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23—1846.] 
THE. AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 
377 
OLARK’S HOTHOUSE 
METALLIC WORKS. 
55, LIONEL-STREET, BIRMINGHAM. 
Proprietor, Mr. THOMAS CLARK, 
Superintendent of the Works, Mr. JOHN JONES, 
These 
i 
and of such thickness as to preclude all danger of accidental 
breakage, whilst that which arises from the action of frost 
(frequently amounting to 25 per cent. per annum), is effectually 
prevented by the peculiar mode of glazing adopted. As a sam- 
ple of his Metallic Hothouses, in which the most recent im- 
provements are happily combined, Mr. Cx: 
and satisfactio! e magnificent range erected by him in 
the new Royal Gardens at Frogmore, which is admitted by all 
competentjudges to be the most complete and perfect of its 
ind in the world, 
The Agricultural Gazette. 
SATURDAY, JUNE 6, 1846. 
MEETINGS FOR THE ' 
Wrpyxsnay, June 1 
WO FOLLOWING WEEKS. 
Soviety of England 
E n 
TuoxspAv, — — 18—Agricuitural Imp. Soc. of Ireland. 
LOCAL SOCIETIBS.—Cadder, near Glasgow— Wells (Ireland.) 
" FARMERS’ CLUBS, 
June 8—Bakewell—Selby— Exm n- | June 9—Watfo-d—Wingerworth 
ster—Yoxford — Cirencester | — 10.—Harieston 
— li-Grove Ferry 
— 12-—Waáeb idga—Halesworth— 
Chelmsford —St. Gerimains— 
‘Paviawoek—Norchallerton 
— 15 Botley 
Framlingham-—Jedburgh 
Tue RAmwaAv, Gauce question, now exciting so 
much public attention, has a bearing on AGRICUL- 
‘TURAL INTERESTS more important than is apparent 
at first sight. The influence of that increased 
facility which railways offer for the exchange of 
local mineral produce—the transfer of the coals 
from the north into the south, the fuller’s-earth of 
Surrey into the cloth districts of Yorkshire, and the 
ints of Kentinto the Potteries of Stafford and Wor- 
€ester—caunot yet be said to be felt. "The transit of 
agricultural produce is beginning to produce. its 
effects. Even this last week it has been related 
how the Eastern Counties Railway, throughout its 
Course in Essex, is gencrating a trade for supplying 
the metropolis with pure milk, Since the opening 
of the Bristol and Exeter Railway, numerous shops 
ave been established in London for supplying De- 
Vonshire cream, poultry, &c. You may now, in 
fact, have clotted cream with your coffee at break- 
ast every morning as fresh in London as the inha- 
bitant of Exeter himself. The effect of this on 
prices has been very great, particularly in the neigh- 
bourhood of the Great Western Railway. The 
half-pay officer at Plymouth and Exeter is begin- 
ning to grumble that the economical charges hitherto 
peculiar to those spots are vanishing. A poulterer 
in Exeter last year told us how grievous a thing it 
was that he had a long contract with the principal 
inn at Exeter to supply it all the year round with 
fowls at a guinea a dozen, now that he could send 
them by railway to London, and in the season 
realise five and six shillings a couple! Again, the 
Pee a about New Cross and Deptford 
aia better market for their produce among 
n Sus LIMES winter and autumn than 
E ovent Garden itself, and transport their 
egetables accordingly to Brighton. The South 
CURA sheep, when the coast line js completed, will 
Mi Passengers up and down the railway twice in the 
Course of the year, for pasturage on the Downs and 
in Romney Marsh. 
ut we need not accumulate further instances to 
Prove that already railway transit is beginning to 
ST great and beneficial effects upon agriculture. 
XM here, however, lies the connexion between the 
83 eee of these effects and the gauge, or the winT 
Eh HE RAILS? How can it matter to the farmer 
ether they be 4 feet 8} inches or 7 feet apart? 
EE is à UNIFORMITY OF SYSTEM OF RAILWAYS 
di Ret: to the agricultural interest? We 
= ah eas to answer these questions. First, 
PM s cheapness and facility of locomotion ; 
c y, as respects uninterrupted freedom and 
Universality of locomotion, 
us po BaUsesy QE Nude m the rails, as now cover- 
S the country like net-work, are laid, about 1900 
miles of narrow, and about 270 miles of broad aiie 
It may be fairly assumed that there must be good 
Teascns for such a disproportion between the quan 
tities of the two. Commercially, no dono ane 
"NA sauge has been far the most profitable to 
por archolders ; and it has been so because it has 
WE preferred by those who have to use it. It 
Ae to all railway makers to adopt which- 
gauge they pleased. 
