( 408 ) [July, 



CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE, 



Intlu^incj t(jc llrotccVmgs of ^ciinitb Sotictifs at J^mm ;mi) |.bro;ib ; 

 uuii Uotkw of ^uccnt .i'tientifif l^ittratuit. 



1. AGEICULTUEE. 



A MOST instructive and suggestive paper " On the Condition 

 of tlie Agricultural Labourer" appeared in a recent number of 

 'Fraser's Magazine.' The decennial statistical records of the 

 Eegistrar-General and the annual agricultural tables issued by the 

 Board of Trade are used in it with great ability to teach both 

 the leading facts regarding the labourers in our fields, and their 

 relations to the corresponding facts regarding the labourers in our 

 mines and in our workshops. The main features of agricultural 

 practice and experience in the several English counties are also 

 cleverly marshalled, and exhibited so as to explain the distribution 

 of the agricultural labourer over the country. The whole is not 

 only discussed in a very well-written essay, but uncommonly well 

 depicted and presented to the eye in diagrams and maps. In one 

 set of curves, for example, the percentages (at the several ages) of the 

 whole number of labourers employed on land and on coal and iron 

 respectively are shown ; and we see at a glance that a larger propor- 

 tion of aU that are so engaged is of the middle age in the cases of 

 coal and iron than in the case of land. The curves of coal and iron 

 labour stand higher between the ages of eighteen and forty-five ; 

 and the curve in the case of land labour stands highest over the 

 early years and over the later years. The explanation is that 

 many of the boys of the farm leave it for the workshop as they 

 become men, and return to it as they approach old age and begin 

 perhaps to look out for a maintenance at the expense of their 

 parish. Other diagrams illustrate the quantity of agricultural labour 

 employed per acre in the several counties ; and it appears that it is 

 not only the amount of arable land in a county which determines 

 the quantity of agricultural labour employed per 100 acres, — that 

 depends rather on the quantity of live stock which is on the land, 

 and especially on the quantity of dairy stock. Lancashire and 

 Middlesex employ more labour than other counties, notwithstanding 

 their large proportion of grass land, no doubt because of the great 

 quantity of live stock which their agriculture maintains. There is 

 however a good deal of diflercnce in this particular, also due to the 

 character of the soil. Light lands are suitable for sheep farming, 

 and sheep require but httle care. On heavier soils cattle must bo 



