vetches, or seeds for them in the spring. The ewes, after lambing, get on the pastures about 1 pint of oats each, and later on a few mangolds. When on the rye or vetches the lambs run forward and learn to eat a little cake and corn, the ewes getting 1 lb. of cotton cake. The lambs are weaned soon after shearday, about the middle of June, and are put on the pastures and seeds. The tup-lambs get pint of corn and cake, and some cabbage as soon as we can spare them any, until the rams are sold the first Wednesday in August. The ewes, as soon as the lambs are weaned, have rather a hard time of it until September, they are run thick in a pasture, or they clean up seeds after the other sheep, or run anywhere where we can keep them cheapest. The rams, as you are aware, during the summer, are kept on vetches, and have cabbages taken to them, always having a plentiful supply of water by them, and moveable shades to protect them from the sun, getting about a pint of split peas, and a little linseed and cotton cake."

Pigs.-Seven breeding sows of the Berkshire sort are kept, and all the produce is fatted off at about ten score weight. The sows are remarkably good specimens of the Berkshire breed, and the feeding pigs combine great aptitude to fatten with sufficient size. Horses. Mr. Treadwell keeps nine working horses, which are strong useful animals, but not specially deserving of notice. They are yoked at length, three in a plough, for deep winter ploughing, and they work abreast for the lighter operations of spring cultivation.

Grass-land. The pastures are a very important feature in Mr. Treadwell's farm. Á very small proportion of them are mown for hay, and none are mown two years in succession without an application of good well-made farmyard manure, at the rate of nine or ten loads per acre.

The fields are divided into convenient enclosures, and are nearly all well watered. Although depastured almost entirely by dairy cattle and young animals, they do not show any symptoms of deterioration; and although breeding animals must eventually, under ordinary management, impoverish the pastures they graze upon, Mr. Treadwell's high farming and liberal use of linseed cake and corn no doubt correct as much as possible a system of stock-farming, which, in too many instances, has impoverished much of the grass-land in the kingdom.

Mr. Treadwell buys annually 600l. worth of linseed and cotton cake, 2007. worth of corn, and besides this generally consumes beans and peas grown upon the farm to the value of 6007.

Fences.-The fences are, generally speaking, not good, and are evidently suffering from many years' neglect of former tenants. In many cases they are past repair, and can only be improved by

grubbing up the old ones and planting new ones, where practicable, on a fresh site. A work of this sort can only be managed by the joint efforts of landlord and tenant, and in this case it is very desirable that some equitable arrangement should be made for the improvement of the fences.

General Remarks.-Mr. Treadwell's system, although differing very much in detail from that pursued at Ardley, nevertheless fulfils the same essential conditions of high farming; and it has produced at Upper Winchendon, in this trying season, magnificent crops of roots and corn, and has moreover maintained in the best possible condition a large herd of cattle and a large flock of sheep.

The catch-crops, as they may be called, of vetches before roots, and of turnips with the beans and peas, tend extremely to promote this great fertility. It is scarcely necessary to point out the large amount of sheep-feed contained in a really good crop of vetches, and when these are all fed off by sheep eating cake, the amount of manure of the best description returned to the soil is very large indeed. The same remarks apply to the turnips after pulse, which are also all fed off by cake-eating sheep.

The amount annually expended by Mr. Treadwell in cake and corn, as has already been shown, is very large; and we thus, in the second Prize Farm, obtain a further confirmation of the value of high stock-feeding, combined in this case, however, with a most excellent system of green cropping. I think that Mr. Treadwell's system of management is highly instructive; great ingenuity is exhibited in the adaptation of his root and green crops, and the whole concern is managed in a thoroughly systematic and business-like manner.

It is right that I should notice the difficulty the Judges had in comparing two such very different farms as those to which the first and second prizes have been awarded.

The first is a large poor light-land arable farm, and the second contains a large proportion of very useful pasture land. It is obvious, therefore, that different systems of farming should be adopted upon lands so entirely opposite in character and quality. At Ardley, very inferior land has been made to produce remarkably good crops, and we therefore think it deserving of the greatest credit; but we nevertheless consider that Mr. Treadwell pursues a system well adapted for the land he occupies, and carries it out in the most effective manner.

THIRD PRIZE FARM.

Mr. Craddock's farm at Lyneham, Chipping-Norton, although not altogether fulfilling the conditions necessary to entitle it to

the first or second prize, is nevertheless, in the opinion of the Judges, so meritorious in many respects, that they deemed it to be worthy of high commendation and of recommendation to the Royal Agricultural Society for a third prize of 257., to which request I am happy to say the Council has acceded.

It consists of 503 acres of land, 150 of which are pasture and 353 arable. It is held on an annual tenancy under the Earl of Ducie, with an ordinary farm agreement. Mr. Craddock has occupied it some eleven or twelve years. At the time when he entered upon it a re-arrangement of the farms had just taken place at Lyneham, and two farms were then thrown into one, forming the one which he now occupies. The house and premises are situated in the village, and are built of stone and slate; the latter are remarkably commodious, and provide ample accommodation for any amount of stock which can ever be kept upon the farm. There is also a fixed steam-engine, and some excellent machinery for cutting hay and straw, grinding cake, &c. These

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excellent farm buildings are by no means thrown away upon Mr. Craddock, for we have seldom seen upon any occupation so much order and neatness, and where the epithet of a place for everything, and everything in its place," could so rightly and properly be applied.

