THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



l65 



fields, aad this meaus, by a simple change and improvement 

 of the existing deleterious state of things, can be obtained, 

 then it becomes us to think whether a nation should not sum- 

 mon up all her intellectual and material resources in order to 

 preserve these fundamental couditions of her welfare. 



It has been maintained that the recovering of the manure- 

 elements out of the sewers of large cities is impracticable. I 

 am not ignorant of the difficulties which stand in its way. 

 They are, indeed, very great ; but if the engineers would 

 come to an understanding with the men of science in relation 

 to the two purposes — the removal of the contents of the sewers 

 and the recovery of their valuable elements for agriculture — 

 I do not doubt that a good" result would follow. Intelligence 

 in union with capital represents a power in Engla.id which 

 has rendered possible and practicable things of ranch greater 

 apparent difficulty. I look forward with deep concern to the 

 solution of the sewerage question ; for, if this question is de- 

 cided in Great Britain without regard to the wants of agri- 

 culture, we can scarcely hope for anything better upon the 

 Continent. 



Permit me to add still a few words in relation to the leading 

 article of TheTimes of the same date, in which the one side of 

 this question is taken up with great clearness, while the au- 

 thor of the article seems to have not quite a correct view of its 

 bearing as it presents itself to my mind. The mistake into 

 which he has fallen arises from his confounding the condition 

 of a State with that of its population. 



In the natural sciences we know nothing of a State — of its 

 might or its feebleness. We know only lands, their geological 

 formation, their climate and soil, and whether the soil contains 

 the natural conditions of the subsistence of man and beast. 

 In places where these conditions are abundantly present, and 

 geological circumstances do not hinder their intercourse, men 



cannot be exterminated. The most wasting war cannot rob a 

 land of the conditions which nature has given, nor can peace 

 give them to land which wants them. 



Countries may be fruitful and become capable of sustaining 

 a large population when certain resisting influences, which iit 

 their unhindered working make the cultivation of the soil im- 

 possible, are overcome by human iutelligence, or when a land 

 has all the conditions of productiveness except one, and then 

 receives the one which it kcked. If Holland were without her 

 dikes, which must be kept up at great expense, she Vifould 

 produce neither corn nor meat ; the land would not be inha- 

 bitable. In a similar manner the inhabitant of the African 

 oasis protects his grain fields by dikes against the storms of 

 the desert, which cover his laud with a barren sand ; and if 

 Mr. Layard is disposed to answer the question put to him, 

 he will say that the decay of an admirable system of irrigation 

 rendered the permanent maintenance of a great popidatiou in 

 Assyria and Mesopotamia impossible. 



I know that the prophets of future evil have at all times 

 been derided by their own generation; but, if history and 

 natural laws can furnish any ground for a just conclusion, 

 then there is none which stand more firmly than this — that, 

 if the British people do not take pains to secure the natural 

 conditions of the permanent fertility of their land — if they 

 allow these conditions, as hitherto, to be squandered — their 

 fields and meadows will at no distant time cease to yield their 

 returns of corn and meat. But it does not beloug to the 

 province of natural science to discuss the question whether 

 the might, strength, and independence of the nation will be 

 preserved after this state of things shall have gradually arisen. 

 Believe me, dear Sir, yours very truly, 



Justus Von Liebig. 



Mr. J. J. Mechi, Tiptree-hail, Kelvedon, Essex. 



PROGRESS AND PROFIT OF THE STEAM-PLOUGH. 



