1868. ] Agriculture. 205 
all, is better secured by adopting the principle of piece-work pay- 
ment, so that industry at once meets with its reward, than by 
offering as its stimulant a share in doubtful profits twelve months 
hence. The association for supplying cheap implements stands, 
perhaps, upon a sounder basis, for no doubt the charges made by 
agents and allowed by manufacturers are an excessive fine on cus- 
tomers; but we suspect that the competition of individual dealers 
is likely in the long run to make them the cheapest and most effi- 
cient agency for distributing these as well as all other kinds of 
goods to purchasers. 
A paper by Mr. Maw on “ Potatoe Culture,” in a recent number 
of the ‘English Agricultural Society’s Journal,’ deserves mention 
here as an example of an elaborate experimental agricultural 
research. Mr. Maw’s experience proves that, the cultivation and 
manuring being alike, the weight of the crop is proportioned very 
accurately to the weight of the sets. Full-sized potatoes, from 
4 to 8 oz. in weight, planted 10 inches or a foot apart, m rows 
2 feet or 26 inches from each other, yield the maximum return. 
And where the sets were made to average 6, 4, and 2 ounces in 
place of 8, the crop per acre was found to drop from 26 tons per 
acre to 15, 14, and 11 tons respectively. Although the plots on 
which the experiments were tried were small, and the crops re- 
corded almost incredibly large, yet the trials themselves were so 
numerous and the results so uniform, that the rule seems sufficiently 
established ; and we may consider it as certain that the crop will 
generally vary as the weight of the sets; and as these are best 
planted at a certain distance apart, the larger sets are to be preferred. 
The theory of land drainage has been under discussion recently 
owing to the assertion that the opening of a shaft to the surface of 
the land from the upper end of an ordinary drain, giving a direct 
connection with the air, facilitates the escape of water. This is of 
course an assertion which can be properly tested only by experi- 
ment; but it appears to us obvious that the broad surface and the 
whole substance of the soil are already entirely under the influence 
of atmospheric pressure, and that the operating cause in land 
drainage is plainly the mere weight of water which the land contains 
pressing downwards everywhere—into any channels, therefore, which 
may be provided for its escape. The provision of one opening more 
through which air can find a direct passage, if it will, from the 
sunlight to the underground channel, seems to us incapable of any 
power or influence at all on the process of land dramage which 
may be going on through that channel. 
The agricultural statistics of the past year have just been 
published. They are interesting on a comparison with previous 
publications of the kind, as showing the unexpected changes which 
have gradually and unnoticed taken place in English and Irish 
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