33—1846.] 
553 
for raising Water, where 
can be obtained, to the 
Or Cistern arranged to throw a 
Jetof Water constituting a Foun- 
tain with the head of water be- 
neath, 
Also Engines for Deep Welle, 
Worked by steam, horse, or manual power; Douch Baths, &e, 
Buildings heated with hot water. 
Freeman Roe, 70, Strand, London. 
Estimates given for the supply of Towns, &c. 
The Agricultural Gazette. 
SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 1846. 
MEETING3 FOR THE TWO FOLLOWING WEEKS. 
Trunsvay, Aug. 20—Agricultural Imp. Soc. of Irelan?, 
Tuurspay,  — %7—Agricubural Imp. Soc. of Ireland. 
FARMERS’ CLUBS. 
Aug. 97—Ottery Sr, Mary 
— 2e—Rhins of Galloway 
Aug. 17—Bovley 
— 26- Newton 
Ir has been long a growing practice in the 
draughting of Acts of Parliament, to commence by 
an elaborate definition of the meaning to be attached 
to the principal terms employed in the body of the 
Statute. Necessity is in this matter seen to occupy 
the same maternal influence upon the logical prac- 
tice of the governing, and the understandings of the 
governed parties, as she is tritely said to exercise 
over our inventive faculties. The effect is as whole- 
Some as its exigency is obvious. Before you can 
make a law effectual you must make it intelligible. 
But what a truth lies staring at us in this practice, 
if we would only look it in the face. If the legis- 
lator must be at such pains clearly to understand 
(for he must do that before he can accurately de- 
ne) his mere words, what must be the incumbent 
Necessity which behoves him to have clear notions 
Of his subject. Words are but the more or less 
distinct * signs of ideas: they are subject to family 
diseases of their own, ambiguity and feebleness, 
that may not in any degree have attached to the 
idea iutended to be expressed; but if the idea 
itself be dim or inaccurate; undigested by reflec- 
tion ; unsupported by adequate information—if the 
‘light within? be dark, —how great is that darkness! 
Yet such must legislation be without statistics. 
o make, or to unmake, laws relating to the agri- 
culture of the country, and not to know what the 
agriculture of the country actually is; to deal with 
the subjects of production and consumption, and 
Tame statutory regulations thereupon, with no more 
frowledge of the facts than what is to be gathered 
rom the contradictory estimates of theoretical 
Writers upon political economy, whilst in posses- 
Sion of the only existing powér and means that can 
draw the required knowledge from the fountain- 
head, seems the very acme of political laziness. If 
We have had parish surveys for assessing 
Poor-rates and county-rates, and tithe commutations 
>We have had an ordnance map on the scale of an 
Inch to a mile,and are to have another, if the world 
last long enough for its completion, on a scale of six 
Inches—a monster map which looms upon the ima- 
Bination in the dim ‘geological period’ of the future 
as if to balance the Saurian monsters of the past. 
e haye been measured and measured again by 
Ordnance officers, parish surveyors, canal companies, 
and railroad engineers, to see which side we wear 
Our pockets, and how large they are. Surely after 
having stood so patiently to be geometrised for the 
benefit of others, it is not too much to ask that the 
Same tape may be applied to cut us out a suit for 
Ourselves? As in the case of a certain anonymous 
Sarment, of Bristol-riot celebrity, in whose pocket 
t © expectant searcher found only a hole, the 
Agriculturist has taken as yet the wrong side of 
nothing by theseGovernment researches—they have 
een made use of not to enlighten, but to lighten 
im. The subject calls for inquiry, and his mind is 
pening to its importance. 
Where are the statistics of agriculture? We 
know every bale of cotton that comes into and goes 
Cut of the country; every pound of tea, coffee, 
Regan, and Tobacco, that is consumed in the United 
Kingdom, What is our growth, what is our con- 
Umption of corn. The nearest weathercock might 
© appealed to with about as much expectation of a 
Cady answer as the sources which exist and are 
usually taken as the data for a calculation. The 
Sstimates made are the best possible commentary 
n each other. Guess what you please between 
twelve and twenty-five millions of quarters per 
YDRAULIC RAMS (upon an improved prineiple) | 
on your side. 
