280 
JOURNAL  OF  NORTIGULTURE  AND  COTTAGE  GARDENER. 
Septembel*  16,  1S97. 
would  have  a  very  difficult  task  before  him.  We  are  not  told  one 
word  as  to  the  cost  of  production,  and  we  always  imagined  that  the 
cost  of  production  formed  the  basis  for  a  true  valuation.  Of  course, 
there  are  such  things  as  fancy  prices ;  but  these  are  just  now  beside 
the  question. 
An  Englishman  sets  down  first  his  rent,  and  greater  than  his 
rent,  his  labour  bill,  then  rates  and  taxes,  which  are  many  and 
heavy,  especially  if  he  should  happen  to  farm  within  the  boundaries 
of  an  urban  district.  We  know  several  cases  of  this  sort  where  the 
tenant  helps  to  pay  for,  but  does  not  participate  in,  the  luxuries 
supplied  to  his  town  brethren.  The  highway  rates  are  always  heavy 
— of  late  years  this  burden  has  increased — then  come  sanitary  rates, 
school  rates,  excessive  poor  rates,  and  in  many  parishes  certain  special 
rates  for  the  maintenance  of  dykes  and  strengthening  of  river  banks. 
All  this  takes  a  great  deal  of  capital,  and  these  ealls,  instead  of 
being  stationary,  are  always  growing.  Then  every  year  a  large 
amount  must  be  spent  on  artificial  foods  of  various  sorts,  if  we  would 
keep  our  stock  in  health  and  up  to  the  mark. 
The  bill  for  tillages,  perhaps,  is  not  exorbitant,  for  we  buy  care¬ 
fully,  and  on  analysis  only,  but  the  bill  is  there  [and  has  to  be  met,. 
Then  come  all  the  minor  expenses,  tradesmen’s  bills,  the  blacksmith, 
the  ironmonger  or  implement  maker,  the  wheelwright,  the  farrier, 
and  a  hundred  other  oddments  that  together  make  a  very  substantial 
total.  Then  a  certain  sum  a  year  must  be  written  off  for  wear  and 
tear  of  dead  stock,  and  no  farmer  gets  through  a  twelvemonth  without 
several  funerals,  and  usually’’  the  least  valuable  are  spared. 
All  these  items  have  to  be  taken  into  consideration  before  the  price 
of  one  single  commodity  can  be  adequately  fixed.  We  have  a  long 
time  been  doubtful  as  to  the  advantages  of  owning  land.  A  tenant 
farmer  gets  pulled  up  by  his  landlord  before  he  has  time  to  become 
absolutely  penniless.  An  owner  goes  on  from  bad  to  worse,  with  no 
remission  of  rent  to  help  a  bad  season — he  probably  over-estimates  the 
value  of  his  land,  and  only  awakes  to  the  true  state  of  affairs  when  he 
finds  himself  a  hopeless  bankrupt. 
Our  American  friend  says  “  three  parts  of  our  business  is  done  on 
credit,  the  remainder  on  borrowed  capital.”  He  gives  us  no  idea  of  the 
class  of  land  farmed,  no  idea  of  rent,  no  idea  of  taxes,  except  that  he 
states  they  are  increasing.  The  class  of  farmer  of  whom  he  speaks 
seems  to  be  on  a  par  with  our  50  and  100  acre  men,  for  he  says 
most  of  them  do  a  great  deal  of  their  own  work.  Were  the  holdings 
larger,  that  would  be  an  impossibility.  He  gives  no  wage  table,  no 
railway  rate  ;  but  from  his  figures,, living  must  be  very  cheap.  He 
says  the  average  Wheat  crop  is  13  bushels  per  acre.  Well,  all  we  can 
say  is,  either  the  land  is  very  poor  or  shockingly  farmed.  Such 
returns  would  break  the  Bank  of  England,  He  does  not  tell  us  the 
quantity  of  Maize  per  acre,  although  he  speaks  of  the  price  as  lid.  to 
Is.  per  bushel.  These  13  bushels  of  Wheat  per  acre  make  39s.,  and 
we  have  made  less  than  that  here,  but  we  do  not  go  on  sowing  such  a 
poor  paying  crop.  He  speaks  of  Strawberries  rotting  on  the  plants. 
