Land Tciinri 



529 



in the year bringing its pecniiar demands for labour ; 

 you will find in winter grubbing of hedgerow:-, making 

 compost heaps, mending roads, &c. ; and you 

 will find, too, that the acquired skill to manage a 

 steam-engine and a reaping machine has given a 

 brightness to the eye, an elasticity to the step of the 

 man, while it has also increased his respect for his 

 employer, and furnished him with material comfort 

 unknown to him before, by the higher wages paid, and 

 which he is worthy of. 



As agriculture advances, the condition of the 

 labourer must, perforce, advance with it. The art of 

 swinging a flail is very different from the intelligence 

 and thought required of the man who is entrusted with 

 an engine costing several hundred pounds, and on 

 whose carefulness and fidelity to orders the safety of 

 tlie machinery and success of the whole operation, 

 such as thrashing or ploughing by steam, depend I 

 ^'ou cannot depend on picking up such a man at a 

 (lay's notice, and hence you must provide a cottage, 

 and make him otherwise so comfortable that he can at 

 least be counted on as being ready at any moment. 

 Nor, can those whose duty .it is to perform the less 

 important parts of complex operations be discarded 

 when the job is finished. Men acquire a dexterity in 

 l^eiformance wXxnn frequently at the same task, which 

 renders their continuance in the service of an em- 

 ployer advantageous, if not quite a necessity. The 

 prudent farmer, therefore, will look around him for 

 such men as will suit his purposes, and to lodge them 

 near at hand. He will be under the imperative 

 necessity of obtaining from liis landlord cottages suffi- 

 cient for the wants of his farm. As time goes on there 

 grows up a new generation who are easily trained to 

 the performance of the work they hear and see niucli 

 of ere they can practically assist ; the whole resulting 

 in the labourer becoming not only more skilful and in- 

 telligent, and consequently, more valuable, but a 

 better member of society. 



TliXURE AND STOCK MAXAGEMEXT. 



In stock management, security of tenure is abso- 

 lutely necessary to the modern farmer. Except in 

 some mountainous districts en which the light of im- 

 provement has not dawned, there are few wether 

 sheep to be had now-a-days four or five years old. 

 The consumption of beef and mutton by our increas- 

 ing population outstrips population, and this of itself, 

 were there no other cause at work, naturally tends 

 to the slaughtering of animals as nearly as they can be 

 produced. 



It is a fact known to the initiated that a well bred 

 sheep can be made into excellent mutton at, say 15 

 months, and really good beef from cattle not over 27 

 months old. But to do this, they must consume a 

 considerable quantity of cake or corn, along with hay, 

 grass, and roots ; the full benefit from the use of 

 which is not got from the animals. Nevertheless, it 

 is not of necessity lost. The sheep lives out of doors, 

 and his droppings are, of course, on the land. The 

 VOL. I. 



IniUock is kept more than half, or it may be, even all 

 his time in the house, and the manure made under 

 him is carefully collected, liquid and solid, and carried 

 off to the land and ploughed in ; the result of this 

 kind of practice being that much better crops of com, 

 roots, and grass are grown. 



Time is, however, required to obtain the benefit. 

 It takes three years to breed and feed your 27-months 

 bullock, and it takes practically two years to breed 

 and realize a crop of fat sheep ; and for the land 

 to return interest on the indirect investment on it, 

 another year or two is necessary. Therefore, we 

 require, say five years for cattle and four for slieep 

 breeding and feeding for repayment in full ; so that, 

 under tenancy at will, where there is no power to 

 obtain reimbursement for the outlay at the end, except 

 from the animal, it is patent that a heavy loss would 

 lie the consequence of a tenure suddenly cut off ; to 

 obviate which, and encourage good farming, it has 

 some times been proposed to make such repayments 

 compulsory under authority of an Act of Parliament. 

 I confess, however, to have a decided objection to 

 parliamentary interference in the arrangements made 

 between individuals in matters of a strictly private 

 description ; were it even possible to frame a law 

 which would be fairly applicable to the generality of 

 cases. Experience has shewn that the benefit the 

 land derives from the consumption of cake, &c., 

 depends in some measure on the method of feeding. 

 Thus, if I lb. of cake per day be given to a 20 lb. 

 per quarter sheep, there is reason to believe that 

 not more than one-half of it will be converted daily 

 into mutton, and, consequently, one-half ought to 

 be charged to the sheep and the other to the 

 lamb. But if the consumption of cake be limited to 

 half-a-pound per diem, it is possible that the increase 

 in the weight of the animal might pay the entire out- 

 lay. Cattle may be fed in the house on cake and 

 other food, and the dung taken away every morning 

 with great regularity and laid in a heap, exposed to 

 all sorts of weather, whence issues a copious dark- 

 coloured streamlet, evidence at once of the loss sus- 

 tained by the bleaching process going on. Lime may 

 be applied to newly broken up arable lands where it 

 will render soluble the inert vegetable matter, abound- 

 ing in such soils, and thus increase the food of the 

 crops ; or it may be applied to newly-drained, though 

 old cultivated lands, where it may act beneficially by 

 neutralising or setting free acids injurious to vegetable 

 life. It may only act mechanically, and yet by alter- 

 ing the texture of a field be of great service. But it 

 may be applied to land deficient in vegetable matter, 

 or where it can confer no benefit by acting on acids, 

 or where its mechanical action is positive harm. 

 Guano may be misapplied in its application, bones 

 may be put on land where their results will appear 

 for many years, or they may be applied to soils where 

 their action is reduced to three or four. Where equal 

 amounts have been expended, the reversionary interest 

 of draining may be actually worth 100 per cent, less 



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