762 
THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 
[Nov. 14; 
scientific which incurs such a risk for so insignificant a 
saving. 
|3 or 4 feet drain for the proper reception of a 2 ineh 
g. The difference in price between a pipe of 1 pipe, with fall as great facility, if not with greater, a 
inch internal diameter, and 2 inches, is not more than he will one for laying 
an inch pipe. To dwell upon the | 
from 2s. 6d. to 3s. per 1000 ; and the little saving in | extreme liability of the small pipe to disarrangement 
weight and carriage is not worth a thought, between the | 
two. That I may not be misunderstood in this matter, 
I will undertake that in any works I may be engaged 
in, the cost of a drain-pipe of full 2 inches inter- 
nal diameter shall not exceed the cost of a 
similar pipe of l inch diameter by more than 3s. 
per 1000. Having given this assurance, I wish to 
demonstrate a little more fully by the accompanying 
figure (No. 1), the advantages of a larger sectional area. 
The inner and smaller circle represents a pipe of 13 inch 
diameter, and the outer and larger circle one of 2 inches 
drawn in juxtaposition at A to show that, as the water 
in both will flow at that point, the difference in its com- 
pression between the larger and the smaller pipe is not 
material, since in either case the advantage of a due 
degree of compression will be ensured by the circular 
form. Butas itis an advantage to obtaia this com- 
pression, particularly when the run of water is small, 
the same figure will suggest that by converting the 
smaller circle into an oval, as shown by the dotted lines, 
probably the most perfect shape for the purpose will be 
obtained, with the additional advantage of a more suit- 
able area. The 2d figure (No. 2) is a full-sized section of 
this oval pipe, and such as most people will, I believe, 
adopt in preference certainly to the smallest circle, and 
even, perhaps, to the 2 inch pipe. The flat foundation 
to the oval form has also, I conceive, some advantages. 
m tug 
| { 21 zi 
| 24.44 
No. 2. 
In closing this portion of our subject I think it neces- 
sary to speak a little more in detail of the difficulti 
would be tedious—it is a sufficiently self evident truth. 
INFLUENCE OF MIND ON AGRICULTURE. | 
Tae cussion to which you have invited me is) 
likely to take such a direction as to render you averse 
to admit it to your columns. The turn of the expres 
sion in which Mr. Mechi’s name occurs is far from 
being a happy one. But that gentleman ought not to} 
consider it as disrespectful to Mimself to be selected as | 
a type of the intelligence which the Agri ultural 
Gazette contains. 
We are both agreed as to the relation which exists 
between thefcondition of men's minds and the laud they 
cultivate. You recognise in that relation only the con- 
nection of cause and effect. Believing in all that you 
believe, I perceive in it a farther connection of simple | 
concomitance. The following illustration will explain | 
what I mean:—In harvest the grain is ripe and the | 
straw is dead at one and the same time, No doubt the 
hardening of the straw has an effect upon the ripening 
But the connection which exists between 
ened straw and the ripened grain is more a rela- | 
tion of simple coneomitance than one of e»use and effeer. 
A remoter cause holds them both equally within its 
grasp. Again, if I ask any one what that is which 
causes the seed to vegetate when winter is past, the 
answer will be that it is the approach of spring. And 
the approach of spring is determined by the position of 
the heavenly bodies. Here again is a simple rejation:| 
of eoncomitance. The same cause that operates upon | 
the atmosphere and the soil also operates upon the seed, | 
and has the power of a parent to make them all work 
in concert. 
The concomitance which’ I have endeavoured to 
illustrate is eminently true with respect to the relation 
which exists between men’s minds and the lands they 
cultivate. The same cause which gives skill and intelli- 
gence also operates otherwise than through that skill 
and intelligence upon the business which is to be the 
subject of them.* 
» at one with you in the belief that regarding 
the material world alone, atom acts upon atom in 
agriculture, precisely the same as it does in chemistry. 
But the mystery springs out of the connection of the 
human mind with the material world. And I cannot 
but regard as most mysterious, that sient and secret 
influence which the human mind exercises over the 
atoms of physical nature. 
