230 AGRICULTURE. 



stacking and thatching. These operations have to be carried 

 on in the busiest season of the year, when labour is dearest; 

 and the after expense of pulling the hay-rick is a waste of 

 material and loss of money. In the covered stack-yard 

 these objections do not exist; the ricks are formed as fast 

 as the carts can be unloaded, and a cloudy sky or a 

 threatening horizon does not frighten or injure the farmer 

 in the middle of his stacking operations." 



From threshing, the transition is easy to cutting up the 

 " loose straw into chaff," for which operation Mr. Pusey was 

 wont to pay 2d. per six-bushel basket. He now, by means 

 of Mr. Corne's chaff-cutter, performs the same amount of 

 work for one farthing, " one-eighth only, therefore, of the 

 cost incurred here twelve years ago." Mr. Pusey may be 

 sanguine in his calculation of these savings, but we quite 

 agree with him that mechanical science has conferred 

 greater advantages on agriculture than chemical. It may 

 be doubtful whether the latter has materially increased the 

 amount, but there can be no doubt that the former has very 

 materially diminished the cost of production. " But," says 

 Mr. Pusey, "farmers have been, to say the least, rather 

 slow." The cost of motive power, the cumbrous wagon 

 and slow horses, always favourites with the wagoner be- 

 cause they allow him to be slow also, the ill-constructed 

 plough, a favourite with the ploughman because it lightens 

 his labour a little by increasing that of his horses a great 

 deal, are year by year pulling down the old-fashioned 

 arable farmers of the midland and western comities. No- 

 thing can save a man who goes slow when all the rest of 

 the world is going fast. 



Hitherto Mr. Pusey has addressed himself to occupiers 

 of land. He now introduces his advice to owners, with 

 the following observations : 



" Ten years since nothing struck me so much as the 

 varied means possessed by the owners of land in England 

 for raising, permanently, the productiveness of their estates. 

 In no country are those means so various. Scotland and 



