328 
THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 
[May 16, 
resort to this condiment wherever itis to be met with, 
and where native salt abounds. 
In Cheshire there is a farm on which there is a salt 
spring, to whieh the cows daily resort ; and this farm is 
partieularly noted for the excellence of its cheese, and it 
is believed that the tasting this brine by the cows adds 
to the flavour of their milk. 
Of the four classes into which Dr. S. divides his in- 
gredients for feeding horses, those two which contain 
the steamed Potatoes are most recommended. 
It will be apparent, that although in the methods 
here adduced for the feeding of horses, some difference 
exisis in the artieles made use of as food, yet that they 
all agree in certain essential points, viz., in the practice 
of invariably bruising or coarsely grinding the grain and 
Beans—in cutting down the hay and straw—in giving 
no hay in the rack—in giving salt—and in weighing 
each artiele separately before mixture, in place of adopt- 
ing the fallacious guide of admeasurement. 
From the * Quarterly Journal,” vol. 3, p. 1024. 
Extract from a paper by Mr. W. Dick, V.S,, Edinburgh. 
* On cooking food for horses.” ^ The whole paper is well 
written, and deserving your perusal. Mr. Dick says, 
that Mr. Croal, an eminent coach proprietor, has found 
that by cutting the hay into chaff, 8 lbs. per day, with 
16 lbs. of Oats, is sufficient for one horse; and that his 
horses are in excellent condition; and that by it he 
saves in his establishment 1507. per annum. 
Mr. Isaac Scott allows his post and job horses, which 
are larger than Mr. Croal's, from 10 to 12 lbs. of cut 
hay, with 16 lbs. of Oats. 
But the advantages of preparing food for horses have 
been pursued still further by Captain Cheyne, late of 
the Civil Engineers. Finding that each horse was con- 
suming a stone of hay per day, at a cost of ls. 4d. per 
stone, and straw at 6d. per stone, and being constantly 
annoyed by daily waste, he determined to give cut 
food only, and to bruise all the corn given: he was 
soon enabled to reduce their allowance of hay, increasing 
at the same time the quantity of straw given: each 
horse being allowed per diem 15 lbs. of the following 
mixture :— 
Ibs. | Ibs. 
10 bus, of cut straw...... 90| Or thus—of Oats ........ 8 
6 do. of bruised Oats 29 Beans 2; 
per bus. Straw. .... 4t 
ed Beans .. 59 — 
— To each horse. ... 15 
323 
And at night in addition to the above,fabout 25 lbs. of 
the following mixture :— i 
os. per bu 
1 do. of bruis 
s. d. Tos. 
One boll of Potatoes at.. 7 6 5 cwt, steamed .......... 560 
Fine Barley dustatperst. 010 — 21... .86 
Cut straw at per do. eie Dot 40 
seco = (BO 2... m 
The cost of each horse was about 5d. for supper, and 
b us for daily forage and cooking—in all about 
s. 51d. 
* Quarterly Journal,” vol. iv. p. 378, Captain Cheyne's 
method is earried out still further. He says that much 
economy will arise from the introduction of steamed 
Potatoes mixed with eut straw. "That Potatoes should 
be steamed slowly, that they may be thoroughly done 
to the heart before they crack : they require from half 
an hour to three-quarters : and when done they should 
be emptied into a tub and mashed toa pulp. Captain 
Cheyne supposes a farm horse to be fed three times a 
day ; then his food may be thus divided :— 
MonwiNG. lbs. Mrp-pay. Nicut. 
Oat and Bean Meal as before. . . 
1 Cut straw...... . 
>. $ Potatoes steam. 11} 
Salt at per cwt...» 
Ibs 
at 
meal.... 
Cut straw 
Put the meal and the cut straw into a tub, and 
sprinkle a little salt over them ; then add the steamed 
Potatoes, and mash up the whole together. The weight 
of the mixture can be then easily ascertained by mea- 
sure. Captain Cheyne advises that the mangers be 
made of iron; for, if made of wood, the Potatoes will 
stick to the bottom: also that iron bars be fixed across 
the mangers to prevent the horses from tossing out 
their food; the bars to be made of small round iron 
cut into lengths. 
