AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY AND GEOLOGY. 141 



this, I need not tell you how great was the astonishment. It became greater as Sir Robert 

 Peel continued.] Within a very few days past he had visited, at no great distance from the 

 metropolis, a model farm. [A sarcastic cry of Oh !] Yes, a model farm, from which the 

 agricultural member who cried " Oh !" might take many a useful lesson. It was the farm of a 

 well-known citizen of London — of a tradesman of great enterprise and of considerable pro- 

 perty ; but of one, be it observed, who had not been used or accustomed to farming, and 

 who was yet able to teach English agriculturists a lesson in agriculture. Upon a barren 

 heath Mr. Mechi had planted a model farm ; and such were his improved methods of cultiva- 

 tion, of draining, of manuring, and of subsoil plowing, that upon that barren heath there 

 stood at that moment the very finest crops throughout the length and breadth of Britain. 

 He admonished country gentlemen that new methods of cultivation had been too long neg- 

 lected. He warned them that, instead of being before the rest of the world, they were 

 lamentably behind it. He cautioned them to take care lest they were outstripped as farmers 

 by people of whom they appeared to entertain much too light opinions. And the text from 

 which he preached throughout was this same farm of Mr. Mechi, of which nobody, before 

 that day, had ever heard ; but which, from that day and long after, became the battle-field 

 on which protectionists and free-traders, corn-law men and anti-corn-law men, fought many 

 a heavy fight of words, both before Parliament and the people. " The Model Mechi" and 

 " Mechi's Model Farm" became the watchwords of one party, while by the other the dic- 

 tionary of the English language was dissected for every defamatory and disparaging dissyl- 

 lable the dialect afforded to designate Mechi as disgracefully as they desired us to deem that 

 he deserved. 



Since all this occurred, eight or ten years have run their course. Free-trade has become 

 the law of the land ; the averments of Sir Robert Peel as to the backwardness of English 

 agriculturists have been recognised as partly, if not wholly, true ; and Mr. Mechi, who held 

 his course complacently while the tempest howled around him, now enjoys the favoring gales 

 and gladdening sunshine of a prosperous career. I need scarcely tell you that he is what 

 he always was. It is the world that has changed — not the man. But Mr. Mechi knows (no 

 one better) how to turn the changes and chances of the world to account, and I will proceed 

 to tell you how he now applies his knowledge. 



Once every year, just at the close of the London season, when every one in town is sighing 

 for a breath of country air, just before the commencement of the harvest, Mr. Mechi has an 

 "agricultural gathering" at Tiptree Hall. To this gathering are invited all the notabilities 

 of the day. Farmers, imitators, and admirers, all turn out to see " Mechi's Model Farm." 

 To these, collected at his hospitable hall, Mr. Mechi proceeds to show his improvements. He 

 walks them over his fields and through his stock-yard ; he expatiates upon his difficulties and 

 explains his improvements ; he discom-ses on his crops, exhibits his machines, lectures learn- 

 edly on his manures, shows how he distributes them, and when the party have acquired suffi- 

 cient information and astounding appetites, he concludes the day by setting them down to a 

 banquet, such as a Londoner alone knows how to manage. 



As a place of country-resort, Tiptree Hall has few attractions. Situated on an elevated, 

 bleak, and barren heath, without a tree within a mile of it larger than a laurel, it boasts not 

 a single rural beauty, such as we regard rural beauty in this country. Mr. Mechi has made 

 a great effort to compensate for this by artificial gardening ; but though every thing has been 

 done that a cultivated taste and a lavish expenditure could effect, yet the result, as a whole, 

 is eminently unsatisfactory. Terraces and embankments have been thrown up to relieve the 

 flat monotony of the landscape ; a bog has been converted into a series of little lakes ; walks 

 of every possible variety have been wound around plantations ; tender shrubs have been 

 planted and effectually reared on spots where Nature never intended that a shrub should 

 grow ; flower-beds have been laid out with all the elaboration of which the Italian style cf 

 gardening is susceptible ; color has been properly introduced where nothing was to be seen 

 but drab-colored heather ; but still the result is unsatisfactory. The place, in fact, as a re- 

 treat, has no capabilities. Nature has predetermined that there shall be about it none of the 

 specialities of an English farm, and Nature has yet, in this respect, been too strong for man. 



But what of Tiptree as a " model farm ?" Is it what it professes to be ? Is it what Sir 



