1844.] 



THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 



i* 







QTEPHEXSON and CO., , f 



O London, and 1 ", New Park-street, J-nuthwark, Inventors 

 and Manufacturers of the Improved CONICAL and DOUBLE 

 CYLINDRICAL BOILERS, respectfully cit the attention of 

 scientific Horti culture's to tr.eir much approved method of 

 applying- the Tank system to Pineries, Propagating Houses, & c . 

 by *hich atmospheric heat as well as bottom. heat is secured 

 to aay required degree without the aid of pipes or flues. 

 S. & Co. have also to state that at the request of numerous 

 frieids they are now m: ig- their Boilers of Iron as well as 

 Copper, by which the cost is reduced. These Boilers, which are 

 now so well known, scarcely require description, but to those 

 who have not seen them in operation, prospectuses will be for- 

 warded as well as reference of the highest authority; or they 

 may be seen at most of the Nobility's seats and principal 

 Nurseries throughout the kingdom. 



S. & Co. beg to inform the Trade that at their Manufactory in 

 New Park-st., every article required for the construction of 

 Horticultural buildings, as well as for heating them, may be 

 obtained upon the most advantageous terms. 



Conservatories, &c. of Iron or Wood, erected upon the most 

 ornamental designs. Balconies, Palisading, Field, and Garden 

 Fences, Wire Work, &c. &c. 



_ 769 



61, Graeechurch-street, to them ; and perhaps our readers will kindly assist I U^ of an army or the direction of the labours of a farm ; 



« f£r ™ hn Z™ ei \? neni ™ to c it ft is our aim to be | still the mind prepared by a comprehensive and scientific 

 "" "***" "* ' knowledge of its task will ever bear the mastery: and 



the boy-philosopher will astound the practitioner of rears 

 by an a priori knowledge of results, of which a life of 

 laborious and blindfold practice had, unassisted, afforded 

 to the litter only a confused and glimmering recognition. 

 Perhaps there has seldom been seen, in our own day, a 

 more memorable evidence of this, than in the delivery of 

 Dr. Play fair's Lectures, * two years ago, before the Royal 



as far as possible the organ of these Societies, and to 

 publish the facts adduced and opinions sanctioned 

 by them. V e should feel greatly obliged to their 

 Secretaries if they would forward to us information 

 on the following points:— The name and locality of 

 the Society, its object, its times of meeting, and* the 

 subjects, if they have been fixed upon, for discussion 

 during the ensuing year, and a report of discussions 



fill ^* 1 1^. #u ^ L& _A_. "W rt % * -^ 



m)t 3tgrfailttiral €fe?ettt« 



SATURDA Y, NOVEMB ER 16, 1844. 



MEETINGS FOR THE TWO FOLLOWING WEEKS 

 Wbdnksdav, Nov. SO— Agricultural Society of England. 

 Thursday, Nov. 21— Agricultural Imp. Soc ot Ireland. 



WeDtcwdAT, Nov. 87— Agricultural Society of England. 

 Thursday, Nov. 28— Agricultural Imp. Boc. of Ireland. 



FARMERS' CLUBS. 



ments were added of the climate, elevation, soil, and 

 general agricultural character of the several districts 

 we should be enabled to collate and correctly to 

 appreciate the opinions indicated by the mass of 

 information which would be accumulated. 



Such an attempt to centralise the numerous but 

 unconnected efforts which are now making in the 

 cause of agricultural improvement, if it were success- 

 ful, would probably be useful. 



Nov. 18— Fairford. 



W. Firle. 



Wenlock. 

 Nov. 20— Harleston. 



Nov. 21 — Richmnndshire. 

 Grove Ferry. 



Nov. 22— Debenham. 



Hadleigh. 





Nov. 22 -Stoke Ferry. 



Wrentham. 

 Nov. 23-Glo'ster. 



Nov. 25-Chepsto\r. 

 Nov. 26— Framlingham. 



Rayleijrh. 



Me of Thanet. 



The present is the season during which most of 

 , our Farmers' Club A nnual Reports are published 



When they are well compiled, few publications are 



more useful. The hard-earned, and often dear- 

 bought experience of practical men is well worth 



attention and study; the resolutions of Farmers' 



Clubs on the various topics of Agricultural interest 



which have been discussed by them during the year 



certainly deserve publication at the end of it. 

