100 Chroiicles of Science. | Jan. 
there is a certain class-colouring perceptible in farming, as in other 
professions, and tenant-farmers may be safely spoken of as a worthy 
and well-conditioned body of men. If, as is sometimes feared, a 
general prevalence of the lease should displace the homely and neigh- 
bourly class with whom in English country districts one has so 
long enjoyably associated, by a set of energetic, ruthless, restless, 
money-making “sharps,” the change would be lamentable indeed; but 
the fear is ludicrous. However many new men may be entering 
Agriculture from other walks of life, it will always be that the bullx of 
farmers have been bred by farmers. And it is an easier and a better 
thing to engraft upon the characteristic good qualities of this class, or 
rather (for they already exist) to foster in them the intelligence and 
enterprise, and energy of commercial life, by adopting more generally 
a commercial view of the relations between landlord and tenant, than 
it will be to engraft a strict valuation and acknowledgment of tenant 
right upon the system of tenancy-at-will. 
Although this Journal is devoted rather to the consideration of 
science than of business, yet the case of Agriculture, owing to the 
peculiarity of its raw material, land, is so exceptional, that these 
general remarks on what, more than anything else, determines its pro- 
eress and improvement, may be permitted in a paper introductory to 
a quarterly series, descriptive of the progress and improvement which 
from time to time will have to be recorded. 
And as a preliminary study of the subject which will thus at 
intervals engage us, we will now shortly enumerate the particulars in 
which this progress consists, or to which is owing increased produce 
of food from the land. 
1. It is owing in the first place to better tillage. The object of tillage 
is the creation of an increased available surface within the soil, on 
which may be prepared and deposited food for plants, and over which 
the roots of plants may feed. The greater the quantity of this internal 
superficies to act as a laboratory, as a warehouse, as a pasturage, and 
the better stored it is, under a given extent of land, then so long as 
the fitness of the mechanical condition of the land with reference 
to particular plants is preserved, the more fertile is that land with 
reference to those plants. 
Tn order to the creation of this inner surface a greater depth of soil 
is stirred, and clods are comminuted. In order to the increased acces- 
sibility of this inner surface land is drained. 'The air and rain water 
which then traverse soil and subsoil instead of merely lodging in them, 
introduce substances into this warehouse and activity into this labora- 
tory. 
The air which rain-water thus draws through the soil as it sinks 
downwards to the drains is as necessary to the fertility of the soil as it 
is to the heat of burning coals. The fire will merely smoulder until, 
by the erection of a chimney over it, a current upwards through the 
burning mass is impressed upon the air. And even then, in fires of 
caking coal, the heap may smoulder until, by the smashing of the fuel, 
that inner surface of the fire, where the action of the air takes place, 
throughout is multiplied, and the impervious ceiling—or floor, as we 
