THE ROAST BEEF OF OLD ENGLAND.*
THE School of Agriculture at Cambridge is already exercising a salutary influence on methods of tillage, through the labours of Professor Biffen and his colleagues. Mr. Mackenzie's book suggests that the School may render equal benefits to our great cattle industry. Mr. Mackenzie, the Reader of Agriculture in the University and the late editor of the Royal Agricultural Society's Journal, is not open to the charge of being a mere academic person, since he has had many years' experience of farming and breeding cattle, and is better acquainted than most " practical men " with the showyards and auction-marts of Great Britain and Northern Europe. His severe criticism of existing practices—from the opening sentence in which he speaks of land under permanent grass as " more suitable material for the thief than for the honest producer "—must therefore be taken very seriously even by those who are prejudiced against teachers and students of agricultural science. Mr. Mackenzie admits that the roast beef of old England is the best in the world, and that the Continental beef is mostly the flesh of cows, which requires much more careful cooking. But he thinks that the English farmer's method of producing prime beef is wasteful in the extreme, since it involves the use of an excessive amount of permanent pasture, or of roots and imported cake, or of both—excessive, that is, in proportion to the meat actually obtained. As for the prize cattle of the shows, he quotes a foreign veterinary surgeon as saying that " the condition of fatness to which you get your show cattle is undoubtedly pathological." It is true, as he says, that foreign buyers of pedigree stock insist on obtaining fat beasts, but the foreigner's requirements in this matter ought not, he thinks, to be allowed to influence the general practice of the English farmer. Mr. Mackenzie examinee the results of the ordinary methods of fattening store cattle. A three-year-old bullock bred and reared on pasture would weigh, he says, on an average 1,050 pounds, and would have used nearly six acres of land. The useful contents of the carcase, including the hide and • cams and the Future of Beef-Production in Ragland. By K. J. J. Mackenzie. With aPreface and Chapter by K. A. Marshall. Cambridge : at the University Prem. re. ad. net.1
the offal, might be reckoned at 700 pounds, or about 120 pounds to the acre. Expressed in money, this represented a turnover of only f3 or £4 an acre. " As it was produce obtained from the land that demanded practically nothing in return, It was often the only system in England showing a profit." Mr. Mackenzie contrasts with this the ease of a two-year-old store reared on arable produce and on grass, estimating the result as 800 pounds of carcase, or 510 pounds of meat and other useful products, from about two and a half acres—or about 200 pounds to the acre.
The care of such young stook, moreover, involved much under- paid labour in the winter. " A great deal too much land in this country," Mr. Mackenzie remarks, " is doing nothing but sustain the life of young, bullocks."
The author's main contention is that the English farmer must aim at marketing his animals at a much earlier age. He is all for " beeflings." He admits, of course, that young cattle are very much more troublesome to tend, butte points out that they cost far less in fodder and cake than the older bullooks, which often give " a very small return in growth for the very large proportion of food used for maintenance." We can well imagine that many farmers, harassed by the incessant increases of wages sanctioned by the Agricultural Wages Board, will be inclined to turn a deaf ear to the proposal on the ground that it involves an addition to the labour bill. Yet Mr. Mackenzie is undoubtedly right, and his policy would eventually pay the farmer, improve the labourer's position, and benefit the country by assuring a larger supply of home-grown beef. He estimates, for example, that on two and a half acres eight calves would each put on 125 pounds in weight in three months, giving a production of 400 pounds per acre, or even more. He reminds the farmer that the cost of producing winter beef in the old extravagant way was extremely high, and that the breeder sometimes received no more for the prime beef than he would have received for inferior beef, if the supply at a market happened to be in excess of the local demand. Mr. Mackenzie rejects the theory that the cattle benefit the land in proportion to the rich food which they con- sume. " From the farmer's point of view it is foolish in the extreme to put plant-food into the land through the cake-bill when it can be obtained much cheaper direct from the manure- merchant." The author blames wealthy landowners for setting a bad example to their tenants by producing " wastefully fat brutes " regardless of expense.
The new methods involve greater care in the selection of stock for breeding and rearing. The many existing pedigree societies are doing good work, but Mr. Mackenzie insists that much more effort and method will be required before a general improvement in the cattle on English farms can be brought about.
It is still the exception rather than the rule for a calf to be sold in the auction-mart with any indication of the herd from which it comes. Thus the owner of a calf which, when fully grown, turns out to be a good milker cannot in nine cases out of ten trace its origin, or buy others of the same parentage. Mr.
Mackenzie pleads earnestly for a better organization of the industry in this respect. He admits that our pedigree cattle, for which Argentine and other foreign breeders cheerfully pay high prices, are very good, but he questions whether they are always the breeds that are most useful or profitable to the English farmer. What we need here, of course, is the " dual-purpose " beast, which is a good milker and which also yields good beef. The problem is to fix a standard at which breeders should aim.
Mr. Mackenzie says very frankly that agricultural exports do not know enough about the subject as yet, since no one has done for cattle what the Rothamsted experiments, continued through many years, have done for arable land. He discusses the various well-known breeds, and Dr. Marshall contributes an instructive chapter on the physiology of cattle. But " it may almost be said that there lies-an absolutely new field for research ready to be worked by the expert in animal husbandry who wishes to
select the best from among the cattle of this country." Even the Shorthorn, to whose qualities Mr. Mackenzie pays admiring tribute, is not fully understood. No one knows, for instance, why a yellow-red Shorthorn cow is likely to yield more milk than a blood-red Shorthorn, nor why a roan bull is more highly valued than a red and white bull. Mr. M.aokenzie's book is all the more stimulating because he does not profess to deliver a final opinion on these or other matters. He will have achieved his object if he can make farmers and landowners realize that our cattle industry, greatly as it has developed in the past two centuries, is only at the threshold of a far greater future.
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