 It should, however, be remembered by those who 



have the charge of these compilations, that opinions 



on points of farm-management, however fairly de- 



ducible from well-established facts, are rarely of ex- 

 tensive accuracy. This will appear to any one in 



the habit of attending Farmers' Club Meetings, from 



the acknowledged agricultural skill and success of 



many who differ widely in their views on some of 



the simplest matters connected with their business. 



The same effect will not follow the operation of the 

 same cause, unless it act under similar circumstances; 

 and the causes which the farmer puts in action are 

 influenced so much by soil and climate, both of which 

 are notoriously variable in this country, that the 

 great variety of opinion to be met with on the prac- 

 tical details of farming is not to be wondered at. All 

 wis, we say, should be considered by those who un- 

 dertake the preparation of these Annual Reports, 

 because it appears to indicate a method of greatly 

 increasing their value. 



In another column of this day's Paper, we have 

 referred to the necessity of combining with accounts 

 of agricultural practice, statements of the circum- 

 stances under which it occurs— the propriety of so 

 doing is indeed sufficiently obvious from what has 

 been already said— and the suggestion applies with 

 no less suitableness to the publication of opinions as 

 expressed in the resolutions of Farmers' Clubs- 

 opinions of which agricultural practice is just the 

 embodiment. In reading a Report of a Farmers' 

 Uub, prefixed to which there was such a statement 

 —one descriptive of the climate, soil, and general 

 agricultural character of the district to which it re- 

 ferred— any person would be able to judge of the 

 applicability to his own case of the opinions therein 

 expressed ; and he would hazard no loss by attempts 

 to act upon them, under adverse circumstances. 



doubtless the primary object of Farmers' Clubs is, 

 pith each, the agricultural improvement of its own 

 ocahty ; and this, in the present form of their Annual 



deports, is all they are calculated to effect. Their D - - ,™ a ^ _ MWJ ^vuicu. «„«« in 



1 resent isolation is a necessary consequence of unex- youth for nothing but incorrigible mischief, he at last 



Plained M4R> — ^~. ~r — :..: i:A __,:,. grows into a position of subordinate service, is made to 



fetch and carry, and there it ends. But the Goddess of 

 Wisdom and Science, the offspring of a higher and nobler 

 species of generation, bursts at once into perfect life, 

 perfect form, and perfect caparison. Art, ever childish 

 and immature, passes on the same from century to cen- 

 tury, scarcely improving, or caring to be improved. To 



ANOMALIES OF AGRICULTURE.— CHAP. II. 



(.Continued from page 738.) 



That he who will have most dealings, and be brought 

 most into contact with Nature, should of all men be 

 taught most about her, would seem an axiom ; and he 

 who is not ambitious of the character of "a powerful 

 demonstrator of undisputed facts," might be well content 

 to leave it as it stands, and not waste- his own or his 

 readers' time by enforcing or attempting to illustrate 

 what seems self-evident. But in this motley crowd of 

 life we daily find that what is Truism to one man is Para- 

 dox to another. And though the generality of our 

 readers might at once admit the proposition, the fact is, 

 that those whom we are most anxious to reach, and who 

 are, if they only knew it, the most deeplv interested in 

 the matter, are not readers at all; and we are thus 

 placed in the same category with the sign-post which in 

 giving minute "directions for passing th? ford" con- 

 cluded with an " N.B.— Them as can't read had better 

 go round by the bridge." Here is our difficulty; here 

 is the leading and glaring "anomaly" indeed, of the 

 "most ancient of the arts;" that the artists— seven 

 tenths of them— do not read at all ; and do not only 

 believe, negatively, that no reading in the world could 

 teach them one iota about their trade which they do not 

 know already ; but do also hold, positively, that there is 

 some latent, poisonous, and pernicious quality about 

 books, in its nature detrimental to the character of a 

 "practical farmer." Nobody that has ever studied the 

 phenomena of mere practical knowledge can wonder 

 much at this. It is a fact universal and notorious in all 

 the arts : the self-taught believes in no discoveries but 

 his own: you cannot make him understand that the 

 facta to be found in books are the concentrated and 

 digested records of the experience of other men— as. 

 clever, as practical, as knowing as himself. The mere 

 fact of its being a book — printed in harmless words in- 

 stead of being deep-engraved in the damage to his pocket 

 of failures and errors that he might have been warned 

 against by the most ordinary instruction— is enough to 

 make Mm turn an ear deaf as the deaf adder. He 

 has heard his father or his grandfather say that 

 book-farming don't do ,- he has never learnt how 

 to team ; and want of early exercise leaves the 

 mental muscles unused and rigid. He does not under- 

 stand that Education does for the mind pretty much what 

 Tanning does for leather ; it renders it tractable and sus- 

 ceptible of impressions, prevents clumsiness and indu- 

 ration, prolongs and increases utility, and defers decay. 

