| 
326 
THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 
| Max 16, 
I cannot better point out in what we are inferior to 
English farming than by quoting a criticism upon us by 
an English farmer. He told me last night that a friend 
of his, a gentleman who had farmed 2000 aeres in Lin- 
colnshire went to reside in Scotland—that he had there 
an opportunity of seeing a good deal of Scotch farming, 
and the distinguishing cl teristies of it was slovenli- 
ness. If slates were blown off the houses, he said there 
was no repair till the houses were half ruined, and per- 
haps cattle injured by cold and wet, uuless the landlord 
made the necessary repair—the windows and doorsnever 
painted, but allowed to take water and become rotten 
in a few years—fences neglected and openings left when 
a trifle would have repaired them, till the crops are 
damaged, or cattle injured by wandering, to ten times 
the amount which would have repaired the fence, or 
even have made a new one—farm roads neglected, or 
no farm roads, when a day or two of the farm horses at 
an idle season would have saved twenty days work at 
the busy season, and much tear and wear both of horses 
and carts —(true, most true !)—slovenliness in cleaning 
fences and cutting down weeds, and also about the 
houses and courts, where a very little taste and exertion 
at odd hours would add very much to the comfort and 
health both of bipeds and quadrupeds. There was 
a further catalogue against us, but I will now conclude 
with one more item—our slovenliness in a great many 
little things, as stepping over a tool, or a stone out of 
order, without putting it in its proper place, and follow- 
ing in fact “a weil eneugh system,” which you may 
d d; or as an English would say, we want the 
activity and taste required to carry out that order and 
cleanliness on our farms which an Englishman de- 
lights in. 
You will think my English friend a little severe in his 
criticism, aud of course it does not apply'to half-a-dozen 
in every district ; but I fear if we take the 
teh farmers, there is too much truth in all 
of it. At least we will all do well to look at home, and 
throwing aside our Scotch prejudices, consider’ each of 
us how far we are liable to the criticism. Every 
system of farming has its good and evil points, and our 
study should always be to consider the details and re- 
sulte, in the good as well as the ill farmed districts of 
both Exgland and Scotland; and in my experience I 
have never failed to find something to adopt from ill 
farmed di s as well as something in Norfolk or the 
Lothians inferior to our own practice. By bringing the 
above criticism before your readers, they may see some- 
thing to adopt or correct, but I am not sure the instruc- 
tion will come home to them with such force as it did to 
me from an intelligent English farmer, with English 
neatness and order, and convenience of farm roads, &c., 
al laid out before me. 
But now forthe other side of the picture, and to 
thrown oceasionally on the wheel horse must often strain 
and injure it. I know from experience that five horses 
in our single-horse carts, will with great ease draw 
from six to seven tons, and are filled at probably half 
the expence, so that even for long carriages our one- 
horse carts have greatly the advantage. But when we 
compare the English waggon with the Scotch single- 
horse cart, in ordinary work on the farm, they bear no 
comparison at all. On the farm the large waggons are 
unmanageable, and with four or five horses are hardly 
more than equal to the work of a single-horse cart. An 
intelligent English farmer in this neighbourhood ad- 
mitted the superiority of our one-horse carts, and said 
that if he were beginning now to farm he would decid- 
edly adopt them in preference to the English waggon. 
4th. The English farmer suffers a great loss, both in 
the cost and dispatch, in preparing his grain for the 
market, from the want of thrashing machines ; and this 
evil is not reduced by occasionally hiring a clumsy ill- 
constructed machine, which is done even on farms of a 
considerable extent. In Scotland and even in the north of 
Ireland, now, almost every farm of 100/.,oreven 80/. rent, 
has its well constructed thrashing machine, drawn by two 
horses, if water power is not atcommand, completed at an 
expense of 30, or 35/., or with winnowing machine 
attached, a few pounds more. The English farmers 
must adopt this improvement, and they or the labourers 
need not fear that they will not find every economy to the 
farmer produces increased employment and benefit to 
the workman. 
5th. I may observe that while I greatly admire the 
neatness of the English stackyards, I think unnecessary 
expense is incurred in raising such very large stacks, 
containing generally 900 or 1000 bushels of Wheat, 
and also in the very large barns required to receive 
them. I would recommend the extra expense thus 
thrown out in a large barn being laid out in the erec- 
tion of additional cattle houses, enabling the farmers to 
keep more stock, and to consume part of their straw 
for fodder along with Turnips, in place of sinking their 
whole straw for litter in their houses or straw-yards. 
Experience shows in Seotland that, with Turnips, cattle 
require little fodder, and do very well with Wheat straw. 
