102 Chronicles of Science. [Jan 
fertility is developed and expressed. It will on the whole be admitted 
that, at least on arable lands, there are fewer weeds; our fallow crops 
ave cleaner, our tillage and manures are not so much wasted on plants 
we do not want to grow. 
Another fact of importance is the prevalence of rotations of crops 
in which bare fallows are diminished, and in which there is a larger 
acreage of the more valuable crops. The prevalent rotation of the 
country is the four-field course, in which wheat, turnips, barley, and 
clover occupy one-fourth of the land apiece. But it is common on 
well-cultivated land—where the land is folded by cake-fed sheep, and 
where a top-dressing of guano is given to the corn, to take a crop of 
wheat between the turnips and the barley, so that three-fifths instead 
of two-quarters of the land are in grain crops. One-half of the clover 
land, too, is often sown instead with peas or beans, so that five-eighths 
instead of three-fifths are in grain. Again, over large districts, espe- 
cially in Scotland, potato culture to a great extent displaces turnips 
or other fallow crops, and thus provides a great increase of food for 
man. 
But besides the adoption of improved rotations, we have to report 
the improved cultivation of individual crops. We suppose that the 
eradually diminished quantity of seed used per acre in growing grain 
crops—as drill husbandry extends, and as an increased independence 
of mere custom becomes the rule, each man determining his practice 
for himself—will be admitted by most people as an example of this 
kind. Certainly every one will admit that the extension of drill hus- 
bandry in the cultivation of root crops, the extended use of the horse- 
hoe in the cultivation of grain crops—the extended use of so-called 
artificial manures as top-dressings and otherwise in the cultivation of 
all crops—all illustrate the improved cultivation of the plants by which 
the greater fertility of our soils is expressed and utilized. 
Again, we owe our better crops to the selection and adoption of 
better sorts of the plants in cultivation. We do not suppose that indi- 
vidual sorts have improved upon our hands. Probably, as a general 
rule, they have deteriorated. But new sorts are being perpetually 
introduced ; and of wheat, barley, and oats, mangold-wurzel, swedes, 
turnips and potatoes, cabbages and vetches, a man can grow sorts as 
good as any —we think probably better than any—that his predecessors 
have known. 
4. We now come to the produce of meat, and the question of sort 
has a great deal to do with our improvement here. Our sheep are 
now ready for the butcher at 14 months old; our cattle at 24 and 30 
months. Formerly it needed at least two years of feeding to make a 
smaller carcase of mutton, and at least three or four years’ feeding to 
make a smaller carcase of beef. A thousand sheep upon a farm in 
March or April now mean something like 500 ewes in the lambing 
fold, and 500 sheep ready for the market. Formerly they meant not 
more than 300, and those a smaller lot ready for the butcher. And 
this great increase in the meat produce of a given head of stock is 
witnessed as much in pork and beef as it is in mutton. 
All the important breeds of cattle, sheep, and pigs have improved 
