HIGH FARMING. 247 



You need not read anything to tell you that a square field 

 costs less to cultivate than a three-cornered. An owner 

 who will not put his fields into the shape in which they 

 can be cultivated at least cost, does not deserve rent. In- 

 crease your produce by increased culture wherever the 

 increased produce will pay for the increased culture. In - 

 crease your produce by extra manure whenever the extra 

 produce will pay for the extra manure. But under all cir- 

 cumstances, and in all states of markets, use your utmost 

 endeavours to raise the same amount of produce at dimi- 

 nished cost. 



Now a word with the spade-husbandry men ; and we 

 shall treat them very curtly, because, among the many 

 humbugs which benevolent individuals have run after, we 

 believe this to be the rankest of all. They found them- 

 selves on Jethro Tull, and say that he discovered that 

 culture would supply the place of manure. He discovered 

 nothing but a mare's-nest. The discovery of which they 

 speak would have been the greatest ever made in agricul- 

 ture, and such discoveries never die. But Tull's no-dis- 

 covery has been dead these hundred years. Ancient or 

 modern, there is not a single evidence in its favour except 

 his own. But, they say, garden culture and garden produce. 

 See how a gardener digs, and chops, and trenches. Did they 

 ever know a gardener who would cultivate without manure ? 

 Ours is ravenous, insatiable ; we dread to see him near our 

 manure-heaps. We know something of this matter, because 

 we grow potatoes every year by the .plough, harrow, and 

 horse-hoe, and others, where we cannot plough, by the 

 spade, rake, and hand-hoe. The former always beat the 

 latter, because the former set of implements are more 

 efficient than the latter. On two-thirds of the cultivated 

 land in England nothing can be less efficient than a spade 

 and rake. They cannot deal with cloddy land at all. Pray 

 do not overwhelm us with instances, because we can prove 

 your case ad nauseam by adopting the well-established plan 

 of stating one side. We know two instances, in each of 



