532 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE, 



decisions of these gentlemen were much approved. The 

 arrangements for the ploughing were under the able ma- 

 nagement of the stewards— Messrs. Atkinson, Smart, Fur- 

 niss, and Nicholson— and gave universal satisfaction. The 



civil and orderly conduct of the workmen was much ad- 

 mired: indeed, since the establishment of this Meeting 

 there has been a marked improvement in the ploughmen of 

 the district. 



AN ENGLISH NEWSPAPER, 



BY JUDGE FRENCH. 



[From the New England Farmer] 



How much a single number of a well-conducted news- 

 paper tells us of the condition of the country where it is 

 published ! I am led to this reflection by reading the 

 Mark Lane Express and Agricullural Journal, a paper pub- 

 lished weekly in London. How significant ia every para- 

 graph of the differences between Old England and New 

 England ! The number of Sept. 24, 1860, is before us. Let 

 us look a moment at it» contents. Here is a little table 

 showing the quantities of corn imported into eleven ports 

 in England and Scotland for the week ending Sept. 12th. 

 We must bear in mind that " corn" in England does not 

 mean Indian corn, but all kinds of grain. The amount for 

 the week is 222,416 qrs., which multiplied by eight gives 

 the number of bushels. 1,779,328 1 nearly two million 

 bushels of grain brought into those ports in a single week, 

 equal to about 324,000 bushels per day. This is truly sur- 

 prising, and we should at once conclude that this must have 

 been an extraordinary week. If, however, we turn to 

 Caird's recent letters on Prairie Farming, we shall find at 

 page 9 the following: "During the last year (1858) we 

 have imported into this country at the rate of nearly one 

 million quarters (eight million bushels) of grain each month. 

 We have thus, in addition to our home crop, consumed eacli 

 day the produce of ten thousand acres of foreign land." 

 Now ten thousand acres of wheat, at 25 bushels per acre, 

 would give 250,000 bushels, a little short of the daily quan- 

 tity reported in the Mark Lane Express for the single week. 

 Great Britain, then, it seems, consumes all her own grain, 

 and requires a little farm of some three and a-half million 

 acres, all in heavy grain, equal to 25 bushels of wheat per 

 acre, to keep her population supplied with food ! 



No wonder the interests of agricultiu:e attract attention 

 in England. No wonder that her lords and ladies, as well as 

 her agricultural population, express so deep and constant an 

 interest in the crops, the weather, and the harvest ; for a 

 failure of the crops there brings distress and even famine, 

 while with us no failure has ever been so general, that the 

 want could not be supplied within our own borders,' and 

 our only complaint has been of *a rise in the price of flour 

 and meal. 



FARM IMPLEMENTS. 

 But let us look further into our paper. Here is one of a 

 series of articles upon " Farming without the Plough." This, 

 to one who has seen English husbandry, means much more 

 than others might suppose. The writer advocates not any 

 new terra-cutter, like that recently patented out West, a 

 sort of rotary digger to claw up the earth, as Talpa suggests, 

 like the claw of a mole, but the use of a class of imple- 

 ments well known in England, but almost unknown here. 



If we turn to the advertising columns, we find adver- 

 tisements illustrated with cuts of scarifiers, and cultivators, 

 heavy, powerful implements, with from seven to 

 tw Bteel teeth, some eighteen inches long, curyed forward. 



borne on wheels two or three feet high, the structure of 

 which at once indicates their adaptation to old, well-tilled 



fields. 



I have seen a scarifier of this description drawn by five 

 horses through wheat stubble after harvest, before any other 

 process. The design was to clear the field entirely of all 

 rubbish preparatory to the next crop, which would be tur- 

 nips. The long, sharp, shining teeth forced a foot deep 

 through the soil give a fine pulverization, at small expense ; 

 for the scarifier, although requiring a heavy team, works a 

 breadth of several feet at once, and thus compensates for 

 the power required to move it. 



Upon many of our fields clear of stones and stumps, such 

 an implement, instead of the shallow cultivator in use in 

 New England, might profitably be substituted. We find also 

 cuts and notices of drills of various kinds, for sowing wheat, 

 turnips, and other seeds. Nearly all the grain in England 

 is sown in rows or drills, with these machines, drawn by 

 horses. Wheat is drilled from 6 to 10 inches apart, and a 

 breadth of say 8 feet is covered at one operation. In the 

 after cultivation, horse-hoes, made to exactly match the 

 drills, are drawn between the rows, working the same num- 

 ber of rows. A man follows the implement, carefully watch- 

 ing and guiding one hoe, and all the rest of the set are 

 governed by this one, and as the implement goes in the 

 track of the drill, the rows of which are parallel, although not 

 precisely straight, there is little injury to the crop. The 

 turnip and mangold crops are hoed in the same way, four or 

 five rows at a time, with great facility. Horse-hoeing 

 upon wheat is only practised on light soils, but universally 

 the wheat is horse-hoed or hoed and weeded by hand on all 

 well-conducted farms. This skilful use of tools, and tho- 

 rough cultivation and care, tell of a more perfect husbandry 

 than is anywhere seen in America, at least in the Northern 

 States. 



MOCK AUCTIONS OF LIVE STOCK. 

 Further on we find several communications on the subject 

 of auction sales of cattle, in which it is charged that many 

 of the pretended sales of short-horns and other animals, so 

 common among breeders in England, are mere shams, in 

 which men of respectable position engage to get rid of 

 their poor stock by advertising their well-known and high- 

 bred animals to attract bidders, and procuring the best to be 

 bid in for their own use. The 3Iark Lane Express has con- 

 tained several articles recently on this subject. From what 

 I know of English gentlemen and English farmers I should 

 expect to find as much fairness and honour in their dealings 

 as in those of any class in any countr}'. Honesty is an 

 English trait, and character is an Englishman's capital, and 

 if such practices have prevailed there, public sentiment will 

 soon drive them from existence. 



MARKET FAIRS. 

 This paper coatains regular reports of all the grain mar- 



