The Past, Present, and Future of Seottish Agrienlture 



15 



existence of no appliance for obviating the 

 effects of wet during the obnoxious and ex- 

 posed condition of our reaped cereal crops in 

 harvest, is scarcely a compliment to our in- 

 ventive skill. The good old maxim, " what the 

 rain weets lat the win' dry," still obtains in 

 all its primeval integrity. True, under the 

 drill system there will be less occasion for 

 such an expedient, but its use in our variable 

 climate will never during this period be en- 

 tirely dispensed with. 



But the condition of nothing is permanent, 

 and the time will come when this state of 

 things we have referred to will in its turn pass 

 away. The disturbed equilibrium betwixt 

 demand and supply will again call for a re- 

 adjustment of the balance. The row- 

 culture, from its normality, its individualism, 

 preciseness, and unity — especially viewed in 



contrast with the empiricism and recklessness 

 of the system it replaced — will probably 

 remain a permanent institution. But its con- 

 dition will be modified. The horse-hoe will 

 now be laid aside, and agriculture Avill be 

 resolved into a species of gardening. The 

 quality of the grain will then not be judged of 

 in the aggregate, but each seed will, in plant- 

 ing, be subjected to the same scrutiny as a 

 suspected shilling. And then, in all things,, 

 will be observ^ed the true practice of the 

 science of economics, all arising from the 

 imperious demands of a grim and rigid 

 necessity. 



Such has been, is, and, probably, will 

 be the state of agriculture in Scotland — 

 the science taking its shape and form from 

 the existing and changing conditions of 

 society. 



THE GRAIN PRODUCING STATES OF AMERICA. 



NOTHING seems more difficult than to 

 estimate, with anything approaching 

 to certainty, the course of prices in the grain 

 market. This seems all the more difficult 

 since 1846, for now the mind that would 

 seek to form any just conception of the 

 quantity of grain available for consumption 

 in the course of a year, extending from 

 one harvest to another, requires to obtain 

 reliable statistics from quarters so numerous 

 and so varied, that even the very shrewdest 

 and most far-seeing produce-merchant finds 

 very often that some error has upset all his 

 calculations. Of one thing all feel certain 

 that the price in Mark Lane regulates, to a 

 very great extent, the price of grain in the 

 Northern hemisphere, for the surplus pro- 

 duction of other countries finds there its 

 natural market. Those who have made any 

 study of the wheat products and consumption 

 of Britain, are aware that about two-thirds of 

 her annual necessary supply is grown within 

 her own bounds, but that for the remaining 

 third she is dependent on foreign supplies. 

 A large portion of that comes, no doubt, from 



the Baltic and Black Seas ; but, on an aver- 

 age, England must look for the half of her 

 imported wheat to the North American 

 continent. And it can scarcely, we think, 

 fail to be interesting to agriculturists to 

 learn something of the routes by which some 

 30,000,000 bushels of wheat find their way 

 from the prairies of the far west to the sea- 

 board, some 2000 miles, before it is shipped 

 in its ocean vessels. 



Those who have any knowledge of the 

 American continent are aware that the 

 Eastern States have long ago ceased to yield 

 any surplus grain, but, on the contrary, have 

 become vast grain-consuming communities, 

 deriving their supplies from the great West. 

 The Eastern States are now inhabited by a 

 manufacturing population, obtaining their 

 bread-stuffs from the West and sending their 

 manufactured goods in exchange. It is almost 

 impossible to conceive with what rapidity 

 these Western States have developed. Fifty 

 years ago they contained only a few straggling 

 forts and trading points, now they contain 

 about one-third of the whole population north 



