690 



THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 



[Oct. 12, 



four varieties of turnwrest plou '» in use; the one, and the other, 



common in the south eastern counties of England, ' recommend* on well-drained land. 



mch as Mr. Smith, of Deans ton, [soldier in the rank?, of the plan of a campaign ; about as 



Surru's Turnwrest Plough. 



j much as the foretopuaan of an Indiaman, of the p. i oa 

 of his vessel from the occupation of a satellite of Jupiter • 

 probably less than either of these. But I am told.inanswer 

 to this, that of late years there has been much improve- 

 ent; that this state of things is passingaway; that already 

 the farmer (such a one, at least, as you would accept for 

 your tenant) is an improved existence; that example farm* 

 agricultural colleges, and schoels of chemistry, are multi- 

 plying over the land ; that the very technical t^rms of 

 chemical lore are beginning to be heard at fa era' 

 ordinaries; till the most fastidiously scientific appetite 

 is beginning to pall, even with the food that pleated it 

 best. This is indeed true enough ; and away with the 

 miserable conceit that, standing on the vantage-ground of 

 a luckier education, would throw one jeer or permit one 

 ill-placed smile to creep out at the infant efforts of how- 

 ever adult a mind, if the tendency be in the right direc- 

 tion. What if Farmer Dobson did think last year that 

 ammonia was " the name of a gentleman's daughter P" 

 Ho knows better this year, and next year we shall hear 

 of his putting sulphuric acid to his dunghill, to seize 

 this fair lady as she flies. Why should he be expected 

 to be a ready-made chemist ? When he was a boy, 

 chemistry was scarcely born. He had no education in 

 chemistry. How should he know anything about it, or 

 that it had any more to do with farming than the 

 Egyptian hieroglyph ? He is not the person to be blamed. 

 The blame, if anywhere, lies with those who advance it— 

 Improved Kb.vtish Turnwrest Plouoh. I namely, with the scientific world, who have allowed the 



.< _ r __ , i- i • V t physical world to grow nearly six thousand years old, 



Besides these, two other forms of the turnwrest i by Messrs. Ransome; and an exceedingly supply and bave ;dy just made the notable discovery that the 



plough were mentioned in our report of the Imple- constructed plough exhibited by Air. Comins, of --'•- 



ment Yard at Southampton .-—Low cock's, a very I South Moulton, Devon, descriptions of both of which 

 ingenious and easily-managed implement, exhibited i will be found at page ol3. 



We have Btill two contrivances to men- 

 tion connected with this implement; the 

 one here figured, which is suitable on 

 light soils where less than the power of 

 two horses would be sufficient to draw an 

 ordinary plough through the land, consists 

 in uniting two implements together, so 

 that a team of three horses, or perhaps of 

 two strong ones, may turn two furrows at 

 once. 



The other matter to be mentioned is a mode 

 of construction adopted by some makers, which, it 

 would appear from the experiments on the draught 

 of ploughs, by Mr. Pusey, as reported in the English 

 Agricultural Society's Journal, is well calculated to 

 diminish the power required to work the implement. 

 This consists in the substitution of a wheel for the 



Double Plough. H 



sole- plate of the plough; the friction on which — owing 

 to the weight of the implement, which it appears is 

 the cause of a considerable portion of the draught— is 

 thus to a large extent diminished. The following 

 figure exhibits the simplest and also the oldest of the 

 modes of construction on this principle. 



Wilkik's Faictiox-Wheel Swi.vg Plough. 



It will be seen that our object in the above very 

 gei.eral remarks is simply to place on record a de- 

 scription of the plough as it is at present constructed 

 and used in this country. The merits of the various 

 forms of it, and the considerations on which these 



! 



must respectively be determined, will afford mate- 

 rials for several future Articles in another section of 

 our Paper. , 



H Price, as manufactured by Messrs. Ransome, Ipswich, 8/. 8s. 

