  be  useful  fields  of  Turnips  are  waste  howling  wilder¬ 
nesses.  What  is  to  become  of  the  flocks  of  sheep  ?  That  is  the 
question  of  the  day.  Many  will  find  an  untimely  end,  sacrificed 
because  they  will  not  pay  to  keep — indeed,  many  are  worth  no  more 
than  they  were  in  July. 
Good  often  arises  out  of  evil ;  in  all  probability  we  shall  hear 
of  few  losses  at  lambing  time.  It  is  excess  of  roots  that  plays 
havoc  with  breeding  ewes,  but  let  us  hope  they  will  be  well  kept  on 
some  good  dry  meat :  it  is  the  poorest  policy  in  the  world  to  starve  a 
breeding  ewe,  and  we  fear  it  is  done  very  much  more  than  people 
imagine.  If  the  cases  of  ill-luck  at  lambing  could  be  traced  to  their 
source,  a  large  percentage  would  be  found  to  arise  from  insufficient 
feeding  during  the  winter  months. 
If  it  is  “down  corn”  it  is  “ up  horn.”  Beef  pays  this  year,  and 
will  do.  Happy  is  that  man  who  has  a  yardful  of  stores  ready,  or 
thereabouts,  for  the  butcher.  We  have  been  trying  lately  the  foreign 
frozen  beef,  excellent  hot,  but  dull  eating  cold,  dry  and  juiceless.  We 
do  not  deny  it  must  be  an  immense  boon  to  the  man  of  limited  income, 
but  we  fear  we  have  been  bred  too  long  on  English-fed  to  take  kindly 
to  any  other.  It  holds  pretty  much  the  same  place  to  English  beef  as 
the  F rench  red-legged  partridge  to  the  denizen  of  our  hedgerows.  It 
does  not  take  an  epicure  to  tell  the  difference. 
There  is  one  question  that  threatens  to  become  cf  supreme  import¬ 
ance — the  labour  question.  Villages  are  decimated,  the  inhabitants 
flock  to  the  towns,  the  young  men  talk  of  enlisting,  the  old  of  the 
hardships  of  isolated  life.  There  has  been  the  greatest  difficulty  this 
Martinmas  in  securing  sufficient  young  men  to  live  in,  look  after 
the  horses,  and  the  only  married  men  available  are  those  whose 
families  are  too  big  to  admit  of  the  possibility  of  making  a  move. 
What  panacea  our  rulers  will  find  to  stop  the  depletion  of  the 
rural  districts  is  more  than  we  dare  imagine.  Practically  this  is  a 
greater  question  than  rents  or  rates,  tithes  or  prices— we  leave  it 
unsolved. 
WORK  ON  THE  HOME  FARM. 
Most  good  folks  are  holiday  making,  but  legal  holidays  are  no  holiday 
for  the  farmer.  True  these  short  days  curtail  his  working  hours,  but  he 
has  to  put  much  good  time  in  by  the  dim  light  of  candle  or  lamp. 
Any  ploughing  that  there  is  to  do  was  stopped  by  the  frost,  and  the 
work  of  the  trost  is,  in  its  way,  as  valuable  as  the  work  of  the  plough. 
This  comfortable  covering  of  snow  has  protected  most  effectually  what 
few  Turnips  there  are,  and  kept  them  from  getting  frozen  hard.  It  does  not, 
however,  pro'.ert  them  from  the  beak  of  the  wily  crow,  who  is  ever  on  the 
look  out  (or  something  to  eat.  We  should  not  grudge  him  one  or  two 
provided  he  finished  them  off  cleanly,  but  he  is  too  fond  of  sampling  and 
spoiling  all. 
If  there  are  any  compost  heaps  the  time  to  spread  them  on  grass 
is  when  the  ground  is  dry  and  hard,  that  is  if  there  are  hands  enough  to 
work  the  horses.  There  is  a  great  “if”  here,  and  the  labour  question 
is  a  most  serious  one  If  the  horses,  by  stress  of  weather  or  want  of 
men,  are  kept  much  in  the  stable,  they  need  less  hard  corn.  It  is  a 
most  advisable  thing,  we  might  say  a  real  necessity,  to  put  linseed  cake 
in  the  water  tub.  One  cake  per  horse  per  week  is  a  suitable  allowance, 
and  the  oil  acts  as  a  corrective  to  the  dry,  hard  food.  Let  the  farmer 
see  to  this  himself,  it  pays. 
There  are  hard-working  days  coming,  and  it  is  essential  that  the 
horses  be  in  good  condition  to  do  their  part.  They  cost  enough  in  their 
keep,  without  being  invalided  just  when  wanted. 
The  breeding  ewes  must  be  kept  in  fair  condition  ;  it  is  bad  policy  to 
let  them  run  down.  Good  B  irley  is  cheap,  and  therefore  a  little  can  be 
well  afforded  in  their  troughs. 
English  and  Canadian  Tukiceys. — Under  the  heading  of  “One 
of  the  Biggest  Thieves  in  Canada,”  the  following  paragraph  is  going  the 
rounds  of  the  press  “The  purchaser  of  a  turkey  bought  at  Blackburn 
on  Thursday  found  fastened  under  the  wing  the  following  message  from 
Ontario  :  ‘  Dear  Friend, — I  hope  you  will  enjoy  eating  this  turkey.  I  am 
sure  he  never  paid  for  his  raising,  for  he  was  one  of  the  biggest  thieves  in 
Canada.  He  is  fourteen  months  old,  weighs  35  lbs.,  and  we  sold  him  for 
2  dols.  60  cents.  Let  me  know  what  he  is  worth  in  England.’  The 
turkey  realised  in  Blackburn  22s.  8d  ”  This  seems  to  be  an  advance  on 
the  selling  price  of  about  12s.  Still,  as  the  big  bird  appears  to  have 
stolen  his  food  he  would  pay  very  well  even  at  3^d.  a  lb.  We  understand 
that  Mr.  E.  Molyneux  has  been  selling  turkeys,  27  lbs.  in  weight  at 
nine  months  old,  at,  we  suspect,  nearly  four  times  the  price  per  lb.  of  the 
Canadian  figures.  So  he  will  not  be  likely  to  migrate  to  the  colony  to 
rear  turkeys. 
