Ths Future of British Agriculture. By Professor Sheldon. (W. H.
Allen.)—" How farmers may best be benefited" is the question which Professor Sheldon proposes to answer in this little volume. "British live-stock interests are of far greater moment than all the rest of our agriculture." We have now 27,500,000 acres in Permanent grass, with 6,000,000 in rotation grasses. The united acreage of the corn-crops is under 10,000,000. How to make most of the dairy, and to improve the breed of sheep and cattle, are the important questions. Three out of his eight chapters Professor Sheldon gives to the dairy, with its three provinces of butter, cheese, and milk-selling. An eighth chapter is devoted to "Tenant-Farmers' Interests." He thinks that the agent is often
a, bar to the good feeling that should be between landlord and tenant. A small, even a moderate-sized estate, up, say, to 12,000 acres, can well be managed without an agent, if the owner will take his position seriously,—i.e., will consider him- self as much a man of business as a merchant. If he thinks that he may spend his life in a round of London, the Moors, and foreign winter-resorts, with a few months at home, and these almost wholly given to sport, he cannot justify his existence. Of Protection, Professor Sheldon speaks with decision. It is an ignis fatuus. To the scarcity of gold, he attributes more than we think justifiable. As to compensation for improvements, he writes : "The time-limit should extend to the period when the improvements finally cease to have any value at all, and the cost-limit should be none other than the actual present value of the improvements." He mentions a very hard ease. The rent of a hill-country farm in Derbyshire was raised from .2250 to ,Z700. When the tenants, a family that had farmed it for generations, left, they received nothing. "The Act of 1875 was a stinting, niggardly, humiliating Aet,—humiliating both to giver and receiver." "The farmers have now the ball at their feet."
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