468 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



low out on their holdings every practical improvement that 

 experimental farming has develoved. They are a class accused 

 of over-caution ; I think them wise in their generation. Farm- 

 ing is their livelihood ; its result the per-ceatage on their capi- 

 tal ; they show no backwardness in seizing on improvement in 

 tillage and in machinery which has stood the test of a fair trial ; 

 I think them wise, seeing that so many who farm for amuse- 

 ment are content to try new things at once, if they wait to see 

 whether that which may only be a theory or a toy turns out a 

 valuable principle, a real auxiliary. 



It is the fashion, but one fast going out, to say the present 

 race of tenant-farmers are above their work, that they are too 

 much of the gentlemen ; then, they have pianofortes for their 

 families, hunters and fovar-wheelers for themselves ! If it is 

 expedient that a farmer, tenant of 1,000 acres, the owner of 

 steam machinery, with large capital invested in live and dead 

 stock, should be of the same brain-gauge as the old tenant of 

 150 acres, guileless of anything in the way of machinery more 

 complicated than a harrow, splashing to his door through the 

 muck, liquid and solid, in which his dozen beasts stood up to 

 their knees, but one grade in his intelligence above his men, 

 who were many grades below the stolidest of our present 

 labourers — I say, if, because both were tenant-farmer?, the 

 modern man should have preserved the features and charac- 

 teristic of these stra^-yard ancients, then the present race are 

 far too refined, are far above what the standard would imply. 



I think it scarcely reasonable in landowners to build houses 

 in which squires of old would have been perplexed by their 

 conveniences, to put to them an amount of land requiring per- 

 haps the immediate investment of some £3,000 or £10,000 

 in actual cultivation outlay, and then to quarrel with the refine- 

 ment or independence of the man who, becoming the tenant, 

 places his all on the speculation of a lease, at best often on a 

 precarious " agreement." 



Large interspaces are bad on the social surface ; it is far 

 better that the tenant-farmer should have his plite, piano, and 

 hunter — should in every outward sign approach the social level 

 of his landlord, than to have an estate with a gentleman at the 

 head of it, the only one at all like a gentleman upon it. There 

 were many grades among the by-gone tenantry, many a real 

 good man among them, with all the feelings of a gentleman 

 beneath an unpolished exterior ; but how many more were 

 there of far dififerent character and position? Landlords may 

 rely upon it, the age which finds tenants at home in their 

 drawing-rooms is an improvement upon that which met them 

 shy, clownish, and out of place in the " justice room" of the 

 great house. 



I have no hesitation in stating my belief that the improve- 

 ment of the position of the labourer has profited, and will yet 

 profit, much by the advance of the tenant-farmer to a higher 

 social condition. I know no men who can do more to advance 

 or to retard the progress of good iu a parish than the imme- 

 diate employers of the men. By precept and by example their 

 influence for good or evil is indeed great. There may be many 

 exceptions ; but, as the rule, I believe each year proves that 

 as the respectability of a tenant is in some sort the pride of the 

 landlord, the decent and upright conduct of the servants of a 

 farm is a matter of honour to their master. 



I have no wish to touch at any length on the political aspect 

 of this, the race once so in the van of political agitation ; they 

 fought for what they esteemed, what they were bred to think 

 a vital interest. I must do them the justice to say they died 

 hard in the person of "Protection;" let us give them now — 

 we who so differed from them — full credit for the manful way 

 in which, fallen, they fought to rise again. 



The careworn soil may indeed deplore the days of long fal- 

 lows, easy farming ; it has since then known no rest. For 

 ever knocked about, it never knows in what form to expect its 

 next blows. Drained of the moisture it treasured in the 

 depths of its old lazy content; pierced with fistulous passages 

 of miles of hard piping ; submitted to all manner of scarifying, 

 crushing, drilling ; ploughed, and harrowed, and rolled, to the 

 utter confusion and pulverization of its clod existence ; every 

 kind of horrible compound that fish, bird, man, or beast can, 

 conjointly or severally, afford, driven into its texture ; when 

 early clothed with nature's fresh verdure, soused, irrigated, pol- 

 luted with liquid extract of solid nastiness — thus abused, it has 

 proved grateful ; it has shown its power to meet low prices by 

 quick returns, and has met the depreciated value of its produc- 

 tions by a continued increase of produce. 



I have no fear for the ultimate continued well doing of the 

 agriculturist, for I have no one misgiving as to the power of the 

 soil to so repay every benefit, however nasty, bestowed upon 

 it, that industry will ever reap her due, and in that due find 

 in agriculture a pursuit worthy of the best powers of the wisest, 

 the most active exercise of the efforts of the most energetic. 

 If the improvement in this branch of a nation's economy con- 

 tinues its late evident advance, we have yet to see farming 

 take a still higher position as a branch of scientific industry. 



I may in another letter again trespass upon your columns, 

 to speak of the labourer as he now is. 



S. G. O. 

 —Times. 



PLEURO PNEUMONIA IN THE CAPE COLONY— ITS EFFECT AND TREATMENT. 



We called attention some time ago to the features of 

 that destructive disease, the Lung Sickness or Pleuro- 

 pneumonia, as manifested in the Cape colony, and which 

 subsequently was brought prominently into notice, 

 from its ravages in Europe. Our last advices from 

 Southern Africa furnish us with some information, which 

 it is, perhaps, desirable to make public here. The agri- 

 cultural community of the Eastern Province of the Cape 

 Colony, who arc chiefly interested in this matter, from 

 their serious losses of stock, sent out, through the Scien- 

 tific and Medical Society of Graham's Town, a series 

 of queries to the principal fanners, graziers, and 



breeders of the colony. To these inquiries some sixty 

 or seventy replies were received ; and to these we 

 desire to draw attention. 



It is chiefly in Africa that we find this disease 

 periodically ' prevalent, and committing frightful 

 ravages. Australia generally is remarkably free from 

 cattle disease. This murrain has lately reappeared in 

 Ceylon, and was very destructive by the last advices. 

 In Canada and the United States we hear of no com- 

 plaints of the kind. But among the South African 

 settlers, the Dutch Boers and the Kafiir tiibes, cattle 

 arc occasionally carried off by thousands; and the 



