I will first notice the Stable or Shelter. Upon this point great difference of opinion exists amongst the best practical farmers. Unquestionably, if a horse is kept in a warm stable, he consumes less food; but then he is more liable to colds, and subsequent inflammations, from exposure to the variations and inclemencies of the weather in this fickle climate of ours: whereas, by being fed in a comfortable stable or shed, and having the run of a warm well-sheltered yard, he is kept in a more hardy state throughout the winter or cold weather; and in summer, the cool grass-field or the shaded yard is far more healthy after a heated day's work, and of course much to be preferred to the hot, close stable, however freely ventilated it may be from above, as the exposure to draughts of air from below ought most certainly to

be avoided.

On farms having a deficiency of grass-lands, I should advocate the turning of the cart-horses, after their day's work, during the hot months of summer, into a cool paddock, there to be supplied with artificial grasses, after their usual feeding. The great aim should be to keep them in an equable, healthy state; and the best judgment of the farmer will be constantly required, to provide such food and shelter at the return of the various seasons as tend best to secure such a desirable end.

The most important part of the subject is the Feeding and Food of the Farm Horses in the different seasons of the year. Farmers perhaps err more upon this point than any other, and in a great degree from their inability, on many farms, to control ignorant or headstrong farm-servants, to whom much of the produce of the farm is frequently open, the waste of food and the irregularity of management often trying the temper of the most hearty and good-natured master. Before proceeding, I give the following extract. Spooner says: "The stomach of the horse is comparatively small, holding about three gallons; whilst the ox possesses no less than four stomachs, the first of which is considerably larger than that of the horse. This difference shows-what, indeed, the habits of these animals also demonstrate that whilst, on the one hand, the ox is constituted so as to consume a very large quantity of food at a meal, the horse, on the other, is adapted to consume a moderate quantity, and often. If such a mass of food as is often found in the maw of the ox, were contained in the stomach of the horse, it would be impossible for this animal to perform those severe exertions which are frequently expected from him, from the loaded stomach pressing against the diaphragm-the muscle of respiration-which would materially interfere with its action. It should also be borne in mind that the progress of chymnification is accomplished by onehalf of the stomach only, thus affording an additional reason why a large mass of food cannot be conveniently taken by the horse at one time." This extract contains the true principles upon which the feeding of the farmhorses ought to be regulated. It is manifest that it should consist for the most part of" concentrated food, such as grain ;" and hay, straw, and roots may be supplied to the horse occasionally, but they are not his natural food.

feeding, and almost universally by means of chaff and corn, followed by rack-meat consisting either of clover or meadow-hay. The horse will, of course, more readily supply himself from partially-prepared food than otherwise. Hence cut chaff is so desirable, as also split beans or bruised oats, and the like; for they have in this state the double advantage of requiring less mastication, whilst at the same time the animal derives the greater nourishment. I need not say that oats and beans have long stood prominent as the best cornfood for horses; and although many deviations have occasionally been followed by practical men, they invariably come back to the simple food of hay and corn. It is true that recently we have had various compounds brought before us; and, by an unlimited process of puffing, much is brought into consumption as food for horses. I am inclined to believe that these mixtures are good, but they are abominably expensive, being chiefly made from the meal of oats, beans, peas, barley, and Indian corn, largely mixed with the locust bean, dried and powdered, and sold at a price far above its original value. The usual allowance of corn for a farm-horse in regular work is generally in the proportion of one-and-a-half bushels of oats to two pecks of beans per week, which is ample, given with wheat, chaff, or finely cut hay and straw. My own practice is to grow for them a sufficient quantity of oats; and I give them an almost unlimited allowance of chaff, cut from oat sheaves by Cornes' machine. I am not prepared to say it is the most economical course, but I do think it one of the most healthy systems pursued, aided by a small supply of clover hay at night during the winter, and in the early spring by a few mangold roots, or Swedish turnips, or carrots, daily. In the summer the same feeding of chaff is given; and they are either turned out to be grazed in the grass fields at night, or are supplied with artificial grasses in the fold-yard. Their general management should consist of careful grooming. Great inattention is given to this point almost universally; anything will do for a cart-horse, if he is only ready for the morning's work; and galled shoulders, cracked heels, contracted feet, with divers other sores and ailments, are the result. Their stables and hovels should always have a plentiful supply of litter in the winter; and I think they should have a cool yard, paddock, or grass field for the summer. Their food should be supplied to them at long intervals, i. e., a good feeding, as above, should be given in the early morning, a slight refreshment at noon-either by a nose-bag or a return to the stable, if near-and a prolonged feeding in the evening. All heating or injurious food must be avoided, or very sparingly given-as tailing wheat, barley, bran, &c. The artificial grasses should not be given to them in a fresh state. Tares ought to be mown some hours beforehand, as also should lucerne and sainfoin, both most excellent grasses for horse-fodder. If given in their fresh state, they should be passed through the cutting-box with good oat, or wheat, or barley-straw as a corrective.

