Book V. VALUING LABOUR AND MATERIALS. i39 



cutting only, 6d. for cutting and hacking, and 9il. when two hackers are necessary. In 

 sandy ground, when wheeling is requisite, three men will be required to remove 150 cubit- 

 yards in a day, to the distance of 20 yards, two rilling and one wheeling ; but to remove 

 the same quantity in a day, to a greater distance, an additional man will be required for 

 every 20 yards. 



3323. To find the price of removing any number of cubic yards to any given distance: 

 Divide the distance in yards by 20, which gives the number of wheelers; add the two 

 cutters to the quotient, and you will have the whole number employed ; multiply the 

 sum by the daily wages of a labourer, and the produce will be the price of 30 cubic- 

 yards. Then, as 30 cubic yards is to the whole number, so is the price of 30 cubic yards 

 to the cost of the whole. Example. — What will it cost to remove 2,750 cubic yards 

 to the distance of 120 yards, a man's wages being three shillings per day? First, 120 -i- 

 20 = G, the number of wheelers; then + 2 fillers = 8 men employed, which, at three 

 shillings per day, gives twenty-four shillings as the price of 30 cubic yards ; then 30 : 

 24 : : 2,750 and 24 x 2,750 4- 30 = 1 10/. 



Subsect. 5. Estimating the Value of Agricultural Labour and Materials, Rents and Tillages. 



3324. Estimating the value of work done is a necessary part of agricultural knowledge, 

 and is founded upon the price of labour and the time of performance. The price of 

 labour is every where determined by the operations of the public, and therefore in any 

 given case can seldom admit of much difference of opinion. In a theoretical view of the 

 subject the proper wages for a labourer in England has been considered, for ages, to be 

 a peck of wheat ; and that of a horse the amount of his keep, expenses of a year's shoeing, 

 and ten per cent, on his value or cost price at a fair age, added together, and divided by 

 the number of days such horse is supposed to work in a year : this brings the value of 

 the day's work of a horse to something more than once and a half the value of the day's 

 work of a man ; so that supposing a labourer's wages two shillings per day, a man and 

 a pair of horses would be worth eight shillings per day. Tliis, how ever, it must be ac- 

 knowledged, is a calculation not always to be depended on, as local circumstances con- 

 tinually intervene to alter the proportions. In all cases of valuing labour, therefore, all 

 that the valuator can do is to ascertain the local price, and to estimate from his own 

 experience the time requisite to perform the work. 



3325. In estimating the value of labour and materials, considerable difficulty occur-, in 

 some departments of agriculture. Thus, in valuing fallows and sown crops it is often 

 a nice point to determine satisfactorily the value of the manure or other dressings ; and 

 in valuing the tillages, or the condition of the arable lands of an out-going tenant, regard 

 must be had not only to the actual number of ploughings a field may have been subjected 

 to the preceding or current year, but to the position which the state of that field holds in 

 the rotation, and to the value which may still be in the soil from manures or limings given 

 to former crops. Supposing a field fallowed, limed, and dunged in the year 1820, and 

 that when it fell to be valued in the spring of the year 1824, it was drilled with beans on 

 one furrow, it would be no adequate compensation for the tenant to be paid for one 

 ploughing, the beans, and the drilling ; the fallow, the dung, and especially the lime 

 given in 1820, must be considered as extending their influence even to this crop, and 

 therefore an allowance ought to be, and generally is, made for these three articles, besides 

 the mere value of the labour and seed. What this allowance should be it does not seem 

 easy to determine : land valuers and appraisers have certain rules which they go upon, 

 which are known to few but themselves, but which, having ourselves been initiated in 

 the business, we know to differ considerably in different parts of the country. Some 

 calculate that the value of dung extends to the fourth year, and declines in a geometrical 

 ratio, or in the proportion 1, 2, 4, 8 ; others limit its effects to three years. Lime is 

 allowed in some places to produce effects for three years only, and in others, especially on 

 new lands, for twelve and fourteen years ; and its value is generally supposed to decline 

 in the proportion of 1, 2, 3, &c. Naked fallow is generally considered as of beneficial 

 influence for five years, where it occurs every seven or eight years, and shorter periods in 

 proportion. A crop sown on a single furrow after a drilled crop which has been manured, 

 is considered as partaking of the manure or other dressings according to the extent to 

 which these have been given, and generally in the same ratio as in manured fallows. 



3326. In estimating the value of materials alone, the first thing is to ascertain their 

 quantity, and the next their market price. Thus, in the case of heaps of manure, the 

 cubic contents must first be found, by finding the area of the base of the heap, and its 

 mean depth, and multiplying the one into the other ; next, the quality of the material 

 must be examined, and the expense of purchasing it in the nearest town or source of 

 purchase, with the addition of the expense of carriage to the spot where it lies. Ricks, 

 whether of straw or hay, are valued in a similar manner. Crops in a growing state are 

 valued according to what they have cost, including tillage, manures, seed, rent, taxis, 

 and other outgoings, and ten "per cent, on the outlay of capital , crops arrived at matu- 



