666 
THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE: 
[Ocr. 3, 
o our own country, and the relative condition of the | 
labouring classes, might prove a source of mutual in- 
truction, and of sume advantage, probably, to both par- | 
t ilst in England land is in the hands, for the 
most part, of large owners, the holdings are also large, 
and small eultivators, as a class, may be said to be un- 
known. In Belgium, on the contrary, the soil is not only 
subdivided into minute properties, cultivated, in a 
majority of instances, by the owners themselves, very 
many of whom have neither capital or resources to fall 
back upon, but the progressive * morcellement des pro- 
priétés,” inseparable from their law of succession, render | 
every year what has not been inaptly termed “the 
squares of the territorial chessboard” more minute, and 
marches, moreover, hand in hand with all the evils of 
open-field cultivation, It is striking to find of how 
many isolated pieces, and at what distances apart the 
farms, wheth&r large or small, in almost every instance, 
consist. No stock can be left in the fields without some 
man, woman, or child, to keep them off the neighbour- 
ing crops. The peasants are undeniably industrious, 
well conducted, and most moderate in their habits ; still 
many of these small owners may be said barely to exist 
—they are literally “ fruges consumere nati,” not, how- 
ever, forgetting that the crops are raised by their own 
hands. Whatever may be the advantages or disad- 
vantages of “ la petite culture,” the perseverance with 
which it is carried on, early and late, is beyond all 
praise. Their soil and implements, however, are, with 
hardly an exception, of so very inferior character, that 
I have no doubt but that, with deeper cultivation, in 
combination with drill husbandry, their produce might 
be materially increased. 
The distress during the last winter, admitted on all 
hands to have been borne with much patience, has not, 
however, been without some advantages. The sum of 
2,000,000f., advanced by the Government in aid of 
publie works, has been met so liberally by local contri- 
butions, and to such an extent, as to have enabled them 
to lay out many extensive lines of roads, which will 
afford means of communication with places which, up 
to this time, were, to use their own phrase, * au bout du 
monde.” Ihave myself, within the last few weeks, been 
an eye-witness to several lines which are being carried 
t hrough districts previously all but impassable in winter, 
which will furnish employment to very many hands for 
a considerable time to come, and must, when finished, 
be of incalculable benefit to the country at large. Thus, 
toa certain extent, at least, good has come out of evil. 
The actual condition of a large number of the small 
proprietors in this country might be studied with ad- 
vantage by those philanthropists who now advocate the 
general adoption of the allotment system as the best 
means of ameliorating the condition of our labouring 
classes—that the investigation into those causes which 
have tended, in too many instances, to depress morally 
and physically the inhabitants of our rural districts, 
should not only be searching and complete, but also im- 
mediate, must be the earnest wish of every benevolent 
mind. To secure well-regulated home comforts to the 
labourer, and so much garden ground as may afford 
him employment during his leisure time, or may be 
cultivated by his family, is one thing, and can be open 
to no objection ; but let these parties be cautious how 
they attempt to carry out any measure which would 
call into existence on a large scale a race of small cul- 
tivators, whose only capital is the labour of their hands 
alone, and who would naturally he inclined to place too 
much reliance upon a erop which is now proved, beyond 
all doubt, to be liable to utter and complete failure. 
To the liberal application of capital, and the well-under- 
stood division of labour, England is mainly indebted for 
her doubted periority in fact May not 
the same principle be applicable equally to sound im- 
provement in agriculture? It strikes me that a 
labourer can never be placed in a position so favour- 
able either to his own individual interests, or to those 
of society at large, as when he forms no unimportant 
part of a well-conducted system of husbandry, under 
which the value of efficient servants can never fail to 
be duly appreciated.—4 Subscriber, and Member of 
the Royal Agricultural Society, Sept. 21. 
