Miscellaneous.

A LANDLORD AND HIS TENANTRY. The Marquis of Aylesbury, at his rent audit, at the Aylesbury Arms Hotel, Marlborough, in returning thanks to the toast of bis health, which was druuk in a bumper, remarked that that was the first time he had had the honor of appearing before them as their landlord. He had come to a title at an advanced period of life, and his interest in that state, as they knew, was only a life interest, and he must, therefore, think of the interests of others. The present depression in agriculture he deeply deplored, and he had given proofs of his anxiety to relieve them in their •present distress by a 20 per cent, reduction in their rents. But in returning that 20 per cent, he did not think he was making any recompense which could compensate their losses ; he did not think he could do so. All of them, he knew, must be pay ing their rent out of capital. Heavy pressure, too, was brought to bear on them; burdens were pressing heavily on them, and he wished all to know how deeply he felt for them in the trying position in which they were placed, and sincerely hoped it would not be long before they re turned to better and more prosperous times. They rhust all curtail their estab lishments and amusements. He was sorry farmers could not afford to enjoy fox-hunt ing as they did. But as to game, he had always thought the great mistake made in this country was the keeping ot large battues until January, instead of shooting game as soon as possible. He did not call that amusement. ,He always considered game was given them as a source of amuse ment as well as advantage. He had men> tioned the subject years ago to Mr Bright, who would have done more good in turn ing his attention to this matter than in talking about “a bloated aristocracy,” which, by the by, since he was a Cabinet Minister and lived amongst them, he had left off doing. He, the noble lord, had always said the game laws were the cause of almost all the agrarian outrage in the country ; and only recently in their own immediate neighborhood four lives had been lost—two policemen had been shot, and two men hung for the crime. He had given up shooting in battues; but he still carried the gun, and no one enjoyed a good day’s shooting better than he uid. Battue shooting, however, must be given up; and he might remind them that he had given permission for ground game to be shot by the tenants of by members of the families, leaving the winged game for himself and friends. It bad struck him as a curious coincidence that when the tenant shot the game they did no harm, but when that privilege was reserved for the land lord the game committed dreadful havoc. Perhaps they could explain that better than he could. Protection had been talked of as a remedy for the present distress, but he urged them not to expect it. Protec tion was altogether out of the question ; no Ministry would dare to attempt it, for it could not he introduced without causing a revolution in the country, a tax on the food of the people was an impossibility. He had come into an estate which was most heavily mortgaged, and in addition to a large family he had three dowagers to provide for, who, it should be remembered, would not take 20 per cent, off their allow ance because times were had, and he had reduced rents to that extent. As a conse quence he of course had very little to live upon. It might be disagreeable to some persons to find out that two and two made four, and not six, but he could not help that. He did the best he could, and he only wished it was in his power to assist them more libenlly than he bad. He hoped they had turned the corner now, and that they would enjoy the land they lived in as they had done before. In their privations he wished to share, and he begged it to be distinctly so understood, and he relied on his steward (Mr Dunlop) to keep him well informed on matters affecting their interests. He left them in the hands of a gentleman of whom they had already seen enough to regard and esteem, who he was sure would do his duty by them, and he reminded them there was a Divine Providence watching over their interest which would undoubtedly furnish them with means to face difficulties which surrounded them. His lordship concluded by proposing the “ Land we live in,” and “Health and happiness to the tenantry of the United Kingdom in general, and of Savernake in particular ’ a ssntiment which was cordially responded to.

KERRY FARMS.

[From the Manchester Guardian.]

