396 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



Our tenant farmers employ the latest and best achieve- 

 ments of engineering science in the form of implements, 

 but take care that they shall be upon wheels, or otherwise 

 non-fixtures, and use rich chemically prepared manures, 

 provided they are not permanent, while they abstain from 

 improvements which involve any serious outlay in the form 

 of fixtures on the land. Those who lecture them about their 

 want of enterprise should always remember that their con- 

 dition is merely a form of feudal serfdom, tempered by the 

 possession of capital, and that all their agricultural oper- 

 ations are influenced by a continual struggle to prevent 

 their capital from falling into the hands of the feudal 

 lord. Anybody who has ever read an ordinary form of 

 English farm-lease, with its prohibitions concerning the 

 sale of hay and straw, and restrictions to "four-course," 

 or other mode of cultivation, must see the hopelessness of 

 any development of British agriculture comparable to that 

 of British commerce and manufactures. 



Imagine the condition of a London shopkeeper or Midland 

 manufacturer holding his business premises as a yearly 

 tenant, liable at six months' notice to quit, with confisca- 

 tion of all his business fixtures. 



THE FKACTURE OF COMETS. 



THE view of the constitution of comets expounded in one 

 of my notes of April last, viz., that they are meteoric sys- 

 tems consisting of a central mass, or masses, round which 

 a multitude of minor bodies are revolving like satellites 

 around their primary, is strongly confirmed by the curious 

 proceedings of the present comet, which proceedings also 

 justify my last note of last month pointing out the omission 

 of our astronomers, who have neglected the positive and 

 irregular repulsive action of the sun upon comets, that, 

 like the great comets of 1843, 1880, and 1882, come within 

 a few hundred thousand miles of the visible solar surface. 



The solar prominences are stupendous eruptions from 