Why  plant  them  so  far  from  a  market  ?  “Good  horses  from  £10  to 
£15.”  Well,  that  word  good  is  open  to  much  question,-  except  where 
English  sires  have  been  used.  The  American  horse  does  not  amount 
to  much.  “  Beef  2^d.  per  lb.  (dressed),  mutton  2^d.  lb.,  hog  (pig) 
2d.  lb.”  We  do  not  know  the  beef  and  mutton,  but  we  do  know  the 
hog  is  dear  at  2d. 
“Many  of  the  farmers  are  paying  interest  from  6  to  8  per  cent.” 
Well,  they  either  do  not  offer  very  good  security,  or  America  must  be 
an  El  Dorado  for  investors.  We  cannot  find  a  safe  investment  here 
paying  more  than  5  per  cent.  Certainly  the  Americans  can  teach  us 
one  good  lesson,  and  that  is  how  to  make  machinery  light  as  well 
as  strong.  ■  They  have  a  pull  there,  and  W’e  owe  them  a  great 
debt  for  handy  useful  implements,  easy  to  work  and  good  to  keep  in 
repair.  But  Ave  may  have  too  much  even  of  machinery,  as  many 
English  farmers  have  found  to  their  cost  this  autumn.  As  all  the 
corn  crops  were  fairly  even  and  level,  with  no  laid  places  or  twisted 
or  storm-broken  patches,  a  great  breadth  has  to  be  cut  .and  tied  by 
machinery.  All  w^ent  merry  as  a  wedding  bell  till  the  weather  broke. 
Ihe  farmer  had  been  congratulating  himself  on  the  saving  in  his 
labour  bill ;  but  when  ,  a  press  of  work  came,  when  the  bright 
harvesting  days  were  few,  where  w’ere  the  men  ?  No  machinery  can 
fork  into  waggons,  no  machinery  can  stack,  and  the  short-handed 
farmer  found  himself  involved  in  a  fearful  difficulty. 
In  this  uncertain  climate  it  will  always  be  a  case  of  men  and 
machinery — men  first.  To  put  the  matter  shortly,  the  American 
farmer  has  only  himself  to  thank  for  the  ruin  which  stares  him  in  the 
face.  The  majority  of  them  started  with  little  or  no  capital,  save  the 
capital  locked-up  in  a  virgin  soil.  That  soil  they  have  cropped  and 
cross-cropped,  in  defiance  of  every  known  rule  of  agriculture,  and  now 
they  find  the  land  no  longer  yields  her  increase. 
It  is  only  by  careful  rotation  of  crops,  by  constant  manuring  and 
first-rate  tilling  that  land  for  Wheat  groiving  can  be  kept  in  heart. 
We  have  learned  our  lesson  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  and  our  brethren 
are  learning  their  lesson  now.  By-and-by  the  world  will  need  all 
the  corn  land  there  is,  and  will  demand  that  such  land  be  treated  so 
as  to  yie|d  the  highest  possible  returns,  and  then  there  will  be  a 
chance  (and  not  till  then)  of  corn  growers  being  owners  of  a 
remunerative  crop.  Here,  in  the  old  country,  it  is  considered 
absolutely  necessary,  or  was  a  few  years  ago,  to  have  capital  at  the 
rate  of  £10  per  acre.  Have  our  American  friends  as  a  body  ever 
had  10s.  ?  We  fancy  not, 
WOKE  ON  THE  HOME  FAEM. 
Thatching  has  been  almost  completed  during  the  past  week,  but  the 
weather  has  been  so  bad  that  the  Barley  rakings  are  still  in  the  fields, 
and  likely  to  remain  there  unless  we  have  a  change.  They  are  seriously 
damaged,  but  having  all  the  sheaves  safely  stacked  we  must  not  grumble, 
but  be  thankful  we  have  done  so  well.  We  hear  very  bad  reports  of 
damage  done  to  grain  still  outstanding,  and  find  the  damage  much  more 
widespread  than  we  had  expected.  Having  measured  others’  good 
fortune  by  our  own,  we  are  sorry  to  discover  the  mistake,  and  trust  that 
a  spell  of  fine  weather  now  may  do  much  to  minimise  disastef. 
We  have  run  the  cultivator  through  the  stubbles,  but  the  weather  has 
been  much  too  wet  to  do  anything  else  there,  but  ley  is  now  ploughing 
well,  so  there  is  plenty  of  work  for  the  horses. 