be taken as the motto of all Yet it is a 
question whose national interest is surpassed only 
by the important commercial and. social pro- 
blems it involves. Amongst all the returns 
that have been moved for in each succeed- 
ing session of Parliament, in which the subject of 
our home supply of corn has been used alternately 
by the combatants on each side of the debate, like 
a battery on some hard-contested position in the 
battle-field, which changes occupants with every 
alternate'attack and repulse, it does seem strange 
that no determined effort should have been made to 
Obtain a really approximate comparison of the ratios 
in which our population and production have re- 
spectively progressed. The quantity of fresh land 
enclosed for cultivation in the United Kingdom, on 
the one hand, and on the other the quantity taken 
up for new roads, railroads, canals, building, and 
other purposes in each year, are all within the 
means of Government information ; the annual rate 
of increase of population is a known quantity. It 
needs but one more datum to enable any ordinarily 
accomplished statist to work some of the simplest 
yet most valuable problems that could enlighten 
public intelligence or subserve general utility. 
That datum is the annual acreage of land under 
Wheat, and the quantity thrashed out in every 
parish of the United Kingdom. At present our 
knowledge is limited to the quantity sold at 150 of 
the principal towns of England and Wales, a col- 
lection of reports which, without the promise of 
much accuracy, or of any utility beyond that of 
obtaining an approximate price-average, presented 
difficulties of execution more complex than those 
which would attend a more complete and unex- 
ceptional return of the acres grown and the bushels 
old 
a 
The productive capability of land is a problem 
which, perhaps, will never receive solution. It is 
one of those mysterious questions, which the 
man who thinks he can answer, affords a primá 
facie evidence of small rather than great capa- 
city to judge of. The short-sighted economists 
of the exploded Malthusian school were fond 
of representing population as outgrowing the 
production of food; but a very little knowledge 
of the expansive powers of the soil to increase its 
produce to an inereasing demand would have shown 
the almost childish futility of such a limitation of 
the resources of Nature. Nor is it by the greatest 
quantity of corn ever grown upon an acre of the 
best land inthe highest cultivation,that this ques- 
tion can be judged of ; the succession of crops in- 
volves a postulate still wider and more scientific in 
its nature. A modern agriculturist in five years 
obtains seven crops from the same land from which 
his predecessor never thought of asking more than 
three or four, and leaves it in far higher condition 
atthe' end of the rotation. The gradual abolition 
ofthe bare summer fallow, the increased root room 
and consequent mechanical capability of supporting 
larger crops, occasioned by the deeper cultivation 
rendered practicable and profitable by drainage, the 
ingenious process of cotemporaneous cultivation of 
successional crops, as applied to the Bean and the 
Turnip by Mr. Hewirr Davies, Mr. Meca, and 
others, with other improvements that will occur to 
the minds of many, as attempted with more or less 
success in their own neighbourhood, are standing 
evidences of the existence of a susceptibility of the 
soil to the inventive prowess of man, which the 
boldest mind will hardly assume to have reached its 
ultimatum in our day. The application of careful 
statistical inquiry to these, added to the more ordi- 
nary sources of increased and increasing produce, 
which are going on upon every well managed farm 
in the kingdom, would, by the bare statement of 
results, almost furnish a comparative code of agri- 
culture. The irresistible power of arguments and 
conclusions brought to light by the bare enumera- 
tion of statistical facts, needs no rhetoricto display 
them, no extraneous inducements to occasion their 
adoption; they address themselves at once to a 
faeulty more substantial than intellectual conviction, 
more satisfactory than civil acquiescence. The 
man who is made to see what has been done in a 
hundred thousand cases, all varying slightly from 
each other in character and degree of success, all 
bearing that stamp of truth and honesty upon 
them impressed by those minute differences 
of detail that defy the possibility of col- 
lusion, and clench the uniformity of result, feels 
a sort of conviction arising in his mind very dif- 
ferent to the slow and polite assent dragged out 
of him to the possible marvels of a single tale. He 
feels something that he can handle, in a general 
report of rough facts collected and thrown together 
by a person who cares no more for his small indi- 
vidual belief than the hide of a rhinoceros would 
course. 
trade. They collect from the past and the present 
that intellectual store which furnishes the best of 
all prophecy for the future.— C. W. 
HOW TO IMPROVE THE CONDITION OF THE 
AGRICULTURAL LABOURER, 
(Continued from p. 523.) 