I shall now only notice one other important part of the subject-it is the mode and time of working carthorses. It is highly important that the horse should be in as close contact with his work as possible; the nearer the work, the easier will he perform it. It is most reprehensible to see, as we sometimes do, three, four, or

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and the commencement of the inner quarter; a larger number than five nails can never be required in any shoe, of any size, or under any circumstances, excepting for the sole purpose of counteracting defective and clumsy fitting."

The result of this is, that on the affirmative reading of the "no foot no horse," the animal turns out to be much longer lived than people generally suppose him to be. In November last, Mr. Miles had in work in his own stable six horses-the oldest of the lot, now forty years old, he has had just twenty years. "He would pass muster for nine or ten years old," and appears only to have the slight failing of not allowing any stranger to enter his box-Mr. Rarey, of course, excepted. The next, twenty-nine years old, is "the best hack" Mr. Miles ever rode. He bought him seventeen years since, when on the point of being shot, the smith having declared his feet so far gone that he I could not shoe him! The third is twenty-one years old, and has been in his present place sixteen; the fourth sixteen years old, nine of which he has been with Mr. Miles; and number five, at thirteen, has passed eight years in the same service. The sixth was recently destroyed at the age of twenty-six.

This question thus grows upon us in importance. There is, perhaps, no other horse-keeper who could say as much, simply because no other man has paid equal attention to his horses. At ten or twelve years old the animal is now frequently condemned outright; whereas with only proper care there may be quite another ten or twelve years' wear in him. We can say from our own experience that the best horse we ever had was fifteen or sixteen when we bought him, and that after three seasons' good work, he sold

for more than double the price he came in at. But then he was well cared for-shod in his own box by the best man in the district, his feet regularly stopped, and his somewhat battered legs soothed and savedespecially at first-in every possible way. We must let one more extract from the article before us tell how this is still to be done :

being in better order than those of my neighbours', I should "If I were asked to account for my horses' legs and feet attribute it to the four following circumstances: first, that they are all shod with few Lails, so placed in the shoe as to permit the foot to expand every time they move; secondly, that they all live in boxes instead of stalls, and can move whenever they please; thirdly, that they have two hours' daily walking exercise when they are not at work; and fourthly, that I have not a head-stall or rack-chain in my stable: these four circumstances comprehend the whole mystery of keeping horses' legs fine, and their feet in sound working condition up to a good old age.”

There is no one, we think, who will say such a paper as this is out of place in the Journal of an Agricultural Society. On the contrary, we believe it will be more read and better remembered than almost anything that has been published by the same channel. It is already issued as a shilling pamphlet; so that such of our readers who are not members may readily obtain it in this form. They must in no case be content with our mere opinion of its excellence. The essay is not distinguished as a prize paper, neither do we gather whether it was a volunteer contribution or written at the request of the editors. On any showing, it is worthy of some especial distinction. To a horserearing, horse-riding people like ours, a cure for lameness and lost shoes is indeed a blessing.

Why have not farmers in every county tested the system of wheat-growing in triple rows, with fallow intervals between? Mainly, we believe, because of the hand-labour digging it involves. It would require fourteen to twenty men, according to the nature of the land, to trench the intervals upon a hundred acres in the course of three months; and where shall we find the extra hands to do it?-not such as may always be had in winter for steam-thrashing and odd jobs, but stout, clever, and honest spademen. We say "honest" men; for the difficulty of getting a number of labourers to perform the task faithfully in every respect is a serious obstacle, even were the right sort of hands obtainable on such a large scale.