Not only have the 
majority adopted the narrower gauge, but it has 
been found most profitable that all deviations from 
it, except that of the Great Western, should be and 
they have been altered to it. 
The narrow gauge arose and spread for pas- 
senger railways because it was already in use 
for the conveyance of minerals. For years the 
4 feet 8} inches gauge had been adopted and 
found most suitable for the carriage of minerals. 
This fact, is quite incontestible, — admitted by 
Mr. Brunet, the inventor of the broad gauge, who 
has bimself adopted the narrow gauge in mineral 
districts. The carriage of all agricultural manures 
is but the carriage of minerals ; and thus we may 
say at once that the superior suitability of the nar- 
row gauge for the carriage of minerals to be used in 
agricultural operations is at once established. Small 
carriages, as mos: proper for the transit of coal and 
iron, may be said reasonably to be most suitable for 
lime, sand, or compost. 
It must be clear that if a certain carriage and 
rails are best for the transit of manures to the land, 
the same carriage must of necessity be the one to 
be used for the transit of the produce of that land. 
It would be impossible to have two, even if the 
manure carriage did not happen to be the very best 
conceivable. A farmer never has his waggons and 
carts of two widths, and would not do so when he takes 
to using railways. But the narrow gauge carriages 
may be assumed to be quite efficient for the transit 
of produce. The only doubt of their perfect suita- 
bility arises from their being rather ¢oo large than 
too small. The broad gauge trucks for ordinary 
every day purposes are practically found to be 
much Jarger than convenient. The agricul- 
turist requires, as has been well observed 
by Mr. Sipwzy, “ not huge carriages and 
trucks, but handy little waggons, which may 
without inordinate trouble or expense, be run 
into small road stations and sidings, to which a 
farmer may send his couple of fat oxen or his score 
of sheep, or his load of corn, in conjunction with 
one or two more neighbours. Hitherto, of all classes, 
the agriculturist has least enjoyed the advantages 
of railway transit ; he never can enjoy them where 
expensive rates and heavy unwieldy trucks prevail, 
and that is the reasor why the Great Western Rail- 
way, although running through rich corn growing 
and cattle feeding countries, has created, as yet, so 
little local traffic. The whole machinery is on too 
vast, costly and magnificent a scale. Were it not 
for the break of gauge (its consequences being shift- 
ing from one carriage to another), the cheap little 
Belgian 3 feet 9 inches gauge would supply the 
wants of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire, infinitely 
better than the broad gauge.” "The smaller carriage 
of the narrow gauge is admitted by every one to be 
much more handy for manipulation. It requires less 
than half the power to move and turn it about. 
Mr. W. Bass, of Pickford's house, who has “no 
share in either the broad gauge or the narrow in 
any way,” says that “the broad gauge trucks are 
most inconvenient for carriers’ purposes generally.” 
« A great cumbersome broad gauge truck requiring 
eight men to move it. .A narrow gauge truck a 
couple of men would have moved with great ease.” 
We may look forward to the time when, as agri- 
culture becomes more developed, the great farmers 
will have their own single line of railway to join 
the high roads. As far back as 1676, it is stated, 
in the life of Lord Norta, that “the manner of the 
carriage of coal is by laying rails of timber from the 
colliery to the river, exactly straight and parallel, 
and bulky carts are made with four rollers fitting 
those rails, whereby the carriage is so easy that one 
from one carriage to another, where the BREAK of 
GAUGE occurred, and its concomitant cost, difficulty 
and damage, would prevent the transit alto- 
gether. The Gloucestershire farmer would 
never send his waggon of Turnips to Wolver- 
hampton, if the whole must be shifted in the jour- 
ney. Shifting would eifectually prevent the ex- 
change of the coals of the Midland counties for the 
chalk or flint of Kent and Surrey. It is essential 
that the trucks pass from the starting to the end of 
the journey without disturbance. But there must 
be uniform gauge to permit them to do so. Itis 
no idle dream to foresee that such exchanges are 
coming about—exchanges even between the ex- 
tremities of our island. Already the railways com- 
pete with the canals for the conveyance of heavy 
goods, and coals are transported at a penny per ton 
per mile. Break of gauge would put a dead stop to 
this exchange, in which no one is perhaps so much 
interested as the agriculturist. The advance of the 
science, the productiveness of the soil, the well- 
being of the farmer, and the comfort of the la- 
bourer, depend on the most perfect exchange. But 
freedom of exchange can only be had by a perfect 
NATIONAL UNIFORMITY OF RAILWAYS, and no class 
is more deeply interested in securing that UNI- 
rormity than the agriculturist. — 
ON THE DRILL HUSBANDRY OF TURNIPS. 
