single ear, which he specially recommends, as bearing the forcing of high farming.
As the fair testing of different sorts of wheat on the same ground is as difficult as it is important, Mr. Hainworth’s method is worthy of notice. First he selects a field in which the soil is as near as may be, of an uniform character, measuring, for example, 16 poles wide by 33 poles long; 8 rows of each different sort of wheat are dibbled with great care, the short way of the land, 9 inches apart, and 5 inches between the holes, in each of which three corns are deposited. This is repeated in succession until the whole piece of land is cropped with say 11 beds of each sort. The 8 rows of each variety in each bed are reaped separately, bound and set up, then brought together, threshed and measured, thus giving a fair average of the whole 11 beds, grown in different parts of the same field. The farm on which these experiments are made is necessarily in a high and cleanly state of cultivation; its fertility, in fact, is maintained by the application of London stable manure. If this careful selection, cultivation, and testing of varieties of wheat be looked on merely as a commercial speculation, the results must be valuable; but in this case, as in almost all such, the higher object of advancing the interests of agriculture gives a fresh stimulus to the labour and skill which such experiments at all times require.
Sheep.
After a word of commendation of the Hoo flock of 400 Sussex downs, improved of late by rams from Babraham, and a word of warning as to the ultimate results of cross-breeding between the long and short woolled races, however promising at first, I pass on to speak of that which for not less than two centuries has been called “the far-famed Bennington flock.” Bennington is a village near the centre of the county, between Stevenage and Standon. The flock, which is still owned by the descendants of those who first formed it, is said to have sprung originally from the old Wiltshire horned breed, which appears to have formed the staple of the sheep stock in the midland counties of England up to the beginning of the present century. Within the memory of many persons, the horn, one of its distinguishing features, though reduced in size, was still retained, and in all respects the sheep were nearer their original type than at present. Attempts at improvements were at one time made by the introduction of Leicester, Gloucester, or Cotswold rams, though the produce of one, if not both these crosses, was weeded from the flock. Of late years the chief, if not the only new blood, has been Lincoln; some of the flock still retain traces of