Are there no means, then, of modifying the system so as to dispense with manual digging, and yet realize the promised profit per acre? How far Mr. Smith has now advanced in freeing himself from dependence upon the spade and fork we do not know; but two years ago his little volume on "Lois-Weedon Husbandry" proposed to open a furrow by two turns with the plough in the middle of each interval, subsoil the furrow bottom, and after a winter's exposure, raise the crumbled subsoil and turn the pulverized furrow-slices underneath by means of a machine he has invented for the purpose. This ingenious "rotary digger," drawn by horses, was constructed, tried, and found to answer; but to what extent it has been employed in superseding manual forking we have not yet heard. In the absence of such a machine, could our ordinary ploughs, subsoilers, and cultivators be made to fulfil the object in view-which is," to pulverize a certain small portion of the subsoil, year after year, and then mix it with the staple"? We

thought it worth while to try, and accordingly commenced operations the year before last. Yet before we describe our management, consider how important is the experiment. For look at Mr. Smith's extraordinary results. He lays out in total expenses (including £2 an acre for rent) £5 16s. per acre on the "clay piece," and clears £5 14s. net tenant's profit-when wheat is at forty shillings a quarter: and on light gravelly land (clayed) gets £4 14s. clear profit from an expenditure of £6 16s. per acre. The average yield on the light land is thirty-four bushels per acre, and on the heavy land considerably more; in both cases without manuring. The straw is sold at forty shillings a ton; but as we cannot "dispose" of our straw at all, and should find farm-yard manure a costly article were a couple of sovereigns paid for every ton trampled down as litter or eaten by our stock, we deduct considerably from the above items, and take the prospective profit on good land (neither clay nor gravel) at say £3 10s. per acre. That is, a hundred acres permanently under wheat would gain us £350 clear annual profit, when the price is at the low figure of only 40s. per quarter; and at 50s. a quarter, the same presumed yield of thirtyfour bushels is to bring us £5 10s. an acre, or £550 altogether. This was worth thinking about; for we doubted whether many agriculturists of our acquaintance could show a clear annual income of either £550 or £350 from every hundred acres they occupied.

Let us see how the scheme would work. Take a farm having three hundred acres arable, of very good friable loam, producing four-and-a-half or five quarters of moderately good red wheat per acre as a very fine crop, and of course less as an average; rent, forty shil

lings; tithe, six shillings per acre; and other burdens not peculiarly heavy. Growing every description of cropping, and in rotation almost at will-say, two-fifths, or one hundred and twenty acres, are wheat every year. As it is, this proportion of wheat, together with thirty acres of oats for the horses, and also a little piece of barley, is the largest breadth of white corn we can well grow that is, it is all that the necessity for alternating white straw with green crops, &c., will permit and enable us to prepare for it. But if wheat is to follow itself year after year for any period of time whatever, the extent of ground we can prepare by rotation is no longer a limit to the breadth we may sow. Thus, unless there be other objections, we may have half, or more than half of our three hundred acres in wheat every year; and the remainder green and other crops, according to the character of farming and live-stock breeding or feeding that may be practised. If we choose to cultivate only one hundred and twenty acres of wheat as at present, this quantity of land will be set apart to produce wheat in perpetuity; while the other one hundred and eighty acres may be all in other crops, as roots, artificial-grasses, and beans, peas, and oats, in different and rather novel rotations. But for the sake of simplifying calculation, let us suppose that one hundred and twenty acres of the most suitable wheat land is partitioned off from the farm, to be entirely self-sustaining and bar the threerow wheat every year; while the remaining one hundred and eighty acres is managed as if it were a complete farm in itself-two-fifths of it under wheat, and the rest green and other crops, as at present. We shall thus have an auxiliary, 120-acre wheat-farm, as it were, not only yielding its harvest every year without manure, but producing a large amount of straw to manure and enrich what may be called the 180-acre farm. And either the same fields may be permanently kept under the three-row culture, or every year a certain portion may be given up to the general cropping, and an equal breadth taken from the 180 acres ; so as to travel gradually round the whole or any part of the 300 acres with the new system. The proposal is, that on this 120 acres, independent of any green-cropping, fallowing, or sheep-feeding, we are to get an annual return of £1,140, by an outlay of £720-that is, we realize a clear profit or income of £420 a year when wheat is at only 40s. per qr., the gain rising to £660 when the price jumps up to 50s. This would be a good interest for capital, at any rate, if not exactly equal to the famous druggists' per-centage of "elevenpencehalfpenny in the shilling.'

