ing markets, they are hence receiving, from time to time, consider able sums on that account; this, with the money arising from the butter, cheese, &c. which their wives can spare from family use, and above all, that habitual custom they have of providing themselves in all the necessaries of life from their own farms alone, enables those who are most industrious, to collect, in the course of years, no inconsiderable sums. It happens, however, more frequently, especially if the factor is disposed to be oppressive, that in the occurrence of unfruitful seasons, by which their corn crop is not only defective, but even the fother rendered useless, that many an industrious and frugal family among them is reduced to great straits, and even over. whelmed in bankruptcy altogether.

These particulars, in the state of the moorland farmers, are the more interesting, in that they serve, in a great measure, to describe the situation and manners of the ancient husbandmen in general over the whole country, who, before the introduction of the many great improvements that have in this age taken place in agriculture, or in circumstances connected with it, were, both in their condition and practice, in a state nearly similar to these their undegenerate posterity. Some few particulars, in the manners and habits of the present race of farmers in the low parts of the country, as may be considered to be innovations upon ancient customs, may now be taken notice of.

• One remarkable circumstance, is the alteration which has taken place in personal labour. Formerly, (as still is the case in the moorlands,) the masters not only put their hand to every kind of work, but were actually the hardest wrought, and worst used labourers on their farms. It is, however, long since, in the low country, that they have emancipated themselves from this drudgery; although, at the same time, it must be acknowledged, that they have abated nothing of their former diligence and activity, but on the contrary have advanced in both. A farmer, now, is constantly to be found at the head of his work; either with the ploughs, in the barn, or the cattleyard; always overseeing some of the various operations carrying on. In this manner, his personal attention is employed to much better purpose, than when confined to a stationary employment, which, besides placing him on the same level with his servants, puts it really out of his power to direct or superintend them.

In their dress and exterior appearance, a great alteration has also taken place. Their vicinity to the metropolis, and consequent frequent intercourse with the citizens, has led them to adopt a refinement in dress, unknown to their ancestors, and which they follow up to all the variety of fashion. The same thing may be observed in regard to board, lodging, and furniture, in all of which, they have been gradually advancing to the better.

In nothing, however, is there a more striking contrast, than in this, that every article of family maintenance, which was formerly obtained at home, is now purchased in the market or in the shop. Not only the different articles of clothing, but bread, beer, and butchers meat, is all had from the town. This conduct, which has the appearance of extravagance, originates in the very opposite principle; for the farm servants, now being generally married, and boarding

in their own houses, the household of the master is commonly as limited in number as that of any other private individual, so that the quantity of bread, of beer, or of butchers meat, wanted from time to time, is so trifling, as to make it more economical to purchase it occasionally in town, where the bread is excellent, the malt liquors remarkably cheap, and the butcher market at all times well supplied.

With all these circumstances, which seem indications of wealth, they are not in the way of much increasing their fortunes. There is perhaps no profession whatever, which gives such a small return for the stock employed in trade, and the knowledge and application necessary, as does Agriculture in the vicinity of a great town, where, from the great competition for land, arising from the continual influx of noviciates from the city, who are eager to become farmers, the profits of the real husbandman are reduced to the lowest degree of recompence. Thus, while it may be observed with what rapidity fortunes have been lately here acquired, not only in the higher professions, but even in the lower mechanical arts, there is hardly an example of a farmer being able to raise himself above the level of his former station, although the husbandmen here consist of a body of men three times more numerous, and possessing a stock in trade six times greater than that of any other distinct profession what

ever.'

We have met with no practice in agriculture (in this volume) that will be so new to most readers, as the author's account of the ruta-baga, or Swedish turnip; which, as it is also short, we shall insert entire:

This was introduced lately, and thrives well. It is, perhaps, not so beneficial in some respects as the common turnip, but as it admits of being transplanted with advantage, it is surely an object of attention to the turnip farmers, as by means of it, they can fill up any va cancies in the drills of the common kind, with very little expence, which is hardly practicable by any other means, Even where the turnip fails altogether, as by the fly or slugs, the crop can be more readily renewed from a seed bed of ruta-baga, than from re-sowing the field, which seldom comes to much good.

