Book I. AGRICULTURAL ARTISTS. 1079 



6958. Commercial or jrrofcssional farmers, such as farm lands for profit. Tliose who 

 farm an extent of good land under one hundred acres, are considered small farmers ; 

 under three hundred acres, middling farmers ; above and under five hundred acres, large 

 farmers ; and exceeding that quantity, extensive farmers : a very proper title, for few 

 arable lands can be profitably cultivated to a greater extent in one farm or by one 

 establishment than five hundred acres, and those which exceed that quantity, are gene- 

 rally breeding or other stock farms, characterised by their extent. 



6959. Gentlemen farmers, are professional farmers on a large scale, who do not asso- 

 ciate with their minor and personally working brethren ; but who affect in their style of 

 living the habits and mannei-s of independent men or gentlemen. It is a character ex- 

 tremely liable to ridicule by the vulgar yeoman and purse-proud farmer on the one 

 hand, and those persons who are gentlemen by profession, and men of family on the 

 other. 



6960. Yeomenfarmers, small proprietors who farm their own lands, but yet aspire not 

 to the manners and habits of gentlemen. 



6961 . Fariiiing landlords, proprietors who farm their own lands on a large scale. 



Sect. III. Agricultural Counsellors, Artists, or Professors. 



6962. The land-measurer is the lowest grade pf agricultural artists ; he is very often the 

 village schoolmaster, and is called in to measure work done by the job, as mowing, 

 reaping, hedging, trenching, &c. 



6963. The agricultural salesman is a person who attends at fairs, markets, &c., and 

 acts as agent to buyers and sellers of corn and cattle. There are also salesmen pur- 

 posely for hay and straw, others for green food, turnips, potatoes, &c. 



6964. T/ie apjtraiser, or valuer of farming-stock, comes next in order. This pro- 

 fessor values the live and deadstock, and crop, tillages, manures, &c. , and sometimes 

 also the remainders of leases between outgoing and incoming tenants, or betwixt tenants 

 and their landlords. Occasionally the appraiser is employed to value lands, but this is 

 generally the business of the land-valuer. 



6965. The land-surveyor generally confines his avocations to the measuring and map- 

 ping of lands ; or to their subdivision, or the arrangement of fences and other lines ; but 

 sometimes he joins the business of appraiser and valuer, and even timber-measurer. 



6966. The timber surveyor and valuer, confines himself in general to the measurement 

 and valuation of fallen or standing timber ; he also measures and estimates the value of 

 bark, faggots, roots, charcoal, ashes, willows, hoops, and various other products of ligneous 

 plants. 



6967. The land-valuer not only values the rental, but the price or fee-simple of lands, 

 buildings, woods, quarries, and waters. He does not often meddle with metallic or 

 saline mines ; but he sometimes values fisheries, stone and lime quarries, brick-earth, 

 gravel, chalk, &c. This profession requires not only a general knowledge of agriculture 

 in the most extensive sense of the word, but a very extensive acquaintance with the 

 country in which the property lies, and great experience in business. Tiiere are local 

 and general land surveyors and land valuers : the general professors live in the capital 

 cities or in the metropolis, and generally unite the business of land-agent. 



6968. The land-agent may or may not be a land-valuer, but at all events he should pos- 

 sess the knowledge of the valuer in an eminent degree. His business is to effect the transfer 

 of property either by purchase, sale, hiring, or letting ; and also to collect rents, and often 

 to relet farms, and effect other business belonging to the land-valuer. Land-agents are 

 very frequently attornies, who know little of agriculture ; but who save their employers 

 the trouble of employing both a land-steward of superior abilities, and a lawyer to draw 

 up agreements and leases. It is the opinion of the best informed agriculturists both of 

 Britain and France, that the employment of attornies as land-stewards and agents, has 

 been one of the chief causes of the retardation of agriculture throughout Europe. Cha- 

 teauvieux has clearly shown how this cause has operated in France and Italy, and Dr. 

 Anderson, Arthur Young, Marshal, and various others have deprecated its influence in 

 Britain. The love of precedent, which these men cannot abandon from habit ; the lovo 

 of litigation, to which they adhere from taste and interest; and the ignorance of agri- 

 culture, from the nature of their education, are the causes that have counteracted tlie 

 tendency to change and amelioration. 



6969. Of agricultural engineers there are considerable variety. The drainer for laying 

 out drains and water-works ; the irrigator, for watering the surface of grass-lands ; the 

 road engineer, for laying out roads ; the mineral surveyor, for searching for, measuring, 

 mapping, and valuing mines and minerals ; the coal viewer, for estimating the value of 

 coal works ; the rural architect, for designing and superintending the execution of agri- 

 cultural buildings, and the hydrographical and canal engineers, for canals, liarbors, mills, 

 and the greater water-works. 



6970. The vetcrinari/ .surgeon, or ngricultural doctor, is to bo considered as a rural 



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