242 THE 
AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 
[Arri 11, 
yate the earth with his mind as well as his body! 
Imagiue him taking a walk over his farm, in July, 
immediately after a smart thunder-storm ; a de- 
licious and peculiar fragrance rises up from the 
ground to his nostrils ; a dab of a schoolboy at his 
ado looks up knowingly in his face, and. says, 
* Papa, do you know what that sweet scent comes 
from?” “To be sure, child! From the ground." 
“Yes, but what makes it come from the ground ?” 
“Why, the rain.” * But what makes the rain bring 
it from the ground ?” Papa looks foolish ; whilst 
the junior boy i in'the junior class of agricultural 
chemistry comes out strong with his first lesson. 
“Tt comes from the ammonia, brought down in the 
rain more rapidly than the earth can absorb it, and 
which being a highly volatile gas, is rising again 
into the air as soon as the storm is over !” “ Non- 
sense, child!" But, Professor Lieste and Dr. 
Prayrarr, and all the great chemists, say that 
it is so.” “But how can they prove it, 
“Why, in this way. They say that 
although the carbonate of ammonia, which’ smells 
now so d is a volatile gas, the sul- 
phate of ammonia is a fixed and visible body: and 
if you spread finely powdered gypsum, which is 
sulphate of lime, upon a Grass-field, you may walk 
over it-afier a thunder-shower without perceiving 
this scent; for the gypsum lays hold of the am- 
monia and obliges it to make a very curious inter- 
change—a sort of cross-marrisge; for the sulphate 
leaves the lime and unites with the ammonia, and 
becomes sulphate of ammonia, and the carbonate, 
abandoned by the ammonia, consoles the deserted 
lime, and becomes carbonate of lime, commonly 
called chalk! And thus gypsum, though not a ma- 
nure itself, becomes the basis of two manures—sul- 
phate of ammonia, which is an organic manure, and 
carbonate o lime; which is an inorganic manure. 
But the Master s we must not PR of inor- 
ganic manures because it leads to confusion ; and 
it is better to call inorganic substances applied to 
the soil ‘alteratives’ for the sake of distinction. 
And he says that if powdered gypsum be spread 
occasionally over the stables and the farm-yard, it 
will take up all the ammonia that now goes off in 
smell, and, by the same process abovementioned, 
will increase ihe quantity and value of the manure 
prodigiously.” 
Query, which 
is the better agricalturist, that boy 
his father? The one is an experienced and 
practical farmer, the other is a youngster just dipped 
in the first rudiments of Theory. True: but let 
us try the same question in another branch of art? 
Which is the best physician, the youth who is 
attending his first lectures at Guy’s and Bartholo- 
mew’s, or the village quack who has been practising 
all his life and ef fected many 
“wonderful cures,” 
groping in darkness, yet sometimes stumbling upon 
light. . Which is the best musician, the s tebe 
r, who has been grinding a (barrel-organ all 
or the tyro w ho has just read * Pinnock's 
First Catechism of the first Principles of Harmony.” 
What is Theory? The condensed result of the 
whole history of former practice, atranged and 
classified, enlightened and explained, by reference 
eternal and immutable principles of scientific 
truth. He who despises theory despises the prac- 
tice of every man that was born before himself in 
the world. He who commences practice, with the 
knowledge of theory, commences business with a 
mind Jit up by the recorded experiences of all who 
went before him. Your “ practical man,” leaving a 
engi arm and sett ona Gloucest ershire clay, 
jeep in the mud, the first winter, by 
» fed off his Turnips, whilst one of his new 
ical" neighbours, before he has quite done 
: inds himself upon a chalk farm in 
Kent, and bec "omes lau ghed at in his turn by ate 
à summer fallow for Wheat and liming i Whilst 
theorist who gave us that lesson just now 
he has got to the top of the 
school, lea ally prepared for any soil you 
ean plant him in, not bound down to the deti 3 
practice on clay, chalk, or sand, but a master of the 
art of Agriculture upon either, If he learnt every 
lesson as well as his first, we'll back him to any 
moderate amount, to turn the laugh upon the 
laughers, at the end of one course, in any county 
you shall name, or upon any of the variegated strata 
of the “geological map of the British Isles” that 
hangs before cur eyes. 
But we must réturm to our draining; and we 
trust our patient readers will not find our young 
friend's elementary information upon the ammonia 
in rain-water, to be an inappropriate or useless 
parenthesis. 
To a deeply 
of 
ained soil, every shower that fulls 
and filters downwards to the drain, brings a fresh 
tribute of that which is the essence of fertility. 
From an undrained clay, every shower washes away 
together with its own virtue, some of the best of the 
chemical and mechanical elements which it found. 
