length and width of the car; the bottoms of the tray are made of 1⁄4 inch galvanized wire netting, so that the air passes easily through the cotton. As the cars run on rails both inside and outside of the drying house, moving them requires little labour. When the cars are inside the house, the cotton is protected form the weather by the device of covering the outside end of each leading car with galvanized iron sheeting, which exactly fits the exit space in the wall when the car is pushed home.

Fig. 1. shows the car when drawn out, while fig. 2 gives the whole apparatus.

RURAL ECONOMICS.

734

The Installation and Accounts of a Large English Dairy Farm. Production of Clean Milk on Two Large Dairy Farms.

The

The Journal of the Board of Agriculture, Vol. 19, No. 11, pp. 923-928. London, February, 1913. The Kelmscott herd of pure-bred dairy Short-horns is said to be the largest in the country, and the system on which it is kept is admirable. The owners farm an area of 2 144 acres in contiguous holdings in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. Over 200 cows are kept, and the milk is sent daily to London. In 1909, all cows and heifers in milk were tested for tuberculosis, and since that year the stock has been tested annually. So far only eight animals have reacted and six of these were stock not bred at Kelmscott. No cow that reacts is allowed to contribute to the milk supply. In order to ensure the purity of the milk great care is taken that the hands and clothes of the milkers should be scrupulously clean. During most of the year, the cows are groomed before milking and the udders washed. The tails, udders and hind quarters are kept clipped; and the cowhouses are clean and well-ventilated.

The milk is not pasteurized, but simply cooled to 58° F. Although many milking machines are in use on the surrounding farms, they have not been adopted at Kelmscott, where all the milking is done by hand.

The wages are relatively high; Messrs. Hobbs pay a day labourer from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, 15s 4d without cottage) the average weekly wages of an Oxfordshire labourer are 13s), or with harvest money, cottage (if provided), extras, etc., 16s 4d; an under-carter's wages at Kelmscott are 178 0 2d, including lodging at Is per week, a head-shepherd's 26s 2d reckoning is 6d a week for cottage and garden. The men's cottages are of an exceptionally good class; the total number of the staff is 102.

The rations fed to the cows vary greatly according to the value of the different feeding stuffs but the following tables indicate average feed:

3 lbs. dried grains,

Winter.

3 lbs. mixed bean meal and oat meal,

3 lbs. cotton, soya bean and dairy cake mixed.

9 lbs. per day for thirty wecks.

RURAL ECONOMICS

2 lbs. cotton cake.

I lbs. soya bean cake,

I lbs. dairy cake,

Summer.

4 lbs. per day so iong as the animal gives 2 gals. daily.

The average milk yield per cow for the three years ending September 30, 1911, was for 134 cows 6015 lbs., this being the lowest average for many years owing to the summer drought. The average yield per cow for 1910 was 6 330 lbs, and for 1909, 6500 lbs. The average yield of an average farm cow in Great Britain is perhaps 4 500 lbs.

The average yearly expenditure of recent years has been £13 096 63 10d. Messrs. Hobbs have made the following estimate of the cost of a herd of 40 dairy cows kept on their system.

735

"The Evesham Custom."- The Gardener's Chronicle, Vol. LIII, No. 1367, pp. 156-157. London, March 8, 1913.

More than 10 000 acres of land in the neighbourhood of Evesham are occupied by market gardens, which are, with few exceptions, leased to tenants. The great extension and the flourishing condition of this intensive cultivation are due, in addition to other circumstances, to the system of tenure obtaining in that district. This system, entitled the Evesham Custom, allows the tenant to pass his lease on to a third party, on payment of a sum as compensation for improvements to the ground and the expenses incurred in planting; the new tenant, with the consent of the owner, takes over the land on the same conditions as the former tenant.

The tenant is thus able to give up, at any season of the year, and whenever he wishes, the whole, or a portion, of his land to another tenant and incurs no risk by so doing.

He is also empowered to hand over part of the market garden to his grown-up sons, as soon as they are capable of managing the business.

Owing to the short period of time which elapses between the giving of the notice to quit and the incoming of the new tenant, it is impossible for the old tenant to exhaust the land and thus decrease its value. Further, even if he had a longer time at his disposal, it would be to his own interest to keep the market garden in the best possible condition, for the compensation which he receives at the close of his tenancy is based upon the condition of the land at that time.

The owner of the land is thus relieved of the necessity of compensating the outgoing tenant for improvements or planting; and is saved the cost and frequent litigation entailed by the often difficult matter of valuation. This system also greatly diminishes the risk of not finding a new tenant within a given time.

The writer gives a brief summary of the provisions of the "Market Gardeners' Compensation Acts".

736 Reorganisation of Agricultural Land Tenure in Russia. HITTER, H. Progrès de l'Agriculture russe. Bulletin de la Société d'Encouregement pour l'Industrie nationale, Year 112, No. 1, pp. 133-146. Paris, January 1913.

The Imperial Decree of February 19, 1861, had given the rural population as perpetual holding 294 150 000 acres of land; of this quantity 242 875 000 acres was the property of the communes, and 51 275 000 acres consisted of family hereditary holdings. In no case were the grants of land made to individual farmers, but always to the commune, which had then to distribute the land among the various families.

In this distribution the land was classified according to its quality and to its distance from the village, and from each class a plot was given to each villager to cultivate. At every new redistribution of the land rendered necessary by the growth of population, the number of classes was increased; this naturally gave rise to an ever increasing subdivision of the land with all its attendant evils.

On March 30, 1905, the Czar of Russia appointed a special commission for the object of discussing and proposing measures intended to convert