THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



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battue, I remember we were ten guns, and there were tbree 

 or four guns fired at each bii'd ; each man had his servant 

 behind him, who scored the birds to you or to me, so that 

 at the end of the day there was a list of a vast number more 



heads of game killed than were in the bag 



Before I came into Susses, I was a game preserver in 

 Warwickshire upon the estate of Lord Digby. I could not 

 afl'ord to spend much upon game preserving, but I had as 

 good shooting as I could wish. And it was preserved en- 

 tii-ely by the tenants themselves, I had only one person I 



could call a gamekeeper. I was dependent entirely on the 

 farmers for my sport ; and they were so hospitable, that my 

 difficulty was, not to get tipsy with theii- strong ale, and in- 

 digestion with the pork pies they ?.)rought out to me in the 

 field. They had a right to kill rabbits, and hares by cours- 

 ing, and I would never shoot a hare so as to interfere with 

 their coursing. They marked for me, and the shepherds 

 and labourers kept all intruders off. In my whole lite I 

 never knew such civility and kindness."— From Dickens' 

 " All the Year Round," 



AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS, 



Sra, — Much frothy nonsense and delusion has been both 

 spoken and written during the last five years, eulogistic of 

 agricultural progress both in England and Ireland — Eng- 

 land soaring high in the world of machinery and puff, puff; 

 Ireland, in the world of blarney and speech, speech. Never 

 having set foot on English soil, we, of course, can .form no 

 idea of your agricultural system, nor its extent; all we know 

 being from hearsay and reading your journal. All we have 

 read lately about steam-ploughs, steam this, and steam that, 



and steam the d 1 knows what, we had begun to think 



you were actually turning your mountains (if you have any) 

 and waste lands upside down, and into fertile com fields ; 

 and had almost arrived at the happy conclusion that England 

 had at last awakened to a sense of her state of dependence 

 on foreigners for her bread, and that she had now determined 

 to grow her own corn, and thus be fortified inside as well as 

 outside, and thereby be able to resist all unfriendly intruders, 

 no matter what their cast or colour. The last few weeks, 

 however, of cold, dark, and rather drenching weather-, which 

 has cast such gloom around, caused such doubt, and thrown 

 such consternation into all internal affairs, and so unsettled 

 the mind of man, as to unnerve his whole faculties of action, 

 clearly prove that agriculture (notwithstanding the opinions 

 of modem political economists to the contrary) is not only 

 the propelling, but is also die governing power of this'great 

 nation. 



We who know, and have watched what is called Irish 

 progress, are in no way taken short, and our onward course 

 must have very shortly, if not this very year, brought us to 

 the necessity of adopting the half-holiday system to the Irish 

 stomach, independent of the season, so far as our own bread 

 production is concerned. We have not grown our own 

 bread for the last three years, our importations being higher 

 than our erportations. We go on, oblivious of all changes 

 of circumstances and seasons. No human afflictions, an- 

 cient or modern, seem to act as a warning, nor serve to beget 

 our forethought or reflection. We rely, as they say, on Pro- 

 vidence for everything, good and bad; when the bad thing 

 comes, it is Providence's will, and of course no use in trying 

 to avoid it. We rely, with the most perfect confidence, in 

 the adage, that when things come to their worst they will 

 right themselves, without our aid ; yet here we are, past the 

 middle of the nineteenth century, and our most faithful 

 adage has just as much appearance of being verified as it 

 had one thousand years ago. 



The interesting history of Jacob and his progeny, and the 

 wonderful intei-position of a Divine Being in having sent 

 Joseph into Egypt as a commissary, we may say, to buy up 

 and store com, in times of plenty, against future scarcity, 

 either by the effect of seasons or any other unforeseen cir- 



cumstance—this direct precept, by a ruling Providence, 

 as to the necessity of forethought, and of being provident, 

 seems to be entirely lost sight of by us of the green isle. 

 Jacob was a greater stockmaster than almost all Ireland put 

 together; had the whole land of Canaan as a run for his 

 herds and flocks ; when one district failed he could migrate 

 to another. Still we are told that he and his whole house 

 must have died for the want of com and bread, except for 

 the stores in Egypt. 



Let us come down to the period from 1780 to 1784, known 

 in Scotland as the time of the white Peas, and when the 

 three kingdoms were suffering distress and famine, from the 

 double calamity of bad seasons and war, which made it haz- 

 ardous to import corn from the Baltic, and even from Eng- 

 land. In 1782 a number of people were lost on the Scotch 

 mauntains, between Stirling and Inverness, through their 

 philanthropy, and risking a perilous journey, in search of 

 corn for themselves and neighbours. Again, so bad was the 

 season and harvest of 1 799, that oatmeal in the spring of 

 ISOO rose to the enormous price of five shillings per peck 

 (nine pounds) in the Glasgow market. 



We ourselves well remember that first season and harvest 

 of om* farming trials ( 1816), and so may our then juvenile 

 fingers, being frostbitten in the month of November, picking 

 the dry sheaves out of the stook, and shaking the snow off 

 others, and turning them to the midday sun to dry. Hun- 

 ger, distress, and war prices followed in 1817, and stomachs 

 had to put up with half-holiday allowance, and some even 

 less. All classes had to lower sail and take in a reef or two. 



Need we mention the direful famine that devastated this 

 counti7 duiing the years 1815-6-7-8 and 9, the vision of 

 which still bedims our optics, and recalls to mind the char- 

 nel houses of death from starvation and fear, we were wont 

 to meet in the provinces on every cross-road, and even on 

 the deep bogs ? 



Yet with all these events of former ages, and those of 

 modern date, and in our own times, to guide and to warn, 

 we still pursue the old beaten track, stumbling over moun- 

 tains in ssarch of molehills — sinking in the substance in 

 pursuit of the shadow— and are now less prepared to meet 

 scarcity than we were in 1846. Where, then, is our 

 so much boasted agricultural improvement ? We carmot 

 see it ; and our opportunities have neither been few nor far 

 between. We know the whole country, from the Giant's 

 Causeway to King-head, and from Ochil-head to Howth- 

 bead ; and, except an odd place or two in a county, we un- 

 hesitatingly say there is no such tiling. 



If starring human beings, and driving them to every cor- 

 ner of the world in search of employment and food, which 

 they cannot .find at home ; if the pampering of a few fat 



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