AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 351 



work is partly compiled, and partially illustrated by extracts from works of the 

 highest authority : and in a word, it is just the thing it professes to be at once, 

 a vehicle of instruction, and an entertaining and easy medium of the conveyance 

 of it. 



AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



ECHOING universal public report, we gave last month a most flattering account 

 of the crops, the harvest then commencing under the happiest auspices with regard 

 to the weather, that most important of all other considerations on the subject. On 

 the same authority, we continue our favourable accounts, without, however, re- 

 ceiving the opinion implicitly of an old Essex farmer, and applying it generallv 

 who sent us the information by a mutual friend that his crops were so exceedingly 

 bulky that he was really puzzled to devise where he could stow them. That the 

 crops, particularly of wheat, barley, and oats, on rich and good land, are great both 

 in quantity and quality, need not, for it cannot, be denied : but we should not be 

 faithful reporters to follow implicitly the echo of this overcharged and unqualified 

 abundance such as is habitually sounded on the commencement of every harvest 

 which is tolerably productive, without, at the same time, giving attention to the 

 other side of the question, and fairly stating those drawbacks which are well proved 

 to exist. We have generally found it necessary to suspend our opinion until a 

 quantity of the new corn shall have reached the markets, sufficiently large to 

 authorize a permament judgment. This event will not be long protracted, the 

 farmers being spurred on by two very powerful motives, immediate and pressing 

 calls for money, and the obvious prospect of a falling market, not only from the new 

 supply from their own harvest but those of so large a part of the continent, which 

 must inevitably be sent hither for a market. Most of the broken threshing machines 

 have been repaired and are again in requisition. This state of the markets, 

 British and foreign, is no doubt an indication of abundance, though not absolutely 

 decisive. After all, there has been a strange witchery in the affair of this year's 

 seasons, and a change of opinion from one extreme to the other. In the months of 

 May and June, from the appearance of the corn upon the lands, shrivelled, checked, 

 and discoloured by wet, cold, and drought alternately, it was judged irrational to 

 expect any other than a deficient harvest like the preceding when, "great events 

 from little causes," from the influence of two or three genial days under a favourable 

 change of the wind, the corn suddenly shot up, as it were from the regions of death, 

 into a state of luxuriance and healthful vigour which elevated to astonishment all 

 those concerned therein. As to the poor peas, withered by the blast and thence pre- 

 pared for the reception of the eggs and lice which produce the fly, fortunately for the 

 farmer, many of them encountered resurrection in a manner little short of mira- 

 culous ; for, from a hopeless blighted state and covered with vermin, they were 

 enabled by a favourable change in the weather, to shake off' their inqumbrances 

 and to enter into a new life of vegetation and the production of fresh flowers, 

 which has been succeeded by a crop well podded. Much of this, at best, precarious 

 crop, was in so hopeless a state, that it was either ploughed under at once, or fed 

 off by sheep. The part which has stood appears to be productive. This has been 

 a season of wonders ! the finest harvest weather for both hay and corn that pur 

 climate is capable of producing, yet mixed up with atmospheric ingredients inimical 

 to human lite and health, and even to the fair and healthful progress of vegetation. 

 In the meantime, there has subsisted throughout, the expectation of an abundant 

 crop in our several fortunate districts. 



The commencement of this year's corn harvest dates generally in the different 

 parts of the island according to their situation, from the last week in July to the 

 first week and the middle of August, few being later. Merionethshire in Wales 

 probably, has the honour of precedence, the earliest sample, a very fine one, of 

 barley being there shewn for sale. In Ireland, they were perhaps full as forward. 

 The Continental accounts agree very generally and in numerous particulars with 

 our own, and in the Mediterranean countries the crop of maize or Indian corn is 

 said to be the most beautiful and productive hitherto witnessed. But in the nor- 

 thern countries and in the vicinity of Copenhagen, the weather being unsettled, 

 with heavy rains and cold, the growing crops of corn were quite green towards the 



