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of the same crop on the same soil without manure, which, in some naturally rich soils has been carried on with impunity for centuries, would certainly, in a very few years, exhaust the richest district in the finest part of the most fertile of the islands.*

We may here be allowed to suggest a distinction between fertile soils and rich soils,-the former, rather than the latter, being the condition characteristic of the Channel Islands generally. The soil is rarely rich, but it generally bears good crops. must also be remembered that cultivation on a small scale always yields a better result per acre than when large properties are held in one or a few hands. Two half acres will thus yield more than one acre; but still the average production from any of the islands does not appear to equal that of an equal area of rich lands in England, and perhaps does not at all exceed that of average land elsewhere under good cultivation.

* It is no doubt perfectly true, that the produce of much of the best land in the principal islands is so large as to command very high rents; but this is the result of local circumstances, and is quite independent of its intrinsic value. The vicinity of a town affords unusual means of obtaining manure, and the value of all produce is enhanced by the large demand of a town population.

STOCK.

The breed of horned cattle in the islands has long been known, and is in many respects remarkable. The important peculiarities are the small size and delicate frame of the animals; the large quantity and rich quality of the milk they yield; and the yellowness of the fat and of the butter made from the milk. The first result may, no doubt, have been produced by the habit of breeding in and in, which has long since been carried to such an extent that each island has its own breed, which may not be mixed on any consideration whatever. Perhaps the same cause, combined with the practice of tethering, the pampering with various kinds of food, and the climate, may be sufficient to account for the other peculiarities also. Although very small, many of the cows are remarkable for symmetry; and they rarely show vicious temper. They have a fine-curved taper horn, a slender nose, a fine skin, and deer-like form.

Of the different island breeds, the Alderney is the smallest and most delicate, and the Jersey is somewhat larger, but not very different. The Guernsey cattle are larger-boned, taller, and stouter in all respects, and have a less fine coat. They are not, however, less valued as milkers, and have probably been improved by some foreign stock, although the laws against the admission of horned cattle from the adjacent islands are, in some respect, even more severe than in Jersey.

The colour of the coat is very various, being commonly red, red and white, grey and white or cream coloured, but there are good beasts of black, and black and white colour, with a dingy ridge down the back.

All the cattle are yellow round the eyes and within the ears, and this peculiar tendency, it has been already remarked, is accompanied by a similar colour of the butter made from their milk, and of their fat when killed.

The cause of this peculiarity of colour, has been an object of

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much unlearned and learned speculation. It is evident that the milk is not the only secretion of a yellow colour, for in addition to the eyes and ears being tinted, it is one of the peculiarities of the best animals that there is a yellow tinge at the root of the tail. It has been suggested that the colour is derived from bile, but yellowness is not the essential character of that secretion. Its properties are to be bitter, carbonized, and to perform certain functions in the animal economy. Its active principle (cholesterene) is indeed white. Colourless bile is possible, and so, beyond a doubt, is yellowness without bile. But that the colouring matter of the milk and tissues of the Channel Islands' cow may also be the colouring matter of the bile, is an hypothesis which no physiologist would condemn; so is the doctrine that the near vicinity of the sea may supply an excess of soda in the grass, and that the practice of closely tethering, by limiting the amount of exercise, may engender a tendency to something akin to bile, if not bile itself, to be in excess.

The large yield of milk from the island cows and the richness of the milk for butter are well known. Extreme cases show that from sixteen to seventeen pounds per week of butter have been made from the milk of one cow; but the average annual yield of a well-conducted dairy farm, though not so startling at first sight, affords a means of estimating the produce far more instructive. It is stated by Mr. F. Carey, of Woodlands, Guernsey, that the average annual produce of five cows on his land has been 1,680 lbs. of butter and 13,760 quarts of butter-milk. The former is worth fully one hundred pounds sterling, and the latter nearly fifteen pounds. These cattle were fed in the ordinary way, and milked three times a day. Each cow requires about one and three-quarters English acres of grass land, and is fed during winter, from the beginning of November, on mangold wurzel, turnips, parsnips, and hay.

Good cheese can be made from the milk, but it is not manufactured for sale.

The breed of sheep in the islands offers little worthy of remark. The animals are for the most part small, poor, of bad shapes, with indifferent fleeces, and coarse boned. That they are capable of great improvement, with care, is however quite certain. The pigs are without special interest, although in Jersey much improvement has recently taken place in the breeds.

Of horses, there is nothing important in the various breeds. Those of Jersey were improved about the beginning of this century, by the admixture of blood from some Cossack horses, landed with a body of Russians in 1800. The result has been the production of a hardy and hard working animal, which for want of attention is now deteriorating. Within the last few years, both in Jersey and Guernsey, more attention has been directed to breeding, and several good stallions have been introduced. Useful animals may be obtained in the principal islands at moderate prices.*

The donkeys are of the ordinary English breeds, and do not exhibit any peculiarities. They are not very common.

Of poultry there are few curious varieties, the common fowls being of mongrel breeds. They lay tolerably well in all the islands, and in sheltered and warm spots, though the proportion of eggs is not so great as in France. Each island exhibits some slight varieties. Geese are not very common, and turkeys are extremely rare.

* To Mr. Smith, for some time resident in Guernsey, and better known as the first introducer of the screw propeller principle in steam navigation, than for his agricultural proceedings, the island of Guernsey is indebted for some capital stock, both in horses and sheep. A few such intelligent breeders would greatly improve the islands in these respects.

FROM the cultivation of the fields, we proceed to consider that of gardens. These are of two kinds, either for pleasure or profit, and both admit of a good deal of remark in special reference to the Channel Islands. The climate of the islands is perhaps even more clearly indicated by an account of what has been done with care and knowledge, in the way of introducing, and successfully cultivating, the finer kinds of fruit and certain foreign plants, than by a mere notice of the routine operations of agriculture, and a comparison of two things so different as farm cultivation and crops in a large and small island.