A patriotic agriculture should seek to feed its own country 

 men ; and if the task of growing bread-corn and butchers' 

 meat on a limited acreage for a people doubling itself every 

 half-century may appear too preposterous, at any rate it is 

 possible to reduce that immense importation for which we have 

 to beg abroad, and trust the chances of natural and other 

 breezes on the seas. In Great Britain we suppose there are 

 about 19,000,000 acres arable, and nearly as much grass ; and 

 there remain but few unenclosed commons and wayside lands 

 capable of ordinary culture which are not already brought un- 

 der the plough, or converted into improved pasturage. We 

 have mountain wastes, moorlands, heaths, aud downs, not too 

 lofty, bleak, and barren to reward the enterprising reclaimer ; 

 we have woods and forests that might be cleared, sands that 

 might be planted, sheep-walks that could be improved, bogs 

 that can be made sound, fringes of salt marsh that may be 

 recovered from the tide. But most of these are fields of 

 speculative labour beyond the range of ordinary business, 

 yielding a slow return of the expenditure in grubbing, marling, 

 draining, and costly hand tillage ; sometimes, indeed, being 

 only reclaimable by the pick and spade of the cottager — as the 

 granite and slaty wastes of West Cornwall, where thousands 

 of working miners have their four-acre plots, so prominent in 

 the land schemes of political economists. All England, Wales, 

 and Scotland below such wild altitudes, and wherever good 

 husbandry, with advanced machinery and improved live- 

 Btock, has been hitherto practicable, lies in farms from which 

 the copses were grubbed, or the rabbits banished, or the meres 

 and plashes dried up, long ago. On these cultivated land we 

 may gain room by removal of straggling fences, and by curb- 

 ing wandering brooks ; but here our acquisition of surface 

 ceases, unless we encroach on the park and pleasure-ground, 

 and fell the timber in necessary woods and plantations. Any 

 increase, then, of our annual produce of some 16 million 

 quarters of wheat, as well as the raising of more meat and 

 other supplies, must be obtained by augmented yields per 

 acre. If the agricultural management of the whole kiugdom 

 equalled that of our forwardest counties, and all estates even 

 in first-class localities were farmed as highly as a small pro- 

 p ortion already are, the simple extension of the best husbandry 



over the area now in cultivation might soon double our har- 

 vest, as well as our cattle and poultry markets. But the per- 

 manent improvement of land moves slowly. Companies are 

 actively assisting the landowners, still not a quarter of our 

 drainable ground is yet drained ; and the absolute necessity 

 of farm-buildings that will preserve the products of the soil is 

 being very gradually acknowledged and supplied. Smaller 

 and handier resources however have come largely to the help 

 of the farmer. The tenant-farmer is availing himself of im- 

 ported and manufactured feeding-stuflfs and home and foreign 

 fertilizers at an enormous expenditure every year, and he is 

 purchasing more extensively than ever the beat machinery for 

 expediting and economizing every process of his art— steam- 

 engines alone being supplied him at the rate of 10,000-horae 

 power per annum ; and he ia thus bestirring himself for a 

 more urgent consideration than the advantage of swelling our 

 aggregate home produce. Rents have been steadily rising, 

 while a growing population has added to the competition for 

 farms. As time moves on, the labourer, as well as the land- 

 lord, looks for better pay ; and yet a low range of prices can 

 alone be expected in the corn-market. Our turnips rot as our 

 potatoes did, and if we pamper the grain crop beyond its 

 strength, we get only so much more fodder aud litter instead of 

 an increase of corn. And the most awkward and difficult of 

 our heavy soils do not pay for their tillage at all. In fact, the 

 farmer's present position is somewhat critical ; and some far- 

 seeing rural prophets already descry a coming crisis of agricul- 

 tural distress unless something readier and speedier than the 

 common resort of land improvements arise to avert the cala- 

 mity. In this emergency it is that we welcome the perfected 

 steam-plough— to prove, if we mistake not, as great a relief to 

 our husbandmen as the "jenny" once was to the cotton- 

 spinners. Let the rental rise as the country advances, let 

 public burdens continue to weigh heavily, and the labourer 

 obtain the hire of which he, if any man, is worthy ; we can 

 nevertheless diminish our farm outlay, and augment our yields 

 by the aid of the mighty motive power which can create a 

 grand future for fields and homesteads as well as for mills, and 

 mines, and factories. 

 That steam cultivation will " revolutionize" agriculture has 



