HOPE FOR CO-OPERATION.
It is very remarkable in England how often the best work, even in research, is to the credit of private persons who, in most cases, have commercial interests. Again and again they succeed where the organization, whether Governmental or other, more or less fails. The perry pears give one example. It is possible that even agricultural co-operation, one of the greatest needs of our time, may, in one branch, come from the most unlikely of all sources—from the merchant, to whom the word co-operation is, in general, accursed. A number of farmers are now making contracts with a Cirencester firm of bacon curers on the very best pattern of co-operation. If they will supply bacon of a standard cross (Large White and Wessex Saddleback, which the curers decide to be the best), then they will be paid the current price of the month plus half the profits, with some deductions for expenses, earned by the curers. The "standardization of the pig "—in this case a cross between Large White boar and Landrace sow— has probably brought more profit to Danish farmers than any other technical achievement in either biology or chemistry. It must be an economic folly that we send out of this country annually the SUM of 155,000,000 odd for pig products. The whole subject is greatly interesting our farmers. An official of the Ministry of Agriculture told me that their marketing demonstration at the Suffolk Show, which in this ease iolely concerned pig products, led to more inquiries from farmers than they have ever known.
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