The following communication, procured by favour of the Hon. BARON COCKBURN, sets the Swedish turnip in a still more favourable light:

"This plant is the best calculated of any for a Northern climate ; it stands frost well, keeps wonderfully when headed with straw built in stooks, which becomes in a great measure necessary, as hares resort to it from all quarters, and will touch no other root, while any of it remains. It eats as well after it is shot and sheds its seed, as it does before. I saw the remainder of a stack of it, the end of last May, at the Duke of Buccleugh's farm, which, with several others, had been lifted and stacked the first week of November at Dalkeith, after the winterers had been turned to grass; one root of which I carried home, and found it, when boiled, eat as well as it would have done in the month of October.

"Cattle are much fonder of them than turnip, insomuch that when put into a straw-yard together, the turnips are never touched until the other is entirely eaten up. Nay, after having been accustomed for some time to the Swedish plant, they have been found to refuse turnip for many hours; and even when compelled by hunger, to take to them with a seeming reluctance; the superior nutritious quality of the plant is pretty well ascertained from this fact; that, upon a comparative trial of a number of square inches of a single root, against the same of field turnip, the weight was a third more; and that cattle fed upon it, put up at the same time with others upon turnips, advanced more in a month than the others did in six weeks. Upon land prepared for turnips, the proper season for sowing it is about the 10th of May, and not much later. It has been tried in February, when early garden turnips are sown, but it always failed, growing to the stalk only without any root; when sown after May, it seldom niped to any tolerable size. Hares don't much take to it until the end of October, when the frost commonly begins, but as it can then be stacked, this objection is removed; and likewise the trouble attending the supply of cattle, during a storm with turnips, which will not suffer to be kept long after being taken out of the ground. The shaws of this plant, when carefully stript, are found to be an excellent kitchen green, and a good substitute for spinnage."

In addition to the above, the following circumstances relating to this turnip, communicated by a Gentleman, whose accuracy may be depended on, are deserving of attention:

"For five years I have found the Swedish turnip very useful, al though less productive than the common Norwich kind; half the quantity will go nearly as far, and nothing will destroy it in winter, "As a specimen of its hardiness, I shall mention one fact:-Last winter, which was a severe one, my sheep got into a field, where both species were growing. The smallest bite on the common turnip caused them to rot completely, and although many of the Swedish turnip were half devoured, the remaining pieces continued perfectly fresh and sweet, till the sowing of my barley obliged me to carry them off for my sheep."

• Gogar, 12th Nov. 1795.

W. R.:

In glancing over the miscellaneous matter in these pages, we were much surprised at the quantity of strawberries consumed in Edinburgh; which is computed to be in value not less than 6oool. each season. The price on an average is under 8d. per. Scotch pint, or a little more than 18. per gallon English.

The writer's account of the West-kirk charity work-house, p. 192, and of the economical practices of a Mr. Johnston, Appendix, No. 6. deserve notice, but our limits forbid farther

extracts.

On the whole, this performance, with others of the same sort, may furnish materials for a future work on agriculture, that will be useful to actual farmers: but, in its present state, it can only be viewed as a warehouse filled with heterogeneous

matter,

matter, which requires to be regularly divided into separate parts, before it can be rendered very fit for the use of the public in general.

MONTHLY

CATALOGUE,

For AUGUST, 1797.

EDUCATION,

SCHOOL BOOKS, &c.