I could have quoted many valuable extracts from 
papers written by other practical men; but lest I 
should tire out your patience, and since enough has, 1 
think, been said to convince you all of the very great im- 
portance of attention to the economy of horse-keep, which 
of itself must necessarily form an expensive item in all 
farm establishments, I shall content myself with giving 
you a reference to some other papers which have fallen 
under my notice, and which I consider well worth your 
perusal: viz , No. 18 in the “ Farmers’ Series " in the 
Library of Useful Knowledge, being the third report of 
select farms.—Sinclair’s “Husbandry of Scotland,” 
vol. i. p. 126 to 148 ; and in the Appendix, No. 23 of 
the 2d vol. of the same work; also “ British Hus- 
bandry," vol. i. p. 124 to 153.— Mr. N., in the 5ih 
Report of the Gloucester Farmers? Club. 
(To be continued.) 
Home Correspondence. 
_ * How do Savings Banks effect a rise in Wages?” 
is a question which concerns the interest of the em- 
ployer as well as the employed. It has been admitted 
on all sides that there is a great disproportion in the 
rate of wages among the agricultural population in this 
country, yet no plan has been devised to effect a more 
equal ratio ; how far the influence of savings banks 
is eapable of attaining this end we shall endeavour to 
show. We would, however, here notice, that while our 
rural labouring population are urged to become depo- 
sitors, it may be remarked by many that their scanty 
allowance and low condition will not allow them to 
range under this class ; that in reality the accumulation 
of a sum, very trifling in the eye of the rich, is to the 
working classes a most difficult task ; and that the rate 
of wages and means of employment are seldom adequate 
to do more than provide them with a bare subsistence. 
This statement is in some respects true ; those who de- 
pend only on labour can certainly save money while 
single, but cannot certainly after marriage. Let them 
keep single then till 30, by which time a man’s savings 
will provide him from want in old age; by his good 
habits and constant industry he is enabled to gain 
greater accumulations. We are supposing the case of 
a young man who goes into farming service (and the 
like remark is applicable to a domestic female servant); 
he may lay by between 18 and 30 under ordinary circum- 
stances at least 6/.a year (?) This will augment to 847., 
sufficient to purchase an annuity of nearly 207. a year 
from the age of 55. Again, to show that the labouring 
classes, farming and operative, can and do save, it is a 
striking fact, that a prodigious majority of savings bank 
depositors are parties who do not earn individually 
more than 16s. per week. On the other hand, let us 
suppose the case of a farm labourer who has not, but 
might have, saved ; what difficulty, for instance, does 
he not experience, where any portion of land is held, in 
obtaining seed for his ground, in purchasing a cow, 
pigs, or other profitable stock, and in effecting any im- 
p y or i perati on his small 
allotment ? how has he provided for the decline of life t 
how will he have kept himself independent of the parish 
and thus benefited society? But there is a higher 
consideration in saving, and which we started with, 
namely, the influence of savings banks in effecting a 
rise in wages. This is so forcibly illustrated by Dr. 
Chalmers in an article on Savings Banks in a late 
number of the “North British Review,” that we will 
at once quote his remarks. firms, “ that a little 
He affi 
stock in the hands of labourers, such as that laid up by 
themselves in a savings bank acts, both by an equa- 
lizing and an elevating power on the wages of labour ;” 
and adverting to the fears of a general combination 
among labourers and a strike for a rise of wages, he 
proceeds :—“ The observation of Adam Smith, on the 
impossibility. of a general combination among the 
farmers of a country for raising the price of corn, ap- 
plies with tenfold emphasis to the impossibility of a 
general combination among the peasants and artizans 
of a country everywhere for raising the price of labour. 
