on "Early Fattening of Cattle and Sheep," we read :— "Such additions to knowledge have effected the stockfeeding of the whole country. Except in the case of mountain sheep, and of cattle as slow, the ripe three-yearold wethers and oxen of the old school are no longer met with at market. Quite recently the fat-stock clubs have been compelled to re-cast their prize lists, so as to meet the requirements of the times. The Smithfield Club admitted lambs to the competitive classes in 1875, and on several subsequent occasions the champion prize offered for the best pen of three sheep of any class has been won by lambs-in 1884, by Southdown lambs which, at ten months old, had gained 61 lb. a day, or 183 lbs. of live weight, yielding probably sixty per cent. of carcase, or 13 stone 5 lbs. each. Mr. de Mornay's three Hampshire prize-winning lambs in 1877 weighed, when dead, seventeen and a half stone each; and one of his lambs has scaled, when dead, eighteen and a half stone at ten months old. The same club established young classes for bullocks in 1880, having previously, in 1870, restricted the champion prize for sheep to one-year-old sheep, i.e. under twenty-three months in December."

The altered practice of the Hampshire breeding district has necessarily increased the difficulty of obtaining store sheep on the feeding farms elsewhere, and this has occasioned a very desirable change of management, which has been much discussed in the agricultural press for several years past. It is now seen that no reason exists why the breeding of sheep should be confined within such strict limits. Those farmers who have not hitherto practised sheep breeding will learn the art. They will learn to rely less on their corn crops, and they will sow a larger proportion of forage crops, in accordance with the practice already adopted by leading agricul

turists. It is generally admitted that a change of this sort-a revolution, in fact-will prove highly advantageous. It will obviate the transit of animals from one part of the country to another; check the dissemination of disease, lessen the number of dealers and middlemen, and diminish the risks and costs of those great autumnal purchases which have hitherto been made. It will be seen that the revolution now in progress is closely connected with early maturity. Even on Surrey sand farms, where breeding was once regarded as impracticable, animals are now bred and fattened young. Summering is the difficulty on light land farms, where the pastures are few; but by the plan of early fattening, one year's summer feeding is avoided. The cattle are always fat, and always ready for market, to which they may be consigned at any age between fourteen and twenty months old, according to weather and food supply, and other circumstances. The new system, therefore, and the extended use of forage crops, admits of a plan of intensive farming, which, among other advantages, fertilises the land liberally, and lessens that rather abject reliance on corn crops, which has proved ruinous to many farmers within the past twenty years.

These then are some of the reasons why the future of agriculture mainly depends on the extension of skilful stock farming, the improvement of breeds, and the earlier fattening of cattle and sheep.

HENRY EVershed.

CHAPTER XLVII.

IMPROVEMENT OF CROPS AND STOCK.

BY HENRY EVERSHED,

The well-known Author of various articles, papers, and pamphlets on Agricultural Crops, Stock, &c., in the "Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England," the Agricultural Newspapers, Reviews, &c.

THE improvement of any one of the plants or animals of the farm implies the production of an increased amount of food from the soil, and every one of our vast commercial interests is therefore directly concerned in the improvement of crops and stock. The methods of effecting such improvements are various, but so far as our general subject is concerned, it may be confidently stated that all well-directed efforts in this direction have always been rewarded, and that the field is by no means exhausted. All improvers, from Ceres, the legendary ennobler of corn, to the latest hybridiser and selector, or from the first tamer of the wild ox to the modern breeder, have deserved honour as public benefactors.

A sketch of the early history of improvement would involve an inquiry into the origin of domesticated animals and plants, far too lengthened for these pages. It must suffice to say here that in modern times every animal and plant used for food has been closely questioned as to its origin, and although we cannot enter into the early and often legendary history of those improvements of animals and plants, to which we owe our modern short

horns and southdowns, our wheat, barley, cabbages, swedes and turnips, we may refer the student interested in those matters to such works as Darwin's "Animals and Plants under Domestication," Victor Hehn's "Wanderings of Plants and Animals" (Sonnenschein & Co.), and De Candolle's "Origin of Plants and Animals " (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.)

In "Cultivated Plants, their Propagation and Improvement," Mr. F. W. Burbidge has described the various methods of hybridising, cross-breeding and selection, which have, in recent times, produced such marvellous results, especially in the department of horticulture. Mr. Burbidge says comparatively little about the plants of the farm, for the simple reason that they have at present received far less attention at the hands of improvers than the plants of horticulture. Hundreds of eager enthusiasts have manipulated the latter, while the former have been neglected. There is not a fruit in the garden, from the pine-apple to the gooseberry, that has not been largely modified and substantially improved. Quite recently a gooseberry has been produced which may be put on the market a week earlier than any other sort. It is notorious how very advantageously T. A. Knight modified the garden pea of the last century, as the late Mr. Rivers and others have done the apple, pear, plum and peach. Our great seedsmen, nurserymen and florists employ an army of experts who are continually engaged in all those interesting operations by which plants may be "improved," and rival exhibitors at the shows, where their excellence is tested, left a little in the Even the blackberry has been taken in hand, so that a fruit which most persons well remember as consisting chiefly of pips, has assumed a sweetness and size resembling that of the raspberry. In a seedsman's trial

rear.

grounds might be counted last summer four hundred plots devoted to as many varieties, or so-called varieties, of the potato. The maxim of the great firms seems to be, "Try everything; hold fast that which is good." In Messrs. Carter's nursery at Forest Hill, we were shown a giant pea, seven and a-half feet high, growing side by side with a dwarf two feet high, and these extremes of habit were produced solely by art, and we may add, too, that although the dwarf has short haulm, its pods and the peas within are of the large marrowfat type. In horticulture there is absolutely no limit to the modifications of form, flavour, size, period of maturity, and colour, which time and skill may attain to. At the flower-seed farm at St. Osyth you may see an acre of the Tom Thumb tropæolum, all ablaze with scarlet blossoms, and hardly a leaf to be distinguished among the mass of blossoms certainly a striking contrast to the unmodified nasturtium of thirty years ago, which was little better than a tangled jungle of leaves and straggling stems, with few blossoms. Scores of other flowers might be named, all of them amazingly improved.

In the kitchen garden, the lettuce has been strangely modified, and its usefulness much increased. Formerly the forms of lettuce were few and they remained in season only a short time. The other day sixty-five varieties were counted in a seedsman's garden, and the different sorts, early and late, from little Tom Thumb up to champion mammoth and long cos, supply lettuces from spring to autumn. For some years past a skilful horticulturist has had the tomato under his care, and he has marvellously improved it by cross-breeding, followed up by selection. As an example of what may be effected by selecting for early maturity year after year, his earliest sort ripened on August 8th, while a late sort, grown next