Excerpt from Journal of the Bath and West and Southern Countries Society, Vol. 13: 1902-1903; Work and Learn This feeling Of security had long taken possession Of our farmers and had bred in them a confidence in their methods, and in those of their fathers before them, which it would have taken an earthquake to shake, and it cannot be denied that they had a good show Of reason for such a state of self-satisfaction. For centuries previously British agriculture had been acknow ledged to be the best that the world could show, and its live stock was the envy Of all lands. N O wonder, then, that the long stretch of prosperity between the forties and the eighties should have produced a thick-skinned conservatism with respect to ancient methods, which it would take many lean years of adversity to penetrate. The great depression found the land of this country mostly in the hands Of those who, though keen business men in their way, were obstinately wedded to their own systems Of farming, both as to the choice and rotation of crops and the management Of their stock. For years they went on growing wheat just the same when the price was 283. Per quarter as they did when it was and breeding just the same number and class of cattle, sheep, and horses, fully persuaded that the good Old easy times would come back again, and that there was no occasion to adopt new-fangled ways. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.