nags for the milk cart, the mowing machine, the horse-rake, and so forth,
cannot maintain a brood mare as well. In the winter, it is true, the milk
may sell for as high a price as tenpence per gallon of four quarts, but
then he has a difficulty in procuring the quantity contracted for, and may
perhaps have to buy of neighbours to keep up the precise supply.

His herd must also be managed for the purpose, and must be well fed, and
he will probably have to buy food for them in addition to his hay. The nag
horses, too, that draw the milk waggon, have to be fed during the winter,
and are no slight expense. As for fattening a beast in a stall, with a
view to take the prize at Christmas at the local show, he has abandoned
that, finding that it costs more to bring the animal up to the condition
required than he can afterwards sell it for. There is no profit in that.
America presses upon him hard, too--as hard, or harder, than on the
wheat-grower. Cases have been known of American cheese being sold in
manufacturing towns as low as twopence per pound retail--given away by
despairing competition.

How, then, is the dairyman to succeed when he cannot, positively cannot,
make cheese to sell at less than fourpence per pound wholesale? Of course
such instances are exceptional, but American cheese is usually sold a
penny or more a pound below the English ordinary, and this cuts the ground
from under the dairyman's feet; and the American cheese too is acquiring a
reputation for richness, and, price for price, surpasses the English in
quality. Some people who have long cherished a prejudice against the
American have found, upon at last being induced to try the two, that the
Canadian cheddar is actually superior to the English cheddar, the English
selling at tenpence per pound and the Canadian at sevenpence.

Mr. George finds he pays a very high rent for his grass land--some 50_s_.
per acre--and upon reckoning up the figures in his account-books heaves a
sigh. His neighbours perchance may be making fortunes, though they tell
quite a different tale, but he feels that he is not growing rich. The work
is hard, or rather it is continuous. No one has to attend to his duties so
regularly all the year round as the man who looks after cows. They cannot
be left a single day from the 1st of January to the 31st of December. Nor
is the social state of things altogether pleasant to reflect on. His sons
and daughters have all left home; not one would