. JANUARY. 55 



TRAVELLING. 



The reader may also be surprized to see such 

 an article as this in a Calendar of the business of 

 fanning ; but were I to name one circumstance 

 which has, in the last twenty years, advanced 

 the husbandry of this country more than any 

 other, I should fix on the practice of farmers 

 taking their nags (to use an expression of Bake- 

 well), to see what other people are doing. Men 

 who are confined their whole lives to one spot or 

 vicinity, necessarily contract a too limited range 

 of thought. Their ideas flow so much in the 

 same channel, and dwell so much on the same ob- 

 jects, that new ones, however useful, make tor> 

 faint an impression : nor can they know what is 

 doing by the best farmers, on soils perhaps exactly 

 similar to their own. To take a ride, for a fort- 

 night, through four or five hundred miles of 

 country, with an eye scrutinizing every thing they 

 fcuu, and calling upon noted farmers to make in- 

 quiries about such objects as appear interesting, 

 must necessarily give a new movement to their 

 minds, a new spring to thought, and remove many 

 prejudices. If only one journey be taken in a year, 

 and that at a vacant time, perhaps June would be 

 the best season ; but, v as I propose tint two should 

 be taken, one may as well be in January as in any 

 other month. This season will explain the winter 

 management of live stock, the important objects of 

 the farm-yard, fattening beasts, sheep-feodiug in 

 many branches^ winter irrigation, and many other 



K 4 objects. 