I have had an opportunity to-day _ of seeing with ray own eyes two very in teresting things—firstly, the working of an estate of 10,000 acres on the Scotch princi ple of twenty-one years’ leases, large farms, scientific tillage, and the rest of it ; and, secondly, I have seen and talked with a peasant proprietor. I will therefore speak

of the owner and his agent as Mr A and Mr B ; but anyone who knows Kerry will know very well whom I mean. Proceed ing by train to the north-west of Kerry, I drove over to the estate, and was first shown through the farm buildings and cattle sheds. The agent, Mr B, is devoted to concrete. It is his hobby, and an ex cellent one too. Dwelling houses for the farmers are built throughout ot concrete, both inner and outer walls, and even the roof itself. The cattle sheds, the hay barns, the pigsties, nay, the very pig trough, are all concrete. The only men who have cause to dislike it are the brick layers. Still more interesting than the sheds themselves were the cattle they sheltered. Mr A is a famous breeder of Shorthorns, and has some really magnifi cent animals. He has a regular sale of bulls every March, and last year the average price realised for each animal was Lsl. w His tenantry buy them largely, and the breed is gradually permeating the whole of Kerry. These animals come much quicker to maturity, and are ready either for breeding purposes or the butcher at a much earlier period than the ordinary mongrel cattle of Kerry. In the afternoon I went over the chief farms of the estate with Mr B, the agent. Since the landlord came into the estate he has spent L 30.000 on improvements. A great of land has been reclaimed, and an immense amount of building done. All the farmers I saw were well and comfortable housed— better, in fact, than the average of English farmers. The land is good.. The rents are double Griffiths’ valuation. Sir Richard Griffiths valued the land of Ireland for taxation purposes in 1850. After the valuation was finished he wrote a letter, commonly known as “ Sir Richard Griffiths’ letter,” stating that for renting purposes the valuation should be in every case 25 per cent, higher than that given in his list, as he had purposely un dervalued the land to that amount. Of the remaining 75 per cent, still left to he accounted for, 49 per cent, represents the interest on the landowner’s outlay of L 30,000 upon improvements, and the rest represents the rise of prices which has occurred. It does not, however, by any means represent it fully, as that rise has been 73 per cent. It is to be added that Griffiths’ valuation is particularly low far the county of Kerry. All the farms we visited were well kept, and bore every sign of prosperity. One man owned twenty-six milch cows, another forty-six In the summer the latter send a firkin of butter to market every day, and even at the abnormally low price caused by the Cork “ ring,” (it is worth mentioning that the Cork batter merchants have probably damaged themselves by their sharp practices, and that a strong movement is on foot for consigning the butter direct to London) ; the firkin brings in L 3 10s. The signs of the times are very quickly discerned on this estate, and wheat is being universally for oats, green crops, and pasture. It is as butter and meat producers that these farmers really prosper. I went up to see the largest of them, a man holding 260 acres of land, for which he pays L4OO rent. His land is hold on a twenty-one years’ lease at revisable rents, the rent being raised or lowered every three years, ac cording to the state of the Cork butter market, I asked him what he thought of the recent agitation. His reply was that such a thing as agitation against “ land lordism” did not exist in his part of the country and among the men of bis class, and he did not think it existed among the smaller men either. As for lC the gentle man who has been conducting the agita tion, sure, sir, I think he is either a rogue or a madman. What he wanted was “fixity of tenure at fair rents,” and that he thought the people must and would have. As to " fair rents,” which is a vague phraserhe presently substituted for it the much more practical phrase of “ re visable rents.” He strongly urged that this principle should be allowed through out the estate and throughout the country. Mr A, to whom I afterwards referred this matter, said that he quite accepted the principle, and said that he would apply it to all his grazing farms, where there was some definite standard, such as the price of butter, whereby to readjust the rents. The farmer showed me over his hold ing, pointing out the excellent hay barns, &c., of concrete, which have been built for him, and the private road which Mr A ie making for him from his farmstead to the highway. He was not discontented by any means, hut he bad two One was to see the extension of that principle of revisability of rent' to which I have already referred ; the other was a very ruling passion indeed. “ Why should not Mr A make bis lease for sixty-one years lease instead of twenty-one years? He knew he was all right if he did not out live Mr A. But what if Mr A died and was succeeded by a spendthrift heir, and that heir sold the property to one of these such men, of whom we farmers have such a horror ?” when is landlord to whom I re ferred the question answered it by simply turning the Tables. “I am very well pleased with a tenant as is the man you have been speaking to. But what if,

having such a lease, he were to die shortly, and leave his leasehold to a son who turned out badly, or to some stranger who did likewise f It is of course possible that ray heir might turn out badly, and if so the tenants would not benefit from the appli cation of capital to the land as they have done under my regime. But as for any danger of such a tenant being evicted it is a chimera, and he knows so himself. Landlords are not bigger fools than other people, and no landlord would evict a man who paid his rent punctually and did his best for the land, without first going out of his mind.”

