TENANT-FARMERS. 23 



and anxiety besides. On the other hand, where farmers have not had 

 experience in drainage-works, and have not the intelligence to under- 

 stand how they ought to be carried out, the agent has either to attend 

 closely on them himself, or appoint some one as a superintendent to 

 look after them, causing extra trouble to the agent and expense to the 

 proprietor. But in the latter case the work is seldom so well performed 

 as in the former ; for I have seldom found drainage-work so satisfac- 

 torily gone about when under the care of a hired superintendent, unless 

 he is a very conscientious man, as when they are under the immediate 

 superintendence of an intelligent and enterprising tenant-farmer. A 

 man of that kind will not allow any deficiency to pass, but will have 

 it put right, while the hired superintendent, having no direct interest 

 in the after results, may be less attentive, and in this way faults and 

 defects are overlooked, and, as it were, buried in the ground. 



It is not, however, in works of drainage alone that the advantages 

 arising from intelligent farmers affect the prosperity of an estate, but in 

 works of all kinds that may be carried out for its improvement. In short, 

 the prosperity of an estate is very much influenced in all respects by hav- 

 ing a superior class of tenants on it ; for besides their being able to carry 

 out improvements more satisfactorily than inferior tenants, they are also 

 better able to maintain the effective condition of the respective works 

 after they have been performed, and therefore to increase the value of 

 their subjects. For instance, it has frequently happened that drainage- 

 works, conducted and completed in the best manner, have been rendered 

 nearly iiseless owing to the state of the outfalls being neglected by 

 ignorant or careless people ; whereas an intelligent man, fully alive to 

 the importance of maintaining the drainage of his farm in the best pos- 

 sible order, would never neglect so material a point. 



SECTION 3. Training and Education necessary for a Farmer. 



It is only those who have had a wide and intimate acquaintance 

 among farmers that can understand the extent of their acquirements 

 and fitness for the business they pursue. There is no profession in 

 which a knowledge of the laws of nature is so much needed in those who 

 follow it as in farming ; and still, there are comparatively few of them 

 who have studied these laws in the light of science. In most trades, 

 arts, and manufactories, those engaged in them are well acquainted with 

 the nature and component parts of the substances they use ; while 

 farmers, for the greater part, know very little as to the real nature of 

 the soils they cultivate, or of the plants they grow, nor as to the changes 



