178 WAGES OF LABOURERS. 



droughty seasons. A calcareous soil and a hot sun may 

 possibly, therefore, be instrumental towards its success. 



This view is further supported by the prevalent 

 opinion among farmers " that the great use of plaster 

 is to draw water from the air ;^^ which means, as I take it, 

 that its action is more apparent in dry than in wet seasons. 



A very extreme view of its influence upon the 

 weather was entertained by some of the old Dutch 

 farmers in the United States — one of whom, according 

 to Judge Peters, objected to the use of it because " it 

 attracted thunder.'''' 



Mr Geddes works his farm with four pairs of horses 

 and seven men, on an average, all the year through. 

 His head-man has 313 dollars a-year. Other men 

 have f dollar (3s. English) a-day, except in harvest, 

 when they have IJ to 1^ dollars a-day. A good man, 

 taken into the house, has 150 dollars (^^31, 10s.) a-year 

 and his board. They are hired by the month. 



Behind Mr Geddes's farm, at a short distance towards 

 the south, rises the escarpment of the Helderberg lime- 

 stone, the outcrop of which, more or less distinct and 

 elevated, runs east to the Hudson River, and west as far 

 as Lake Erie, and forms the southern limit of the belt of 

 low rich land of which this wheat-region consists. He 

 drove me in an open carriage for some miles along this 

 escarpment, and thus enabled me to obtain a general 

 idea of the whole country, and gave me an opportunity 

 of picturing to myself what this broad plain will ulti- 

 mately become when arterial and thorough drainage 

 have done their work, and the axe of the clearer has 

 laid open the broad patches of wilderness which still 

 stretch, with occasional wide breaks, on almost every 

 side as far as the eye can reach. 



The Onondaga salt-group, on which Mr Geddes's 

 farm reposes, consists on the surface of green shales 

 richly calcareous, sometimes impure shaly limestones, to 



