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diately after harvest, when wheat was at 35s., and on making out my balance sheet -the details of which are given at p. 34 -I found that the net profits from the four acres were, to the proprietor, £37, 33.

"My profession, my pursuits, and my inclination are all opposed to any enlargement of my operations in farming. Had it been otherwise-had I chosen to take in hand a hundred acres instead of four, for the growth of wheat, the profits would have been upwards of £900. With wheat at 35s. the quarter, the net profit from these hundred acres would, I repeat, have been to the proprietor more than nine hundred pounds. And, moreover, a result somewhat similar to this I should look for, year after year, from the same one hundred acres of land, as I certainly look for it, year after year, from the four.

With the most entire sincerity, and with the greatest earnestness, I give utterance to my conviction, that, on tolerably level wheat-land-that is, with very few exceptions, on all clay land-on that very quality of land which is spurned and calumniated as unremunerating the same system, followed by the same success, could be carried out to any extent which requirements of a farm for other produce might permit. The only obstacle I foresee to its extension, is the want of a clear understanding of the method, and the means of carrying out a practice so new."

The reader cannot fail to remark that the estimate of profit is here taken at 35s. the quarter, and will draw his inference, comparing the result with the present value per quarter. The "calumniated clay land!" There is a very amusing as well as instructive little book upon this subject, with a quaint title, Talpa, or the Mole: the Chronicles of a Clay Farm, showing, in a facetious, lively manner, the successful treatment of a clay farm, which had previously been disastrous to every occupant. Clay is a mechanical disadvantage, but is of chemical superiority. The revolution wanted is in the mode of culture-to overcome by new mechanical means mechanical difficulties, and to turn to the best purpose the chemical superiority. It is thus the author of Talpa writes of Jethro Tull :

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"When that day comes-when the living chemistry of the soil is accepted and understood, not as an amusing and probable speculation, the vaguely suggestive

subject of a 'Lecture' before a patronising council, but as a solid working-day, everyday practical fact-then the mechanics of agriculture will not be far behind! Then the touching truisms of Tull-the Galileo of agricultural science, the Luther of modern husbandry-struggling single-handed against a whole dark age of ignorance and banded prejudicewill reach the 'promised land' he saw and pointed out with the finger of the seer, but was never allowed to enter. Blending into the truest of union with the after-discoveries of Davy, De Candolle, Liebig, Boussingault, and our own not less deserving Way and Johnston, and others of distinguished note-his theory of cultivation will propound matter of deep thought and combined action, equally to the chemist and mechanician."

The author of A Word in Season is equally earnest in praise of Tull :

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"There are," says he, "few persons well informed upon the subject who will deny that agriculture in England owes more to the genius of one man, wanting though he was in the accuracy of modern science, than to all the scientific schemes which his principles of farming have since evoked. It may give some weight to my present observations, if I state that that man has been my guide in husbandry; and that, though I differ altogether from him in the method of applying his principles to the growth of wheat, yet the principles themselves are those of Jethro Tull."

Difficulties, real or assumed-for fears are of the nature of difficultiesare the forerunners of great events, of beneficial results. Agriculturists, landlords, and tenants, and even those not, strictly speaking, agriculturists, but the economists and scientific, who look to the serious disadvantage of trusting too much to foreign produce for the maintenance of the population-all are making, in their several speculative ways, agriculture the main interest of their country. The sciences, mechanical and chemical, are constantly at work for the benefit of the soil. We are put upon our mettle, and shall doubtless reach great results in the culture of our lands, as we have in everything else. It is in scientific discoveries, and their application to all our wants, that this age is so remarkable. And the steady, sturdy perseverance of our race, under all difficulties, bids us yet hope, that

even out of the evil we have felt or fancied, permanent good will come.

