1.—1846.] THE 
AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 9 
FARM IN EAST LOTHIAN TO BE LET. 
O BELET—THE FARM OF PLEASANTS, in the 
eru of Spott, containing 190 Imperial Acres, or thereby. 
The Lands are of excellent quality, and are situated about two 
miles from the seaport of Dunbar, one of the principal stations 
On the line of the North British Railway. Entry will be given 
the Houses, Grass, and Fallow, at Whitsunday next, and to 
the remaining Lands at the separation of Crop 1846 from the 
ground, John Forrest, at Bowerhouse Gate, will show the 
Lands. The Conditions of Lease will be seen at Messrs. DAL- 
Manoxv and Woops, W.S., 69, Queen-street, and offers for the 
arm will be received by them till the 16th of February, 1816, 
Which may be made either in Money, or in Wheat, payable ai 
ae Biher fiars of the county, or partly in both.—Edinburgh, 
C. 23, 1845. 
The Agricultural Gasette, 
SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 1846. 
WEEKS. 
—Highland and Agricultural Society. 
ofIreland, 
— 16—Agriculiural Imp. Soc. of Ireland, 
LOCAL SOCIETIES. 
Antrim Uni ork — 
5 FARMERS' CLUBS. 
an 5—Darlington, Usk, Newark. | Jan.10—Northampton Book Club, 
Jan. 6—Wiveliscombe, Ab Cardiff, Swansea,Carl Tr 
Rochford Hundred, Framlingham, | _Winchcomb. 
Toisia 
g! 
c j 
JŠ Quivox. Jan. 12—Exminster, Yoxford, Wen- 
‘an.7—Monmouth, Braintree and | lock, Great Oakley, W. Hereford. 
j,Booking Jan. 13 - Wootton Basset, Lewis, Isle 
‘an. 3—Blofield and Walsham, Rich. | _ of Thanet. 
mondshire. Jan, 14—Harleston, 
Jan, 9—Wrentham, Tavistock, De- | Jan. 15 - Grove Ferry, 
TRN Germains, Halesworth, | Jan. 16—Wadebridge, 
leigh, Wakefield, St. Austell. 
ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVEN THOUSAND AND 
THREE HUNDRED TONS OF Guano were consumed in 
this country between the Ist of July 1844, and the 
lst of July, 1845. Of this quantity, Africa sup- 
plied us with about 100,000 tons, and South America 
With the remainder. "The cost price to the farmer 
ofthis manure may be estimated as follows :— 
100,000 tons African, at 8l, per ton .. `.. £800,000 
87,300 tons Peruvian, at 127. per ton +. 441,600 
ay, Making a total costof — .. 7 2. £1,247,600 
A million and a quarter of money spent by British 
farmers in a fertiliser which was unknown in English 
practice five years ago, is an astounding fact, and 
one which is pregnant with interesting considera- 
tions. Thus in the first place it is a direct and 
practical refutation of the libel so industriously 
asserted by some, and blindly believed by others, 
that the farmers of England are “as stubborn as 
the clays they cultivate,” and are unwilling to adopt 
modern ideas for the improvement of their practice, 
and the increase of their produce. There are, 
doubtless, some who are even yet ignorant of the 
value of this fertiliser; but the fact of the great 
‘Consumption to which we have alluded proves that 
` the cases are not “few and far between” in which 
the farmer has been neither dull of conviction nor 
tardy in action. 
A demand increasing in four years from nothing 
‘to, 180,000 tons, is evidence enough that there are 
Some apt scholars amongst us. In like manner it 
ìs an answer to the open enemies and lukewarm 
friends who doubt the utility of our agricultural 
Societies, and who sneer at the efforts of all who 
DU with their pens or their voices to stimulate 
€ mind of the farmer to enquiry, and to diffuse, 
Over the length and breadth of the land, the princi- 
Ts 9f the science and the practice of an art upon 
which so much depends, and comparatively so little 
is known. 
ie if we grant that some few persons directly 
cun inthe cultivation of the soil knew the 
tha ity of the manure on its first importation, and 
X analysis pointed out to others the why and 
E erefore of the fact, how is it that this fact is now 
M. longer new or strange in any part of Her 
then’. s dominions? Howis it that it has endured 
ordeal of doubt and denial, and has gained such 
Seneral confidence in so short a time? By what 
ns has the knowledge of a practice so novel as 
TÉ use of this manure been so quickly diffused ? 
