232 AGBICULTURE. 



ference to the difficulty of ascertaining the longitude, we 

 cannot conceive. We have no idea what a pole is. Perhaps 

 the length of Mr. Pusey's walking stick, or some personal 

 measure. Perhaps he does not know that a rood of draining 

 in Leicestershire and Derbyshire is seven yards, and in 

 Staffordshire eight ; and that if you leave out one of the o's 

 in this measure, you-cut down the length to five yards and 

 a half. With respect to the words " inch," foot," and 

 "yard," there is no such uncertainty of interpretation. 

 They convey to the minds of every one of Her Majesty's 

 British subjects a definite and an unvarying meaning. 

 Again Mr. Pusey talks of bushels and quarters of lime. 

 We believe that we are the largest lime-burners in England, 

 but we do not know what quantities these terms indicate. 

 We occasionally burn lumps of lime which would not go 

 into a bushel. Though cwts. and tons do, unfortunately, 

 in respect to a few articles and in a few localities, refuse to 

 conform to the definite meaning to which they are confined 

 by Act of Parliament ; and though we admit that, in the 

 north-western provinces, lime is one of the articles which, 

 in passing from what mercantile men call first hands, de- 

 clines to be cut down from 120 Ibs. to 112, yet we believe 

 that the use of the words tons, and cwts. would, even with 

 respect to it, convey much more general and more definite 

 information than quarters and bushels. 



Mais revenons. We wish we could consider draining to 

 be one of " the very cheap means " of improvement which 

 Mr. Pusey indicates. We have never found it so. He 

 gives us a table of the prices which he pays for draining. 

 We cannot estimate the price of labour per yard, because 

 we do not know the length of Mr. Pusey's pole ; but a cost 

 per acre of only 2. 5s. Id. for five-feet drains and llf- 

 yard intervals, is by us perfectly inexplicable. Nor can we 

 understand how five-feet depths with these intervals should 

 cost only 3s. 4cZ. per statute acre more than four-feet depths. 

 The cost of 17s. 3d. per acre for pipes is only explicable on 

 the supposition that they are small and used without collars, 