M. de Lavergne, like every man of taste, is an advocate for sparing the picturesque, and deprecates utility in ugliness. We hope, and are inclined to believe, that in agriculture, as in most things, beauty is always combined with utility; and that if with a present view it may in any respect appear otherwise, some new discovery will show us the error, and direct us how to retrace our steps. We take the spirit, if not the accuracy of the wording "God made the country, and man made the town"-only as far as the free beauty of nature predominates. In fact, town and country are both the Great Creator's and man's. Man was gifted with inventive faculties by which he builds and works out all mechanical arts and things beautiful. His labour, too, is in the country-he changes the face of it; but somehow or other, with design or without design on his part, the result has hitherto been, that natural beauties, on the whole, have not been destroyed. The cultivated country will be found, upon a just comparison, more beautiful than the uncultivated. Even that wonderful invention of mechanism and science, the steam-engine upon our railroads, which landed proprietors, rural poets, and artists so lamented as an unsightly intrusion, we look upon in quite another light. The rapid progress, the changing vapour, creating variety and colour as it goes, and the returning calm and gradual re-coming out of the scene in its many changes, are all elements of the picturesque. We have no lamentations for the legitimate applications of science to agriculture, believing that none will be permitted to be really permanently profitable that are totally, and without compensations of new beauty, destructive of the charms of landscape. We are incredulous that cattle will be for ever turned away from pastures; that our hills will not be "white over with sheep; " that our Academy will not have its modern and future "Paul Potters," with their recognised sketches from nature. Lovers of the marine picturesque were at first alarmed at the unsightliness of steam navigation, but are now convinced to the contrary, and sensitive

to the grand effects of steam, cloud, and sky and water, in a more living union and motion.

"With the exception of Normandy, and some other provinces where the same practice prevails, our territory seldom presents that smiling aspect which England does, with its greensward depastured with animals at large. The attractive beauty of the landscape is enhanced by the picturesque effect of the quickset hedges, often interspersed with trees, which divide the fields. The existence of these hedges is strongly assailed in the present day, although hitherto they have been considered as indispensable to the general system of agriculture. Each field being pastured in its turn, it is convenient to be able in a manner to pen the cattle, so as to leave them without any It appears strange to us, further care. whose habits are so different, thus to see cattle, and especially sheep, left entirely to themselves, on pastures sometimes far from human habitations. To account for such a state of security, it must be recollected that the English have destroyed the wolves in their island; and that they have by severe laws, under a system of rural police, protected property against human depredations; and, finally, they have taken care to make their fields secure by means of fences. These beautiful hedges, then, are thus a useful defence, as well as an ornament; and it is only surprising how there should be any wish to do away with them."

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A country without trees or enclosure has its own wild and peculiar beauty it communes with the clouds-poetically with the morning dawn, the twilight, and the gloom of night; but a cultivated country without trees and hedgerows, is like a town without inhabitants, and without the order of its streets. Trees are the very life of the land-they are not even mute-their voices in the breeze are pleasant. They seem ever to be telling some story to the earth, which they have gathered from their look-out in the sky above.

M. de Lavergne thinks we are wrong in neglecting buckwheat :

"As to maize and buckwheat, in place of being causes of inferiority, they ought to be sources of wealth, for these two grains are endowed with much greater power of production than the other two; and what they yield with us (France) in certain parts, shows what they may be made to produce elsewhere."

"In this consists the whole system of English farming: nothing is more simple. A large extent of grass, whether natural or artificial, occupied for the most part as pasture; two roots-the potato and turnip; two spring cereals-barley and oats; and a winter one, wheat,- all these plants linked together by an alternating course of cereals, or white crops, with forage, or green crops, commencing with roots or plants which require to be hoed, and ending with wheat ;-this is the whole secret. The English have discarded all other crops, such as sugarbeet, tobacco, oleaginous plants, and fruits; some because the climate is unfavourable, others on account of their exhausting nature, or because they do not

like unnecessarily to complicate their means of production. Two only have escaped this proscription: these are, the hop in England, and flax in Ireland; both these are successfully produced in their several localities. The value of the flax crop in Ireland is £15 per acre, but its extent is only 100,000 acres. The hop yields a still higher return, but it covers only about 50,000 acres."

politicians at least doubted the propriety of advocating a crop which itself encouraged, in a large population, reckless idleness. Cobbett, it is well known, wrote fiercely against it, and took some pains, against fact, to prove it a poison. With regard to hemp and flax, Ireland seems likely to profit by their cultivation; and that the cultivation is important, and should be encouraged, has been foreseen; and the foresight is remarkably applicable in the present day. Mr Spence, writing at the commencement of this century, in his treatise, of which we have already spoken, England independent of Commerce, says, "If we cannot get hemp and flax from Russia as usual-and most assuredly we cannot, if Russia will not accept our manufactures in return (it might have been added, if at war with us)-we shall have occasion immediately to bring into cultivation upwards of 200,000 acres of waste land, for the purpose of growing these products ourselves. Here is at once employment provided for 200,000 individuals."

