552 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



to increase, and there are many hindrances to receipts 

 from the South, in the nature of the want of roads, and 

 the vile state of those which do exist, and to obstruction 

 of the river Dnieper, before it reaches Odessa, as to 

 raise the average market price at the port to 34s. 6d. 

 per qr, ; which, with the expense of water-transit of 

 14s. or 15s. per qr., will not allow of its being sent here 

 unless our need for it is considerable. 



As to Sweden, it is out of the question to expect 

 much wheat. They grow about one peck per head to 

 the population, and are not likely to do much more. 

 Denmarli affords a better supply, but, until a better 

 system of roads is contrived, the cost of transit to the 

 coast is too great to induce the farmer to sow more 

 wheat. 



The Weser and the Elbe convey to Hamburg, from the 

 towns upon their banks, considerable store of wheat ; 

 but the expenses are too great to allow of any large 

 importation from thence unless our prices are very 

 tempting. 



Prussia&nA Holland are too fully populated to lead 

 us to expect receipts from thence larger than at present. 

 France has a soil and climate equal to anything, but 

 it is poorly farmed. Wheat is the staple grain of the 

 people ; but so badly are they fed, that thirty-five mil- 

 lions only consume as much as our twenty-nine. 

 We can only look for a supply from France when Go- 

 vernment shall have become firmer, confidence greater, 

 and when capital, like a fertilizing river, shall flow over 

 and enrich the country. Importations from that quar- 

 ter have been very much greater between 1818 and 1858 

 than they ever were before j but it will require more 

 than a decade to overcome the effect of centuries of 

 misrule. 



Around Danzig lies Pomerania — a splendid wheat- 

 country. Poland possesses a proverbially fine soil : but 

 what is a fine soil with no roads, no means of communi- 

 cation ? What inducement has the farmer, in that pro- 

 ductive district, seven hundred mile3 south-east of 

 Danzig, to grow more than he wants ? His difficulty is 

 expressed in the fact, that the difference between the 

 market-price in Galicia and Danzig, the same day, is 

 25s. per qr. 



Spain, too, is in the same state— once the granary of 

 the Romans, and now her cultivated lands yielding a 

 bare li or 2 per cent, to impoverished owners 1 The 

 roads are wretched, or entirely wanting ; the country is 

 infested with robbers ; there is no hope, no encourage- 

 ment, no protection for the cultivator, who scratches 

 the ground with his miserable implements, and in a 

 seed-bed so prepared sows sufficient corn to ensure the 

 supply of his own wants. No speedy change is to be 

 looked for there. 



The Italian States are equal to production far 

 beyond her own wants, but only when Italy shall have 

 become a free Italy, settled down to the pursuits of in- 

 dustry under a firm and enlightened government, and 

 when every labourer is assured that he will reap the 

 fruits of his own toil, will she find herself in a position 

 to send us much corn. 



Hungary again we hardly can estimate what she 

 might not send us, were she once to free her neck 

 from the Hapsburg yoke. Now the richest portions of 

 her domain grow not grain suflScient to supply even 

 the cultivators of the soil, and one-fourth of the best 

 land lies waste. 



Turkey and Syria naturally afford an immense re- 

 turn for seed sown, but so arbitrary and cruel is the 

 government, so much neglected are all modes of cul- 

 tivation, that there is no reason to expect her to send 

 lis more than we receive, though she could send us ten 

 times the quantity with the greatest ease. 

 Beviewing these European and Transatlantic sources, 



then, we may come to the conclusion that so long as 

 things continue as they do in France and Spain, iu 

 Turkey and Germany, so long as people remain apa- 

 thetic in the matter of good government, improved 

 roads, and railways, no sensible increase in the amount 

 of wheat to be received in England may be expected. 



This conclusion then involves a serious question. 

 Our own population is increasing rapidly at the rate of 

 something like 1,200 per day (the difference of births 

 over deaths), supposing that supplies from abroad can- 

 not naturally be augmented, are our own farmers pre- 

 pared to feed them ? There are those who are talking 

 very lamentably about the exhausted state of our wheat 

 lands, and who would have us believe doleful things of 

 the future ; while, on the other hand, there are some 

 who advise a strenuous appeal to the subsoil, with the 

 comforting assurance that the fund of wealth there 

 accumulated will answer any demand we please to 

 urge. It is said, and I believe said quite truly, that no 

 need exists to go to the waste poor lands, but that a 

 staple deepened inch by inch and year by year (like 

 Mr. Smith's five-inch staple upon a yellow clay, was 

 during a course of fifteen years turned into a dark rich 

 staple 18 inches deep), will supply all we want, and 

 render us even quite independent of foreign supply 

 altogether. 



It is stated that the soil of Great Britain furnished 

 in 1846 food sufficient for the comfortable subsistence 

 of at least five millions of inhabitants more than in 

 1820. Yet this great addition was scarcely in any 

 measure brought about by the employment of waste 

 land, but simply by improved methods of cultivating the 

 land already under the plough. What has been done 

 can be done again. That immense national gain was, it 

 is true, accomplished by drainage, by an encourage- 

 ment oiP root culture, and sheep-feeding, and by cleanly 

 farming, &c. Our hands need not be stayed in this 

 direction ; our lands are not all thoroughly; drained ; 

 our land is not scrupulously clean ; and there are some 

 farms in the kingdom which sufficiently prove how 

 much more might be produced upon the land, were it 

 all brought by the judicious expenditure of capital to 

 their pitch of perfection. We require somewhere about 

 eight bushels more per acre to render us independent 

 of foreign supply. A vigorous prosecution of such im- 

 provements, together with the novel descent down- 

 wards, to help us to accomplish which Smith and 

 Fowler have arrived in the very nick of time, will ac- 

 complish all. The fears which haunt some, of the 

 dangers of dependence upon another country for corn, 

 may be toned down, and the alarm evinced by others 

 lest there should be no porridge to stop the cries of 

 any of the 1,200 little brats born into the world every 

 day, may be entirely quelled. F. R, S. 



THE YIELD IN WEIGHT. 



Sra, — The agriculturist who could shut his eyes and be 

 indifferent to the advantages conferred upon himself and 

 his labours by a most beneficent and all-wise Providence 

 within the last five weeks, would be ungrateful indeed. 



The weather has been marvellously fine: First, for pre- 

 paring aad sowing the land for another harvest ; secondly, 

 in giving improved condition to the new wheat, rendering 

 it more suited to the fastidious taste of the millers, who have 

 been rather unexpectedly spoiled by a plenteous supply of 

 fine dry foreign ; and thirdly, by calming down men's minds 

 as to the productiveness of the recent harvest. Some will 

 aver that it has no parallel for badness since the memorable 

 year 1816. Others consider it as resulting much beyond 

 previous fears and anticipations, and that, after all, we have 

 secured a tolerably fair crop, Now, taking two such antagon* 



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