18 



undeserved celebrity from the existence of a private agricul- 

 tural school at Mogelin, established in 1806, and conducted 

 till his death in 1819, by the distinguished Von Thaer. 

 After his death the school he had founded was made a 

 Royal Academy, and is still in existence. It contains at 

 present only twenty pupils ; and even in Yon Thaer's 

 time it never contained more than thirty-four. In the 

 much praised primary schools of Prussia, a little instruc- 

 tion in gardening is the only teaching which bears an 

 immediate relation to the future occupations of the rural 

 population. 



In the nature of its soils, indeed, which are sandy, light 

 enough to be blown by the winds, and apparently almost 

 sterile, Prussia has much to contend with. This is espe- 

 cially the case in its more ancient and central Dutchies. 

 Westphalia and the Rhenish provinces are naturally richer, 

 and are also more advanced and better cultivated. 



Besides, until the revolution of the past year, the bur- 

 dens or servitudes upon land, of a feudal kind — and of 

 which in the New World you have no examples, except a 

 few of a milder form in the seignories of Lower Canada — 

 were so onerous and so unequally distributed, as greatly to 

 retard the development of its agricultural capabilities. 

 The state of the roads and other means of communication 

 also, as in Bavaria, and the scarcity of large towns, have 

 concurred with other causes, in retaining the agriculture 

 of Prussia in a very backward condition. 



Holland. — If from the uplands of Germany we descend 

 to the lowlands, and especially to that country which in- 

 cludes the islands at the mouths of the Rhine and the 

 Scheldt, and the low country stretching northward to the 

 Zuyder Zee and the Dollart, we shall find reason to stay 

 -our steps and to consider calmly the cause, and purpose, 