ON THE STATE OF HUSBANDRY IN LOWER 
BRITTANY, 
WITH INCIDENTAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE CONDITION OF 
THE FARMING POPULATION THERE, COMPARED WITH 
THE SOCIAL STATE OF THE ANALOGOUS CLASSES IN 
IRELAND. 
By Martin DOYLE. 
, (Cóncluded from p. 618.) 
Tue dietary of the Breton is inferior to that of the 
Norman peasant, yet better (decidedly so with the com- 
mon labourers) than that of the Irish peasantry, and 
vithout danger of famine even to the poorest, because 
they do not exclusively depend on one kind of food. 
Tn a regular farmer’s house the diet is abundant; all 
the family fare alike, On galettes, a kind of pancake 
made of the flour of buckwheat ; soup of the same flour, 
or prepared with lard and cabbage, and twice a week 
with pork; poor cheese and barley or oatmeal cakes ; 
Potatoes mashed with sour milk or butter, and coarse 
bread in abundance. In some parts where orchards 
are common, cider is drank ; but generally water is the 
beverage, milk being kept for making cheese or butter, 
except a very small portion for cooking, The children 
are reared on grease or cabbage-soup, but great num- 
bers of them die prematurely, The mealy Potato with 
milk is certainly more nutritious and wholesome, if we 
may judge from the physical condition of the Breton 
labourers, who are feeble, diminutive, and sallow-com- 
plexioned, and no more to be compared with the Irish ; 
than “I to Hercules.” Yet those men eat four or five 
times a day ; a piece of bread, however, with an apple 
often doing duty for a meal, and as they never work so 
as to sweat themselves, they have a very tolerable 
dietary. 
The labourers who diet with their own families can- 
not afford to eat often in the day, and rarely taste meat 
more than once or twice a year, and have no other 
bread than that made of Rye or Sarragin flour: indeed 
they now live very much on Potatoes mashed with sour 
milk or grease, and the recent failure has become a 
source of much privation. "The workmen in farmers’ 
houses are so much better fed than the externs, that 
one is surprised to find, even in so cheap a country, that 
the difference of daily wages is estimated at so low a 
sumas five sous, the rates being 10 sous a day with 
diet, and 15 sous without it. The ordinary labourer's 
condition, however, is very miserable, and so depressed 
has it been for ages, that the songs of the country, like 
the plaintive melodies of Ireland, always referring to 
some national or local woes, leave a character of sad- 
ness. There is a song called the labourer’s lamenta- 
tion, in which the hardships of his lot are feelingly set 
forth ; but we doubt if one of the verses, which after 
warning maidens not to wed a soldier nor a sailor, nor 
above alla labourer, has much effect among a simple 
people entirely ignorant of the prospective prudence of 
the Malthus tribe. "The lament concludes thus :— 
Oh labourers you lead a hard life in this world; 
You are poor and enrich others ; 
You are despised aud yet must be most respectful; 
You are cold and hungry. 
Again :-- 
My brother, life isnot to be desired, 
For life is sad, and our happiness is to die. 
The sufferings of this class must have been great 
indeed to have called forth such wailings. 
The Breton cattle are of a good deseription—like those 
of Ayrshire. In-calf cows are worth about 67. each, and 
milehers produce 1 lb. of butter per day in the season; the 
diminutive breed falls in value to 17, 10s. per head, and 
like the Kerry breed is very good and thrifty when put 
on kind pasture ; but it bears more resemblance to the 
mountain breed of Switzerland in form and colour, than 
tothe corresponding kinds in the highlands of Ireland and 
Scotland, The Breton sheepare worth from half-a-crown 
to 10s. of our eurreney, and when aged and fattened on 
the sea downs—as at Treguier in the Côte du Nord— 
delieious to the taste. The black woolled are much 
prized for the fleece, and on that aecount are allowed 
to live till they become pretty tough picking; but 
whether long or short lived, they do not enjoy that 
| happy and tranquil existence which our floeks ordinarily 
enjoy. Confined by night without fodder, in a close 
eabin, driven forth inthe morning by a reckless urchin, 
who, regardless of their fetters, hurries them with the 
incessant cracking of a whip and the barking of a cur 
at their heels, where to a bare field they are tethered 
in couples ina very severe manner, or with hardly time 
to snap at the scanty herbage in any one spot, urged 
forwards. How different their state from that of our 
happy fat sheep reclining under the shade of a tree or 
in a glen, ruminating in undisturbed repose, and fatten- 
ing as if from a sense of gratitude to its owner ! 