From the remarks thus hastily thrown together, 
you will see that I blame the English farmer for un- 
necessary expense extravagance in his manage- 
ment, and the Scotch farmer for unwise economy in 
many things, or niggardliness, and to cure our mutual 
faults, may yet take some time; but there is that 
spirit abroad now which will, I have no doubt, tend 
to the improvement of both countries. An English- 
man, for odd work, might bring neatness and order to 
our Scotch farms ; and the alarm among English land- 
lords on account of the proposed change in the Corn- 
laws, will force them to grant leases, and tend to a more 
inu]. 
show in what our Scotch farming has the g 
this may best be done by pointing out the evils of the 
English system—and, 
Ist. The great hindrance to profitable English farm- 
dug is the unwillingness of landlords to grant leases for 
aterm of years. To a Scotch farmer it appears won- 
derful how much some tenants have expended under so 
discouraging a system ; but the general and only pos- 
sible result of short leases is to check improvement—to 
cause draining and other expensive improvement to be 
either neglected or imperfectly executed ; and no in- 
ducement is held out to the great body of farmers to 
forsake the clumsy implements and expensive system of 
working of their fathers, the effect of which would be 
to put all the profits of the change into the pockets of 
their landlords within a year or two after the improve- 
ment is adopted. A great part of their clay lands are 
undrained, and on the very best managed farms, the 
draining is quite inefficient—the drains being perhaps 
36 feet asunder, and only 2 feet deep, where they should 
have been placed at every 16 or 18 ft., and 2) ft. deep. 
2d. This insufficient draining, or the wetness of th 
land, forms an excuse for a great misapplication of horse 
power in ploughing the land. A Scotch ploughman 
would be amused to see five horses in a plough going 
one before the other in a furrow, 'under the manage- 
ment of two men, turning over a furrow, which we could 
do much better in Seotland with our well-formed light 
plough and two horses abreast ; and when this regiment 
of cavalry comes to turn at the land, and gets into close 
column, he would hardly avoid breaking into a broad 
horse laugh. The ploughs are no doubt generally of a 
bad construction—formed to resist draught rather than 
to throw it off, and with short ill-formed arms, which 
must make them difficult for che ploughman to hold, 
even with the aid of two wheels im front, which all the 
ploughs here seem to have. I saw some new ploughs, 
at a maker’s near Warwick, of a better construction, 
but all too heavy for efficient and economical work. I 
have no hesitation in szying that a Scotch ploughman, 
with a pair of good borses, willdo as much work, and 
certainly make a beter seed furrow, than the two En- 
glishmen will do with their five horses. 
d. So with their great waggons, drawn by four or 
five horses, in universal use, there is an immense loss 
of horse power, as well of man's labour. The only pur- 
pose for which their immense waggons are at all suited, 
is to carry manvre from the towns, or heavy loads to 
distant markets, and for that work they are not econo- 
mical ; they zraw in them, with five horses, 4 or 43 tons 
of manure, «nd the hand labour in loading these monster 
waggous throwing the stuff to such a height, must be 
enorm-usly greater than what js required to load our 
Sco«h one-horse carts—the horse power cannot be 
e,ually or effectively applied ; and the unequal burden 
g on the part of English farmers. 
If a Warwickshire farmer can work his farm with half 
the number of horses he now employs, (as I am con- 
vinced he could do,) here would be a source from which 
he could draw security for a very considerable fall in 
the price of grain. If such were to be the result of the 
change in the Corn-laws, the possession of a farm for 
a lease of 19 or 20 years would certainly lead to such 
safe means of realising profit. The great objection is 
the expense of purchasing new carts and ploughs, and 
the difficulty of getting workmen to go heartily into the 
change. As to the mere expense, I believe the saving 
in one year would pay for all the new implements, and 
one or two Seotch ploughmen, brought in by intelligent 
farmers, would shame the ploughmen from these old 
clumsy ploughs, and induce them to compete in the 
march of improvement. The ploughmen of Warwick- 
shire seem a superior race of men physically, and they 
might depend upon it the more economically and profit- 
ably farm labour is done, the more labour will be done, 
the more hands employed, and the better wages given. 
Again, for a few hints for the improvement of our 
Scotch farming from the detail of English practice : we 
don’t, in the west of Scotland, use the drill machine for 
Wheat so much as we should do. Here almost all 
Wheat is sown with the drill machine, and the workers 
are now busy with the hoe, cleaning between the drills, 
and cutting down all those seed weeds with which 
our fields are so often disfigured, and at the same time 
breaking the hard crust, allowing the air and moisture 
to get into the ground, and thereby increasing the 
growth of the Wheat. 
A dibbling machine has also lately got into use here to 
dibble in the seed. Wherever this has been used the 
grain looks much more fresh and forward than where 
it has been sown either drilled, or broadeast—I have 
not yet seen the machine, and am unable to report further 
about it at present. 
Some of the farmers here, immediately after harvest, 
use a scuffle with very broad soles, to cut under the 
stubble and seed weeds, which are harrowed and 
gathered to put into their feeding yards or muck heaps. 
This serves the double purpose of cleaning their land 
and raising their manure, and in some lands with us 
might be done with considerable advantage. The 
English farmer is indefatigable in raising manure and 
making up compost heaps ; along all his fences, and all 
his roads, every partiele of earth, even pure clay, is 
mixed up with lime or farm-yard dung, and his pastures, 
from such top dressing, have a depth and riehness eveu 
on very second-rate land, that would surprise and de- 
ton, 
light a Scoteh far 
ON MEASURE WORK. 
