TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 211 
undersell, and thus they tend to drive the legitimate trader and artisan from the 
market. The institutions are sectarian; they thus intensify religious bigotry—a 
fruitful source of great evils in our social system. The number of juvenile criminals 
is not decreasing. The system has failed to repress juvenile crime and to reform 
criminals. Its indirect moral effects are bad. It tempts the children of the poor 
to abandon honest labour and become inmates. It tends to destroy the feeling of 
parental responsibility. It induces parents to neglect their duties to their children 
so as to qualify them for the Industrial School or Reformatory. He suggested 
that the workhouse system (reformed in its present working) could by an easy 
extension take the place of the Reformatory and Industrial School. The tax-payer 
is represented on its board. ‘The proceedings and accounts are subject to public 
control. It has buildings and a staff of officials in every union. It was devised 
to meet the claims of destitution, and is non-sectarian. It is much less costly, and 
the rights of the state are protected by the Local Government Board. 
On the Future of the United States. By G. W. Norman, F.S.S. 
On the Cause of Insolvency in Life-Insurance Companies, and the best Means 
of detecting, exposing, and preventing it. By T. B. Spracun, M.A., FSS. 
A Scheme for the Technical Education of those interested in Land. 
By the Rev. Witt1am Watson Woon, Wickham Market, Suffolk. 
The writer of this paper drew the attention of the Section to the want of 
technical knowledge displayed by those most interested in the cultivation of land, 
whether as landlords or tenants, and proposed a plan by which this necessary know- 
ledge might be obtained. After remarking upon the unintelligent cultivation of 
land which was made to produce only two and a half quarters per acre, whilst 
land of the same description, in soil and subsoil, produced five or six quarters of 
the same cereals, and on grass Jands showed even a greater disparity of production, 
he cited instances within his own experience of improvements actually made on 
farms of different soils and situations. 
Ist. A light-land park in 1848 produced scarcely grass enough for two cows and 
twenty sheep, and was let at 12s. Gd. per acre. By a very small outlay the amount 
of stock fed was trebled, and the land has been let since for £2 5s. per acre. 
2nd. On poor heavy-land pasture, almost valueless and growing the worst kinds 
of grasses only, by drainage, manuring, and sowing tlie better kinds of grass seeds, 
the produce in 1872 was estimated at £100 on nine acres. The purchase of manure, 
he remarked, would be needless if the right artificial manures were used on the 
arable lands at the right time in fair quantity, and suitable to the wants of the 
different cereals for which it was applied, three and a half loads of straw per acre, 
which might easily be grown on such lands, allowing a good margin for the 
manuring of pastures, if mixed with artificial food, and thus made into manure 
of a certain strength. 
The third instance he adduced was that of a park that would scarcely keep a herd 
of deer, and which, by the use of underground irrigation, returned £40 per acre in 
1870. He then proceeded to remark that whilst England justly claimed pre- 
eminence for her lieads of horses and cattle, yet the great majority of these were 
bred regardless of those points which would add to their utility and beauty, 
“ Drive,” he writes, “a few miles in any direction from visiting the most famous 
breeds, and how many flocks or herds do you find possessing any thing approaching 
their qualities? It is no exaggeration to say that many era might suppose, 
from observation of the stud or stock-yard, that those who send stock to them 
were intent upon perpetuating their imperfections. There is no reason, except 
unintelligent management and cultivation, why we should not have horses and 
meat both better and cheaper.” The attention of the Section was next invited to 
the number of unintelligent farmers intermixed with others who farmed unin- 