It appears, by recent discoveries, that the real properties and uses of the three plants-beet, flax, and chicory-have been misunderstood. The promise from them is great indeed, for it is to the supply of many wants. It is well that the owners and occupiers of the soil should look to all possible ways, and all possible articles of commerce, to which they may apply the land-their raw material. We have read with much interest a pamphlet by Mr Digby Seymor whose first object is to promote

of the "Land Investment the west of Ireland." He value of the plants-beet, chicory. They have ulteit beyond their immediate and onionsible uses; and the objecHamch at first sight force themels

pon our suspicion, upon invesvanish. The crops are not ative, as they were supposed to after the first uses, the secondary ry profitable for the feeding of and these uses are to be drawn All three-and they are rotation and it further appears that arcely any soil which will them.

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Our means of happiness arise out of some evil. Thus "Necessity becomes the mother of invention," and venter the real magister artium. Every famine is a warning: every removal of a good makes the supply of a new one. In our wars with France she lost her colonies: the consequence was, that the people of that country lost the great article of consumption-sugar. Then arose the discovery that beet might be so cultivated as to fill the vacuum. It is now made out that we can produce sugar as well from the beet as the cane. And how well timed is the discovery, when slaves are emancipated. Nor is sugar from this plant the all-the residue is eagerly devoured by cattle and sheep. "The materials left after the sugar contain the nitrogen and salts which render the beet useful as food, or as manure if returned to the soil." Molasses, too, is sold to distillers for the manufacture of spirits. Again, the same necessity-the apprehension that a cotton supply would fail us, has set the "machinery" of mind to work; and from that wonderful mill, man's brain, we are enabled to turn out cotton from flax-nay, more, to manufacture a material to intermix with our three great staple trades of cotton, wool, and silk. Such is the invention of M. Claussen. Take these products instead of sugar, and all said of the beet may be said also of flax, in its ulterior uses. Now, what of chicory? Must we connect it with fraud, and see nothing but the adulteration of coffee? It is a very honest plant, yielding ready and even singular obedience to the hand of the cultivator. Its propensity is to throw off every bad particle of its nature, and to assume virtues with a changed and graceful appearance. "No plant exhibits in such marked degree the effect of cultivation as contrasted with its condition in a wild state. stead of thick and fleshy roots, the cultivated varieties exhibit them long and bulky; instead of stems two feet high, the cultivated varieties reach the height of from six to ten feet; and instead of oblong, lanceolate, and runcinate leaves of a uniform hue, present them with lobes hooked back, diversified in shape and in shades of colour." For its uses, as beet and flax, so is

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chicory profitable as forage for cattle. Mr William Stickney, a practical authority, speaks of its enormous produce per acre; and adds, "It is my opinion that there is no green crop in this country that can pay so well. I believe that it will eventually be the common beverage of the poor, and in a great measure supersede tea and coffee. It makes a rotation crop with beet and flax: like them it gives its return to the land, and therefore, like them, is not exhaustive."

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Time's changes are wondrous-old things come round again, and look into the world with a better face than ever-banished dynasties walk quietly into their thrones again. Cotton came in proudly and overthrew the cottiers' dames' spinning-wheels: then pleasant music went out of villages. Cotton drove out flax. Now, what if flax returns and discomfits cotton?it has learnt something from its rival. "The observations I have made," says Mr Digby Seymour, assume the adoption of Schenck's patent; and for the production of strong fibres for the linen manufacturer, it will probably be still the most approved system. But it is high time that we should pass to the discovery of infinitely greater importance in the history of the flax-manufacture-I mean the invention for which Chevalier Claussen has obtained a patent, by which the old rival of the flax plant is likely to be discomfited in its own field; and flax, instead of making way for cotton, is transformed into a similar article." This will be a metamorphosis quite Ovidian.

