1864.] ( 309 ) 
CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE. 
I. AGRICULTURE. 
Aumost every department of farm management is in active operation 
during the first months of the year. Land drainage and autumnal 
tillage have put the fallows in the best condition for deriving fertility 
from the atmosphere. The direct application of manures to the crop 
becomes useful and economical as the season of growth commences. 
Seedtime brings under discussion the various methods at our command 
for plant improvement. The continuance of stall-feeding on winter 
food keeps the whole subject of the meat manufacture before the mind 
of the farmer. And the lambing and calving season recalls for his 
consideration all those points on which the theory and practice of the 
improvement of his live-stock depend. It is in the order of these 
several departments of farm practice that we write the agricultural 
record of the first three months of 1864. 
1. A dry winter had very early in the season put the tillage work 
of our arable farms unusually forward ; and the periods of severe frost 
which towards the end of winter were experienced have been of the 
greatest service on all well-drained clays. It is on such lands espe- 
cially that the steam cultivation of the previous autumn proves supe- 
rior to the ordinary horse tillage, which on such soils interferes very 
materially with the drainage of the land. 
The extension of this steam cultivation is the great agricultural 
event of late years, and though comparatively little is heard of it 
during the winter months, yet it is then especially that its advantages 
are seen and realized. Fields which have hitherto been kept dry by 
steep surface lands or ridges and frequent intervening furrows, as well 
as by the ordinary underground drains, are now left flat and dry, torn 
up roughly before winter by the engine-drawn cultivator. 
The drainage of stiff clay soils has, indeed, till now been rarely 
thoroughly effected. ‘Trenches have, indeed, been dug some 3 or 4 
feet deep and 7 or 8 yards apart, and through pipes placed in them it 
has been expected that all the rain which falls upon the field will find 
its way, after gradual penetration, through the soil and subsoil, and 
filtration by every particle of all this three or four foot deep mass of earth. 
But after this the upper layer of this mass has hitherto been cultivated 
in a way which interposes between it and the lower layers what is 
practically an impervious floor. Three or four ploughings of grain 
stubbles before the succeeding peas and beans, the passage of long 
teams of cattle on the floor over which the soil, and under which the 
subsoil lies is an effectual induration. This floor is fatal to land 
drainage, and therefore to fertility. It must be broken up, and this 
can be done effectually only by steam power. Every month of March 
VOL. I, : 