Such a combination could not be effected, yet still a rise 
of wages would be effected, but without combination— 
without the plots, or the outbreakings, or the secret 
conspiracies, or the open violence, which are the ac- 
companiments of our present partial combinations, 
taking place like'so many volcanic eruptions here and 
there over the face of the country. rise in the price 
of labour would just take place as a rise in the price of 
corn does ; not by combination, but by the silent though 
sure and resistless operation of a market law—the one 
rising in proportion as the corn gets scarcer, and so 
there ensues a keen competition among the purchasers 
to buy, and no impati i iate neces- 
sity among the holders to sell ; and the other rising in 
proportion as labourers get rich, because then a court- 
ing of them and competition for them by employers or 
te buyers of labour, and no extreme or urgent neces- 
sity with the sellers of labour to give in on lower terms 
than such as might please them. And so a general 
elevation in wages by a sort of general and silent pres- 
sure throughout society at large—and this without any 
fierce or fearful disorders of any sort. But might not 
the rise be such as to annihilate rents and to ruin capi- 
talists ? This apprehension, too, will be founda chimera, 
though we have not space here to repeat a demonstra- 
tion which has been given elsewhere on this truly in- 
teresting subject, and one of such vital importance to 
the well-being of society. What we once heard from 
an eminent silk-manufacturer in Spitalfields, we believe 
to be thoroughly consistent with the experience of all en- 
larged and enlightened capitalists—that he made more 
of those ditioned and ted workmen 
to whom he gave two guineas a-week, than he made of 
those misthriven, reckless, dissipated characters, gene- 
rally the refuse of poor-houses, to whom he gave half- 
a-guinea a-week. The truth is, that the difference of 
the wages is, generally speaking, made up by the 
superior faithfulness of the workman, and the superior 
quality of his work ; and when once a general high 
wage throughout the country comes in the train of a 
general economy and good conduct throughout the ope- 
rative population, what is found now to hold true in 
the particular instances, will be found then to hold true 
on the large scale. Masters will find ample compensa- 
tion for the higher price of labour, in the higher moral 
and mental accomplishments of labourers, and higher 
value of their services. {And here we must modify 
what we said a little ago respecting the benefit of a 
higher wage being only to be realized by the depositors 
in savings banks, after that the habit of such depositions 
had become general. From the very first, it is a be. 
nefit which might often be realized by the individual 
depositor ; and just because his being so is at once the 
cause and the evidence, and therefore the guarantee of 
a sobriety and a moral superiority which make him all 
the more valuable to his employer: qualities these 
which are worthy of a price, and for which he often will 
be paid accordingly. It will illustrate, and make still 
more obvious, the influence of these deposits in raising 
wages, if we contrast it with the opposite influence of 
well 
debts. We have often heard of an oppressive and ure 
principled master, under the infamous truck system 
who tempted his servants to expend beyond their wages 
that he might become the dictator of his own terms with 
them when he had thus got them into his power. The 
advocates of a poor-rate, and more especially in the 
application of it to the support of able-bodied labourers, 
little dream that such is precisely the depressing effect 
of their system, arrayed though it be in the smiles and 
promises of benevolence to the lower orders, but fraught 
in effect with the most mischievous consequences, not 
on the state of our pauper labourers only, but on the 
general condition of the working classes all over the 
land. We do not say that these consequences are per- 
ceived or within view, either by the enemies of savings 
banks on the one hand, or by the friends of a poor-rate 
on the other. We cannot imagine aught so diabolical 
as a wish or design—whether to restrain the ascent of 
the common people to a higher status by an attack on 
savings banks, or to ensure their helpless continuance 
on the level and along the margin of pauperism by the 
operation of a poor-rate. Certain it is, that the two aet 
as antagonists to each other : for no one can deny, that 
the prospect of sustenance for themselves and their 
families, even though in a poor-house, must have a ten- 
dency to paralyze the inducements for laying up in a 
savings bank, With the provision of a legal charity to 
count upon, the inclination generally, if not universally, 
will be to spend rather than to save—to dissipate all 
the means at present on hand, rather than to lay by 
any portion of them for an evil day, seeing that a secu- 
rity against this is already provided for by the laws of 
the country.” We are afraid that we have already 
trespassed too much on the indulgence of your readers ; 
we would, however, just in conclusion strongly recom- 
mend those who have not perused the article above 
quoted to do so; it contains a striking exemplifieation 
of the mode of attaining higher wages and in a more 
equal ratio, a desideratum whieh would tend to raise 
the labouring and industrious classes in the social and 
intellectual seale of society, and which every true phi- 
lanthropist must heartily wish to see brought about.— 
Ş 
Artificial Hatching.—I beg to state a fact upon a 
subject which has appeared several times in your 
Paper. When I was a boy, some partridges’ eggs were 
given to me whieh had been taken from a nest that had 
been mown over; I wrapt them in flannel, and put 
them in a box, and placed over them two stone bottles 
filled with hot water; which I supported by hollowing 
the opposite sides of the box, so as to receive the end 
of the body and the neck of the bottles. 1 regulated. 
