1 2.—1846. ] -THE 
AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 
25 
E OT WATER APPARATUS.—The attention of 
Architects, Builders, and others, is respectfully requested 
to BENJAMIN Fowxen’s superior method of Heating Churches 
and Chapels, Halls, Stair-cases, Conservatories, Forcing and 
Greenhouses, Manufactories and Warehouses, Kilns, Rooms 
g Ti &c., and every variety of purpose for which 
rtificial heat is required. Within the last 20 years some 
hundreds of buildings have been heated upon this plan, and 
the parties for whom they were executed are co Ly 
pressing their sati ion, also their willingnes vouch for 
their efficiency. An improved wrought-iron boiler, which re- 
quires no brickwork, may be seen in action upon the premises, 
BENJAMIN FOWLER, 63, Dorset-street. Fleet-street, 
The Agricultural Gazette. 
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 1846. 
MEETINGS FOR THE TWO FOLLOWING WESKS. 
Hurspav, Jan. 15—Agricultural Imp. Soc. of Ireland. 
TnuunspAv, — 22—Agriculiural Imp. Soc. of Ireland. , 
LOCAL SOCIETIES.—Cadder—Longford. 
lock, Great Oakley, W. Hereford. otley. 
Jan. 13- Wootton Basset, Lewis, Isle | Jan. 20— Bromsgrove, Plymton St. 
of Thanet, Mary. 
Jon, 14—Harlesten. Jan. 93—Shadwell, 
Jan. 15- Grove Ferry. 
WE are unwillingly forced to postpone for a week 
our remarks on THE Pmoserors or THE GUANO 
Trape, But we may just make one observation at 
present. ` It is by no means right to estimate too 
lightly the probability that sources of this manure 
hitherto undiscovered, are in existence, and will 
hereafter reward the industry and enterprize of our 
merchants. In illustration of this, we publish the 
following passage extracted from a letter just re- 
ceived from a gentleman farming largely in the 
south of Scotland. a 
“ On reading, this morning, your Leader of Satur- 
day, it occurred to me that having just received 
a letter from. Rio Janeiro, of date 11th Nov. last, it 
might be in my power to add something to your 
information as to the future supplies of guano. 
The letter is written by the Captain of a ship, of 
which Iam manager, and part owner. He says :— 
**Since I came here I learned that three ves: 
have loaded cargoes of guano on the coast of Patagonia 
two of them called in here, one of them sailed for 
England three or four days ago, the other is likely to 
sail next week early. Both the masters are keeping 
the place where they loaded a secret, but there are 
two vessels gone after it some time ago, and other 
five vessels will likely follow next week, and I have 
made up my mind to make the sixth. I think it must 
‘be somewhere between 39° and 42° south latitude, and 
as I learn that the Liverpool brokers'are chartering 
vessels to come for this.guano, I trüst we shall be 
successful. 
“You may make what use you please of this 
information. I hope they may fall in with another 
Ichaboe.” 
In Dr. Jonnson’s admirable little story of “ Ras- 
selas,” Imlac makes a long digression in order to re- 
count to the Prince all the various things which a 
man ought to know who aspires to the name of a 
poet. Before he has half done, the Prince inter- 
rupts him with the exclamation, “ Enough! thou hast 
persuaded me that no man can be a poet! Proceed 
with thy narration," 
The bare mention of the sciences with which the 
agriculturist is expected, now-a-days, to be familiar, 
often reminds one of this passage, and tempts one to 
exclaim, with theimpatient Rasselas, ** Enough ! no 
man can be afarmer. Let's change the subject |" 
Somuch for theory : howisitwith practice? A tenant 
dies or leaves his farm, orsays he is going to die, or 
hints that it may just exist within the suburbs of pos- 
sibility that he may leave his farm. No matter 
whether the said farm be large or small, good or 
bad, sand or clay ; within one month, “one little 
month,” the landlord's residence isin a state of siege; 
his table groans under a feast of letters ; he is pelted 
with a snow-storm of“ applications.” High and low, 
tich and poor, old and young, male and female! 
What stick in the hedge of humanity will not do to 
cut “a farmer” out of ?* Pardon the extravagance 
of the conception, and imagine for a moment all the 
motley host of applicants for the vacant.or vacable 
farm collected together, and the landlord, after eyeing 
the noun of multitude before him, all answering to 
the name of farmer, with a painfully-suppressed fit of 
inward laughter, addressing them in the following 
words :—“ Now, I will let the farm rent-free to the 
. man, woman, or child who shall tell me the meaning 
of the following words : chemistry, geology, vege- 
table physiology, botany, zoology, mechanics, hy- 
"draulics, hydrostatics, geometry, meteorology, ana- 
tomy, animal physiology, natural philosophy, arith- 
metic, single and double entry, oxygen, nitrogen, 
hydrogen, carbon, ammonia, soda, potash, phospho- 
* Do not let us be misunderstood, These are not owr words. 