auth, strong as it may be, cannot travel without 
Ponce and faets are generally longer on the 
^h than fiction. Nor does ignorance ever give 
DE to knowledge without a struggle for the 
Jeng To the meetings, speeches, publications 
oa Societies, and to the press connected there- 
ee 3 mist attribute the extraordinary results we 
ihe ni F to. By bringing the ignorant and 
NEUE i together, those who were willing 
: bie of tee, mingling with those who were 
teen 3 e by employing capital in col- 
eure an pe facts, by making these the 
Nie rs which our speakers have discoursed to 
S usands, and which „our journals have carried to 
M market table in the kingdom ; by these 
vue all of which our Agricultural societies and 
ubs have employed, information on this point of 
Practice has been promulgated, and ignorance has 
AE dispelled at aspeed,and in a degree unparalleled 
is any other period in the history of agricultural 
3 provement, and poe unattainable by an 
ofle means. By these means, the disadvantages 
E Ocality and cireumstance, of isolation and limited 
PPortunity of active communion with the world and 
its daily progress, have been overcome—disad- 
vantages which have always been regarded as fatal 
obstacles to the progress of improvement, either in 
the knowledge or the practice of our farmers. 
The efficacy of these means is, however, evidenced 
by other cases as well as the one now quoted. Thus 
it is a matter well ascertained that we have pro- 
gressed more during the last four years, under the 
influence of these means, in our knowledge of the 
true economy of all other manures—especially of 
bones—than during the previous forty years. It is 
equally, too, a matter of fact, that the same mode of 
procuring and spreading knowledge abroad, has 
caused as great an advantage to be made in the 
fund tal work of impro draining, both 
as regards principle and detail. 
And the rapid increase which has taken place in the 
use of guano is suggestive of anotherimportant reflec- 
tion. The million and a quarter of capital which 
has been spent in guano is so much ezíra capital 
employed in the cultivation of the soil. In proof of 
which we find that the great demand for guano did 
not, during the past year, diminish the market for 
other manures. For example, bones have been 30 
per cent. dearer during 1844 and 1845, than in the 
previous year. This million and a quarter of extra 
capital beneficially employed in cultivation, cannot 
have produced less than two millions worth of food 
for the population and wealth for the country. 
What then, indeed, is the value of the assertion that 
the farmers of England are “behind their age ;” or, 
that the institutions which have been founded for the 
encouragement and promotion of agriculture, are but 
“a mockery, a delusion, and a snare ;” and are as 
incompetent to effect that purpose as the farmer 
is unwilling to be taught. An ounce of such a fact 
as we have stated at the commencement of this 
article will outweigh a ton of this empty verbiage. 
To the practical farmer, however, there is one other 
consideration connected with the great fact to which 
we have drawn attention, which is of paramount 
importance. It is the consideration how a supply 
adequate to such a consumption is to be obtained 
for the future. At the present moment, indeed, this 
question is of peculiar interest ; we shall, therefore, 
in our next, attempt to inquire into the prospects of 
the market for the future. 
ANorHER Year 1s Gone. A remarkable and 
eventful, and it is to be at least hoped, an instruc- 
tive year to the agriculturist. It is gone: as en- 
tirely and irrevocably gone as “the years before the 
flood.” . What has it bequeathed to us? What 
light have we gathéred from it, wherewith to light 
up the mysterious and shadowy prospect of the 
future ?—for, it is by the experience of the past that 
the future is to be alone discerned, so far as human 
eye can penetrate. And surely if ever a coming 
year was fraught with an almost painful intensity of 
interest to every man in this kingdom that sets him- 
self down as in the remotest degree “connected 
with agriculture” in any shape or sense, it is the 
year that now lies before us like a shut book, as yet 
sealed and silent, yet pregnant with coming facts 
and disclosures, in politics, in science, in art; in 
allthat bears upon the history and progress of agricul- 
ture, the gradual unfolding and revelation of which, 
as surely as “one day telleth another, and one 
night certifieth another,” so surely will they make 
each one of us wish that we had watched with more 
attentive, more prescient eye, the indications of the 
future, with which every past seems to have teemed, 
when looked back upon from the vantage-ground of 
after-knowledge. 
