In the 'Nineties
A London doctor of medicine writes me on the theme that " a healthy soil produces a healthy nation." He tells me that his father's farm of 100 acres, old fashionedly husbanded, produced butter, cheese, bacon, " all manner of meat, fruit, fowls and game," and had attached to it a watermill grinding wholemeal flour baked in old-style bread-ovens. This farm supported my correspondent's family of twelve. Seven of them are dead, " four of them well over 90, two over 84 and one 74." The three living are 97, 95 and 91, respectively, while the writer himself is over ninety. He claims that the microcosm of such a farm growing a variety of interdependent foods by organic methods, with all the oils and vitamins intact and balancing give with take in the return of all wastes to- the soil, is the only means to a national macrocosm in health. " One of my sisters in her 97th year drove herself to a flower show and won a prize. She also bathed in the sea in warm weather."
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