But we appeal to the reader if they must not accurately express 
the feeling of any one (we will suppose him to be ignorant of 
farm-practice) who witnesses the scene here described—a scene 
which, in many parts of England at all events, is not of infre- 
‘quent occurrence, 
rus, sulphur, alumina, silica, calcareous, centre of 
gravity, line of traction, angle of fortyfive, diameter, 
circumference, pulverisation, percolation, filtration, 
capillary attraction, solution, precipitation, protec- 
tion, sliding-scale, * *. + + * There, am 
out of breath! have only told you half: but that 
will be enough for the present. You look amazed, 
and are all laughing ; but it is Twho ought to laugh 
at you; for every soul that stands before me, 
man, woman, and child, that has made application 
for this farm, virtually undertakes to solve practi- 
cally the most difficult and mysterious problems 
that the human mind can perform; and the man 
that takes it will do so, and every man that holds 
a furm and cultivates it does do so every year of his 
life—in every one of the sciences and subjects of 
which I have merely given you the proper names!” 
And such is literally and honestly the fact. The 
list is long, and the names are hard. But we may 
know a man’s character well, and he may have done 
us a good service for many a year, and yet it is 
perfectly possible that we may be ignorant of his 
name; and so it is with the sciences and subjects 
that belong to agriculture. Of all the practical 
pursuits in which the mind of man can be engaged, 
t is the one which requires the most extended 
knowledge of, and derives the most daily and hourly 
advantage from, an acquaintance with what are 
called the physical sciences, meaning the knowledge 
of natural causes and effects in the matters of earth, 
air, water, fire, plant, and animal. But if it makes 
this demand upon the capacity of man, with what 
does it repay him? With the highest, the truest, 
the-best of all earthly blessings—health to the body, 
satisfaction to the feelings, occupation to the mind ; 
and to these present boons, there is added another 
less obvious and tangible, but singularly and benefi- 
cently adapted to the imperfection of man’s earthly 
state, viz., an interesting and alluring anticipation 
of the future, which—hiding the grey hair, masking 
the deepened wrinkle, and soothing the recent woe 
—gently leads him on from year to year (from the 
seed that he has sown to the crop that he will reap), 
till the allotted span is already past, the goal imper- 
ceptibly won, and the earth, which his mind has 
studied and his strength has tilled, receives him in 
her gentle bosom ; and whilst he sleeps in peace, 
“the good that he has done lives after him.” 
R“ Very pretty, indeed—highly pleasing and poet- 
ical,” you will say ; “but if one may venture an opi- 
nion drawn from common remark and daily expe- 
rience, your farmer is, of all mankind, the most unin- 
formed of all these scientific susceptibilities and de- 
pendencies of his art, and the least sensible of all 
those moral and physical advantages that you 
flourish about. If the pursuit be really such 
as you describe, how comes it that in this same 
six thousand and fifty-somethingth year since 
Apam found the soil and nineteenth or twen- 
tieth since Mr. Deansron SwrrH discovered the 
subsoil, that farming is still lost in the dim back- 
ground of civilisation ; a mark for every passer-by 
to have a shy at, till the poor farmer may say, with 
Farsrarr, * all men take a pleasure to gird at me?’ 
1y, you may see the very coachman point know- 
ingly with his double-thong whip, as he passes by 
Mr. Dossow's Wheat-fallow, and leaning back a 
bit, with a critical wink to the guard, say, * There's 
farming, Jem!’ Surely there must be some mis- 
tak We eannot be talking about the same thing! 
If agriculture be, as you say (and as PriNv, and 
VinGir, and Dr. Jounson, and Mr. Pusey, said be- 
fore you), the oldest, the noblest, the most truly 
earned, and the best of all human pursuits, surely 
agriculture and farming must mean different things ; 
for, surely, the oldest practice must need be the 
most perfect ? " 
The answer is by no means obvions ; but it is 
signally and unaccountably true. Strange as the 
assertion may be, it will be found on examination 
that the advancement of the arts is exactly in an 
inverse ratio with their antiquity! "The cotton- 
trade is far before the older silk-trade; and the 
Silk before the still more ancient wool-trade. In 
a word, the more the himan mind is advanced, pre- 
vious to the discovery and practice of any particular 
art ortrade, the more suddenly does that tradeleap 
at once into perfection; because it has mo esta- 
blished prejudices to contend with. Those two 
~ 
inveterate hags, Prejudice and (mistaken) Self. 