Art. 14. Book-keeping reformed: or the Method of Double Entry so simplified, elucidated, and improved, as to render the Practice easy, expeditious, and accurate. By J. H. Wicks, Master of the Boarding School, Englefield House, Egham, Surrey. 4to. 8s. Boards. Longman. 1797. EVERY merchant finds it necessary to keep an hourly register of the commodities which he buys or sells, and of the money which he receives or pays. The first is the business of the stock-book, and the second is that of the cash-book. From these two registers, every transaction is posted to the ledger, in pages headed by the name of each person with whom the dealings have passed. The amount of things bought or money received becomes a credit, and that of things sold or money paid a debit, in the ledger; and thus the state of each person's account, the parity or difference between purchases and payments, is at one glance visible. The balance of the cash-book (that is, the difference between incomings and outgoings) consists in bills and money, and is ascertained weekly or daily. The balance of the stock-book consists in commodities and profit, that of the ledger in the difference between the outstanding debts and credits, and is commonly ascertained yearly; when the merchant is said to cast up. These three books are essential to complete accounts, and are sufficient persons confining themselves to these are said to follow the Flemish method of book-keeping; probably because the practice was brought hither from Antwerp, or some Hanse-town. It appears to have been in use from time immemorial. The stock-book nearly answers to the liber patrimoniorum of the Roman law; and the cash-book to the codex accepti et expensi, &c. Perhaps the Hanse towns in the Baltic, which had great intercourse with Constantinople before it was taken by the Turks, thence derived at the same time bookkeeping and arithmetical figures, which were apparently used among the antients before the time of Boethius. (Villoison, Anecdota Graca, vol. ii. p. 152.) Ludovico Guicciardini (Descript. German infer. p. 109) describes Antwerp as more advanced in the knowlege of exchange-accounts than his own countrymen.

The Italian method of book-keeping is said to be of Venetian origin, and of more recent introduction; but it would gradually have grown out of the other system in any very commercial country, Dealers, whose transactions multiply in different directions, find it necessary to keep subsidiary books, more detailed registers of their leading concerns. Bankers keep subsidiary cash books, separating the payments made in notes from those made in bills or by transfer,

Hb 4

&c.

&c. Wholesale dealers, who subdivide what they buy, register their purchases in a journal, their sales in an invoice-book, (livre d'envoi,) &c. Tradesmen, whose attention to customers requires manual occupation, make their registers in a waste-book, and reduce them to a neater form in hours of leisure. These are subsidiary stock-books. To merchants, who speculate in a variety of commodities, it becomes an object to discriminate between the profit yielded by each several article, in order to attach themselves to that which produces most gain. This is accomplished by subsidiary ledgers; by keeping a ledger for Things as well as Persons; by recording, under the head Wool, what was paid to Mr. Bakewell, to the carrier, &c. and what was obtained of the Leeds-manufacturer; under the head Wine, what was paid at Oporto, and for freight and for duty, &c. and what was obtained of mine host at the Garter." In most trades, it suffices to keep a ledger of Things for a few articles only: but there is certainly a neatness in extending such double accounts to every individual transaction. Where this is done, persons are said to follow the Italian method of book-keeping. The stock-book and cashbook must for this purpose be so constructed, that every entry shall specify both the person and the thing which the amount concerns. Each double entry is then posted twice; once to the debit or credit of the person, and once to the debit or credit of the thing in which the trader deals. The radical and characteristic difference between the Flemish and Italian methods is, that, by the Flemish practice, every ar ticle is posted but once, and by the Italian twice. On the latter plan, the accounts of a haberdasher may be made as voluminous as those of the Bank; it is therefore well adapted to give an air of bu siness and consequence to men of commercial leisure, but it tends little to resist error, and it surely increases the inconvenience of mistake. Where a transaction is omitted in either register, no form of book-keeping can supply the defect of recollection. Where an amount is originally recorded wrong, it will not be set right by posting it four times.-There are no discoveries to be made in bookkeeping our several traders proportion the number and structure of their subsidiary books to the nature of their occupations; and the best way is, to learn of him who has most applied his reason to the improvement of his peculiar routine.

:

After these remarks, it is time to notice the author of the work now before us, whose Introductory Observations do not display clear ideas of his subject. Books which serve merely to preserve copies of documents, letters, &c. are for the most part omitted: yet the Bill book, which is of this kind, is discussed. The supposititious bills of loading, inventories, and the like, are grossly inelegant. Names of ships, which are neither those of marine deities, nor distinguished navigators, nor otherwise connected with sea-affairs, occur. The commodities mentioned are not those for which our country is most famous; nor are their prices always probable: yet they are not those with which boys may be supposed conversant; an observance of which is another method of making instruction cling. From a classical schoolmaster, who selects his motto from Burke, and dedicates to the accountant general of the India-house, we expected attention to all

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this.