FARMERS' REGISTER— SCHOOLS FOR FARMER'S SONS. 



295 



tion adduced, but a sample is intended and not a 

 catalojTue. A noseo;ay may give some idea of 

 the riches of the partenej and has the advantage 

 of being more portable. 



But besides enriching the mind Avith a store of 

 knowledge positively and actively useful, a course 

 of education such as I have suggested, would, by 

 the inculcation of sound principles, defend the 

 mind from the inroads of many senseless preju- 

 dices; for ignorant men are, as has been before 

 hinted, the most inveterate theorists. They will 

 never be satisfied without assigning some cause 

 for the phenomena which they see, and that as- 

 signed cause is often not only false, but absurd; 

 and, as the remedies resorted to are naturally cor- 

 respondent with the supposed cause of a disease, 

 the latter is likely to remain undisturbed, and a 

 new disease to be introduced by the operation of 

 the intended remedy. Apple trees have been cut 

 down, from its having been unjustly supposed that 

 they bred certain insects which did mischief to the 

 corn. Kirby and Spence give an instance of a 

 meadow in wliich the gi'ass was eaten up by 

 grubs; the rooks were busy in digging for these 

 grubs, of which they happened to be fond, but the 

 owner thought it was the rooks that eat the grass, 

 and he therefore shot them. It is not stated whe- 

 ther he also killed his cat to preserve his cheese 

 from the mice. Bradley, an agriculturist fiimous 

 in his da}', accounted lor the blight in the follow- 

 ing original manner: — He supposed it to be occa-* 

 sioned by insects which came from Nova Zcmbla, 

 "where the cold is intense enough to give life to 

 these small creatures.^'' The late Mr. Bakewell 

 theorized himself into thinking, that dung should 

 be dried into the fineness of a pinch of snufi, — "an 

 opinion," says the author of the new Farmers' 

 Calendar, "which I have ever thought absurd and 

 unprofitable in the extreme," and I believe most 

 peo|)le will think so too; but even the author of 

 that Calendar is guilty of the following heresy: — 

 He says, at page 15S, "it would be wonderful did 

 we not know of the constant recurrence of such 

 contrarieties in agricultural practice, that lime has 

 been often found both of the utmost advantage 

 and perfectly noxious by different cultivators, on 

 soils of a perfectly similar nature,^'' which I think 

 "may hardly be, Master Shallow." 



A scientific education would, moreover, remove 

 the great gulf which appears to separate every 

 part of the country from everj' otlier part; things 

 may be known and done for ages in one place, 

 without their being heard of in another not a 

 hundred miles off. Potatoes Avere brought into 

 Ireland about 1610, and did not arrive in Cantire, 

 which is a very sandy soil, and where they have 

 since succeeded so well, in less than a centurj' and 

 a half They had reached Lancashire forty years 

 before they were much planted about London, and 

 then considered as rarities, without any conception 

 of the utility that might arise from bringing them 

 into common use. The cultivation of the turnip 

 was introduced about 1670, but at first it seems to 

 have been overlooked and even neglected for ma- 

 ny years, and then again proposed, recommended, 

 and explained with better success. 



To put the argument into a different form, let us 

 advert to the introduction of Swedish turnips. 

 Less than 35 years ago, the author of the new 

 Farmers' Calendar was obliged to quote an ac- 

 count of them from the Nottinghamshire report, 



"being without experience in the culture of this 

 root." And in another place he says, "I hear his 

 Grace the Duke of Bedford has from 20 to 30 

 acres of the Ruta Baga at Woburn." Now, if 

 this crop had made its way no faster than potatoes, 

 it would not have been heard of over a quarter of 

 the kingdom yet, and there are many farms to 

 whose improved system of husbandry they are es- 

 sential. It is stated in the History of the Royal 

 Society, that the value of sea-shells as a manure 

 had been known in Cornwall at least as early as 

 1675, and the process followed had been published 

 in the Transactions of the Royal Society; and yet, 

 in 1744, the use of them was so little understood 

 in Suffolk, that a farmer who found it out by acci- 

 dent, soon realized i^. fortune by the discovery. 



But of proofs and instances ja77i satis. Enough 

 has been said to convince those who are Avilling to 

 give a peaceable reception to truth, — and this pa- 

 per is addressed to them only, — and to them I say 

 that we have in this scheme a matter of high im- 

 port to the nation at large. The universal com- 

 plaint seems to be, that the people are growing too 

 numerous for the land. No parish but either has, 

 or fears to have, a redundant population; — men, 

 able and willing to work, subsisting unprofitably 

 and uncomfortably u]:!on the poor rates, — this su- 

 perfluity displaying its eflect in diminishing the 

 rate of^ wages; that, again, followed by distress, 

 and distress by riot and insubordination, and the 

 evil increasing so fast, that it was lately stated by 

 the chairman at the Quarter-Sessions in one of 

 the towns in the south of England, as the result of 

 his calculation, that if things continued to go on 

 for five and twenty years longer as they had done 

 for the five and twenty years past, the poor rates 

 would swallow up the whole rent of the land, so 

 that it would not be worth a shilling to the proprie- 

 tor. Now, though I do not "eo the whole hog" 

 with the noble chairman, I think it cannot be de- 

 nied that there is something strange in the present 

 position of the countrv, — in the increase of the 

 people, rapid beyond all former example, and in 

 the more rapid increase of the poor rates. It is an 

 indisputable fact, that the money raised for the re- 

 lief of the poor increased six-fold in the reign of 

 George III, while the population only doubled; but 

 over-population is relative, and not absolute. It is 

 not to the superficies, but to the consumable pro- 

 duce, of the land that the people are disproportion- 

 ed. If we can augment its fertility by one-tenth, 

 we in effect add one-tenth to its measurement, and 

 do as much good as if we could recover another 

 Yorkshire from the German Ocean. Supposing 

 the quantity of corn grown could be indefinitely 

 increased, the number of people could never be- 

 come inconvenient, even though it should increase 

 ten-fold, but manifestly much the contrary. An 

 hundred millions of people would bear with ease 

 the burdens which crush us to the earth. If we 

 can improve the cultivation so fast as to keep a- 

 head of the population, we shall do good beyond 

 the hopes of" the sanguine, or the wishes of the 

 benevolent; but if only so fast as to prevent the 

 disproportion from getting greater, we shall inter- 

 cept an incalculable mass of misery. Every class 

 of society is interested in this question. The far- 

 mer in the first instance, then the laborer, who 

 would find more employment, in proportion as the 

 farmer had more profit of his labor, — the manu- 

 facturer would hn.YB cheaper food and more cus- 