"In nova fert animus mutatas discere formas Corpora."

Some future Darwin, as poetical and less political, may hereafter, with success unsatirised, sing both the "Loves and the Rivalries of the plants. Nature is ever humane. Finding that man destroyed the poor bees for their honey, she gave him the sugar-cane; seeing that he made his fellow-man a slave to cultivate it, she showed him the uses of the beet. When we misuse her gifts, she takes them away, and benevolently provides substitutes. "Vivite sylvæ"-let all the plants given us flourish, and our

improved agriculture both feed and clothe a happy population.

M. de Lavergne's chapter on the "gross produce" may be read for its statistics: the result is the great superiority of England. The agriculture of France is, beyond a doubt, much improved since Arthur Young said of it, when travelling through the poorer districts, "It does, indeed, try one's patience to behold a country so lovely, and so favoured by Providence, treated so shamefully by man." While quoting Arthur Young, we cannot resist the temptation of laying before the reader a very curious passage from his journal. He actually saw in Paris the electric telegraph on a small scale: how strange that its uses should have been in abeyance until now!

"In the evening to Mons. Lomond, a very ingenious and inventive mechanic, who has made an improvement of the jenny for spinning cotton. Common machines are said to make too hard a thread for certain fabrics, but this forms it loose and spongy. In electricity he has made a remarkable discovery. You write two or three words on a paper he takes it with him into a room, and turns a machine enclosed in a cylindrical case, at the top of which is an electrometer, a small fine pith-ball; a wire connects with a similar cylinder and electrometer in a distant apartment; and his wife, by marking the corresponding motions of the ball, writes down the words they indicate, from which it appears that he has formed

an alphabet of motions. As the length

of the wire makes no difference in the effect, a correspondence might be carried on at any distance-within and without a besieged town, for instance; or for a purpose much more worthy, and a thousand times more harmless, between two lovers prohibited or prevented from any better connection."

With all deference to the gallantry of the preference, we should think the last communication of the least importance if it be true that "Love will find out a way," love may be left to itself. But the besieged town suggests something of very present importance; and we think it "a thousand times more harmless," if it may tend to provide against the irruption of an enemy. We know not if this been thought of in our need at topol. The use is so palpable, mmunication with the French

and English lines, and also with the fleets, that we can hardly imagine it to have been overlooked.

This machinery, it need scarcely be added, which Arthur Young saw so many years ago, is exactly our "electric telegraph."

Of the chapter on "" rents, profits, and wages," we have little to remark. Much has been written, and with widely different views of late years, upon the theory of rent. Some philosophers of the economic school have gone so far as to deny the right of rent altogether. We are satisfied that if an estate is sold in the market, rent is implied in the purchase. Governments admit it in taxing both landlord and tenant. It is not worth while to discuss the subject; nor do we care to investigate comparisons of rents, profits, and wages. There are theorists who lament the substitution of the farmer for the old English yeoman, who cultivated his own few acres. Among these we may reckon the author of Talpa. M. de Lavergne is of a contrary opinion. We are inclined to side with him. If, indeed, a class of stout-hearted substantial men had been removed from the land, instead of having exchanged their character in a degree, there might be cause for regret; but it is not so. The farmer, who, had he not altered his condition, would have been the yeoman, has simply bettered his former condition, and this naturally

arose with us from his own election. For as agriculture improved, more capital was required for carrying it on; and the cultivator deemed it more to his advantage to turn his capital, generally a small one, in the cultivation, than in purchasing the ownership of land. We consider the class as raised, not lowered. Agriculture is a manufacture requiring skill and capital; and these, the more they are enlarged, create the manly dignity of responsibility.

"Farmers 'in the best parts of England make fifty, sixty, up to one hundred francs per hectare (15s. to 30s. total incomes amount to from £500 per acre), and there are some whose to £1000. Hence the importance, in a social point of view, of that class which is as firmly established upon the soil as property itself. These are the

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