1852.] 



AGRICULTURAL EXTRACTS. 



Ill 



ments, the one in Vienna being the largest in Europe, costing 

 £1 1,000 jser annum ; tliere are also Holidaj' and Sunday Schools, 

 in wliich the workmen take great interest, and their knowledge 

 and research mto the various sciences is a matter of astonishment 

 to Englishmen. In Bavaria there are no Real Schools, but 26 

 Trade Schools, one for every large town ; they are supported by 

 the localities, the Government exercising supervision, and sending 

 commissioners periodically to inspect. There are also Holiday 

 Schools, and the entire number of students may be about 3000. 

 The Baden Gymnasia, and High Standard Schools of burghers 

 and trade were represented as the most perfect in Europe, there 

 was an average of 41 teachers to 430 pupils; the expense to the 

 Duchy is about £4100 per annum, and the cost to the student 

 £6 annually. The lecturer estimated that there were 13,000 

 students receiving an industrial and systematic education in all 

 Germany, and from 30,000 to 40,000 working men improving 

 their mind by HoUday and Sunday Schools. France was next 

 reverted to: besides the great and well-known schools of the 

 Government, such as the Hcole Polytechniqiie, the JScnle des 

 Mines, the IHcole des Fonts et Chwussees, and the Conservatoire 

 des Arts et Metres, there is a private institution, the Hcole Cen- 

 trale des Arts et Manufactures, established by private capital, 

 which has obtained the most ample remuneration hj its success. 

 So important is this to the industry of France that the Govern- 

 ment and the Conseils Generaitx of 29 departments have 

 established exhibitions in connection with it. The school has 

 300 students, taught by 40 professors of the highest eminence. 

 So much valued are the certificated students of this school by 

 the manufacturers of France, that they ai-e sure of immediate 

 and important employment. Belgium and Denmark were also 

 noticed as having public schools ; and the lecturer emphatically 

 implied that the time had now arrived when England must no 

 longer be supine in the matter, but take a bold step on the sub- 

 ject of in Just]'ial education, inculcating the principle that practical 

 experience must go hand in hand with philosophical science to 

 bring the arts of any country to a high standard of exceUence. 

 The coui-se of lectures for the session of five months are — 



1. Chemistry applied to Arts and Agriculture — Lyon Playfair, F.R.S. 



2. Natural History applied to Geology and the Aits — Edward 

 Forbes, F.RS. 



3. Mechanical Science, with its Applications to Mining — Robert 

 Hunt, Keeper of Mining Records. 



4. Metallurgy, with its Special AppKcations—Jno. Percy, M.D.. F.R.S- 



5. Geology, and its Practical Apphcations — A. C. Ramsay, F.R.S. 



6. Miumg and Mineralogy— Waiingtou W. Smith, M.A., F.G.S. 



Agricultural Extracts. 



The Origin of some Agricultural Inventions.- — -A Devonshire 

 farmer invents a modification of the rotatory churn, in which, by 

 making it revolve in an outer casing of warm water, tempered 

 by the aid of the thermometer, he can at all seasons of the year 

 command the best degree of warmth for separating the butter, 

 and thus finish the process in a time at once brief and uniform. 

