which the soil of those countries has been cultivated, and has been forced 

 to pour forth all its resources by the application of fertilizers of every de- 

 scription. But it is an extraordinary fact that the agriculture of all these 

 countries is conducted by classes of people who are forced into a subservient 

 order in society. The land itself, in many of them, is held in large estates, 

 and is tenanted by a class whose chief business it is to direct those oper- 

 ations on the land, which are to yield them an ample return lor the capital 

 invested. It is so in Russia, where labor is wholly subservient to capital, 

 and where the division of the empire into small estates is impossible. It is 

 so in England, where the "laborer is merely a tenant, and makes his ar- 

 rangements under the eye of a landlord. It is so in France, even, where, 

 notwithstanding the division of the territory into small estates, the whole 

 business of farming is conducted by sabots, that rural population of France, 

 who even within a half-league of all the wealth and refinement of Paris, 

 retain all their ignorant rusticity, and cover the kingdom with the inani- 

 mate atmosphere of the most primitive and least ambitious modes of agri- 

 culture. It is the kings and princes, the families of distinction, who draw 

 their income from the land, and who vie with each other in the agricultural 

 exhibitions. The small farmers follow their lead. AVhenever great agri- 

 cultural improvements are made, it is under their patronage. It has been 

 said of the cultivation of the turnip in England, "On the value and im- 

 portance of the turnip crop to England, it is unnecessary to expatiate. Not 

 only does it enable the farmer to supply the consumer with fresh meat dur- 

 ing the winter, instead of the salted food upon which our ancestors had al- 

 most exclusively to depend, but also partially supplies the place of a fallow ; 

 it imparts to the land a degree of fertility which, under proper manage- 

 ment, secures a succession of crops for the following years of the rotation. 

 It is indeed the sheet-anchor of light soil cultivation, and the basis of the 

 alternate system of English husbandry, to which every class of the com- 

 munity is so much indebted." And yet so slow was the English farmer to 

 adopt this root as an article of field culture, that the zeal with which Lord 

 Townshend urged its cultivation and set forth its importance, won for him 

 the name of Turnip Townshend in derision ; and nothing but his position 

 and wealth enabled him to carry his point. It was the Duke of Bedford 

 who first introduced ploughing with two horses abreast into the region 

 about Woburn. The introduction of the line breeds of cattle and sheep 

 which Mr. Bakewell, Culley, and Charles Colling brought to perfection 

 has been encouraged and fostered most carefully by those who hold in their 

 hands the wealth and titles of England, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Somer- 



