THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



129 



to be employed iii the uianufactiiio of implements for 

 foreign exports. He aUo found that the knowledge 

 that better wages could bo obtained in our colonial 

 possessions induced many to emigrate, who had de- 

 rived considerable advunfajo from that emigration. 

 Still lie thought a good master had net much tioublo 

 in getting good labourers. He had employed the same 

 men i'oy many years, and they liHdbecome intelligent by 

 the improvements carried out upon the farm. Those 

 men still remained with him, and he had no difficulty 

 in getting-in his hnrvest at a moderate rate of wages 

 whil>t others complained on tliat score. He agreed with 

 what had been said, that something more ought to 

 be dune than the mere payment of wages and the 

 using men as machines which could be laid aside at 

 any time. There was the relation between the em- 

 ployer and the employed to be considered. AVith a 

 proper regard for that feeling, and by a more general 

 introduction of piecework, which was, after all, the 

 cheapest, he experienced no difficulty in getting and 

 retaining men of great physical and improving mental 

 capacities. With regard to the economy of horse- 

 labour and steam, they must look at it not only in a 

 pecuniary point of view witli respect to the direct 

 saving eflected, but also to the amount of land that 

 was ss3t free f^r the production of human footl by that 

 substitution, namely, by feeding those 300,000 horses 

 with coal in>tead of wiihci)rn and hay. He calculated 

 that, at the lowest estimate, there would be in the 

 United Kingdom 2,300,000 acres of land set free for 

 feeding human beings instead of animals. That alone 

 was a great desideratum in these times, when popula- 

 tion was pressing so hardly upon i)roductiL»n. With 

 regard to tlic various applications of steam-power in 

 tiie operation of a farm, looking to the improvements 



they might expect to be made, he saw uo reason why, 

 by improved arrangements, iu addition to the turnips, 

 &c., being cut up, the food should not bo dilivered by 

 means of machinery, and why steam should not be 

 made to do nearly everything upon a farm which was 

 now done by manual labour. 



Mr. Thomas Scott saidit was a gratifying fact which 

 they had heard, that the great pioneers of steam cul- 

 ture — the inventors — had more orders upon their 

 hands than they were able to keep pace with. The whole 

 subject of this evening's discussion had been in fact 

 reduced to the great ay:ricultural question of the day — 

 sfeain cultivation ; and when Mr. Hoskyns said it was 

 judicious to wait a little longer, he (Mr. Scott) would 

 only say that three or four years ago he felt lor those 

 great self-sacrificing inventors, but he was happy to 

 add that no such feeling was now called forth. Having 

 noticed the results of steam culture upon the crops, ho 

 found that they were such as justified any man in 

 adopting the present machinery, even admitting it to 

 be still far from perfect. A few days ago he entered 

 into an examination of the cost of the operation by 

 Fowler'.s steam plough, extracted from the carefully 

 kept books of a farm, and he found it to be 4s. 4d. per 

 acre as the actual cost, to whichmust be made a fair ad- 

 dition for repairs and allowance for wear and fear. If 

 that were the fact, the cost of steam ploughing was 

 very much less than that of the common ploughing, and 

 the produce of the land was greater. It was therefore 

 manifestly to the interest of the cultivators of the soil 

 to abandon the pi esent s.s stem, which entailed a daily 

 h'ss, and to avail them.^elves of steam machinery, now 

 that the opportunity was afforded them of doing so. 



A vote of thanks to Mr. Morton concluded the pro- 

 ceedings. 



AGRICULTURAL AND CHEMICAL COLLEGE, KENNINGTON. 



LECTURES ON PLANTS 



Applied to Useful Purposes throug\out the World, or otherwise fulfilling obvious offices in the Economy of 

 Nature, commencing with those which are the Principal Objects of Cultivation, as furnishing Food, 

 Fibre for Manufacture, Medicine, Colouring, Astringent and other Properties applicable to the Arts, 



BY CHARLES JOHNSON, PROFESSOR OF BOTANY AT GUV'S HOSPITAl, 



Lectctre IV. 



The epithet, "land-formers," applied to our next 

 group or series of the grass family, may really be 

 understood as having a literal signification. The office 

 fulfilled by most of the species being that of binding 

 loose sand together, and thus rendering it, eventually, 

 a sufficiently undisturbable surface for receiving and 

 retaining the seeds of the more direct colonizers, pre- 

 paratory to its gradual conversion into pasture-land, 

 they could scarcely be more appropriately designated. 

 Their scene of action is almost universally the low sea- 

 shore ; and the circumstances with which they are as- 

 sociated have already been a subject of comment in the 

 course on Physical Geography. Those which relate to 

 the grasses themselves necessardy, however, require 

 repetition here; and with them we must takeinto con- 

 sideration some of the leading facts in which their 

 agency and its vast physical importance are alike 

 demonstrated. 



The deposit, or rather throwing up, of sand and other 

 debris by the action of the tidal waves, is fitmiliar to 



all persons who have ever visited such parts of our 

 island coasts as permit of such accumulation taking 

 place. Sometimes this is remarked as occurring at the 

 base of perpendicular or ovei hanging clifts, that, ori- 

 ginally broken into that form by corresponding action, 

 are thus after the lapse of ages left far inland, the pic- 

 turesque embellishments of a country uo longer mari- 

 time rising amidst heath and forest, as they now do in 

 the W^eald of Sussex. It is indeed one of the many 

 slow processes by which nature effijcts the never- 

 ceasing alternation of sea and land ; a change most 

 essential to her wide economy, though too tardy in its 

 general progress to challenge man's attention, unless 

 where locally interfering with his own petty plans, or 

 subjecting him to inconvenience in their execution. It 

 is chiefly on low sea-borders that land extension pre- 

 sents itself under such contingences. Here the loose 

 sand accumulates in banks and ridges, ridge beyond 

 ridge successively encioaching upon the dominion of 

 the wave that threw it up, and barring reclamation, 



L 3 



