23 



favouring summer, the mists and fogs that settle over us at 

 every season of the year. I only remind you of these things, 

 and ask you to contrast with them the large crops we can 

 reap, the high rents we can pay, the poor lands we have en- 

 riched, the local climate we have ameliorated, the wide 

 wastes we have subdued beneath the plough, the northern 

 districts we have tamed down to the production of wheat, 

 the large population we have reared, and in ordinary sea- 

 sons are still able to feed, and — amid all the croakings and 

 complaints of individuals and of classes — the vast amount 

 of material comfort and of intellectual elevation which 

 the island exhibits. How much kinder, on the whole, the 

 Deity has really been to us than to prolific and sunny 

 Spain; how much better our fortunes as a people, how 

 much happier our individual lot ? 



Practical Improvements in Great Britain. — 

 Among the greatest of those practical improvements in the 

 treatment of the land, by means of which British agricul- 

 ture has been advanced to its present condition, I may 

 mention : 



1st. The alternate husbandry/ — a judicious rotation of 

 crops. In this walk Flanders was probably the earliest 

 among modern European countries to make decided and 

 important advances. 



2d. The introduction of thorough drainage. — ^To a cer- 

 tain extent and in a certain way, under drains have been 

 made in almost every country of Europe, and are at least 

 as old as the time of the Romans. But the necessity and 

 almost universal profit of the system as it is now understood 

 and practiced, was first demonstrated in Scotland, and owes: 

 its general introduction to Mr. Smith, of Deanston. 



3d. As the complement of thorough drainage, the intro- 

 duction of deep and sub-soil ploughing. These practices 