Before leaving the subject of these large farms, I should mention that Mr A absolutely forbids tenant-right in the Ulster sense, and will recognise no shadow or phantom of it. He has the greatest ob jection to it from the point of view alike of the landlord (who spends all his capital in land), of the tenant (who spends all his capita! in buying the goodwill ; and of the land which thereby necessarily suffers. Meanwhile I will add that on this estate compensation has been given for all real improvements for the last thirty years, and that the whole estate shows what can be done by a landlord who gives devoted care, full knowledge, and large capital to the land. It also shows that high rents do not necessarily mean miserable tenantry, be cause when the rents are high much has been done for the farmers. There are landlords in this part of the country whose rents are low, and who take no trouble whatever about their land ; and I do not find their tenants the best, but the worst off. In truth, the position of an Irish landlord is one of enormous responsibility, and when the people have neither the magic of property” to stimulate them nor the help and encouragement of a wise landlord to bolster them up and teach them their business, they always sink low. _ A man might as well be a careless engine driver as a careless Irish landlord. On the same afternoon on which I visited these large farms I paid a visit to the commons, on which live nearly a hundred peasant proprietors. In origin these men are simply squatters, whose fathers or grandfathersquietly appropriated slices of the common land with no claim or title whatsoever. Most of the proper ties are miserably small. Plots of one acre, half an acre, and even less are common. Of course such a bit of land cannot support a family, and such pro prietors are always on the brink of destitu tion, and in hard times like the present there is pretty sure to be a beggar in every household. I went into one of the wretched hovels built on one of these plots. One had to stoop double to get in at the door. There was no window, and what light there was came in at the hole in the roof, which did duty for a chimney. The one room was about the size of a pantry in an ordinary middle-class English house, and here lived five people. The beds were rigged one above the other like berths in a ship, and furniture there was none. Here was a discouraging specimen of peasant proprietorship ; and if I had contented myself with seeing this single house, or others like it on the commons, I might have gone away, as others have gone away, with the impression that the whole thing was a miserable failure, and that the Irish peasant is quite unsuited for property. But the agent, Mr B, who was driving me about the place, knew of a man who held a much larger plot than any of these, and to this man’s farm we accordingly pro ceeded. The settlers are in most cases men with no turn for agriculture whatever. The plots are too small to support a family, and consequently a man has no induce ment to work hard to better his condition. When we came up to Patrick Sheehan’s farm, the largest proprietor on the place, quite a different state of things presented itself. The owner was in, and we accord ingly had an opportunity of talking with him. A middle-sized, squarely-built man, with a blue eye, firm mouth, and a good though rather worn expression, as of one always looking ahead to face possible dangers and difficulties, came out to meet us. The intelligence, frankness, and straight-forward self-respecting manner of the man were very remarkable. He was very ready to talk, and told us a good deal about his circumstances. He has fifteen acres of his own, and pays rent for another nine. The house, though low, was long and roomy and there seemed to be no want of outbuildings. His princi nal business is with butter, which he sends to the Cork merchants, and he anxiously discussed with Mr B the possibility of sending it direct to London, and thereby avoiding the extortions of the middlemen. His father had owned the land and he before him, himself had sought to increase his property by purchase from a neighbor. He had offered LSO an acre for the land, but the owner had refused to sell. He was much assisted by being able to graze his cattle on the piece of common which still remained unannexed, was grate ful to Mr A for his care in seeing that the public rights were no farther encroached upon. But for him there would be a hundred more on the land this very day. He read all Professor C. Baldwin’s books

(Professor Baldwin, the well-known writer on agriculture, is a household work in Ireland), and, indeed, he thought he knew them by heart. He carried out their principles, moreover, and on his land the regular rotation of crops was strictly ob served. He had two sons at Glasnevia (the great agricultural school of Ireland), who were both doing well. With good seasons again, he was not afraid of Ameri can competition.