Tue construction of cottages with respect to health 
and cleanliness is an important consideration. The 
labourer should have a dry, warm, well-ventilated, and 
convenient home, furnished with an oven, and a copper 
for boiling Potatoes, &c. ; not an incommodious, un- 
comfortable dwelling, such as the hovel-like abodes of 
the Welch, or the filthy cabins of the Irish. Every 
cottage should have a garden attached; because, even 
when the allotment system is brought into extensive 
operation, every labourer will not be an “allottee.”” 
His garden being close at hand, is to be cultivated after 
he returns from his day’s work; and thus he obtains 
profit from working in his spare hours. He may grow 
Potatoes, Cabbages, Peas, Beans, Onions, Radishes, 
&c. and frequently have some portion of his crop to 
sel. Most gardens have a few fruit trees—such as 
Apples, Pears, Gooseberries, and the like, and the sale 
made a source of profit. Horti- 
labourer in his gardening. The premiums offered for 
various kinds of fruits, vegetables, and flowers, prove 
of great benefit—not only in bringing into more general 
cultivation the most wholesome, nutritious, and profit- 
able roots and plants ; but in refining the labourer's 
tastes, and inereasing his sources of pleasure by orna- 
menting his humble home. A neatand thriving flower- 
gardenisasure index of the cleanliness and comfort of the 
cottage; and general observation plainly shows that 
these both indieate the moral, careful, and industrious 
habits of the oceupants. Labourers should be directed 
and enabled to manage their domestic affairs with better 
economy. ‘There is much room for improvement 
in the choice of provisions, and the methods of cooking ; 
for, “although the English labourers consume far more 
animal food than the foreign peasantry of Europe, they 
yet do not fare so well; and that solely by their dif- 
ferent mode of preparing their victuals.” The poor 
imitate their superiors. It is generally found, that 
wherever the farmers live in the simplest and least ex- 
pensive style, the labourers also live most plainly and 
economically ; but where the farmers dwell amidst so 
many comforts and luxuries, the labourers ‘will always 
strive to make their homes resemble'as much as pos- 
sible those of their masters. Many will not be satisfied 
without eating the best white bread ; for this might be 
substituted loaves made of half Wheat and half Barley 
flour, which would be a much cheaper and still more 
hol: ‘ood : or bread may be used, which ean 
be obtained at two-thirds the cost of Wheat-bread ; and 
instead of purchasing loaves from the baker's, they 
should buy the flour and make it up themselves. Ina 
great many farm-houses the servants live too well; 
they have so many kinds of food at their command that 
they become dainty and wasteful; and when they leave 
their master’s table, and must earn their own victuals, 
their ideas, tastes, and habits are too delicate and re- 
fined for hardship and privation. Now, a great service 
might be rendered in such cases, by masters treating 
their hired servants with simpler food. In many dis- 
tricts it is customary for them to fare on the best joints 
of beef and mutton; let more bacon be used ; it will 
be a benefit in preparing them for their future mode of 
living, and a great saving to the farmer. 
Every farmer should distribute amongst his men, 
copies of a pamphlet on * Cottage Economy and 
Cookery ; compiled “from Essays submitted to the 
Royal Agricultural Society.” It contains various useful 
rules and receipts for preparing their provisions; “and 
if, by teaching them a little of simple cookery, a com- 
fortable meal can be occasionally so changed as to make 
it somewhat more savoury at the same cost, there can 
be little doubt that it would materially add to their 
comforts, and thus attach them still more to their 
homes.” They might be shown the best and cheapest 
way of clothing themselves and their families, and the 
assistance given in these several ways might prove very 
useful in rendering their means of subsistence most ser- 
viceable, in providing them with the most substantial 
food and warmest clothing for the least expenditure. 
But notwithstanding these things being done for 
them, “success must depend upon the habits of the 
poor themselves.” There are, and there always will be, 
very many that will not receive assistance when they 
may, who spend their money foolishly and wantonly, 
who are, in fact, too idle, ignorant, and vicious to profit 
or care to benefit by any instruction which may be 
given them, Itis obvious that such lawless characters 
will always be in a bad condition, let them have what 
privileges and advantages they may; but if a man is 
really seeking for the welfare of himself and family—if 
he is honest, sober, and anxious to improve his own 
circumstances, then these means offer him every aid 
and inducement to persevere in his labours.—J. A. 
Clarke, Long Sutton, Lincolnshire, (To be continued.) 
| 