The Breton horse is an admirable specimen of its 
kind, strong, hardy, enduring, and keen to the draught. 
There are, however, two very distinct breeds. The 
round, robust, heavy-limbed draught-horse, is bred on 
strong rich land, as in the valleys of Treguier ; the 
other is a light, active, lank animal, reared and princi- 
pally used in the mountainous parts, and though dege- 
nerate in form, bearing the traces of Arabian origin. 
The sharp-eyed horses which are employed in carrying 
chareoal on their backs are principally bred in Mor- 
biham. The horses reared forthe cavalry,produced from 
the native mares and high bred stallions (not always 
English), are very defective, the legs being too long, and 
the heads heavy in a remarkable degree ; the body is 
also disproportionately lengthy, and the loins are almost 
universally defective. The number of horses bred in 
lower Britiany and drafted thence to the great Norman 
pastures is prodigious. So great was the redundane: 
about 14 years ago, that an English tanner (established 
in the country), bought at one of the fairs a score of 
colts and fillies, 18 months old, for the sake of their 
skins alone. 
The price of a good horse 15 hands high is from 204. 
to 247, each ; but it is hard to find one that has not been 
worked from a very early age. The swine are very 
like the old Irish. breed, so completely extinct in all the 
civilised parts of Ireland, long legged, and long flanked; 
yet, thus ill-formed and without aptitude for fattening, 
they are reared for sale and domestic use in vast 
numbers. The teams of horses and oxen*—the latter 
not common in lower Brittany—are necessarily large 
from the condition of the farm-roads, which for a great, 
part of the year are of the. worst kind ; the ploughing 
is well executed, in yi of this dancy o 
animal power, as to depth ; but the objectionable par- 
tiality for high narrow ridges, even on perfectly dry soil, 
prevails in Brittany as in Ireland ; but in the former 
country the centre of the ridge is thoroughly loosened 
| by the plough; whereas, in the latter, it is usually left 
unstirred. 
The turning of stubble land begins at Christmas, and 
it lies, until February, when it is broken to pieces with 
hand-hoes for Potatoes or spring corn. There is no 
 * In Brittany the oxen are yoked by the heads; in Nor- 
mandy they draw from the collar, 
f | completed). 
ploughing ; the harrow pl the prep i 
Ley is broken up in May with plough and hoes, for 
Buckwheat in the first instance, which is sown before 
the end of June at farthest. The ground is afterwards 
manured for Wheat, and ploughed (with two. horses 
abreast and one leading), as on an English fallow ; but 
there is no succeeding ploughing, the seed being har- 
rowed in after the former labour. 
Much of the slovenly and exhausting cropping which 
has been so long subject of regret in Ireland charac- 
terizes the agriculture of Brittany where it is common 
to take successive crops of Oats as long as the land will 
yield it, and then leave it to recover as it may. The 
fences are frequently very large—eight or nine feet in 
width ; but this, though apparently wasteful, is not so 
in reality ; for these barriers are planted to the utmost 
advantage with trees, and kept exclusively by the lord 
of the soil or proprietor, among his foncial rights, as 
timber preserves. 
Tenants are generally prohibited from selling their 
straw ; but as they rarely give hay to their working 
cattle until spring, a great portion of it is consumed. 
for fodder ; the housing of live stock, however, through: 
the greater part of the year, necessarily produces a largo 
supply of manure, of which the liquid portion too fre- 
quently flows off in utter waste, from mismanagement 
and ignorance. 