 % Price, as manufactured by Messrs. Barrett and Exall, 6/. 6*. 



THE ANOMALIES 01 AGRICULTURE. 

 If there be upon this earth a pursuit — a practice, an 

 art — call it what you will, of which one may at once with 

 courtesy and truth say it is " as old as Adam," that art 

 is the cultivation of the soil ; or, to speak more like an 

 honest Saxon — farming. It dates from the fall ; it was 

 the first fruit of the taste of the forbidden fruit. It is 

 the proper biography of man, for it is coeval with the 

 existence — nearly co-extensive with the spread of the 

 human family upon earth. Born the child of sin aud 

 sorrow, it grew up the parent of good and of happiness ; 

 pronounced as a curse, it has insured a blessing. It is, 

 as it were, the natural condition and obligation of man, 

 in all ages and in ail parts of the earth ; and, could we 

 indeed trace and follow out its history, it would probably 

 be the most pregnant, the most real history of the human 

 race. Adam and his children, Noah and his sons, the 

 Jewish patriarchs, were all farmers. The heroes of 

 Homer and of Hesiod, equally at home in the field of 

 swords and ploughshares, settled all accounts in stock- 

 not Government but agricultural— stock proper. Their 

 modus estimandi of a warrior was by his flocks and 

 herds ; and their grandest religious ceremony— the Heca- 

 tomb — must have been a perfect Smithfieid Show. The- 

 ocritus, and the pastoral poets after him, were so many 

 flock-masters. Cincinnatus among the ancient, Virgil, 

 Horace, Cicero, and Pliny, among the more modern 

 Romans, were all farmers. In a word, from the days of 

 Adam to those of John Robinson*, and from him to the 

 noble reigning triumvirate, Richmond, Spencer, and 

 Ducie, farming has held up its head in the world as high 

 as its most devoted panegyrist could wish to vindicate. 



* George the-Third's farming soubriquet. 



Is it not, then, a something to wonder at, even in 

 these latter day3, when wonder itself is grown threadbare 

 und out of fashion, that agriculture, being such, of 

 human arts the elder bro her, the most universal, the 

 most necessary, should in this ignorant present time, to 

 wit in the fifth decade of the 19th century, be of sciences 

 the youngest and the last-born, not yet out of its swad- 

 dling clothes— and what swaddling-clothes ! Prejudice 

 wrapped over Ignorance, and a veil of thick and stupid 

 mystery over all ; as if the closer gaze of that which to 

 know fully must be the most valuable and precious of all 

 physical knowledge were a boon too rich and rare for 

 thankless man. And yet, in plain and sober seriousness, 

 can this be denied ? Take the ordinary English farmer 

 of 100, 200, or 300 acres ; ask him the simplest question 

 that can be put to a child, about any one branch of any one 

 of the sciences upon which his whole practice is founded, 

 and upon which his livelihood depends ; take him to his 

 dunghill, aud ask him the meaning of decomposition ; 

 take him to his fresh-sown field, and ask him about ger- 

 mination ; show him a field in broad leaf, and ask him 

 the history of vegetable nutrition; ask him anyone of these 

 questions, or, if you can think of i , something more simple 

 and elementary than either. He is a professed dealer 

 with Nature ; he ploughs, manures, and limes ; he sows 

 and reaps ; he is the autocratic director of every operation 

 on his farm, mechanical and chemical. Surely if science 

 be not all a lie, and the analogy between the laws of one 

 human pursuit with another a delusion, he should be 

 something beyond a mere empiric; he should have some 

 conception of the great laws and principles which he puts 

 into force ; the engineer should know something of the 

 engine. What does he know ? About as much as a 



science of all nature — chemistry — is eminently aud neces- 

 sarily applicable to the art of all existence — fanning ! I 

 say it is the backwardness and infancy of science, not the 

 ignorance of farmers, that deserves reflection. Which 

 of these three propositions is the more wonderful, that 

 Jethro Tull should have made the discovery that pulve- 

 risation was the great secret of mechanical cultivation ; 

