THE PROGRESS OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 



[From tlie London Quarterly Review.] 



In the year 1856, a few En2;lishmen accepted the invitation of the French 

 Government, crossed the Channel with their best live-stock and implements," 

 entered into competition with the picked aj^ricultural and mechanical skill of 

 continental Europe, and found themselves by a long interval hmt in the arts 

 and sciences required for producing meat and corn in the most economical 

 manner, under a climate not eminently favorable, and on land which has 

 long lost its virgin fertility. This is the problem which modern cultivators 

 have to solve. 



The live stock of the British islands are distinguished for three merits — the 

 early period at which they become ripe for the butcher, the great amount of 

 food they produce in return for the food they consume, and the large propor- 

 tion of prime meat which they yield. 



The agricultural implements of England are distinguished for solidity of 

 construction, as well as for the rapidity and completeness with wiiich they 

 execute their work — especially that class of work which in other countries ia 

 more imperfectly and expensively performed by the labor of men or cattle. 



The best evidence of the superiority of British live stock and agricultural 

 machinery will be found, not in the premiums and medals awarded to them 

 in Vienna or Paris, but in the constantly increasing exportation of both to 

 every part of the world where scientific cultivation has superseded the rude 

 expedients of earlier times. 



Farmers are prosperous, landlords are intent on improving their estates, 

 laborers have ceased to hate the drill and the threshing machine ; during the 

 past harvest the reaping machine has come into working- use ; and competent 

 judges are of opinion that an economical steam cultivator has been almost 

 perfected. The time seems propitious for reviewing the series of events which 

 during the last hundred years have combined to place English agriculture in 

 the position which it now by universal consent enjoys. Different men and 

 different means have, in important particulars, founded the agricultural pros-. 

 perity of Scotland, although the two kingdoms have more than once exchanged 

 improvements. A Scotchman only can do justice to the unwritten history of 

 Scotch agriculture. 



There is rarely a great invention received by tiie world of which the germ 

 is not to be found in some preceding age. This is the case with the system 

 of artificial manures, which has recently worked such wonders in agriculture, 

 and which is touched upon as follows in " The new and admiralile Arte of 

 Setting Corne," by H. Platte, Et^quire, published in l(JOl, by " Peter Shorte, 

 dwelling at ye signe of ye Starne on Bred Street Ilill :" 



" Shavings of home, upon mine own experience, I must of necessity commende, by 

 means whereof I obtayncd a more flourishing garden at Bishopdal, in a most barren 

 and unfruitful plot of grounde, which none of my predecessors Could ever grace or 

 beautifie either with knots or flowers. I have bad good experience, with singular good 

 success, by strewing the waste sope ashes upon a border of summer barley. Malta 

 duste may here also challenge his place, for foure or five quarters thereof are sufficient 

 for an acre of ground. And sal armoniake, being a volatile salt first incorporated and 

 rotted in common earth, is thought to bee a rich mould to plant or set in. Dogges 

 and cattes and other beastes, and generally all carrion, buried under ye rootes of trees, 

 in due time will make them flourish and bring forth in great abundance." 