In the early part of 1842 I became a candidate for 
the Royal Agricultural Society’s prize for the best re- 
ort of experiments on the drill husbandry of Turnips, 
but like other expectants of carrying off a prize I was 
disappointed. However, on reading the successful re- 
port I was happy to find that the writer’s notions and 
mine corresponded on many of the most important 
points connected with the cultivation of that most valu- 
able bulb. Unfortunately for my report it is too lengthy, 
from minutise of detail, and hampered, as some would 
call it, by too many perplexing, and in several cases 
anomalous experiments ; but have always considered 
it of great consequence for a farmer to know how many 
bushels of grain had been grown in each field, and if 
such knowledge is useful it surely would do no harm if 
curiosity led him a little farther, and raised a desire to 
know how many tons per acre of bulbs he managed to 
raise, and also know what quantity of manure per acre 
had been used in order to obtain such crops. 
The want of any statement as to weight of crops 
produced by Mr. B. Almack in his prize report, is, in 
my humble opinion, a very great one, and to most ex- 
perimentalists must detract much from its value. It is 
he who can grow the greatest weight of roots at the 
least expense, taking soil and situation into account, 
that should be held up as an example; and, although 
Mr. A. gets very nicely over the results pro- 
duced by his mode of managing by saying, “ I 
cannot ‘say how many tons of Turnips per 
acre I have grown, simply because I never weighed 
any nor had any weighed ;” and however convenient 
and advantageous it may be for an individual who gives 
his experience on any particular subject to the public 
to avoid figures, yet 1 must consider they are essential 
to make the communication of real value to those in- 
terested in the subject of inquiry. And therefore I 
think Mr. Almack’s prize report a very imperfect and 
unsatisfactory document without his results being given, 
viz., the various weights of roots produced per acre, 
with the different manures used, and various widths in 
the rows which he adopted ; and I believe most people 
will bear me out in this opinion. 
My figures, I know, are too numerous, and lay me 
open to animadversion on all hands ; but they are the 
real results of my efforts in Turnip growing for the 
years named, on land excessively foul, with every species 
of annual weed, and the soil, although dry, of a poor 
ungenial kind for Turnips. This in some degree may 
account for the heavy expenses in clearing, and the 
return of weights per acre being so inefficient and so 
unsatisfactory to strangers in proportion to the expense 
horse will draw down four or five chaldrons of| incurred in producing the returns.— W. Fernie, Man- 
coals, and is an immense benefit to the coal 
merchant,” and it will not be long before the 
great farmer will use rails like coal-owners. It is 
essential that the construction of these little feeding 
lines should be as economical as possible. "The cost 
will absolutely in most cases determine the exist- 
ence of them. ` In all its details, roadway as well 
as carriages, the width of the gauge increases the 
cost in proportion. Another point, too, involved 
in cost is the facility of laying the rails. In hilly 
districts, at best, the farmer’s narrow gauge rails 
would curve along the valleys, with difficulty and 
at great cost. The increased cost and difficulty [) 
wider rails would prevent the making of the railway 
altogether. So that equally for convenient use as, 
for economy of structure, it will be the interest of 
the agriculturist to have narrow lines and small and 
cheap waggons, rather than very large ones. —. 
If cheap construciion, and a cheap “plant” be 
necessary to enable the agriculturist to avail him- 
self of the advantages of the railway system, it is 
absolutely indispensable to him that the system be 
oxironM, It would be quite impracticable that the 
farmer should keep carriages suitable for passing 
on two widths of rails. The shifting of his produce 
chester, May 28. 
[ We have taken the liberty of somewhat altering the 
arrangement of the matter in the valuable paper with 
which Mr. Fernie has kindly favoured us, and postponed 
the publication of the general remarks with which it 
commences, in order to lay before our readers the 
practical part of the essay in time for them to benefit 
by it.] 
The soil on which the following experiments were 
made is situated in Gloucestershire, on the higher edge 
of the upper oolite geologieal formation, which appears 
in various widths through a long sinuous traet in several 
counties in England, from Dorsetshire to Yorkshire. 
The general elevation of this farm is somewhere 
about 650 feet above the level of the sea, and thus the 
climate is rather cold and late, and not adapted to pro- 
duce crops of any kind of first-rate quality. Where the 
surface runs nearly level, the rock is generally found at 
from 6 inches to 3 feet under the surface, and wherever 
an elevation of 20 or 30 feet appears above the general 
range, that part is always found to be a bed of dull red 
or brownish clay, mixed with nodules of oolitie stone ; 
and when these are absent, the clay is sometimes 
yellow, tough, unmanageable stuff, and, if in large 
| quantities, would not be kept under cultivation, being 
the least productive and most expensive land to culti- 
l yate on the farm, With the exception of 25 acres of 
