ust spend our income for the benefit of
our successors: and what care we for our successors? No, we
look to the present usufruct; the future is no concern of
ours--we have no children!' And the friar is right. Well, he
went on to say that I was at liberty to build at my own cost
as many sheds as I liked, which of course would belong to
the convent at the expiration of my lease. I replied that I
had no objection to erect the sheds, if the convent would
grant me a lease of reasonable length. But just then it
occurred to me very opportunely, that the canon law does not
recognize leases for more than three years, and that on the
very day when my sheds were completed, the pious fathers
might find it convenient to pick a quarrel with me. So here
the matter dropped. Although our cattle are naturally hardy
they are bound to suffer from exposure to the weather. A
hundred cows under shelter will yield the same quantity of
milk through the winter as five hundred in the open air, at
half the cost. A large portion of the hay we strew about the
pastures for the cattle, is trodden underfoot and spoilt
instead of being eaten; and if rain falls, the whole is
spoilt. Calculate the loss of milk, the cost of cartage over
a wide range of land, the damage done to the pastures by the
trampling of heavy cattle in wet weather, all caused by the
want of a few sheds, which it is impossible to have under
the present system, and you will appreciate the position of
a farmer holding under landlords who are careless as to the
future, and merely live from hand to mouth.

"There is another improvement, which I offered to make at my
own expense. I asked permission to dam up a little stream,
dig some trenches, and irrigate the fields, by which I could
have doubled the produce both in quantity and quality. You
will hardly imagine the answer I received. The monks
declared the extraordinary fertility which would result from
the irrigation, would be a sort of violence done to nature,
by which in the end the soil could not fail to be
impoverished. What could I reply to such reasoning? These
good fathers only think of nursing their income. I tax them
neither with ignorance nor bad intentions. I only regret
that the land should be in their hands."

"Pasture-farming u