We are supposing, of course, that the cost and results will be similar to those of Lois-Weedon itself, with the necessary allowance made for the lower value of our straw. If it be found that we can thus raise our wheat crop year after year without manure, we shall certainly be drawing large quantities of manure (in the shape of straw) from the 120 acres, with which to fructify the 180 acres. And how extraordinarily must this great bulk of straw add to the productive power of the 180acre farm, to which it is every year carried! Thus, by adopting this system, we are not only to gain largely in pecuniary profit from two-fifths of our land, but at the same time produce more corn, meat, vegetables, etc., from the other three-fifths: we shall raise the value of the thus more profitable farm, and create additional demand, and consequently better wages, for labour required in the treatment and manipulation of our extra crops and more numerous live stock.

There is something marvellous in increasing the total fertility of an estate by means of a wheat crop acquired mainly from the atmosphere! For that it is so at Lois-Weedon, let no one doubt. Mechanical tillage,

without an ounce of manurial dressing, there maintains the productiveness of the wheat-fields, with so slight a diminution of the fertile constituents of the soil itself as not to be perceptible (we might almost think) in fifty years or a century; the land at present positively getting better, instead of gradually worse. It is a fact that Mr. Smith's twelfth year's crop is the heaviest and best he has had; and (let it never be forgotten) not only without manure, but without his bringing up or making use of an atom of fresh subsoil, only half the previouslyattained depth of digging having been practised during the last three years.

"Well, but remember, Mr. Smith's results are obtained by exceedingly deep culture with the spade." Yes, on the stiff-clay piece; but on the light four-acre field, he only goes twelve or thirteen inches down with his forking; and it is possible to match this depth with horse-labour. His average yield on this gravelly land is thirty-four bushels, because, though unsuitable for wheat, it was dressed some years ago with the substance most required-that is, it received an application of clay, the charge for which is spread over a number of years. If we cannot get the expected amount of produce, owing to horse-tillage proving of inferior efficacy to that of the spade or fork, we may yet obtain, possibly, as large a surplus or profit, because of the lower cost of the horse power, compared with manual operations; and" profit' is what we want. But we need not suppose that our production of corn for the community would fall short, by our thus reaping less yield per acre on the Lois-Weedon than on the common plan; because the former bears wheat every year, and the latter only twice in five years. Under the ordinary management, say, that each acre of the one hundred and twenty yields even the heavy crop of five quarters, that is ten quarters of wheat in five years, then a yearly produce of only two quarters from the new system will equal this amount in the same period. But we must grow more than this, in order to have a produce equivalent in value, not only to the wheat, but also to the crops of the other three years in the course. What crops, then, do one hundred and twenty acres usually bear every year, with a rotation admitting two-fifths to be in wheat? The quantities may be taken at forty-eight acres wheat, twelve acres oats, sixteen acres peas and beans, eight acres barley or potatoes, twelve acres clover, and twentyfour acres roots, &c. What is the worth of all this cropping; and had all been wheat, what yield per acre would have made a total produce of equal value? Now, without entering into minute figures, let us compare the corn crops at present prices, and reckon the clover, roots, &c., as worth, say £7 an acre; the value of the crops on the one hundred and twenty acres will be at the utmost about £1,200 or £10 per acre, and this is equal to the value of four quarters of wheat per acre on the whole area. So that, as far as mere worth of produce is concerned, every acre of the new system ought to yield at most some four quarters annually, in order that the national markets may not suffer. But of course, the principal consideration for the farmer is, will the expense of cultivation under the proposed system amount to less than that of the present fallowing, feeding, manuring, &c., and so leave a wider margin of profit? With Mr. Smith's expenditure, the yearly profit from this yield would be (as we have already said) about £3 per acre, when wheat is at the low figure of only 40s. The cost of our own operations by horse labour will appear in due course.

We have supposed that on a three-hundred-acre arable farm, one hundred and twenty acres are set apart for the growth of wheat year after year on the triple-row and fallow-interval method; the remainder of the farm (to make our calculation easy) being managed as if it were