13 MARCH 1886, Page 29

But we would like to have some more regular balance-sheet

before -starting. In the first place, how is the E20 made up? What does a farmer get as the wholesale price of his milk ? Then about the cost. A practical neighbour tells the present writer that to keep a cow in full milkdaring the winter costs twelve shillings and sixpence per week. Discount this statement (for he sells milk), still there is a formidable discrepancy left. He declares, again, that hay alone will not produce a full quantity of milk. Where is the amount for rent, taxes, interest on capital. Part of it is doubtless included in the cost of food, but hardly all. We should like a full balance-sheet, giving cost of labour, wear and tear of stock dead and alive, &c. Turning to the chapters on fruit-farming, we find a similar want. What will the farmer get for his produce ? The prices paid, at least to amateurs, for what they grow aro ridiculously small. And then there are the frosts. Farming would be much easier if it were not for foot-and- month disease, pleuro-pneumonia, and the tbermometer going down to 10 below freezing point when the blossom is setting.