 or that Humphrey Davy should have first thought and 

 lectured upon chemical cultivation; or that both these 

 great secrets were not put into words till the surface of 

 the tarth had been tilled for upwards of 5700 years ! It 

 is true, Wheat has been sown, as well as " blood spilt ere 

 now in the olden time;" and sooth to say, God's earth 

 has been well enough manured by the one, to account for 

 some extra luxuriance of the other. Lean stock has 

 been made fresh, and fresh stock fat ; yet around these 

 simple-seeming operations, a veil of ignorance, of blind- 

 fold and gregarious empiricism has hung, to be torn aside 

 by the magic touch of Davy first, in England, aud after 

 a pregnant interim, by Thuer and Liebig in Germany, 

 Boussingault in France, Johnstone in Scotland, Buck- 

 land and Daubeny at Oxford, Henslow at Cambridge, 

 and Playfair in London. And at the heels of these 

 champions of agricultural Christendom, a host has gathered 

 that promises to scare Prejudice herself from her favourite 

 and oldest haunt ; and strange to tell, the occupat .oil 

 that has hitherto been deemed •" of the earth, earthy, 

 dull, heavy, and changeless, stupidly laborious and 

 mechanical, fitted only for the hard hands of peasant?, 

 and the unlettered scull of the hind and serf, receives at 

 one blaze its brilliant illumination, aud is all at once 

 found to be associated with the profoundest discoveries, 

 and dependent upon the most delicate and recondite in- 

 vestigations of physical science. — C. W. H. 



{To be continued.) 



GEO-AGRICULTURAL NOTES OF SOUTH 



GLOUCESTERSHIRE. 



[Continued from page 614.) 



Coal— The coal strata, which next engage atten- 

 tion do not follow the same law of conformity which 

 hose hitherto described have exhibited. The strata of 

 be new red sandstone overlie them in a manner different 

 from that in which the former are overlaid by the ha«. 

 IrThe latter case, an entire bed of the one rests on an 

 ent re bed of the other ; hot in the former, the new red 

 tra a rests on the edges of the coal strata ; *«* mu* 

 therefore have been raised up and worn away during the 

 nterval elapsing between their deposition and that o the 

 rtraU covering Them. The boundary of the coal district 

 easily traceable by Itcbington, CiomhallMckwar, 

 Sudbury, Waterleigh, Homapple and Stoneh.U, Han- 

 ham Keynsham, Brislington, Stapleton, and W inter. 

 bTrn.VcloBing a space of about 40 square m. es The 

 heater portion of this boundary is the junction of be 

 coal strata with those of the new red sandstone, which 

 overlie them all round the southern edge of the bun. 

 ll the nort™ of the coal district, its boundary is its junc- 

 tion with the mills-one grit, which dips on a 1 sides be- 

 low it. Very few beds, of coal occur in the northern 

 part of the district, and these are of very inferior qua- 

 Etv Over almost the whole of the district, the prevalent 

 rock is a siliceous sandstone, which where coal abounds, 

 alternates in thin layers with it, and with ^s of clay and 

 ..and • but where coal does not occur, it forms extens ve 

 trata of most excellent building material. It is of a blue 

 colour, but varies much in its texture. It is much quarrud 

 ^building stone, being the best, though not the hand- 

 somest material for that purpose in the county. It 

 a'so much used as a tile and paving-stone. 

 * Agricultural Character of the Coal .-The poore* 

 •and in the counly occurs on the clays of the coalfor* 

 ation near Cromhall and Rangeworthy. A srwtpropoi 

 tion of this land was lately in commons and waste, an 

 perfectly worthless. They were overrun by Heat", 

 Whins, and Brambles; aud being in general very w« 

 no valuable Grass of any kind grew on thenu- " 

 closed land is chiefly in pasture, which, in consequence o 



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