THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



303 



meat goes further and is more nutritious than a I 

 l)ound of inferior stuft". 



With such pioneejs as the Duke of Bedford 

 and Lord Leicester, agriculture rapidly advanced. 

 1 find during the first twenty years of the present 

 century an increase in the cultivated land of this 

 country of upwards of three million acres. Turnips 

 were now regularly cultivated ; and in 1824, that 

 system was adopted which has been the means of 

 enrichini; England to a very large extent : I allude to 

 the method of fattening of sheep by slicing turnips 

 and feeding them with oilcake. This was sug- 

 gested by the very able steward of Lord Leicester, 

 Mr. Blakie, to Mr. John Hudson, now of Castle- 

 acre ; and such was his success that when Lord 

 Leicester asked to see the produce of one of his 

 sheep, he found they had been sent fat to market 

 some twelve months before the usual time. Sheep 

 ha,d been generally kept till they were three or four 

 years old ; but with the new method of feeding, 

 combined with an improved breed having a greater 

 disposition to fatten, very few are now kept beyond 

 fourteen or fifteen months old ; thus the amount 

 of mutton annually sent into our markets has 

 enormously increased ; and, had it not been for the 

 improvements I have indicated, and with our 

 growing population, the price of your necks and 

 shoulders of mutton would have been double to 

 what it is at the present day. The Woburn and 

 Holkham sheep-shearings, introduced by those 

 illustrious worthies before named, were the means 

 of bringing into existence a whole number of 

 county agricultural societies; and first among the 

 number is that of our small county, which was 

 established in 1801. From these sprung that fa- 

 mous association — the Royal Agricultural Society 

 of England ; and from its introduction another 

 starting point may be dated ; and I shall now pro- 

 ceed to speak of the agriculture of the present day. 

 From small beginnings the lloyal Agricultural 

 Society has grown to a gigantic size, and its influ- 

 ence upon the farming of the country has been of 

 the most startling character ; our stock of all 

 descriptions has become materially imi)roved : 

 the manufacture of agricultural machinery has at- 

 tained an unheard-of growth, and has acquired a 

 character and excellence which fairly entitle it to 

 rank with the leading branches of our national 

 industry. The hands employed are numbered by 

 thousands if not tens of thousands; and the capital 

 which gives steady employment to these hands is 

 estimated by millions sterling. I think there can 

 be no more convincing proof than this of the spirit 

 of improvement which is now abroad amongst the 

 agriculturists of the present day. At the first 

 meeting at Oxford there were only twenty-two 

 entries of implements ; but, after the Cambridge 

 meeting in 1840, the importance of this branch of 

 the show was acknowledged, and the number has 

 increased each year until it reached its highest 

 point at Gloucester in 1853, when 2032 were ex- 

 hibited. The number of people wlio visit the 

 show yard is enormous; at Salisbury, in 1857, 

 where the population is only 10,000, the visitors 

 numbered 35,000; and at the Chester Meeting, in 

 July last, they very far exceeded that number. 

 Radways have doubtless been the means of further- 



ing agricultural progress. Very significant were 

 the facts given at the Chelmsford meeting by the 

 ch ail-man of the Eastern Counties Railway, when 

 he stated that in the preceding twelve months the 

 lines over which he presided had conveyed 23,500 

 tons of guano and other artificial manures; 721,000 

 qrs. of grain; 559,000 sacks of flour; 71,000 

 beasts; 380,000 sheep and other cattle; 13,750 tons 

 of meat and poultry; 21,671 tons of vegetables; and 

 4,500,000 quarts of milk. Other improvements have 

 taken place since the introduction of the Royal 

 Agricultural Society. First among the number is 

 that of draining : of course it had been carried out 

 from the earliest times ; but not until this period 

 had it been reduced to scientific principles. In 

 1843, at the Derby Meeting, Mr. John Reed, a 

 gardener by trade, the inventor of the stomach 

 pump and the well-known subsoil plough, exhibited 

 the first pipe tile, for which he received a medal; 

 and so much was it thought of, that a prize was 

 offered the following year for a machine by which 

 they could be made ; but this was not gained un- 

 til 1845. Draining now was rapidly forwarded. 

 Sir Robert Peel, who saw the advantage of it on 

 his own estate, passed an act in 1846, by which 

 four millions sterling were appropriated towards 

 assisting landowners with loans for draining their 

 land. This sum was, however, small compared to 

 that furnished from private sources for the carrying 

 out of this great improvement ; and thus what the 

 sheep-folding turuip-husbaudry had done for the 

 light lands of the country, draining did for the 

 strong tenacious clays; and it has been supposed 

 that the number of miles of drains cut within the 

 last twenty years may be calculated by millions. The 

 Royal Agricultural Society too, by its Journal, bad 

 an important share in the introduction of artificial 

 manures: guano was introduced in 1836, hut it was 

 some years before its value was known ; and it was 

 not until 1840 that a whole host of manufac- 

 turers of manui'es sprung up ; and the trade that is 

 now done and the money expended are almost incre- 

 dible : some farmers are to be found who pay more 

 to the manure merchant than to their landlord. 

 Some of these manures have been of immense ad- 

 vantage upon our light turnip soils, particularly 

 those of the Norfolk plains, and upon the heaths 

 and wolds of Lincolnshire, where it has been said 

 they turned rabbit-warrens and fox-coverts into 

 fields of golden grain. Modern agriculture has de- 

 rived ail incalculable advantage from the appliances 

 of machinery ; and the improvement iu this branch 

 of our industry commenced when a great deal of 

 the poor pastures were broken up and waste lands 

 were reclaimed, between the years 1816 and 1836. 

 It was during this period that the horse-power 

 thrashing machine was introduced, when labourers 

 thought their doom was sealed; and such consterna- 

 tion \lid it create among them, that bodies of men 

 went from village to village demolishing these im- 

 plements. Tlie country was iu a most excited state ; 

 special constables were sworn iu; and I have on 

 my farm a legacy left me by my predecessor — a 

 whole lot of staves, that were manufactured for the 

 use of_thcse said constal)les iu these troublous times. 

 But what a change has come over the views of 

 these worthy sous of toil ! The thrashing machjne is 