Two  days’  threshing  have  given  us  a  fair  idea  of  what  harvest  results 
are  likely  to  be.  Wheat,  as  we  have  stated  before,  is  a  fair  yield,  and  the 
quality  is  good.  Barley  thrashes  smaller  even  than  was  anticipated,  and 
the  portion  of  tail  corn  is  large.  Colour  is  very  good,  but  we  suppose 
the  maltster  will  want  size  tnis  year  ;  he  always  asks  for  that  which  the 
farmer  has  not  got  to  offer. 
Midseason  Fotatoes  are  being  marketed.  They  are  a  light  crop,  and 
though  meeting  a  better  demand  than  usual  at  this  season  they  are  not 
making  much  per  acre.  The  late  kinds  are  making  second  growth,  and 
are,  in  fact,  almost  in  full  flower.  This  will  mean  a  much  increased  crop, 
but  deterioration  in  quality  and  a  late  Potato  harvest,  which  is  invariably 
an  expensive,  one. 
Ewes  have  now  been  running  with  the  ram  some  time  where  early 
lambs  are  wished  for,  and  farmers  are  generally  putting  them  together. 
Hedges  about  home,  if  not  trimmed  before  harvest,  should  be  attended  to 
now  before  the  extra  hands  are  paid  off ;  there  is  always  plenty  of  work 
for  the  regular  men  during  the  winter  at  scotching  and  plashing. 
This  is  a  good  time  to  paint  or  tar  gates  and  fences. 
METEOHOLOGICAL  OBSERVATIONS. 
Camden  Square,  London. 
Lat.  51°  32'  40"  N. ;  Long.  0°  8'  0"  W. ;  Altitude  111  feet. 
DATE. 
9  A.M. 
In  thb  Day. 
1897. 
2 
OJ  (fl  > 
Hygrometer. 
Direc¬ 
tion  of 
Temp, 
of  foil 
at 
1  foot. 
Shade  Tem¬ 
perature. 
Radiation 
Temperature 
Bain. 
September 
3m  CO  as 
OS  49  « 
CQ  dCQ 
Dry. 
Wet. 
Wind. 
Max. 
Min. 
In 
Sun. 
On 
Q-raae. 
Sunday  .. .. 
5 
Inohs. 
S0'006 
deg. 
63-2 
deg, 
52.4 
S.W. 
deg. 
65-1 
deg. 
60-5 
deg. 
44-9 
deg. 
68-1 
deg. 
41-3 
Inch*. 
0-363 
Monday  .... 
6 
29-814 
68-2 
64-6 
w. 
55  9 
65-9 
63-2 
104-9 
52-1 
— 
Tuesday .... 
7 
30-013 
66-2 
62-7 
N.W. 
55-9 
64-3 
47-0 
110'5 
44-0 
— 
Wednesday 
8 
29  968 
64-5 
61-8 
n. 
56-2 
60-4 
48  3 
84-9 
45-1 
0-149 
Thursday  . . 
9 
29994 
61-3 
60-3 
N.E. 
58-0 
62-0 
51-0 
103-7 
510 
— 
Friday  .... 
10 
30-269 
57-2 
50  9 
N.B. 
54-8 
65-4 
42-4 
111-6 
36-8 
— 
Saturday  . . 
11 
30-413 
56-1 
6J-9 
N.B. 
54-4 
67-1 
44-3 
108-4 
39-8 
— 
30-068 
55-2 
62-2 
55  5 
63  7 
47-3 
989 
44'3 
0-512 
REMARKS. 
6th.— Rain  early  hours  up  to  noon,  and  again  from  6.30  to  7.30  P.M. ;  dull,  damp,  and 
cold  all  day. 
6th. — Morning  fair,  and  afternoon  bright. 
7th  —  Bright  early  and  up  to  noon ;  cloudy  till  4  P.M.,  and  sunny  after. 
8th.— Overcast  early ;  generally  sunny  morning ;  overcast  from  about  noon,  and  rain 
at  uight. 
9th.— Rain  early  ;  dull  till  10,30  A.M. ;  afterward*  alternate  sun  and  cloud  ;  bright  at 
night. 
10th. — Bright  and  sunny  all  day,  flue  night. 
11th. — Pine  morning  ;  dull  about  noon;  fair  afternoon,  and  fine  night. 
Much  finer  than  the  previous  weeks,  and  also  cooler.— G.  J.  SVMONS. 