 The French minister sees this at the Society of Arts and encloses 

 a description of it to Paris. A model is made, somewhat altered, 

 and exhibited at the " Exposition." A Scotch director of the 

 Highland Society has a copy made of it, carries it over to Edin- 

 burgh, where the scientific principles of its construction are 

 highly lauded, and for the next six months all the Ayrshire 

 amateurs are treating their friends to butter made in ten minutes, 

 and amusing them with the wonder's of the French churn. A 

 Yorkshire smith, Uving in the midst of heavy land, fixes harrow 

 teeth into a long cylindrical axle at uniform distances, and fitting- 

 two of these axles together, so that the teeth of one shall play 

 between those of the other, when it is dragged along the laud, 

 forms a maehuie admirably adapted for the tearing of heavy 

 brittle clods asunder. It is known to few, and attracts little notice 



at home; but it gets to Norway. Seen thereby an Englishman, 

 it is pronounced, as it is, a thing of first-rate exceUence, and, 

 under the name of the " Norwegian harrow," it obtains a distin- 

 guished place in our future agricultural shows. A Scotch 

 Presbyterian minister puts together, in 1825, an adjustment of 

 wheels and scissors-blades, so working that when pushed along a 

 corn-field at harvest-time, it cuts down the grain as if done by 

 hand, and far more cheaply and expeditiously. His brother, a 

 farmer, improves upon, and adopts this machine, and for a dozen 

 successive years, employs it in reaping his crops. But it, also, is 

 seen by few. The National Society gives the inventor a prize of 

 £50, but makes little noise about it. Nobody cares to make a 

 fortune by pushing it, and although, in 1834, several were in 

 operation in Forfarshire, few of the supposed wide-awake Scotch 

 farmers thought of adopting it as a sa\"iiig of labour, even when 

 the hai'dest times had come. But four of the machines were sent 

 to New York from Dundee, the chief place of manufactiu'e. 

 Thoughtful, pushing emigrants, settlers in the North American 

 prairies, where wide flat fields, easily covered with waving corn, 

 offered speedy fortunes to those who could command hands to 

 reap it, saw, or heard, or read of these machines. The reaper 

 was re-constructed, modified in ditfereut ways, as so complicated 

 a machine could not fail to be, and probably for the better, by 

 ingenious mechanics, was brought into successful operation, made 

 by thousands for the farmers beyond the American lakes, and 

 obtained a deservedly high reputation, as a means both of doing 

 work well and of saving labour much. In 1849 we saw it at 

 the great State Show in Western New York, and brought it 

 thence to Loudon in 1851. The American reaping-machine 

 proved the main attraction of the United States department of 

 the Great Exhibition. Implement-makers vied with each other 

 in seeking to secure the privilege of manufacturing the patented 

 machines for the English market; thousands of practical men 

 became persuaded of its economical applicability to our English 

 soil and crops ; hundreds of machines were bespoken by Enghsh 

 cultivators, and all the while no one knew that the original model 

 machine was at the very time quietly cutting its yearly harvest 

 on the farm of Inch Michael, in the carse of Gowrie. — Edinhurgh 

 Review. 



Vegetable Sports — Supposed Origin of Wheat. — Some 14 

 or 15 3^ears ago, Monsieur Esprit Fabre, a continental botanist of 

 great eminence, met with a plant of the ^gUo2)S ovata, or 

 common Sicilian grass, presentiug features of difterence to him 

 sufficiently marked to lead him to conclude that it was an acci- 

 dental variety. He took the seeds of this plant and sowed them. 

 The produce of this seed of the original plant exhibited stiU 

 greater departure from that original than the produce of the first 

 year. He dealt with the seed of the second year as he had done 

 with that of the first; and so on from year to year, from 1839 

 to 1851 ; and the result of this experiment was that the ^gilops 

 ovata was turned into beautiful wheat. The plant had lost all 

 afliuity with the character of the plant from which it sprung, and 

 had assumed a new type and form ; thus demonstrating that the 

 most useful and valuable of cereal products is in fact nothing- 

 more or less than a sport from ^gilops ovata. 



The Potato Disease. — At a late sitting of the Academy of 

 Sciences, M. Brierre stated that, having noticed that the potato 

 blight did not occur on lands that had been covered by the sea, 

 he'made a strong solution of salt in water, and placed the cut- 

 tings in it for some hours before planting, the result being perfect 

 freedom from disease. At tlie same meeting, M. Bayard, of 

 Chateau Gouttier, averred that the blight was owing to excessive 

 vitality in the plant; and that, therefore, before setting, he had 

 inserted a pea into each cutting ; both plants, the graft and the 

 potato, flouiishing most healthily. tVs the pea vegetated first, M. 

 Bayard supposes "it carried oft' the sui»rabundant moisture of the 



