(C8) | Jan. 
CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE. 
I. AGRICULTURE. 
Tur movements in the Agricultural world during the past few months 
have related more to the business than to the Art of land cultivation. 
Agricultural Societies and Meetings have concerned themselves more 
with such questions as the relations of landlord and tenant, or of 
master and servant, than with details of the processes of the farm, or 
of the appliances by which they are carried out. And just in propor- 
tion as the motive—the efficient cause —is important in comparison 
with the mere machinery, so the nature of these business relations 
will, in any occupation or profession, always be the chief of all the 
influences affecting progress or success. 
This is especially the case in Agriculture :— 
When the landowner guarantees possession of a farm for a number 
of years, and does not restrict its cultivation to any precise routine of 
operations, he induces the tenant of that farm to apply all his mind 
and all his money to its management, for then there is given to him 
hope and opportunity of a reward for his outlay and his labour. The 
land is to a certain extent a machine, and its fertility depends on the 
use that it can make of the fertilizing influences of air and rain. Its 
powers as a machine in this respect can, in the case of wet and water- 
logged soils, be wonderfully increased; but the alterations needed for 
this purpose are very costly. Land-drainage, marling, liming, burning, 
are all expensive operations. A man may, in the case of wet clay 
soils, sometimes profitably spend nearly as much again in these 
improvements as the land is worth. It is folly to suppose that he 
will do this on the lands of another. They must be made his own on 
certain conditions and for sufficient time to enable him to reap the reward 
of that increased fertility which has been conferred. A lease is thus, 
for all purposes of considerable land improvement by the farmer, 
absolutely necessary. 
Where, however, the improvements do not involve so large an 
expenditure, and where that expenditure can, under the several branches 
of it, be accurately recorded, it becomes possible so to keep an account 
between the landlord and tenant as to enable the former to repay the 
latter at any time, whatever may be due from the one to the other. 
And the system of tenancy at will, coupled with an agreement for the 
repayment of the balance of this account, does, im many parts of 
England, both maintain and promote a very high degree of cultivation. 
Nevertheless, this is but a makeshift arrangement, by which landowners 
hope to obtain the full advantage to all classes of a large expenditure 
of tenant’s capital without in any degree abandoning those special 
privileges to themselves which the possession of landed property alone 
confers. And thus the Earl of Shrewsbury, at one of the recent dis- 
cussions on the form of an agreement on this principle between landlord 