ELECTRICITY APPLIED TO BEE REARING.

A correspondent of the Deutsche Presso describes a method which he has adopted with success of overcoming theobstaclesf requently presented to the rearer of bees by the self will of those interesting and profitable in« sects. This is no other than giving them an electric shock. Everyone interested in bees knows the difficulties and dangers involved in hiving a swarm. One is often seen on a hot day in June in the top branches of a tree not to be cliraed, and another in some in accessible place seems to be preparing to set out, on its wanderings. If the bee master ventures to approach, all his dexterity and experience will often not prevent him from being seriously stung. There are, indeed, several cases oh record of death supervening from the stings inflicted; on such occasions. Herr Freiwith, the correspondent referred to, hit upon the idea of employing the electric force to stupify the bees. Trials on large and small clusters, and even on single insects, answered perfectly; the bees coming in contact with the conducting wires, fell stunned and motionless to the ground. They were then sorted and marked, accord ing to the strength of the Jcurrent applied. The time required for their recovery, vary ing from ten minutes to eight hours,: was proportionate-to the strength of the shock, but all came out of their trance safe and sound. Encouraged by the result of this experiment, Herr Friewith resolved to try it on a larger scale, namely, on bees in the hive. To this end he introduced the ends of two conducting wires into a fully occupied honeycomb, and turned on the current for a moment; the bees soon lay on the ground, and it was half-an-hour before they resumed activity. Herr Freiwith then _ constructed an apparatus in a small box, six inches away* which,' similar to a cartridge pouch, he wore with a strap round his body. The two wires of the apparatus were, when required to be used, fastened to -rods of a suicable length, the wires of course always projecting oyer the ends of the rods. These ends were then applied to the swarm, a knob similar to that employed for a room telegraph being at tached to the aparatus, that the current might be turned on at the proper time. Everyone is, of course, not skilful enough to construct such an ’apparatus, though no rm are precluded from doing so, as Heff Freiwith has not patented it.

The Cattle Plague in Cyprus.—The corre spondent of the Daily News, at Larnaca, writing on the 24 ult., says : —•“ We were in hopes a few days ago that the cattle plague, which broke out in Larnaca about a fort* night since, had been effectually mastered by the energetic measures adopted by the sanitary officer of the district, but the day before yesterday it was ascertained that the animals of Mr Richard Mattei, a member of the Executive Council, and one of the largest landowners in the island, were affected with the disease, and there is now no knowing where it will atop. Mr Mattei was away at Nicosia when the malady broke out in his stable, but he had left word behind him that if any of his beasts were to fall ill, they were to be immediately shot, and in accordance with these instructions one of them was put to death on the evening of the day on which the malady showed itself. yesterday au order was issued from the office of the Dis trict Commissioner forbidding the movement of horned cattle in and out of the town of Larnaca. either by land or sea, and bodies of mounted Zapteih now patrol the outskits of the town to see that the order is carried out. It is reported that at Famagusta the same order has been given there, and there seems to be good grounds for believing that the disease exists in many of the villages in that district.” ... Professor Corbett, formerly director of the Poultry Culture Institute at Hicksville (New York) has very generously written to the French Minister of Agriculture offering, upon payment of the modest sum of L 40,000. to place at his disposal an in vention by means of which French poultry-keepers will gain many millions of francs every year. At present, says Pro fessor Corbett, out of six milliards of eggs (6,000,000,000) laid in France every year, only 80.000,000 are hatched, and the chickens are sold at fr. Adopt my scheme, and all the other eggs, instead of being sold for domestic use at about a halfpenny each, will be hatched too, andl the chickens which emerge from them wil be worth, like the others, fr. This represent a clear gain of L 300,000,000 per annum. Professor Corbett omits to tell us, however, who is to eat all these chickens, and what we are to do without eggs in the country of omelettes ; but he probably thinks these details below the notice of a great mind like his. The French Minister has not yet seat him the L 40.000,

FARMERS’ SUPPLEMENT.

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