1832.] [ 487 ] 



, -'t'trrr-'Jt 

 MONTHLY AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



DURING the whole of our reporting days, which have not been few, we do not 

 recollect to have received such general, or rather universal, panegyrical accounts, 

 as those now before us, of the excellence of the winter and present season 

 weather most delightful for all agricultural operations. The spring seeds advan- 

 tageously put into the soil, and great breadths of plant above ground throughout 

 the country. In course there must exist some adverse exceptions, the result of 

 peculiar circumstances, which we shall note in their place. We must also ac- 

 knowledge, that we do not entirely agree with our correspondents as to the 

 benefits of a mild, moist, and foggy winter season, with perpetual chopping and 

 changing of the wind, which has had a morbid effect on the human constitution in 

 many parts, and which has encouraged a premature and rank vegetation of the 

 wheat crop, detracting, it is to be apprehended, too much from the seminal virtues 

 of the root. A crop, superabundant in straw, is seldom equally so in corn. If the 

 greatest breadths of wheat, both autumnal, and in the north, and some parts of 

 the north-west, of spring wheat, ever sown in Britain, can command plenty, it 

 is probable the next harvest will produce it. To say a word or two on that con- 

 venient professional humbug, cholera morbus, our ancient acquaintance, we have 

 not had a single case from the country, though plenty of other atmospheric dis- 

 eases from different counties sore throats, coughs, intermittents. Indigenous 

 cholera has been immemorially periodical in this country, never contagious, but, as 

 the doctors style it, spordatic, or locally infectious ; generally of atmospheric 

 origin, but too often produced by starvation and neglect. 



The wheats, clovers, and grasses, natural and artificial, are all universally for- 

 ward, promising very early spring food for all kinds of stock. It is said, however, 

 that the mild white frosts, which have prevailed through part of the last and 

 present month, have in some degree checked, beneficially, an over luxuriance. 

 The winter tare?, though yet to appearance a full crop, are said to have expe- 

 rienced some change of colour from these frosts, an effect which we have not 

 witnessed. No doubt, however, but their retarding fruit vegetation will prove a 

 step towards the security of that crop ; for it was said a week or two since, in 

 some of the earliest districts, that the bud had not then made its appearance. But 

 the most important effect of those frosts, when accompanied by dry weather, has 

 been experienced in the heavy clay lands, rendering them loose and pliable, and 

 fit for the even early reception of the spring seed, which, without such aid, 

 must have proved disadvantageously late. Indeed, the land has turned up well 

 for all the crops; little or no extra expense of culture has been incurred, and 

 many farmers boast they have scarcely lost a day throughout the season. 



As to unfavourable exceptions, the most remarkable were those which we heard 

 of from Oxfordshire and Beds, where they had previously been congratulating 

 themselves on the best lenten season within memory. In the first they had a 

 heavy rain of twenty-four hours' continuance, about the middle of the present 

 month, which consequently put a stop to all immediate culture of the heavy 

 lands, until the only remedy of frost or drought should present. Nearly at the 

 same period, in B'eds, they had the heaviest fall of rain and snow, continuing 

 through a similar period, which had been experienced throughout the winter, 

 producing the greatest floods in both districts, and laying their meadows and low 

 grounds completely under water. We cannot help noticing again, that which old 

 Marshall would have styled a difference of cUmature. We really have not been 

 overdone with that dry weather in Middlesex, which has been so much vaunted 

 in other districts. We had constant fogs until the first March breezes, at no 

 rate early, dispelled them ; and those fogs appeared to be the substitutes for rain, 

 and generally convertible into rain. As to that article above price, MARCH DUST, 

 its first appearance in any great quantity seems to have been on the 24th, desert- 

 ing us, within two days, with no very satisfactory promise of return. 



After all these objections, however, which we have been compelled to urge, the 

 present spring seed season, conclude whenever it may, will, taken all in all, be 

 among the earliest on record. As to the mode in which it has been conducted ; 

 that probably has been the best within the farmer's power, considering the de- 

 pressed situation of too many of that class; though there are some, even many, 

 who, by their own shewing, are successful. We have lately been agreeably 



