THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



223 



right man insured, they can, when once he is in, 

 hardly leave him too mucli to himself. The duties of 

 the agent should centre pretty much in receiving the 

 rent and authorizing: the repairs. The keeper should 

 have the least possible interference with him. Farmers 

 are beginning to thoroughly understand their own busi- 

 ness. Or if they do not, if anything should be going 

 wrong, there will be plenty of good-natured friends 

 ready to give you a hint of it. Remember how much 

 Gaffer Grey would like the place for his boy, or how 

 many hundreds of others would jump at it. 



There has been some little debate lately as to whether 

 farms should be let by tender or not. Mr, Greenhow 

 Relph and Mr. Henry Higgins have been arguing the 

 point rather warmly down in Monmouthshire. But, 

 after all, there is not such a vast deal of difference 

 between the two systems. A landlord who puts his 

 place up by tender, not hinding Jdmself to take the 

 li'ujhest offer, comes very much to the same conclusion 

 as the one wlio does not countenance this objectionable 

 plan. Either will have the best man, at the best rent, 

 he knows of. In truth, with the competition there now 

 is, it is next to impossible to ignore tender in some 

 way or other. Let a holding once be in the market, 

 and, either directly or indirectly, there are sure to be 

 biddings for it. But the good feeling we have referred 

 to as so often existing between the two, will gene- 

 rally induce a landlord to retain an old tenant if it be 

 possible. There is a mutual pride in such relation- 



ship. If, however, it cannot be — once advertise " This 

 farm to let," and a clever agent, though he may not 

 descend to recognize offer by tender, will bring it 

 very much to the same thing. It is his duty, infact, to 

 ascertain who will give the most rent, and then to con- 

 sider if the bidder be an acceptable tenant. Letting by 

 tender does no more. A canny Scotchman, Mr. 

 Gentle, said at a meeting of the Inverness Farmers' 

 Club, the other day, " He was not prepared to recom- 

 mend any change either in the mode of letting land or 

 as to the term of admission or demission. Landlords 

 were entitled to the same freedom as other vendors in 

 bringing their properties into the market, so as to make 

 the most of them. They, as tenants, had a horror of 

 advertising, particularly in regard to the farm pos- 

 sessed ; but, if they needed a farm, tliey had no objec- 

 tion to see the broad sheet full of advertisements." Still, 

 the letting by absolute tender anything but prevails, the 

 more especially on this side of the Border; neither do 

 we think it is a means likely to become popular. To 

 the landlord it could only bring increnstd risk, and 

 this is certainly not what we have been striving at. 

 With such opportunities, it will be his own fault if he 

 does not get good tenants, while the great boast of an 

 English gentleman is to keep them. Proper conside- 

 ration, and due liberty of action, should be the leading 

 features of his more modern agreement; and he may 

 so maintain a good rent and a good character. 



TOWN AND COUNTRY. 



Why should there be any hesitation about the appli- 

 cation of our towns' sewage to agricultural purposes .' 

 Surely, " boards" are the woodenest things in existence, 

 and the most wooden of all Boards is perhaps that which 

 contemplates the voidance of the sewage of the metro- 

 polis into the Thames, be it above Erith or below it. 

 Is it true that we are expending annually £3,000,000 

 in the purchase of foreign guano, and are at the same 

 time arranging at a terrific cost to expel the excrements 

 of 2,500,000 human beings, of 60,000 horses and other 

 animals, with all other refuse from such a population, as 

 useless and abominable ? What, then, becomes of the 

 teachings of science .' What becomes of the assertion 

 of chemistry, that nothing is lost ? We seem to take a. 

 dangerous delight in contradicting all sound maxims of 

 economy in this matter, and provoking that " woeful 

 want" which logically waits upon " wilful waste." Is 

 it not observed, too, that we thus seek to shatter the 

 connexions of that beautiful cycle of life and decay, 

 which is so well symbolized by the serpent, who forms 

 the circle of eternity by uniting the head with the tail — 

 the end with the beginning ? 



A few days since, a writer in the Times said, with 

 great humour, in treating of this subject, that London, 

 like ancient Rome, seems likely to melt and disappear 

 in her main sewers. The analogy, however, is more 

 than humourous ; for if we cast away as worthless 

 70,000,000 tons of manure, which would give an annual 

 supply of 40 tons per acre per annum to 1,750,000 acres 

 round London, and more than quadruple the produce of 

 the land, we are inflicting a terrible injury upon our 

 entire country. 



Mr. George Sheppard, C.E., is my authority for say- 

 ing that the quantity of liquid manure might be distri- 

 buted for ^£8,942,500, while it would produce a revenue 

 of i£l,120,000 per annum, or 12 per cent, upon the 

 capital employed, inclusive of working expenses, giving 

 each farmer 50 tons of sewage for 20fl.,or 750 tons for 



£15— the price of one ton of guano. These 750 tons 

 would contain the elements of 3 tons of guano, accord- 

 ing to analytical data, in a state much better fitted for 

 assimilation by the rootlets of plants than the best 

 " Peruvian," which always requires the medium of rain 

 before it can be of use to vegetation. 



In contrast with this statement, what will be the cost 

 of the proposed designs for draining London, and what 

 the countervailing return ! It may be said, in reply, 

 that an improved death-rate forms a very satisfactory 

 return. True ; but is a rcfiuced death-rate inconsistent 

 with the use we are taught by Providence to make of all 

 refuse and decayed matter in building up fresh life ? 



The Registrar-General, in his last quarterly return, 

 shows a large diminution in the rate of mortality to have 

 taken place, which he ascribes to the supply of better 

 water, the abolition of cesspools, and the various sani- 

 tary works carried out. Whilst I rejoice over this fact, 

 I cannot but see that the money so expended by one 

 municipality might have produced even greater results, 

 for in a very few cases is the sewage used. Some one, 

 in giving a definition of dirt, describes it as a thing in 

 a wrong place. This is true. It is death in the town, 

 but life in the field. 



Nor is any one competent to say that this is mere 

 theory, or that it will not do to waste large sums of 

 money in mere experiments. I speak of that which has 

 been amply proved in many parts of the kingdom by 

 farmers who have diverted streams charged with town 

 sewage for the purposes of irrigation, and by others who 

 have sunk tanks, set up a system of pumps, drains, hose, 

 and jets to force and carry the life-stream in seasonable 

 showers from this great stomach of the farm, where all 

 the refuse is roughly digested and melted down to the 

 requisite fluidity. It is idle to question results 

 which appear in every newspaper, and facts which are 

 detailed at every gathering of farmers. Everybody who 

 has Sea Atteatioa to this subject can point to meadows 



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