DOCTORS IN HUSBANDRY.
Everyone—it is one of the best signs of the times—is taking the question of agriculture seriously : "rural bias" is in
vogue. One of the latest pleaders is Mr. Cloudesley Brereton. who is a Norfolk landowner as well as an authority on educa- tion and much besides. He writes from the Norfolk angle, and his county, for a century or two a pioneer in husbandry, has been perhaps more severely punished by recent depression than any farming acreage in the world. Mr. Brereton sees the ruin of his county towns—of Norwich, of Lynn and of Yarmouth. Norwich, to my view, is one of the most visibly historic towns within England. Lynn was once almost greatest of our ports, and will soon cease to be a port at all if the drainage of the Fens is not more seriously considered. All these three most English towns are circled or half-circled by a rural community that outnumbers their population ; and rural depression and depopulation mean something more actual, more palpable than elsewhere. The poverty of the farming population may be instantly expressed in a closed shop. It is the same in some Midland places : you could almost infer from the shopkeeper's face, as you certainly could from his books, whether farmers were doing well or ill.
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