88 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. Part I. 



of rent, or a union of farms, and which have secured to the ov/ner the full enjoyment 

 of the use of the land, have prevented any person, except the sovereign, from amassing 

 an enormous quantity, and have preserved, among the inhabitants a species of equality as 

 to property. There are, comparatively, few absolutely destitute labourers. The mass 

 of the people do not live in such affluence as Englishmen ; but this is more than com- 

 pensated to them by all being in some measure alike. In civilised society, it is not 

 destitution, but the craving wants wliich the splendour of other persons excites, which are 

 the true evils of poverty. Tlie metayer regulations have hindered improvement ; but they 

 have also hindered absolute destitution and enormous accumulation. [Hodgson.) 



552. From the regulations concerning landed property in Germany, it has resulted that 

 fewer paupers are found there than in our country. Some other regulations are known, 

 which have probably assisted in protecting Germany from the evil of pauperism to tlie 

 same extent in which it exists with us. There is no legal provision for paupers. A 

 law of the guilds, which extended to most trades, forbade, and still forbids^ where guilds 

 are not abolished, journeying mechanics from marrying ; and, in most countries of 

 Gel-many, people are obliged to have the permission of the civil magistrate, before it is 

 legal for the clergyman to celebrate a marriage. The permission seems to be given or 

 withheld, as the parties soliciting it are thought by the magistrates to be capable of main- 

 taining a family. At least, it is to prevent the land from being overrun with paupers, 

 that the law on this subject has been made. 



553. The agricultural produce of Germany is for the greater part consumed there; 

 but excellent wines are exported from Hungary and the Rhine ; and also wool, flax, 

 timber, bark, hams salted and smoked, geese, goosequills, the canary, goldfinch, and 

 other singing birds, silk, &c. 



554. The culture of the mulberry and rearing of the silkworm, m Germany, are carried 

 on as far north as Berlin ; that of the vine, as Dresden ; and that of the peach, as a 

 standard in the fields, as Vienna. The maize is little cultivated in Germany ; but patches 

 of it are to be found as far north as Augsburg, in Swabia. Rice is cultivated in a few 

 places in Westphalia. The olive is not planted, because to it, even in the warmest part 

 of Germany, the winters would prove fatal. 



555. The common cultivation includes all the different corns, and many or most of 

 the legumes, roots, herbage, and grasses, grown in Britain. They grow excellent hemp, 

 flax, and oats ; and rye is the bread -corn of all Germany. They also cultivate turnips, 

 rapeseed, madder, woad, tobacco, hops, saffron, teasel, caraway ; many garden vegetables, 

 such as white beet, French beans, cabbage, carrots, parsneps, &c. ; and some medicinal 

 plants, as rhubarb, lavender, mint, &c. ; independently of their garden culture of fruits, 

 culinary vegetables, and herbs for apothecaries. The most common rotation in Ger- 

 many is two corn crops and a fallow ; or, in poor lands, one or two corn crops, and two 

 or three years' rest; but in rich lands, in the south-western districts, green crops or 

 legumes intervene with those of corn. 



556. The best pastures and meadows are in Holstein, and along the margin of the Ger- 

 man Ocean ; and for the same reasons as in Holland and Britain, viz. the mildness and 

 moisture of the winters. There are also good pastures and meadows on the Danube, in 

 Hungary; but the great heats of summer stimulate the plants too much to send up 

 flowers ; and the culture there is not so perfected as to regulate this tendency by irrigation. 

 Irrigation, however, is very scientifically conducted in some parts of Holstein, and on the 

 Rhine and Oder. 



557. The operations and implements of German agriculture vary exceedingly. Tliey 

 are wretched in Hungary, and some parts of Bohemia, where six or more oxen may be 

 seen drawing a clumsy plough, entirely of wood, and without a mould-board. In 

 Denmark, Hanover, and in Prussia, they use much better ploughs, some of which have 

 iron mould-boards ; and in many places they are drawn by a pair of oxen or horses. 

 The plough, in the more improved districts, has a straight beam, two low wheels, a share, 

 which cuts nearly horizontally, and a wooden mould-board sometimes partially shod with 

 iron : it is drawn by two horses. In Friesland, and some parts of Holstein, the Dutch 

 swing-plough is used. The common waggon 

 is a heavy clumsy machine on low wheels. 

 (^ftg- 65.) The theoretical agriculturists are 

 well acquainted with all the improved im- 

 plements of Britain, and some of them have 

 been introduced, especially in Holstein, 

 Hanover, and Westphalia ; but these are 

 nothing in a general view. Horses are the 

 most common animals of labour in the north 

 and west of Geratiany, and oxen in the south. Fallows are rarely well cultivated ; and 

 nothing can be worse than the mode of resting lands, and leaving them to be covered with 

 weeds during two or three years in succession. 



