228 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 



familiarized with men of science, and men of science learned not to despise 

 agricultural experience. This last era is almost the birth of yesterday, and al- 

 ready, as compared with any former period, the results read more like a pa^e 

 from the Arabian Nights than like acliapterin the history of agricultural pro- 

 gress. Deep drainage, artificial manures, artificial food, improved implements, 

 and railroad conveyance, have been the leading means by which the change has 

 been wrought. Deep drainage has brought into play theineshauated fertility 

 of our strong clays : portable manures and purchased food have increased the 

 crops on land of every degree. Mangold and swedes have been made to flour- 

 ish on stiff soils, and cereals on sieve-like sands. Downs have been trans- 

 formed from bare pastures to heavy root and rich grain bearing fields. Ihe 

 yisitors to Salisbury Plain at the agricultural show of ]857 were surprised to 

 find a large part of it converted into productive corn land — a change which 

 has been almost entirely effected within the last twenty years. The scientific 

 mechanic has provided the tools and machinery for breaking up and pulver- 

 izing the ground, for sowing the seed, for gathering the crops, for preparing 

 it for market, for crushing or cutting the food for the stock, with an ease, a 

 quickness, and a perfection unknown before. The railroad is the connecting 

 medium which maintains' the vast circulation, conveying the agencies of pro- 

 duction to the farmer, and the produce of the farmer to market. The steam 

 cultivator is, perhaps, about to be added to the triumphs of mechanism, and 

 then will be realized the expression in the fine lines of Mr. Thackeray on the 

 Great Exhibition of 1851 — an expression which was premature if it was in- 

 tended to be historic, but which we hope, and almost believe, will prove to be 

 prophetic : 



" Look yonder where the engines toil; 



These England's arms of conquest are, 



The trophies of her bloodless war; 

 Brave weapons these. 

 Victorious over wave and soil, 



With these she sails, she weaves, she tills, 



Pierces the everlasting hills, 



And spans the seas." 



The spirit of the old agriculture and the new are diametrically opposite — 

 that of the old agriculture was to be stationary, that of the new is to pro- 

 gress. When Young made his tour through the east of England in 1771, he 

 remarks as a peculiarity that the turnip cabbage of a Mr. lleynolds, which 

 had a special superiority, was gradually adopted by his neighbors — " a cir- 

 cumstance," he adds, " that would not happen in many counties." His 

 works are, in fact, a narrative of individual enterprise and general stupidity. 

 A Mr. Cooper who went into Dorsetshire from Norfolk could only get his 

 turnips hoed by working himself year after year with his laborers, and refusing 

 to be tired out by their deliberate awkwardness for the purpose of defeating 

 his design. After he had continued the practice lor twenty years, and all the 

 surrounding farmers had witnessed the vast benefits derived from it, not a sin- 

 gle one of them had begun to imitate him. Mr. Cooper, with two horses 

 abreast, and no driver, plowed an acre of land where his neighbors with four 

 horses and a driver plowed only three-quarters of an acre. Yet not a laborer 

 would touch this unclean implement, as they seemed to think it, and n j farmer, 

 with such an example perpetually before his eyes, chose to save on each plow 

 the wages of a man, the keep of two horses, and the extra expenditure in- 

 curred by the diminished amount of work performed in the day. No longer 

 ago than 1835, Sir Robert Peel presented a Farmers' Club at Tamworth with 

 two iron plows of the best construction. On his next visit the old plows with 

 the wooden mould-boards were again at work. " Sir," said a member of the 

 club, " we tried the iron, and we be all of one mind that they made the weeds 

 grow." On Young recommending the Dorsetshire agriculturalists to fold 

 their ewes in the winter, they treated the idea with contempt ; and on press- 

 ing them for their reasons, they replied, " that the flock, in rushing out of 



