272 Foreign J\''otices. 



eral use, the turnip crop has been iucrea:ie(], in many iastunces, ten fold, 

 and in few less than /bur or Jive fold, and the effect has been equally 

 surprising upon the succeeding crops of grain, on the same land. This 

 is the testimony of practical men, well acquainted with all the circum- 

 stances, and they have no doubt that the soil will go on progressively 

 improving, and requiring a less quantity of bones, anuuallv, from its in- 

 creased fertility and power. It answers best on light chalky soils. A 

 single farmer in Lincolnshire is said to have generally about six hun- 

 dred acres dressed almost entirely with bone manure, furnishing a vast 

 supply of food for cattle, and of common manure for other lands, and 

 is fitting those on which it is sown for bearing the most luxuriant crops 

 of wheat and barley. 



In Scotland the use of bone manure is still more recent, but scarcely 

 less productive. In the Lothians, in Berwickshire, and in fact every 

 where, it is working wonders. Being so light and easily transported, 

 compared with any other kind of manure, many a rugged and hilly tract 

 is fertilized by it, which must otherwise have remained in a state of na- 

 ture. To pulverize the bones, mills are constructed in the vicinity of 

 all the large towns, and, besides what their own markets furnish, large 

 quantities of bone dust are imported by the Scotch farmers. 



I am almost ashamed to otTer your readers this brief and meagre 

 sketch of the present state of British agriculture; but neither time nor 

 space will permit me to enlarge. There are limits, no doubt, beyond 

 which improvements in cuitivating the soil cannot be carried. But there 

 is no reason to think that these limits have yet been approached, even, 

 in the most productive districts of England and Scotland: for the sci- 

 ence of agriculture never advanced more rapidly than it has done with- 

 in the last few years; or, rather, I should say, were I entitled to speak 

 with any authority on the subject, it seems to be almost in its infancy. 

 Who that looks at the astonishing improvements of the last fifty years, 

 both in the science and the art of husbandry — who that recollects how 

 lately the potato, that most rich, nutritious and productive of all our fa- 

 rinaceous esculents, has been brought into general use — who that con- 

 siders what inexhaustible sources of nutrition and fertility and wealth, 

 the turnip and other green crops have so recently become in Britain, 

 will undertake to say, that other vegetables, still more nutritious and 

 productive, may not yet be introduced and brought under general culti- 

 vation? Who can tell what new substances scientific and practical ag- 

 riculturists may yet find, possessing far higher fertilizing virtues than 

 any now in use, or what combinations and mixtures chemistry may fur- 

 nish, so cheap and so abundant, as to put a new aspect of fertility upon 

 lands already most productive.^ Who, in looking at the best acre in 

 all England, would venture to say, that it can never, by any possible 

 improvements and discoveries, be made more productive of human sus- 

 tenance than it nosv is? Who knows but that a hundred, or a thousand 

 years hence, it may yield four fold? Who, in short, can even conjec- 

 ture what amazing undeveloped agricultural resources yet lie hidden in 

 lands which have hitherto been regarded as scarcely worth tilling at all? 

 For myself, I do not deem it at all extravagant to predict, that in the 

 millenium, if not before, the single island of Great Britain will produce 

 food enough for a population oi fifty millions; nor that, when swords 

 shall be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks, and 

 instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the briar 

 shall come up the myrrh-tree, the present territory of the United States 

 will pour the boon of plenty into the la])s of a thousand million of in- 

 habitants! — (Dr. Humphrey's letters from England to the JV. Y. Ob- 

 server.) 



Groiving the Epiphyllum truncMum by grafting upon Cactus trian- 