It does not, and never did, form any part of our 
task to concern ourselves with the progress of mere 
political changes or opinions, however closely at 
times they may seem to unite and almost identify 
themselves with the history of agriculture ; but in 
whatever department of knowledge the matter is to 
be found that moulds itself into the shape of purely 
agricultural speculation, we hold it to become ipso 
facto an essential part of agriculture itself, viewed 
‘as we will now venture to express the firm hope that 
it may be viewed,as areally advancing art, absorbing 
and appropriating to itself every ray, however scat- 
tered, that shines from the most distant star in the 
wide and profound expanse of human science. Put- 
ting aside, then, the mere question itself which has 
agitated, and is agitating the minds of all around us 
throughout the length and breadth of the empire— 
we allude, of course, to the possible alteration of the 
Corn-laws—a question in which landlord, tenant, and 
labourer, allfeel avitaland unavoidable interest which 
it would be almost an affectation to overlook, 
at the opening of a year likely to prove so important 
an epoch in the annals of agricultural experience, 
we extract from the pack the card which intrin- 
sically and alone belongs to us. It turns up in the 
likeness of the following query. What, if any, will 
be the effects of the expected change, not upon 
class or person, collective or individual, but upon 
agricultural practice? It might seem almost pre- 
sumptuous to ask or guess, almost idle to dilate 
upon, had we nothing but surmise or conjecture to pro- 
ceed upon, orto offer. But we have more. We have 
the history of past practice ; of the causes, of every 
description, that have operated to retard or to 
advance its improvement. Andin the review which 
presents itself, our eye is caught by one or two 
leading features that have ever and anon solicited 
our attention and claimed our repeated remark, 
throughout our progress in the journey we have 
traversed. One is the utterly and strangely dis- 
proportionate application of capital to agriculture, 
as compared with all the other great objects of 
human enterprize and investments of human labour 
and invention; the other is a matter of closer 
detail and lying more out of a cursory view, but 
powerfully significant ; it may be comprised in the 
proposition that the farmers’ attention has been 
hitherto called rather to THE PRICE THAT HE CAN 
OBTAIN FOR A GIVEN QUANTITY THAN THE AMOUNT 
THAT HE CAN GROW UPON A GIVEN SPACE, 
We are no mere theorists. We are not careful 
to examine into remote or collateral causes that lie 
out of our province. Our concern is only with 
effects; and with such too as are obvious and in- 
disputable. We affirm with regret the proposition 
as to price and quantity above stated, and we appeal 
to our readers if this remark be not true, in refer- 
ence to the past; and if true, whether it do not 
betoken a screw loose somewhere in the movement 
of the agricultural machine, interrupting its due 
and proper action, and distorting it from its due and 
proper object and purpose, as the means of pro- 
ducing an indefinitely increasing supply, to a con- 
stantly increasing demand ? Observe the effects of 
the application of capital and invention to other 
arts. Theyshowthemselves in improved machinery, 
greater produce, lower price, and increased profits! 
Is this true or is it not? as a practical and striking 
fact, is it true or is it not that the fortunes made by 
cotton-spinning and calico-printing have increased 
and extended enormously since the improved ma- 
chinery and economised labour have multiplied the 
produce and reduced the price to an extent aston- 
ishing to contemplate? Is it true or is it not that 
the very machines that have economised labour 
have yet in the end immensely increased the num- 
ber of hands employed ? that the double blessing of 
lower price to the consumer, and higher profits to 
the producer, have gone hand in hand? And if it 
be true, as it is well known to be, that profit does 
not depend upon price, in regard to that which we 
* put on," why should it be otherwise in regard to 
that which we “eat and drink ?” “Why should that 
which is an axiom in the one be a paradox in the 
other? Both are trades in which capital invests 
itselfin human labour employed,through the medium 
of machinery, upon the task of production. Why 
should a truth which is positive to the loom, be 
negative to the plough? The productive capabili- 
ties of each are alike unknown, and, as far as human 
knowledge has reached, unlimited ; the latter, per- ' 
haps, even more than the former. What is the 
chilling cause that arrests investment in the elder 
branch of human art, agriculture ; and sells its birth- 
right to the younger, manufactures? We pause for 
areply ; but it is the pause, not of fear, but of hope ; 
of hope not illuded by future expectations, but 
founded upon past experience : and truly the experi- 
ence of the past ten years has been instructive 
beyond all former retrospect. With a population 
i ing at th ing rate of a thousand a 
day, a thousand mouths to feed each day beyond 
the number of the day before, with the acreage of 
our little island cut and sliced, and taken up in 
every direction by the overbearing railroad, that 
swallows two thousand acres to a hundred miles, 
how have we met the increased and increasing de- 
mand? By hugely increased importation? . Evi- 
dently not. Have our fields, then, grown larger? 
No! but they have produced more. The example 
of the few, and the encouragement derived from 
that example and its results, have not been wholly 
lost. The movement is but in its infancy, but it bids 
fair to attain a stature that shall vindicate its place 
among the rapid and gigantie growths that modern 
times have seen in other arts, and to exemplify the 
scientific and economic truths that their progress 
has established. We claim no position as the ad- 
vocates or opponents, much less as the judges, of 
financial or legislative enactments. We utterly and 
distinctly decline to beat up even our most worn- 
out ploughshare for the sword of controversy. But 
we cannot turn a straight furrow without keeping 
our eyes open; and if the political hurly-burly 
around us divert qur attention for a moment, it is 
only that we may hearand reflect, and, as far as in 
us lies, endeavour to judge of the future by the best 
of all prophecy, the history of the past. For many 