Farm operations are of two kinds, and I shall in the 
| first place justmame them and arrange them in two | 
columns, according as they are suitable for payment by 
the day or by the piece; some may be paid for in either 
way, and will find a place in both. columns. The first 
kind includes all those which only occasionally demand 
the farmer’s superintendence ; most of them, indeed, 
e more generally performed under the superintend- 
ence of the landowner or his agent: the other com- 
prises the whole routine of farm operations which ne- 
cessarily demand attention as the year revolves. 
I.—OCCASIONAL OPERATIONS. 
All of these properly come under the name of mea- 
sure-work : 
1. Drainage 
2. Grubbing up hedgerows and 
imber. 
3. Paring and burning. 
4. Quarry work. 
5. Mason work. 
6. Carpenter's work. 
7. Road-making. 
IL—ANNUAL FARM OPERATIONS. 
(l) 
Day-work, Piece-work 
Subsoil ploughing. Bio s 
Ploughing. . ^t 
Scaritying. k 
Harrowing. n Pen 
Rolling. m oe ws E 
(2.) 
Turning manure one or more 
times. 
Filing it into carts for the 
field. 
Emptying dung-earts in the | Spreading dung in the field in 
eld, di 
rills or broadcast, 
v 3.) 
Sowing broadcast, or drilling, | Dibbling Wheat or Beans, 
or dibbling by hand or masi „ plants of Swedish Tur- 
chine, Wheat, Barley, Oats, nips and Mangold Wurzel. 
Beans, Peas, Grasses, Clover, 
Turnip seed, Carrots, Man- | 
gold Wurzel. Cutting Potatoes for seed. 
Setting Potatoes. Planting Potatoes, 
(4.) 
Hoeing corn of all kinds, and | Hoeing corn of all kinds ; hoe- 
hoeing Turnips, Mangol i singling Turnips, 
Wurzel, and Carrots. Mangold Wurzel, Carrots, 
Moulding up Potatoes by and hacking and moulding 
plough. Potatoes. 
Horse-hoeing corn, and root | Paring and burning stubbles. 
crops. Hedging and Ditching. 
(5.) 
Mowing Clover. 
Haymaking. 
Corn harvest, » meadow Grass. 
Mowing and harvesting Rye- » and Haymaking. 
grass seed, 5 Barley. 
e ats 
Harvesting Wheat by sickle or 
scythe. 
Carrying Corn to rick or barn. 
Stubble mowing. 
Harvesting Potatoes. 
=» » 
ve 55 
> ms 
Carrots. 
Mangold Wurzel, 
Turnips & Swedes. 
(6.) 
‘Threshing Wheat. 
“se Barley. 
ats 
HRS TRIS » Beans. 
E Peas. 
m a X. » Olover Seed, 
m vs vw Cutting Chaff. 
(7) 
Management of Horses. Blacksmith’s work. 
n Cattle. Saddlery. 
; Sheep. 
igs. 
I wish to add just one word in explanation of the 
principle which has for the most part directed the 
placing of the al d operati pectively 
under the heads of day-work and piece-work. The 
principle simply depends on this—that it is advisable 
for the ploughman to have charge of the horses which 
he works, in consideration of the pride he should and 
will feel in keeping them in good condition ; and it is 
rarely good policy in the farmer to place his cattle at 
the entire disposal of men whose interest it is to get 
their work speedily done, and thus to work the horses 
fully up to, perhaps beyond, their strength. In further 
papers I will state the cost and nature of these opera- 
tions.—_M, S. 
CULTIVATION OF GORSE. 
(Continued from p. 305.) 
4. The soil best adapted for the growth of Furze is a 
dry friable loam—if sandy so much the better, provided 
it be not of too lighta nature or too shallow. It is 
seen in greatest perfection on upland hilly districts, and 
is rarely met with in low damp situations, from which it 
may be inferred that it would be useless: to attempt to 
grow it suecessfully in moory ground, which has not 
been properly drained. A loose yellow loam, inclining 
0 a soapy or sandy clay, suits it well, and from a soil 
of this description it will produce a large return of 
strong succulent shoots. In all cases,whatever may be 
the nature of the land intended for Furze, it is desir- 
able to have it pretty well prepared previous to putting 
in the seed ; for although no plant requires less atten- 
tion during the period of its growth, it is advisable at 
first starting to give it a little kind treatment, such as 
getting the ground broken up if possible, early in au- 
tumn, and exposing it during winter so as it may be- 
bome friable and well pulverised by the time of sowing 
the seed. Instead of applying manure, nothing answers 
better than burning the Grassy lumps along with any 
faggots of old brambles or Furze which may have been 
cut from the waste before it was broken up, and then 
spreading the ashes equally over the ground either be- 
fore they are cold, or as soon after as may be conve- 
nient, y 
. 5. With respect to the time and method of sowing 
Furze, there seems to be some difference of opinion; 
but I believe it may be regarded as certain that the 
fittest -period under all circumstances is the spring ; 
