54 TRANSACTIONS, 



of farms owned and cultivated by peasant proprietors. Spade hus- 

 bandry is either wholly, or in part employed by them. Whether the 

 land is cultivated by the spade, or plough, all the members of the 

 family engage in it ; — children doing the lighter work, such as weed- 

 ing, hoeing, fesding the cows and such like. Suppose the farm to 

 consist of six acres, which is a common area for a farm in Flan- 

 ders. One man and his family can manage it. If he has a wife and 

 three young children, all of whom are considered equal to three and 

 a half grown up men, the family, according to the authority quoted, 

 will reqiiire thirty-nine bushels of grain, forty-nine bushels of pota- 

 toes, a fat hog, and the milk and butter of one cow : an acre and a 

 half of land will jjroduce the grain and potatoes, and allow some corn 

 to finish off the fattening of the hog, kept on the extra butter-milk, 

 &,c.; — another acre in clover, carrots, and potatoes, with the stubble 

 turnips, will more than keep another cow. Two and a half acres of 

 land thus suffice to furnish this family with food, while the produce 

 of the remaining three and a half acres, may be sold to pay the in- 

 terest of the purchase money invested, — wear and tear of implements, 

 extra manure, clothing for the family, &c. Thus it is seen how a 

 family can live and thrive on a farm of six acres of moderate land. 



This is a brief detail of one six-acre farm in Flanders, given, in 

 order to show M^hat peasant proprietorship is doing and demonstrat- 

 ing on the side of Economy in Agriculture — more especially, where 

 the soil tilled, is owned. Give a man the ownership with a title deed 

 of a flat rock, and he will convert it into a fruitful field — but give 

 him a ten-years' lease of a Avell cultivated farm, and nine chances to 

 one, he will convert it into a fruitless waste. Wherever ownership 

 vests in the soil in Europe, it has stimulated the poor man, or the la- 

 borer, rather, to work it even to the conveying of earth in baskets 

 upon the back, far up the mountain side, where Nature had denied a 

 fioil, in order to render it fertile and productive of the substantials of 

 animal nutrition. 



Circumstances, which will suggest themselves to the reader, make 

 a, difference, it is true, between proprietorship in the soil, here, and in 

 Flanders. These, however, do not essentially vary the economic 

 (bearing of the facts quoted. 



Perhaps there is no department of the Economy of Agriculture, 

 "where farmers and gardeners suffer so much direct loss, as that which 

 pertains to animal excrements and urine. There are very few farms 

 in any country, that will produce good crops for any length of time, 

 ■without the application of manure. The farmer in New England, is 



