THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



359 



man justly attached to the first of national interests, 

 those of the credit-foncier, and of agricultural instruction. 

 The Council-General of Agriculture, and the to-be 

 regretted assembly known under the title of The Central 

 Congress, had on many occasions called the attention 

 of the Government to these two subjects. The new 

 inspector was directed to go and study them in Ger- 

 many. Royer set out in 1844, and went over the 

 Grand Duchy of Baden, Wurtemburgh, Bavaria, Prus- 

 sia, Hanover, and Belgium, and returned from this 

 journey with two long reports, which were successively 

 printed at the royal press, by order of the Minister of 

 Agriculture and Commerce. 



The first treats of the institutions of Credit-foncier in 

 Germany and Belgium. It is composed chiefly of 

 official documents, and has only served better to make 

 known in France the ingenious mechanism of these in- 

 stitutions. M. Wolowski, who has, at a later period, 

 had the merit of naturalizing them amongst us, after a 

 long argumentation, has thenceforth awarded full justice 

 in the Journal of the Economists to assistance he de- 

 rived from Royer ; and the opinion of a judge so com- 

 petent is a sufficient eulogy. Established in 1852, the 

 French Society of Cfedit-foncier has not yet realized, 

 and probably will never realize, the unreflecting ex- 

 pectations its appearance has raised ; but its work is 

 proceeding to the extent of possibility, and it has already 

 lent to real property more than 100,000,000 francs at a 

 moderate interest, and with provision for partial repay- 

 ment. This first benefit is still but little felt upon the 

 enormous mass of our landed debt ; but we cannot do 

 everything. Besides, the establishment of this Society 

 has called forth important inquiries into the constitu- 

 tion of property, and the general conditions of credit, 

 which have had the double advantage of dissipating 

 many illusions, and unravelling useful truths. In con- 

 tributing to lay the foundation of this laborious edifice, 

 Royer has not thrown away his time. 



His second report was entitled " German Agricul- 

 ture, its oryanization schools, manners, and more 

 recent practice." This great work places in a proper 

 light the rare qualities of that spirit of investigation he 

 possessed, in this instance, without anything to regret ; 

 time, study, and reflection having allayed his first 

 ardour. The word agricultural organization is, how- 

 ever, too exclusively employed to designate the adminis- 

 tration in its connection with agriculture, which consti- 

 tutes only the least part of what may be called by that 

 name ; but the author has not neglected the most 

 essential basis of true agricultural organization— the 

 state of property and cultivation, the civil laws, 

 manners, communications, imposts, &c. We love to 

 traverse with him the rich province of Lower Suabia, 

 which is reckoned amongst the thickest populated and 

 best cultivated parts of Europe, .with their villages, 

 which touch each other, their excellent roads 

 bordered with fruit trees, their vineyards, planted on 

 terraces to the summits of the mountains, their fields 

 subdivided to infinity ; and the still richer fields of 

 Saxony, where the house of the simplest peasant is 

 well built, elegant, and well kept in repair, which is 



not always the case elsewhere with those of the most 

 wealthy proprietors ; and Bavaria, much less prosperous ; 

 and the German kingdoms, Prussia — which presents so 

 many agricultural contrasts, from the fertile shores of 

 the Moselle and the Rhine, to the frozen banks of the 

 Niemen. 



In the first class of studies which occupy, on the way, 

 the judicious traveller, may be placed agricultural 

 instruction. Such was the true end of his mission, and 

 in the midst of the interesting objects which claimed his 

 attention, he never loses sight of it. Germany is in 

 some respects the classic country of agricultural in- 

 struction. It is to M. de Fellenberg that we generally 

 ttribute the honour of having created the first institute 

 of this kind, at Hofwyl, in the Canton of Soleure, in 

 Switzerland, about the year 1800. At the same period, 

 Thaur established another in Prussia, and obtained 

 from it such results, that in 1806, in the midst even of 

 the disasters of the campaign of Jena, the Government 

 instituted, under his direction, the public school of 

 Moeglin, in order to repair, as soon as possible, in 

 peace, the misfortunes caused by war. In 1818, when 

 peace had finally returned to Europe, a man equally 

 illustrious with Thaer— Schwig — organized in Wur- 

 temberg the Agricultural and Forester Institute of 

 Hohenheim, which was soon imitated in Saxony, Bava- 

 ria, and most of the other German states. Hofwyl had 

 ceased to exist in 1844, but Mceglin, Hohenheim, and 

 the other German schools which rose around these two 

 models, presented a vast field of observation. 



Ten years after Royer, I visited the most important 

 of these establishments — Hohenheim, and have been 

 able to testify to the exactness of the details given by 

 him in his report, and which were in general still true, 

 in spite of the inevitable changes efl^ected by time in 

 such institutions. That little kingdom of Wurtemburg, 

 which has not much more than a thirtieth part of the 

 surface of France, supports thus for forty years one of 

 the largest agricultural and forester institutes in exist- 

 ence, and students resort thither from all parts of Ger- 

 many. Royer gave an account also of the secondary 

 institutions which, in the same kingdom, complete the 

 system — the two farm-schools of Elwangen and Hach- 

 senhausen, the course of rural economy at the University 

 of Tubingue, the Veterinary College of Stuttgardt, and, 

 above all, the celebrated Dairy, and Stud, still more 

 noted, founded and directed by the King of Wurtemburg 

 in person. Such are the various means of information 

 accumulated on one single spot ; but it is necessity 

 which compels it. So dense is the population round 

 Hohenheim, that the soil is scarcely able to support it, 

 and daily new agricultural accessions can alone retain 

 upon their native territory thousands who are ready to 

 emigrate from it. 



Royer passes afterwards in review the other agricul- 

 tural institutions of Germany — Moeglin, in Prussia; 

 Schleissheim, in Bavaria ; Tharaut, in Saxony, &c. 

 Partisan as he was on the subject of agricultural 

 instruction, he speaks at once both of its strength and 

 weakness, and criticises more often than he approves. 

 The period of enthusiastic exaggeration had gone by 