I will again endeavour to illustrate what I mean. If 
I ask an intelligent mind what that was which enabled 
the Maid of Orleans to place the erown upon the head 
of a King of France, I will fix itin a dilemma from 
which it cannot easily escape ; and the more reflection 
it gives to the subject it will feel the more inclined to 
fail in with my belief and to aseribe the maiden’s power 
to that which we understand by the word “faith” 
hen I consider the victories of Julius Cæsar, and 
more particularly when I consider them in connection 
with his celebrated encouragement to the boatmen, 
“Quid times? Cæsarem vehis,” I recognise in the 
mind of Cæsar an attribute which is also characteristic 
of the mind of Joan of Are. I therefore take up this 
idea of “faith :" I find many events in the history of 
the world anomalous and inexplicable. I bring them 
and my idea in contact, and find that like a key it un- 
locks the whole. I go down among the most ignorant 
of my fellow men--a class whom the intelligence of the 
newspaper press never reaches, and becoming every 
year more circumscribed (E had almost said unfortu- 
nately). say I go down amongst these men, and 
find an idea in their minds corresponding to the idea in 
my own. I find this idea characteristic of certain in- 
dividuals in all ages and among every people, and the 
wiser the period or the people, the more prominent does 
the idea become. For example: Cromwell stood at 
Dunbar ; the rays of the rising sun slanted across his 
shoulder, and as he saw them reflected from the armour 
o; d d cottish army, he exclaimed, * The 
which a small pipe presents ; and in so doing I would 
have it remembered that the object is not so much to 
prove their total inefficiency as to show that practically 
and under the majority of cireumstances, they are 
neither so permanently safe or so consistently econo- 
mical as the larger pipes. Where drains are eut in 
sound clay without interruption from stones, sand, &c., 
there is no difficulty in making use of the inch pipes, 
because the workman is able to form a clean and 
uniform cut, both in width and depth, for their recep- 
tion, and it is then simply requisite to place them in it 
with the instrument for the purpose. But let stones 
and other impediments occur, as they more frequently 
do, to a greater or less extent, so as to render the sides 
and bottom of the drain partially uneven either by their 
extraction or protrusion (and how very little would 
suffice to prevent the proper laying of an inch pipe), 
and it then becomes indispensable that the pipes should 
not only be laid by the hand, but that when so placed 
the workman should stand upon them as he proceeds 
in order to their being securely bedded by the pressure 
to one uniform line. This, however, is impracticable 
with inch pipes, because the width is not sufficient to 
admit the foot. If, then, such care is requisite to secure 
ood workmanship with only oceasional interruptions, 
iow much more essential must it be in the rougher sub- 
strata. 
| No doubt, the motives 
As respects the formation of the drain itself 
Lord hath delivered them into our hands," Cromwell 
here ascribes his victory to the power of “faith.” We 
consider Cromwell as a fanatic. But what wise man 
does not see that Cromwell was a giant in intellect com- 
pared with the pigmy race who now speculate upon the 
affairs of nations, But I find the idea not only at the 
head of an army 5 I find it also by the domestic hearth, 
overooming the trials of life. If it was with the mur- 
muring Israelites upon the shores of the Red Sea, when 
they received the command “to go forward," it also 
brought relief to the mother of the young Ishmaelite, 
after she had east her child unber a bush in the wilder- 
ness and sat down over against him a good way off, as 
it were a bowshot. 
I contend, therefore, that I have ample evidence for 
believing that this “ faith” has power over the material 
world. Ihave better evidence for my belief than the 
philosopher has for believing the lunar theory. And 
in arriving at my belief my mind has gone through pre- 
cisely the same process of reasoning that the mind of 
the philosopher passed through before he arrived at his 
* (It is on this point that we suppose we mu: > er, 
which spring out of this “faith” are real 
and efficient agents in whatever a mind actuated by them sets 
itself to do ; but, that they can act otherwise than through the 
skill and intelligence with which that mind is endowed, we 
cannot conceive, Isit well toimagine any mysterious relation- 
ship between a cause and its result, when one, which is plain 
and obvious, is quite sufficient to account for all the circum- 
I hesitate not to say that a good workman will cut a | stances of the case? We think not.] 
conclusion that the sun and moon are the controlling 
causes which regulate the tides of the ocean. 
If, then, this “ faith,” is a reality, it is not always at 
the head of an army—neither is it always crowning a 
king nor slaying a giant. It may be, and no doubt is a 
living and acting principle, although its deeds are not 
recorded by the historian, nor sung by the poet. 
Now suppose that you have got, in one country, people 
capable of acting upon the principle of this “ faith,” 
and these bring the energies of their mind to the culti- 
vation of land, you have a power of creating wealth 
greater than any that chemistry can give you, and a 
means of conferring human happiness limited only by 
the range of the mind in whieh it is found. 
