of acres was 2,812, but in 1906 this area had diminished to 1,594, the lowest figure since the Returns were initiated. The year 1885 showed a temporary rise to 2,453 acres, but in the following year the total went down to 2,226, and since then has steadily descended to its present level.

Swedes and turnips, surely one of the most profitable crops for a sheep-rearing county such as Dorset is, show a decline of in round figures 10,000 acres since 1873. At no time do the Returns show any check to the steady diminution in the area. Bad seasons have not been responsible for the decline in the number of acres ; the rate of decrease has been steady and permanent. Dorset, as a county, was rather slow to take up the cultivation of turnips, but with the general practice prevalent in the county of feeding sheep off the land, it is difficult to see what sufficient reason there is for the diminished area. Of course the smaller number of sheep kept and the larger number of cattle is responsible primarily, but even this would hardly be the explanation of the full reduction. Labour difficulties have also played their part, and the consequence is that a crop which is essential to a sheep-breeding county is slowly declining. The acreage shown in the Returns for 1873 was 42,750 ; in 1879 40,680 and about that figure in 1880. The year 1890 showed a reduction to 36,919 acres, but in 1894 the area had risen to 37,150 acres. In 1900 the area was 32,371, whilst in 1906 the figures had reached their present level of 30,709 acres.

Whilst one notes with regret the decline in the acreage of swedes and turnips, the increase which has taken place in the cultivation of the marigold is a satisfactory feature. It may be that its increased popularity is due to the greater results it gives to heavy manuring and the fact that it is a hardier crop. In any case, the extended area under cultivation for marigolds compensates in some degree for the decreased area of swedes and turnips in so far as sheep feed is concerned. The year 1873 gives the total acreage as 5,183, and with the exception of the years preceding and immedi-ately following 1880, when the acreage went down to 4,826, that figure has remained the lowest total. The biggest jump occurs in the year 1900, when the total was 6,167 acres as against 5,769 in 1899. It may be taken that the increase is of a permanent nature, for the 1906 figures give 6,475 acres.

In regard to the minor crops no comparisons of any value can be given, but it is worth while recording that of the minor green crops only one, to wit tares, has received any great degree of attention from the Dorset agriculturist. Cabbage, which included thousand-headed kale, &c., is grown very little, and kohl rabi hardly at all. The latter does not find much favour amongst flockmasters, as the trouble necessary to prepare it for feeding is not recompensed by the value of the food. Lucerne is practically only grown as a stand-by, though its cultivation can be traced back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, for Arthur Young in his Six Weeks' Journey through the South of England speaks of a fine field of lucerne near Wareham.

Dorset in 1873 devoted 712 acres to flax, 9 acres to hops, and left 7,652 acres of arable land uncropped. In the earlier part of the nineteenth century one or two years' fallow was looked upon as being necessary to the well-being of land, but the agricultural scientists who have been teaching that bare fallow is unprofitable and bad farming may claim, in this agricultural county at all events, to have done good service, for in 1906 there were but 3,310 acres uncropped. In regard to hops, that culture has died out, foreign competition being too strong. The cultivation of flax, too, has been relegated to the past, foreign competition being one cause, and scarcity of labour, combined with the expensiveness of production, being another. As late as 1893 we get 36 acres of flax in the Returns, but for the past twenty years the cultivation of flax in Dorset may be said to have been discontinued. In 1838 there were eighteen flax mills in Dorset, employing 656 hands. Eighty tons of flax were used weekly in a circuit of 20 miles round Bridport, one-tenth of which was grown in the neighbourhood.

Dorset, as a county, has not followed the culture of fruit to any great extent. The total of orchards in 1873 was 3,446 acres, and in 1906 4,492. Apples are grown, chiefly for cider, and the orchards are mostly situated in the west of the county. Nursery and market gardens, too, are but a minor consideration, the distance from any of the great centres of population being too great to allow of a lucrative return. The total does not much exceed 500 acres.

It is in considering the figures in regard to the acreage under grass that the great change which has overtaken the pursuit of agriculture in Dorset is most apparent. The scarcity and high cost of labour, the great increase in dairy-farming, and the unremunerative prices of corn crops have all aided in inducing the farmer to let his land go out of cultivation of grain and root crops. It might be imagined that some part of the increase is due to the greater recognition of the value of grass and clover as a rotation crop, but when figures are examined it will be found that less land has been broken up for clover and grasses and that the total acreage of permanent pasture has considerably increased. Rotation grasses have decreased in area by about one-sixth, whereas meadow and permanent grass lands have increased by nearly one-half. Out of, roughly, 480,000 acres cultivated in Dorset, pastures are responsible for 352,877 acres, leaving but some 130,000 acres for cultivation

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