the heat by that which I found, by a thermometer, as 
the greatest heat of my own body ; and at night filled 
the bottles with boiling water, covering them with seve- 
ral folds of flannel, which I took off successively, so as 
to preserve a considerable degrée of warmth up to the 
morning. This apparatus answered perfectly as to 
hatching ;*for though the eggs got broken one after the 
other through awkwardness and accident, yet I had the 
pleasure of seeing the progress of organisation, the 
spread of the blood-vessels, and the motion of the heart. 
When there remained one egg only, I broke it, and the 
bird was so far advanced that the head moved, and the 
eyes had a ghastly expression, which horrified me. I 
have never tried the experiment again, but it is easily 
B 
Drainage.—The subject of draining land, and espe- 
cially clay soils, having now engaged the attention of 
the more intelligent and seientifie portion of agricul- 
turists, and the importance of it as the foundation of 
good farming being at Jength generally admitted, I am 
induced to seek, through the medium of your Gazette, 
some practical information on the best mode of opera- 
tion. I have lately become possessed of about 120 acres 
of stiff clay land, in a bad state of cultivation, and I am 
inclined as an amateur, despite the repeal of the corn- 
laws, to see what the land is capable of doing. The 
farm lies in fields of about 20 acres each, with a fall of 
lin 60 to 1 in 100, and a sufficient outlet. The lands 
average 8 yards wide, and are about 350 yards long. 
The soil is a very tenacious clay, to the depth of up- 
wards of 6 feet. I propose to drain 25 acres of sum- 
mer fallow now. ‘The better opinion appears to be in 
favour of deep draining, and I have read with much 
interest Mr. Mechi’s articles on the subject, and also 
the able Leaders in your Gazette ; the latter of which, 
at present, however, have only gone to the theory of 
the operation. The farmers here, when I tell them I 
propose to drain 3 feet deep with 1j inch pipes, and to 
fill in with the clay soil, console me by stating that my 
money will be thrown away, and that I shall get laughed 
at into the bargain for adopting the theoretical views o! 
men who have probably never put foot in a farmyard. 
am no sceptic, however, and should be thankful if 
some one of your contributors, who has had experience 
in draining land similarly placed to that I have 
described, will answer the following questions :—Can 
the land be thoroughly drained by pipes placed 30 
inches deep in each furrow. The pipes to be } of an 
inch thick, 1} inch in the bore, and 12 inches long, and 
would the pipes be improved by having flat bottoms ? 
Will the drains be injured by putting stubble an 
brushwood over the pipes? Will 14-inch pipes carry 
the water from lands 350 yards long and 8 yards wide t 
Is it desirable to have mains, or should each furrow- 
drain, where practicable, open to the ditch? And 
where mains/are necessary, from what quantity of land 
will pipes 3 inches in diameter carry the water 1—A 
Country Subscriber. [We never had anything to do 
