446 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



liver, and this inill-lead was always kept in excellent order ; 

 not so the original bed of the river, and as that which is not 

 much used is seldom in good order for work, the crooked 

 track of that which once was a mountain torrent 

 traversed the plain from side to side exactly as the Alpine 

 engineers or the farmer's nag above-mentioned would have 

 mapped it, had it been rising ground. Now, I could point 

 out some hundreds of rich meadows just now similarly 

 situated with tliis one. 



The proprietor balanced accounts with the old water- 

 course, and counted how much earth and subsoil he would 

 require from the new cut to fill up the old water-way so as 

 to malje good land (and good rental) of said water-way, for 

 he had no confidence in the untried theory of levels, that 

 the new cut being wider and deeper would thereby raise 

 the laud, or in other words depress the water. 



The bed of the river was rendered straight in its ground 

 plan, and about oneaud-a-half times as wide as the original 

 bed of the river, the river was shortened by about a third 

 part of its length, and a permanent improvement effected 

 on the land, for the river runs now on one side of the 

 meadow, and not in the middle and from side to side as 

 before, and the spates do not at all affect the crops. 



Let it therefore be borne in raind that by shorteniug the 

 length of a drain, brook, or river, by straightening it, you 

 increase the fall ; thus when it was 100 feet long and had 

 10 inches of fall and you made a cut which shortened it to 

 75 feet, you have altered the fall from 10 inches in four 

 parts to 10 inches in thi-ee parts. It is quite lamentable 

 to see the ruin occasioned to square miles of the finest 

 deep meadow land for want of this common-sense view of 

 the subject. It must originate with the owner ; and unless 

 some calamity such as the breaking up of a public thorough- 

 fare as above-mentioned bring it home, I fear all other 

 hints will be unavailing. It is the business of the journalist 

 to point out the direction in wliich the treasure hid in the bank 

 of earth lies, and leave the miner to hole for the nuggets as 

 he on the spot seeth most convenient. 



I remain, sir, yours respectfully, 



Alex. Foesyth. 



\'3, Islmglon Square, Salford, Manchester, 



October llth, 1860. 



P.S. The above experiment was in Aberdeenshire; on one 

 of the tributaries of the Eiyer Don. 



THE FARMER'S DUTIES AND PROSPECTS AS PUT BY HIS LANDLORD. 



There has been a very hard winter, a cold spring, and a 

 wet summer, which have operated both against the crops 

 and the cattle. As for the cattle, it has heen stated at various 

 ain-icultural meetings that they have degenerated. I think 

 that is rather a hasty judgment. In the winter, as is well 

 known, it was by great exertion that the farmers were en- 

 abled to keep their animals alive, and it was only by the 

 importation of hay from Hamburg, Holland, and even Lon- 

 don, that this was effected. I have seen myself, within ten 

 miles of London, trucks filled with hay to come into this 

 county. 1 have also made observations myselfin Lowther Cas- 

 tle, ill Westmoreland, where the cattle came for agistment, 

 for in various pastures and parks I take in something like a 

 thousand head of cattle, and I saw that they were only in 

 the condition in the month of August that they ought to 

 have been in in the month of May. Therefore, T say, it is no 

 wonder that the number has decreased at the shows, because 

 they were not in a condition to gain prizes at those meetings. 

 At the present moment, various crops do not look so pros- 

 perous as they have iu other years. There is no donbt that 

 wheat will be rather deficient, and that it will not yield the 

 quantity of flour that it has in former times ; the oats and 

 barley, T am glad to hear there is abundance of, in almost 

 all the fields. But, however, that brings me to another sub- 

 ject which was mentioned by a gi'eat authority at Carlisle — 

 that there is a great difference in the land that was drained 

 and highly culiivated, and that old system of fallows and 

 broadcast ; that persons ]Da.ssing along the roads easily per- 

 ceive the land that is drained and that which has not been. 

 With all the bad weather, seasons are not invariably bad ; 

 and though we have had two bad seasons, we ought to cal- 

 culate on the generality, and we may hope for two good 

 seasons to come, that will remove all the despondency that 

 in some quarters exists at present. This is one side of the 

 picture — a certain degree of injury done to certain crops 

 this year. But if you look to the other side of the picture, 

 and at what has taken place during the last twenty or thirty 

 years, you see the population gradually increasing — by some 



statisticians it is said to be at the rate of 360,000 a year, or 

 nearly 1,000 a day, and that there is greatly increased wealth 

 in the country. We have also to look at the fact that the 

 manufacturers have increased, that the manufacturers are 

 getting rich, and there is no manufacturer who gets rich 

 that has not an ambition to have what is called " a bit of 

 land." There is gold from Australia, there is machinery 

 gradually making progress every day ; and it is to the saving 

 of labour, and to production at a cheap rate, that we must 

 look hereafter for profit to the farmer. This country, I may 

 say, has an advantage in the articles of its growth ; these 

 are wool, meat (the manufacture of meat), and butter, I 

 should say with wheat other countries can come into com- 

 petition with us. Their clip; ite is better suited ; there is 

 easy transport and cheap fr ' ;hts. The advice which has 

 frequently been given to the armers of this county is that 

 they plough too much. I think they had better calculate 

 on the produce of their stock, such as wool, butter, and 

 meat, rather than on the growing of corn. The climate is 

 not well suited to it. Much fear has been expressed at 

 these meetings that there is a degeneration of cattle. I flunk 

 that is a very hasty judgment, for the reasons I have stated 

 before, on account of the hardness of the winter. However, 

 a great triumph has been shown in having got rid of the 

 longhorns and in getting supplied with shorthorns. I agree 

 in the advantages of the shorthorn herd as coming to mar- 

 ket so much sooner than the previous longhorns; but I wish 

 they would take it a step further, and rejoice in the dimi- 

 nution, at all events, of the horned and blackfaced sheep- 

 I think if people would attend to their pasture, and drain, 

 and lime, and manure, and clear it of weeds, they would 

 get a far better quality of sheep than we now see, for three- 

 fourths, I may say, of the sheep of this country are moun- 

 tain sheep. Now, the first requisite to improve your stock 

 is, I believe, to improve your pastures, and I should like to 

 see the species of stock to which I have alluded confined to 

 what I may call their native element. That, I believe, is the 

 true study of the landlord and landowner of this country) 



