486 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



out reward, with as much indifference as they would cut away 

 upon a loaf of stale bread, performed this service with a labor 

 and perseverance worthy of all praise. Under this layer of 

 stones was a soil capable of productive cultivation, and the reward 

 was found in the crops which were growing on a portion of the 

 recovered land. After the stones were removed, the land was 

 subsoiled, and a crop of turnips, manured with guano, was taken. 

 The effects of guano, when the land manured by it was com 

 pared with a part of the field manured only with the ashes of 

 the furze, were here most remarkable. The experiment was a 

 brave, and, though labor was at a low rate, it was an expensive 

 one ; but as the land was comparatively without value in its 

 former state, the only question in the case was, whether the 

 land, after being redeemed in this way, would be worth the 

 expense of the recovery. Heavy as this expense was, the land 

 became worth a great deal more than it cost. In fact, it was so 

 much land literally created by the process ; and its situation, 

 where it was easily accessible, greatly enhanced the value. 



2. SCOBELL S FARM. The other experiment to which I 

 referred was going on between Penzance and Land s End, on the 

 farm of Colonel Scobell a farm, in respect to parts of which 

 the culture would seem like going upon a forlorn hope, the land 

 presenting a most forbidding aspect ; and yet in its results 

 exhibiting a conclusive test of the best husbandry, by its per 

 manent improvements, and its ample returns for the labor and 

 expense bestowed upon it. 



Some parts of Cornwall where the hospitality of the inhab 

 itants is in an inverse ratio to the quality of the soil reminded 

 me of a tract of country very well known to many persons in the 

 United States, through which the turnpike-road passes between 

 Lynn and Salem, in Massachusetts, which some one facetiously 

 called the &quot; abomination of desolation,&quot; and of which the British 

 prisoners, in passing over it on their way to Boston, in the last 

 war, demanded, with considerable emphasis, &quot; whether that was 



the &quot; (here using a theological phrase, which it would 



be quite improper to repeat out of the pulpit) &quot;country for 

 which the Americans were fighting.&quot; There is this remarkable 

 difference, however, in favor of Cornwall, that, like some old 

 miser, who seeks to conceal his riches under an appearance of 



