2. Damage by Game. A tenant may now claim compensation for damage to crops by deer, pheasants, partridges, grouse, and black game.

3. Freedom of Cropping and Disposal of Produce. Prior to this Act it had been the custom for generations to insert covenants in agreements providing for the proper cultivation of the farm; as, for instance, forbidding the removal from the holding of hay, straw, roots, green crops, and manure made on the farm.  These and other covenants were merely in the interests of good farming, and to prevent the soil deteriorating.  In recent times vexatious covenants formerly inserted had practically disappeared, and where still existing were seldom enforced.  By this Act, notwithstanding any custom of the country or any contract or agreement, the tenant may follow any system of cropping, and dispose of any of his produce as he pleases, but after so doing he must make suitable and adequate provision to protect the farm from injury thereby:  a proviso vague and difficult to enforce, and not sufficient to prevent an unscrupulous tenant greatly injuring his farm.

4. Compensation for unreasonable disturbance. If a landlord without good cause, and for reasons inconsistent with good estate management, terminates a tenancy by notice to quit; or refuses to grant a renewal of the tenancy if so requested at least one year before the expiration thereof; or if a tenant quits his holding in consequence of a demand by the landlord for an increased rent, such demand being due to an increased value in the holding owing to improvements done by the tenant; in either of such events the tenant is entitled to compensation.

This compensation for disturbance is in direct opposition to the recommendation of the Commission of 1894,[676] and seems to be an unwarrantable interference with the owner’s management of his own land.

Another benefit, and one long needed, was conferred on farmers by the Ground Game Act of 1880, 43 & 44 Vict., c. 47.  Before the Act the tenant had by common law the exclusive right to the game, including hares and rabbits, unless it was reserved to the landlord, which was usually the case.  By this Act the right to kill ground game, which often worked terrible havoc in the tenant’s crops, was rendered inseparable from the occupation of the land, though the owner may reserve to himself a concurrent right.  One consequence of this Act has been that the hare has disappeared from many parts of England.

The greatest improvement in implements during this period was in the direction of reaping and mowing machines, which have now attained a high degree of perfection.  As early as 1780 the Society of Arts offered a gold medal for a reaping machine, but it was not till 1812 that John Common of Denwick, Northumberland, invented a machine which embodied all the essential principles of the modern reaper.  Popular hostility to the machine was so great that Common made his early