THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



197 



The Future of Agriculture.— SUam.—Jt is impossible to 

 overrate the eaorniou.s impetus given to every industrial, 

 and, indeed, to every mental occupation, by the invention 

 of steam power. Some of my views on this subject having 

 been alreudy laid befoic you in my paper read last year, T 

 will not recapitulate them. To withdraw steam power from 

 us would be to plunge this country into ignorance, poverty, 

 and disorganization. Agriculture is only on tlie threshold 

 of the use of steam x'ower. She has neither cheapened 

 her productions, nor supplied the wants of her customers. 

 It is no exaggeration to expect that every faim of 100 acres 

 will give employment to four horses of steam power When 

 this takes place, a large area of land used to feed our horses 

 will be set free for the production of human food. I also 

 venture to predict that great commercial companies will be 

 formed, who will purchase estates, parcel them out with to- 

 pographical economy, and connect them with the towns and 

 cities, whose sewage they will economise. We shall then 

 see our agricultural engines gliding along a line of rails 

 from farm to farm and city to city, drawing the produce to 

 market — cultivating the farm. To see the powerful mon- 

 ster drawn by horses along the common road is an insult to 

 mechanical common sense, and, could the engine speak, 

 would receive his indiguaot condemnation. When the lo- 

 comotive was invented, somebody found means to expend 

 £300,000,000 to make a suitable road for it, and somebody 

 will, some day, do the same for steam in agriculture. The 

 future of British agriculture may be said to rest upon the 

 sufficient use of that cheap and untiring power which has 

 given such an enormous development to almost every 

 branch of our national industry except agriculture. Steam, 

 whether for cultivatiou or for the manipulations necessary 

 in a well conducted homestead, for draining the swaraps and 

 irrigating the hills, and, above all, for applying town sewage 

 to our pastures, green crops, and root crops, will become 

 the sheet anchor of British agriculture ; and it is by this 

 economy that the British farmer will be strengthened in 

 his competition with other corn-producing countries. That 

 great man. Baron Liebig, has revealed to ua the mysteries of 

 our subsoil — that subsuil into which the British plough has 

 never yet penetrated. His researches raise a doubt whether it 

 is possible to manure the subsoil through the cultivated top 

 soil; if so, which I believe, how all imjiortant it must be to 

 bring the manure, the air, and the subsoil into immediate 

 contact and admixture with the surface soil. But, in any 

 case, let us seek in our subsoil, by means of sleam, that 

 treasure which the old farmer told his sons to dig for. 



Public Companies for improving Agriculture. — Assuming 

 and believing that great and comprehensive improvements 

 in agriculture will originate with public companies, I prog- 

 nosiicaie that a combined system of irrigation — town sew- 

 age irrigation — and railroad transit must form an import- 

 ant feature of any great district operation. The principles 

 of drainage, steam cultivation, covered buildings, steam 

 machinery, &c., so well understood by our agriculturiil en- 

 gineers and surveyors, would naturally form a portion of 

 every such improvement. " But," said a farming friend of 

 mine, as we discussed this question of connecting farms 

 and towns by rail, " how can you expect to do this "? Mr. 

 So-and-BO would not listen to such a proposition, andhia 

 landlord would not like his farm altered and cut about." I 

 reply there is no cure for prejudice like a public company 

 and an Act of Parliament. At this very moment, regard- 

 less of affections and prejudices in favour of old residences 

 and old customs, our new Railway Companies are, by Acts 

 of Parliament, levelHng whole streets and squares of houses, 

 overlapping, undermining, destroying, and reconstructing, 

 with a hardheartedness yet unknown to British landholders 

 and British tenants. I hope the time is fast approaching 

 when great associated companies of city merchants and rich 

 agriculturists will expend enormous sums in the purchase 

 and reconstruction of estates, making them subservient to 

 the one grand object of an economical use of steam power 

 for almost every farming operation, including sewage irri- 

 gation. AVe shall then not have the mortification to know 

 that it is possible to carry coals at three farthings a ton per 

 mile, at 20 miles per hour on a railway (formed at enormous 

 cost, and still paying Consols interest to its shareholders), 

 while our farm produce on the common road costs us 8d. 

 per mile, and crawls along at a snail's pace, When estates 