The one is perpetually growing richer, the other 
poorer. The bed of sand which is seen deposited 
at the bottom of the main furrows of a clay soil, ma 
with truth be called the spoils of the field ; yet it 
is but the message left to the eye of the farmer to 
tell him, by what he can see, how much has gone 
besides whose loss he can mot see. Sand is visible, 
but ammonia is invisible, It is but the body that 
remains when the spirit is departed. It is this 
grossness of our perceptive powers which is so 
mitch to be lamented in every art, but most espe- 
cially in that of egriculture, whose true understand- 
lepends so closely upon the knowledge ofthose 
invisible elements which the science of Chemistry 
opens to our minds, Aud never, surely, can agri- 
culture deserve the name of a science, until our 
praetice begins to evince our acknowledgment of 
the high importance of these invisible agents. The 
beams that support our habitations, and the wooden 
walls of our naval armaments, have derived their 
bulky substance from the elaboration iu the leaves 
of the Oak tree of the invisible carbonic acid gas; 
the most nutritious part of a loaf of bread is derived 
from the. equally invisible nitrogen ; the boundles 
and fathomless waters of the ocean are ee 
of two gases, each of them separately invisible; and 
lastly, the atmosphere that supports life and respi- 
ration, during every instant of our existence, is 
itself in isible. Surely, then, the existence of 
ammonia, the life and soul of agricultural fertility, 
should not be neglected, practically disbelieved, 
because it is invisible. — C. W. H. 
THE TENURE OF LAND IN. IRELAND. 
I bee you to publish the following queries and sug- 
gestive notices on this subjeet. I would ask those of 
your renders who have seatsin the Houses of Lords or 
Commons, and others who though not legislators them- 
selves can influence legislation :— Would it not be easy 
to disembarrass land-dealing of much of its costliness, in- 
security, and difficulty ; and if so, would not free-trade 
in land, wholesale and retail, be an acquisition of the 
hest valuc? If there was in each province in Ire- 
lard a land office, such as those in some of the colonies of 
England, prepared for the ready transfer of land, what 
a trade would at once set in for * the aeres,” that radi- 
nent of all other manufactures! Every one knows the 
BAE struzgle of the pessantry for land, sometimes 
attended by a convulsive ferocity of grasp, indieating 
that to possess ground to cultivate, is a question of life 
or death. And yet many of our landlords are encum- 
bered by their unmanaged lands; po: rs of much 
territory in name and little in reality; they are in 
poverty, and their tenants are ready for rebellion, And 
how is this? Because landlords can only Xt, often too, 
for short terms of years; and if by lease, which is gene- 
rally a boon, it is a compact so full of restrictions and 
penalties, that it only invites the attorney and the ab- 
sentee’s agent to use the readiest instrument of 
oppression, “ the broken covenant,” to torture the 
tenant; but even if contested elections, and “ reasons 
plentyas blackberries” were not here to induce affronted 
agents and angry landlords to “ put the tongs” upon con- 
tumacious tenants at will, as; despite bits of parchment 
Irish tenants mostly are, in three of the provinces, 
the complaint now is against the system of hiring land at 
all. My object would “be to Hive muc) ater facility 
for buying small portions of land for eash down— 
* arigith sheese," as we say in our euphonious lan- 
guage. I would enable a man to buy 10 acres out and 
out ; it would be better far than renting 200; he could 
stock 10 and work it properly, while, “with "die same 
capital, the hired 200 acres must starve. If a man 
could not work 10 acres to his liking and advantage, le 
him sell and put mozey in his purse, for at the pro 
posed land-offices an aere ought to be able to change 
hands at a moderate cost for transfer, and with an un- 
impea chable title. But as in duty bound we must in- 
quire, how would these facilities serve the land-owner ? 
~ no great elementary change cught to be partial or one- 
sided. First, then, wh t.is the territorial and financial 
history of our gentry ? "Many of them possess large 
tracts of country, the arable parts not alt worked, and 
of its reelair g and mountain, miles of both are 
much in tl ut the old “ Fir- Belge!” left them. 
If this is tru i Beeause the possessors have 
i st iu the'estate, and they will not 
sink k capital on sò short a tenure, and on mere possibility 
of re'urn; besides, millions of our gentry-owned acres 
are “out at p ” and as their owners can encumber, 
but-cannot sell, they cannot redeem the “ dead: pledge,” 
the De “estate 
E! 
a 
and mortg Ge tte made, 
Thee s ruin'd, and thei etrap d? 
Could landlords. sell on the Tana ix ngë without 
notoriety or discredit, their ter itories mi ight diminish, 
but their wealth would iner they would begin to 
enjoy the sweets of SUN in themselves, and à 
happy and secure vicinity to a steady and improving 
yeoman race—their neighbours. Such achange as this 
would be very valuable in Great Britain, butitis become 
of peremptory Y in Ireland, ‘The fluctuations 
lug trade and commercial relations during 
in 
the war, the closing of some markets by blockade or 
forcing tlie flow of "goods in au üntimely manner into 
others, were with other causes which I. do not discuss 
in your Journal, ruinous to the small manufacturing 
capital of Ireland ; and no wonder, when these violent 
changes grievously oppressed the giant powers of Great 
Britain herself ; usin our agricultural workers 
are in undue over-bala of e they are all 
scramblers for existence; a race, in general, bound 
adscripta gleba, and well described by Sw ift,as & Slaves 
and beggars whom the landlord calls his tenants.” All 
“borrowers of land" are in a greater or less degree 
slaves to him who lends it ; but even though the «€ tem- 
porary proprietor,” the landlord under an entail, may 
get usurious interest on his loan, a general war is being 
levied against him and all his tribe, and either fiseally 
or physically, m is cue ina way to be victimized. 
ask youvintellig * facts? 
and also, wiil they SER would à free- trade, a cash- 
trade, a wholesale and retail trade in land, be a remedy ? 
