140 



Soili7ig, or House-feeding. 



Vol. XI. 



calling out their self-respect, by teaching 

 them the best modes of management, and 

 assisting them to pursue these modes. 



His first plan was to employ some re- 

 spectable and skilful farmers from Scotland, 

 well qualified to teach, who were to serve 

 as agricultural instructors. They were 

 themselves to occupy a small fatm, on 

 which they were to exhibit an example of 

 the best mode of management and cultiva- 

 tion ; and within a prescribed district, they 

 were to visit the cottiers and small tenants, 

 and instruct them in these improvements, 

 looking after them frequently, reporting 

 them, and encouraging them by the promise 

 of handsome premiums for superior skill and 

 industry, to be bestowed at the annual agri- 

 cultural meeting, at the close of the year. 

 In addition to this, through his Scotch agents, 

 or by himself, Mr. Blacker offered the ten- 

 ants aid in the form of seeds, artificial ma- 

 nures, improved implements, and sometimes 

 a cow, the expense of which was all to be 

 ultimately reimbursed. The plan has sue 

 ceeded admirably. One of the first visits 

 was to a small farmer, who had been at one 

 time negligent, addicted to intemperance, 

 deeply in debt, and wholly discouraged, and 

 without even a cow, so important a blessing 

 in a poor man's family. His habits were 

 now changed; he had applied himself most 

 diligently to the cultivation and improve- 

 ment of his little farm ; he had paid his 

 debts ; he was keeping two or three cows, 

 and now felt the pride and wore the port of 

 a man. It would be difficult to say what 

 superior benefaction he could have bestowed 

 upon such a man ; and the beneficence was 

 gratefully appreciated ; for there is a chord 

 in the human heart from which the touch of 

 disinterested kindness seldom fails to bring 

 a response. 



I will give the returns of some of these 

 small tenants. 



A. B. has fourteen acres. He keeps four 

 cows and a horse. The sales from the prO' 

 duce of his cows amounted in the year to 

 j£17 beyond the supplies of his family. Un- 

 der the system of house-feeding, he says he 

 can keep four cows where he could keep 

 only one before. Such a place as this, it is 

 clear, should not be burdened with a horse. 

 Each acre of his land, he stated, gave him a 

 profit of £5. 



C. D. cultivated eight and a half acres, 

 in potatoes, flax, oats, turnips, &c., &c. He 

 kept two cows, but had wisely sold his horse 

 He paid £9 15s. rent, and had cleared, in 

 the previous year, £43, exclusive of butter 

 used in his family. His oats were a magni 

 ficent crop; and where they had been ma 

 nured with the water in which his flax had 



been rotted, the beneficial effects of the ap- 

 plication were most striking. He raised 

 two pigs. 



E. F. occupies nine acres. Had last year 

 three cows; this year he is keeping four; 

 sold last year about £40 of produce, exclu- 

 sive of butter. His cows produce about se- 

 ven pounds of butter each per week. 



All this is spade husbandry and house- 

 feeding. I shall proceed to give some other 

 statements, which did not come under my 

 particular observation, but with which Mr. 

 Blacker was kind enough to make me ac- 

 quainted. 



G. H. stated that he had fed his stock of 

 four cows and two calves upon one acre and 

 two roods of land* all summer, being about 

 one rood and four perches for each cow, after 

 allowing for the calves, and had three roods 

 of turnips, and one of rape, for winter. His 

 whole occupation amounted to eight acres 

 and three roods of land. His stock, of four 

 cows and two calves, he stated, late in the 

 autumn, had been fed, through the summer 

 and up to that time, upon clover and vetches, 

 on the same piece of ground which formerly, 

 in grazing, kept only one cow, and that poor- 

 ly. This man added, that he was satisfied 

 that there was no way in which land could 

 be made to produce so much, or by which it 

 could be brought into such heart, as by the 

 soiling system, and four-course rotation of 

 crops. He was just beginning to feel the 

 benefit of it, his land being now all perfectly 

 clean, every inside ditch levelled, not a spot 

 in the whole that was not productive, and 

 not any of it whatever in pasture. 



I. J. states that when he came to his farm, 

 four years ago, he could only keep one cow, 

 and two acres of such pasture as it afforded 

 was only sufficient to summer-feed her; that 

 he had gradually increased his stock from 

 year to year, until he had now three good 

 cows and a horse, on his eight acres of land, 

 and had now more acres manured than he 

 then found roods. 



K. L. states that where formerly he had 

 only two cows, a heifer, and a pony, he now 

 had five cows, two heifers, and one good 

 horse, upon his sixteen acres, kept on clover 

 and vetches in summer, on cabbage in the 

 autumn, and turnips in the winter and 

 spring. 



M. N. occupied twenty-three acres of 

 land. His stock was seven cows, two heif- 

 ers, one calf, and two horses, which were 

 kept in good condition ; and besides this, he 



* I suppose, in these cases, the Irish acre is intended, 

 which, to the English statute acre, is as the square of 

 14 to the square of 11, or aa 196 to 121. 