The farm is bounded on the south-east by the high road from Barford, and is intersected almost in the middle by the road from Chipping-Norton to Shipton. The West Midland Railway runs along its western boundary, and at one point separates a large meadow from the rest of the farm. The surface-geology of the district is cornbrash and lias; but the farm contains several varieties of soil. There is light and thin stonebrash, strong and poor clay loam, and about one-third perhaps of good mixed loam land.

Some of the grass land is also very inferior, but there are some useful pastures near the village and homestead.

This variety of soil necessitates a mixed rotation of crops, which is effected in the following manner:

The thin poor stonebrash is farmed upon the four-course shift; the good mixed loam upon a five-course rotation, taking three-fifths of corn and pulse; and the poor weak clay on a six-course shift, as follows:

1st. Roots, all drawn off.

2nd. Wheat.

3rd. Beans.

4th. Barley and oats with seeds.

5th. Seeds.

6th. Wheat.

The roots are grown with half-inch bones and superphosphate, and all the farmyard manure is, as a rule, put on the young seeds.

Under the above system of cropping and manuring we found a remarkably clean farm and extremely good crops, even on the poorest land, with the exception of the roots, which this year have to some extent failed, and in other cases were so backward that it is doubtful whether they can now make a crop.

Great pains are taken on the poor pastures to eradicate, by constant spudding, the innumerable thistles which they produce, and on all the grass land there is a very neat system of manage

ment.

A small dairy of 15 remarkably good shorthorns is kept, and the produce is all reared. The females go into the dairy, and the steers are fed off at 3-years old. Calves are also bought, reared, and made off fat at 3-years old. About 90 head of cattle, of all ages, are wintered, and all have cake or corn.

Two hundred Cotswold ewes are put to the ram, and they usually produce about 250 lambs. About 60 ewe hoggets are reserved to renew the flock, and the remainder, together with the draft ewes, are all made fat during the winter on turnips, with corn or cake, and are generally shorn and sent to market early in the spring.

Mr. Craddock does not keep many pigs, and has only three breeding sows, whose produce is all fatted off.

The districts through which the Judges travelled and the generality of the farms which they inspected have not given them a very favourable impression of the cart-horses of the neighbourhood. They are generally undersized, ill-bred, and slow animals-badly groomed, and badly fed. The natural consequence is, that in too many instances three horses are put to do the work of two. This, however, is by no means the case at Lyneham, for I have seldom seen a better lot of horses, many of them being of considerable value, and all in the best possible condition. The admirable cultivation of the farm is a sufficient proof that the horses are kept for work and not for show; and Mr. Craddock's example with respect to the management of horses, as in many other respects, might be followed with advantage by many farmers in Oxfordshire.

Altogether Mr. Craddock's farm exhibits several points of management which are full of instruction, notably, a sensible adaptation of different systems of cropping to each variety of soil; the growth of clean and good crops under such system of management; and the attention paid to his pasture land, which, whether good or bad, has had labour employed upon it, and has been improved.

Moreover, good animals of every kind, and good ones only, are seen upon the farm-the cattle, sheep, horses, and pigs, being all of a thriving and paying description.

The order, neatness, and careful management which strike one at every turn are in pleasing contrast to the slovenly state of things which too often prevails on many farms.

COMMENDED FARMS.

The farms of Messrs. Nathaniel and Zachariah Stilgoe, at Adderbury, near Banbury, and of Mr. Denchfield, at Easington, close to Banbury, deserve notice in this report.

As will be seen from reference to the map, these farms are on the lias formation, and the soil of which they are composed may be described as light, mixed, and strong red loam. Such soil is naturally extremely fertile, but, from some cause or other, not producing this year such heavy crops, both of corn, grass, and roots, as the quality of the soil might lead one to expect.

Mr. Denchfield's Farm.-This farm, as before mentioned, is close to the thriving little town of Banbury. It possesses the best and deepest soil, and contains 252 acres, 168 of which are arable and the rest pasture. It is farmed on a six-course rotation, in the following order :

1st. Roots.

2nd. Barley with seeds.

3rd. Seeds.

4th. Wheat.

5th. Beans.

6th. Wheat or barley.

Farmyard manure is applied for roots and beans. Fine crops of wheat, barley, and beans are growing this year; but the roots are backward and are not thriving, and do not promise a good crop. The cultivation is superior, and there is an air of neatness and good management every where visible.

The pastures are on lighter soil than the arable land, and are much burnt up by the dry weather. They were stocked with some nice young shorthorns, and with the ewes and lambs. The former had not grass enough, and would have done better with an allowance of linseed cake, for which they would undoubtedly pay well.

There are 140 Cotswold ewes on this farm, which breed about 160 lambs. These are all fattened and sold off, and 150 are bought in addition to those bred; about 40 head of cattle and 300 sheep are thus annually sold from the farm.

I have not hesitated to notice Mr. Denchfield's weak points,