1869.] Agriculture. 409 



kept ; and on arable land they must be kept in yards and stables, 

 and this necessitates much labour. A portion of the essay is 

 devoted to a discussion of the improvements in agriculture which 

 are required in the interests of the labourer. We are not at all 

 disposed to lament the decrease in the number of those employed 

 in fields ; which is the leading fact before reviewers of this subject. 

 We may depend upon it that any tendency of this kind is the 

 result of individual action on the part of those immediately con- 

 cerned, which is prompted by the sharpest and most anxious 

 insight into self-interest. If the sons of agricultm-al labom-ers are 

 as a rule gradually leaving the country for the town, we should 

 accept it not as a thing necessarily to be lamented and if possible 

 prevented ; but rather as a proof that the condition of the labourer 

 in towns is declared to be better than that of the labourer in fields 

 by that jury whose verdict, more than that of any other, is likely 

 to be trustworthy. Wlien it shall have become the interest of the 

 farmer to employ more labour, and when he shall have been driven 

 by the force of cu'cumstances to pay a higher wage, then the course 

 of events will alter ; and we may possibly have hereafter to report 

 that cottages and gardens, and education and wages in country 

 places, are together offering attractions to the labouring man 

 superior to those which are presented in the circumstances of our 

 town population. There can be little doubt that when that 

 happens, we shall have a longer hved and healthier race upon the 

 whole than we have at present. That is an advantage aflecting 

 especially the very young, in which the town labourer is un- 

 questionably at a great disadvantage. 



The cm-rent number of the ' Journal of the Eoyal Agricultural 

 Society' contains reports of several experimental researches, con- 

 ducted by Dr. Yoelcker into the elTects of various manm^es on 

 clover and grass. His observations on the clover under treatment, 

 are that nitrate of soda is about as efficient in the production of 

 growth as sulphate of ammonia— that common salt is variable in 

 its efiects, m. one year producing growth and in another inefficient 

 — that the heaviest crop is obtained from a mixture of super- 

 phosphate of lime and mmiate of potash — that where salts of potash 

 have been used the second cutting of clover weighs more than the 

 second cutting of the unmanured crop, whereas when nitrate of 

 soda has been used the second cutting is inferior. These are the 

 results in the special instances reported; but every agricultm-al 

 fact is the result of so many circumstances besides those to which 

 the attention of a reporter is especially directed, that it is never safe 

 to give to particular examples the value of a general law. In the 

 case of ordinary grass-land. Dr. Voelcker found that the direct 

 application of quickhme was injurious — that salt and quicklime 

 produced no effect whatever — tliat mineral superphosphate and 