interest, strangle every babe that is too big for 
their swaddling clothes; and woe to the giant that 
is born within the rounds of their midwifery! The 
fair and noble proportions of Science appeal in vain 
against their accursed partiality for the perpetuation 
of original deformity and dwarfship. And where is 
the ancient art in which these beldames are not still 
in the possession of a lingering practice? Is it not 
become a proverb that the old professors are the 
fierce opponents of the new discovery ? Who im- 
prisoned GariLro? the monkish monopolists of sci- 
ence and knowledge. Who persecuted Caxton? 
the’ transcribers of manuscripts. Who denounced 
Lurner? the priests of the old faith. Who jeered 
at Harvey’s discovery of the arterial circulation * 
the physicians of the day. Who called Lord Sran- 
HoPE a madman for putting steam-engines into a 
ship? a committee of naval captains. Who ridi- 
culed railroads? the old coach proprictors. Who 
laughed at the man that first stocked away the 
useless hedgerows, grubbed up the trees, deep- 
drained the land, and spared no expense in the ap- 
plication of every modern appliance to the farmery ? 
the surrounding farmers. In a word, then, once 
again, why do the modern arts beat the old ones? 
Because: they alight upon:*a fair field and no 
favour,” where the struggling but tender infancy of 
human ingenuity and enterprise is not blasted by 
the chilling breath of established ignorance, nor 
harassed by the poisoned stings of vulgar ridicule — 
Caw Hs: 
In the spring of 1844 Sır Georce MACKENZIE, 
Banr, published a Pamphlet, entitled “ Brief 
Remarks on some subjects connected with the choice 
of Wheat for Seed,” &c. It was reviewed in this 
Journal at the time (p. 78, 1844). Proceeding 
upon the unquestionable assumption that the chemist, 
so far asa knowledge of its composition qualifies him, ` 
is the ultimate authority on the nutritiveness of food, 
it exhibited the valuations of Bakers and Dealers in 
contrast with the analyses of the same samples 
furnished by the chemist, The variety of opinion 
amongst the six practical men to whom the samples 
were submitted, which was apparent in all cases 
except where the variety was perfectly familiar to 
them, was of itself evidence that a merely external 
examination of grain gave them no criterion of its 
value as food. Take the following instances, which 
Composition. 
| EEL 3 
| - a E Prices uu 
8 8| q| S|bythre| Prices by | & 
3j 2| £ | 8| Corn |three Bakers| 8 
c a} A [DE | Factors. E 
17.8 
16.2 
i| 
8 [162 T r 5 
* These Wheats being new to 
value, 
Here are eight varieties of Wheat ; 2, 7, and 8, 
were common in the market, the others were com- 
paratively unknown, and excepting these three, 
what a variety of opinion is here expressed as to 
their value! Such a diference proves the igno- 
rance of Dealers and Bakers of any guide to accurate 
conclusions on the subject. This is the point we 
wish to enforce. Compare the average valuations 
of these samples, as given in the last column, with 
their absolute composition as given by the chemist. 
Look, for instance, at the circumstance that those 
of least value in the eyes of Bakers and Dealers, 
Nos. 3 and 5, are, the richest of the lot in gluten, 
which is the nutritive part of grain ; and that one of 
the dearest samples exhibited, No. 2, contained the 
least of this valuable ingredient. Does not this 
still further prove the assertion that merely external 
examination is no guide to the real value of grain 
as food ? 
Well, then, we take this to be a matter of im- 
portance to the great body who in this country are 
consumers of Wheat. We will suppose that the 
Baker is able to determine by examination which 
is the best grain for his purpose—that is, which 
variety will turn out. the greatest weight of bread, 
from a given quantity of flour and at the 
same time rise well,* but this only increases 
the mischief to the consumer; for 
been thus selected as among the best—a variety 
which it thus appears has zwo bad properties 
—100 lbs. of it contain only 10 of gluten, and this 
small quantity, it appears, is so associated with other 
substances as that, in process of baking, it becomes 
spread over a greater number of loaves than can be 
made out of the same weight of other kinds of flour. 
The interests of the consumers are thus entirely 
sacrificed, and that not intentionally, but ignorantly, 
and, indeed, in the present state of our knowledge, 
irremediably :—the greater the necessity, then, for 
extending our knowledge on this subject. It is 
a capital point which has been determined in the 
course of the investigations, for which the public 
zig, that the 
t appears that those kinds of flour which contain most 
sugar are the best for the Baker’s purpose, and this is lost in, 
the fermentation. 