I would not compel land to be subdiv idedas in France ; 5 
no, I would let men accumulate if they chose, but I 
would facilitate distribution, I would do away with laws 
which make a false mind for an intestate, and aceumu- 
late where the deceased omitted to do so. The law for 
land should be distributive, when not otherwise de- 
vised, but perfect liberty “ to do what they would with 
their "own? would keep plenty of Jand-trading going on 
in the vss . But how would this affect the 
tenantry if they became small proprietors instead of 
s | large renters, if “every rood of ground maintained its 
man?” Should we not have settlers at home instead 
of in Canada or the States of America? The best of our 
peasantry now emigrate; they want a real home, and it 
is away from home they must go to seck it, If in- 
dastry, economy, and total i from 
drink, enable a peasant to sipa together 50 or 20 
sovereigns, he is off to America; he takes bis money 
and his moral eapital abroad, while the incapable and 
the miserable are tied to the soil. If a tenant-farmer 
lets his farm be but half- worked, he and his family must 
be always indigent, and of the & parca-sashtha ? kind 5 
if he A E he is like a Turkish merchant, in 
danger of the b ashaw, because he seems too rich. If 
his tenure ‘is gs out, he dare not sink capital 
or labour in his farm—he would have, in nine 
cases out of ten, to buy if back; and if he is 
thus obliged to abuse and misapply forethought, and 
run down his farm, he runs himself down with it. I 
say nothing now of ejectments from deficient title, 
broken. covenants, or of wholesale “clearances " made 
for non-payment of rent or arrears; but I shortly point 
out the advantage ownership would be to the peasantry. 
Pre-stupLe Estates FOR THE Miirrows |— What a 
grand idea of pacification ; proprietorship, with all its 
calm yet onward influences. Our little, but real land- 
lords, would soon’ make this country the garden it 
should be. e have now scarcely any plantation- 
sheker, How endi we:—if # man wants to put down 
200 trees in fenees or elsewhere, he buys them for 
eighteenpence a hundred, but he m: ast beware of 
covenants. Can he plant 1— and supposing that he 
san, he has no property in them except. he registers in 
the Dublin Gazette at an expense of 7s. 7d., besides 
getting an attorney to do it for him, and 6s ba. addi- 
tional. So much for cottier planting in Ireland, if tLe 
acre was his own, he could plant it, and improve it con- 
stantly ; the face of the country would be soon made 
cheerful ; brushwood loppings would be plenty and 
cheap, and the severe laws about timber stealing might 
be reduced to a constitutional form. But farming 
generally would improve ; cottier farms would become 
the agrienlturist's savings bank, economy would then 
have as safe and a more profitatle depository than it 
now has (for full savings banks sometimes only indieate 
the difficulty of employing small sums of money). But 
what thrift ownership in land would engender ; the wet 
days, half holidays, any spare hours of “the cotier, and 
the leisure now wasted by their wives, and the youth of 
both sexes,and children, all for want of remunerative očetu- 
pation, these properties would be turned into the“ man’s 
own farm," and would pay good interest. I cannot 
hope but there must be always some «o poor that they 
Tas borrow laud on interest ; and any Jaw to forbid 
t is eall * tenancy" would be oppressive, and would 
ll permit usurious dealings in land to continue: free 
permission for usury in money tvo would be some 
economy to those desperate destitute, who will always 
gamble. - Land-lenders, like mon y-lend Hei however, 
ought to be put under t the best legal gu ship; those 
who trade ia what is of indispensable necessity to the 
noorest have always the greatest facility for oppression 5 
pawnbrokers are well cared for, and their doings 
attended to by the law. Landlords who have pawned 
their own estates in mortgages, an pay the interests 
by giving the usance of them to poor borrowers again, 
are driven to many painful extremities ; consequently, 
while I earnestly press free trade in land, and cash 
trade in lnd on the publie, I would not despice any 
measure caleulated to make borrowing the ground 
for usanee as equitable an affir as possible, 
Lord Devon’s commission bas ypreduced no law 
yet to mitigate agrarian suffering and warfare in 
Ireland. We have feroeities to deplore aud be ashamed 
of, but it is desperate suffering which leads to desperate 
eeds. Irish peasants have no more natural appetite 
for being hanged or transported than other men. I 
land could be had at home, wholesale and retail, to buy, 
20 years would alter and improve the whole rural popu- 
lation. — R. Dowden, Rathlee, Cork. 
SMUT IN WHEAT. 
IN eomplianee with your request, I send the yosult 
of certain experiments on Smut, made by me x early 30 