Last century we had more frequent instances than 
now of men capable of acting upon these principles. 
But in proportion as skill and intelligence have increased 
these have left the field. We think now of bringing no 
other qualities of mind to the cultivation of land than 
those which a woman brings to superintend the arrange- 
ments of her household. We have become a skilful 
careworn race, At the time that Hume and Gibbon 
wrote, very many of our forefathers were farming in 
the spirit of Christianity. We now ery down Hume 
and Gibbon, but we have adopted their ideas of life, and 
in spite of ourselves our practice confirms their esti- 
mate of it. 
I cannot think that I have been unfortunate in con- 
trasting England with Ireland. Let a man go down 
amongst the poor of both countries, and put himself on 
a level with their condition. He will soon find that 
speaking in the aggregate there is that among the poor 
of the former country which is not to be found among 
the poor of the latter. In England, he may find 
frequent instances of this faith which gives freedom to 
the human mind, and, as from a centre, radiates am 
influence within whose range alone the intellect and the 
affections can be brought into harmonious exercise. 
In England he will be able to appreciate the value of 
“all for the love of Christ." Among the poor of 
Ireland, on the other hand, whose religion is a religion 
of terror, he will find an abrogation of all faith in the 
famine-stricken ery, * What are words to us; it is 
bread we want," 
In England, you have many men whose minds are 
eognisant of a truth of whieh Solomon's was nof cog- 
nisant when he wrote “ All is vanity and vexation of 
pirit? In Ireland, you have a reprint of the text. 
upon the eountenances of her poor, even at that period 
of life to whieh his estimate of its good is most applie- 
able. — Vide Eccles. ix., 7—10.— J. Russell, Last 
Lothian, Nov. 6. 
POTATO DISEASE. 
ENQUIRY INTO ITS CAUSES anD PROBABLE REMEDIES. 
[We have received the following from Mr. Prideaux, 
of Piymouth, by whom it’ was published originally in 
the Plymouth Herald.] 
The views of this subject to which I was led last 
winter, by a studious comparison of the recent reports, 
with the history of the diseases and treatment of this 
plant from its first extensive culture in this country, 
appear to be corroborated by your reports of this season, 
and by the comprehensive and elaborate one published 
in the * Highland Society's Journal” of this month 5. 
and may be summarily expressed as follows :—The 
question is, whether atmospheric and other exciting 
causes, have not operated on a plant, predisposed (by 
yearly inoculation with dung juice) to putrescent dis- 
ease; vitiating its sap, and often generating fungi, 
capable of communicating the infection from plant to 
plant, and from season to season? They are here given 
interrogatively, both in deference to others who avow 
their inability to detect the cause, and with a view to 
elicis such facts and well grounded inferences in oppo- 
sition to them, as may, in ing them i 
help to elicit the truth, 
A.—Is it not extraordinary that a subject so broadly 
open to every-day observation, should for 18 months 
remain one of uncertainty and dispute? and has this 
not been partly occasioned by this very openness? a 
eause attested by one observer, having been met by a 
different one, from another, and thus both rejected in 
seeking for a single cause, whilst in truth each had 
excited the disease in a plant predisposed for it ? 
B. Atmospheric Influence.—Have we not abundant 
evidence of this exciting cause: 1. In the numerous 
cases where the stalks have been blighted, and the 
tubers remained sound? 2. Where whole fields, and 
even parts of fields, have been blighted on one aspect; 
whilst those contiguous, in a different aspect, continued 
to flourish 4 3. The places of shade and shelter often 
distinctly marked out from the surrounding growth 5 
by the healthy appearance of one, while the other has 
withered? 4. The blight appearing suddenly and 
widely along the track of offensive fogs and peculiar 
atmospheric changes? 5. The very general outbreak 
of the disease last year, upon a particularly sunless 
season; and its restraint this bright summer till the 
rain set in? And 6, must not the Danish Report (Gard. 
Chron., 17th Oct. 1846) and those of Holland, France, 
and Belgium, have weight also in this query ! 
C.—Have we not equally sufficient evidence of ten- 
dency to disease in the plant ? 1. In the numerous cases 
of its appearance in the tubers, whilst the stem and 
leaves were flourishing ; and even in the pits and heaps 
after the crop had been stored sound? 2. In its not 
less frequent beginning at the tap root, or just above 
the old set? And 3, often ata critical period of growth, 
just when the flowers were turning ; 50 that where 