The farmers on the coast are fully aware of the value 
of seaweed—vareck*—which they apply in the various. 
modes familiar to us. In Finistere it is collected like 
the harvest crops at a stated time from the rocks in the 
bays which are covered at low water, with carts and 
their attendants ; but as the farmers who have the 
greatest amount of human and horse labour would take 
the lion’s share, without some restrictions, the clergy 
have effected an arrangement, by which the poor pea~ 
santry only are allowed to collect the vareck on the 
first day, and so considerate are the great for the inter- 
ests of the little farmers, that they lend their men and 
horses to them on the poor man's day. The weed de- 
tached fróm rocks in the sea is often brought to shore 
on rafts rudely constructed with limbs of trees and 
ropes, on which the work-people float to land. The 
number of those moving masses of weed, each with its 
family of human beings—as described very graphically 
by M. Sousvestre, must form a very curicus and inter- 
esting combination. 
(To be continued.) 
PRACTICAL REMARKS O E BREAKING 
UP OF GRASS LANDS. 
Ler us now consider how the tenant ought to break 
up his pastures, For in giving him this permission the 
landowner will doubtless specify the mode in which he 
requires it to be done, I think that all clay pasture. 
lands should be pared and burnt; there are many ad- 
vantages attending this operation in all cases, but there 
are some peculiar to clay lands—such, for instance, as 
the improvement it effects in the texture of such soils. 
At the same time it should be remembered, that land 
when wet will appear to have an adhesive texture, 
which when drained will prove a friable open soil ; and 
therefore no decision on this subject is advisable until 
after drainage. The object of the landowner in namin; 
the terms (on this head) on which he will permit the 
farmer to break up Grass land, should be to arrange 
so that he may have half of his land in green crop an 
half in grain during the first and all succeeding years ; 
and in the case of clay land it is necessary to burn all, 
because while there is no immediate necessity for it in 
the case of that half of it which is to be sown to Oats, 
Beans, or Wheat, as the case may be, yet on such soils 
the sward will not have been sufficiently reduced by the 
ploughing and rest for a year, which that half of it will 
thus receive, to answer for the green crop, which in the 
succeeding year follows those crops. In the case of 
light land, however, there is no such difficulty, and 
therefore on such soils it will be advisable to plough 
up the half intended for grain crops (it will thus be suf- 
ficiently rotten and reduced by next spring for green 
erop culture), and to pare and burn the half intended 
for Turnips, Swedes, &e, That was the mode adopted 
on the farm I now occupy ; about half of it was ploughe 
and half pared and burnt. A great crop of Oats, and 
a great crop of Turnips, was thus obtained, and a large 
stock of sheep and cattle were thus kept during the 
first winter ; alarge stock of manure was thus produced 
and a sure foundation thus laid for the permanent fer- 
tility of the land. 
The farmer has to superintend and bear the expence 
of all these operations, e have put the amount of 
expence he will incur beyond the ordinary cultivatio® 
of the land at 30s. per acre on half of the pastures 
converted, If he enters on the land at Michaelmas, 
which will be the most convenient term for him, he 
will be able to plough those Grass lands, which are t 
be ploughed, in the autumn (we suppose all the land- 
lord's operations, except the buildings, to have been 
The Grass should be cut close, and the 
land ploughed about 4 inches deep; and it will be the: 
better of being rolled before winter, so as to press the 
furrow-slices home, in order that no Grass may grow 
between them. In March 4 bushels of Oats per acre 
may be sown broadeast—they will fall into the furrows 
and spring up as if they had been drilled—they should 
then be harrowed up and down and across the former 
ploughing, rolled, and left till harvest. The farmer wil 
also, during winter, be able to get all the hedgerows 
that are to be removed grubbed up. 
* This Celtic w Itered 
dia a SAE mto 
rd is altered somewhat by-the Celtic Irish» 
who pronounce it wrack, 