 Therefore is theirs the heavier task, and the more man- 

 fully to be undertaken and zealously carried out, who 

 wouid fain see the science of Agriculture flourish in their 

 own generation, and shed its irresistible and ameliorating 

 influence upon cotemporary practice. The "gigantic 

 strides" that this art, in common with every other, has 

 already made, since Science has in some degree been al- 

 lowed to take the helm, M small as they may be, com- 

 pared with what might be done,"* afford ample earnest 

 to warm the hope, even of the sanguine. 



Few of the fables of Antiquity are more elegant in con- 

 ception, more true in philosophy, than that which repre- 

 sents Minerva to have sprung from the brain of Jupiter, 

 full-armed and full-grown. The Arts, it will be remem- 

 bered, were presided over by Mercury, as ordinarily be- 

 gotten a young caitiff as ever Fancy pictured. Noted in 



Plained differences of opinion— differences which 

 would be satisfactorily accounted for by the circum- 

 stantial appendices v\eare recommending. 



i ?'. t0 tne publication, for the benefit of second 

 * n « I third-rate cultivators, of what is found to be 

 Profitable practice in the best cultivated districts, it 

 would be the object of Farmers' Clubs to exhibit the 



tt ails of farm management to the scientific man. 

 ^"questionably Agriculture is capable of great im- 

 provement by the adaptation of it to scientific prin- 

 iples, which cannot be done by people ignorant of 

 rrning ; and it needs but little consideration to see 

 "*at these accounts of soil, climate, and other cir- 

 ^nistances affecting the practice of farmers, will 

 er the differences of opinion existing among 

 em instructive instead of puzzling, or perhaps dis- 

 h %}"S> as they might otherwise be. 

 notir . r remarks > which w e hope will receive the 



trodn* ECRETARIES 0F Farmers ' Clubs, are in- 

 uuctory to a request which we have now to make 



uurmg me ensuing year, and a renort of <li<MMi«einn« 7 ■ ,/ , " . ~ w ' , " j^»«»«b»» uciure mervoyai 

 during the past yll if to such ?nf r „ato, state! £X?2£££S%'u& taL"^. m "?*■*? 



m*nrs utpi-a *AAbA n f *u~ ~i; _i_ ... '., , recent discoveries ot Liemg, in the physiology of assimi- 



lation and nutrition, and the causes of animal heat, were 

 made matter of oral and applied information to the Agri- 

 culturist. Well do we remember the whispered excla- 

 mation of a knot of shrewd and intelligent farmers, just 

 behind us in the lecture-room, on hearing their own hard- 

 earned facts brought home to them, face to face, from a 

 source as new as it was undreamt of. A man, who on 

 awaking in the morning should find a Mushroom sprung up 

 on his floor, would not stare at it with more inexplicable 

 amazement than they did on the almost beardless Pro- 

 fessor who stood before them. The scene was worthy of 

 all commemoration. On the one hand were the stout 

 yeomen of England, fresh from the practical labours of 

 every description of soil. The pastures of Northampton 

 and Leicester, the chalky downs of Buckingham and 

 Kent, the new and the old red sandstone of Warwick- 

 shire and Hereford, the clays of Oxfordshire, and the 

 shaly hills of the Gloucestershire Cots wold, and a 

 dozen other different soils had there each their sturdy- 

 representative. On the other hand, supported and sur- 

 rounded by a band of Nature's own, as well as of 

 Society's Aristocracy, stood the young and learned 

 chemist — the student of a master-science — modestly 

 conscious of the possession of knowledge which re- 

 quired but enunciation to be valued, application to 

 be proved. « What in the wide world can he tell 

 us about fatting beasts ?" was the unfeigned expres- 

 sion of many an incredulous face, the burthen of 

 many a side-whisper. "It would be presumptuous," 

 said the lecturer, " in any scientific man, however exalted 

 his rank in science, to endeavour to instruct an assem- 

 blage such as this, or to recommend alteration- in the 

 practice of an art, which he has learnt in the closet nnd 

 not in the field. But it may be permitted, even to the 

 most humble cultivator of science, to examine the practice 

 which you yourselves have perfected, and to point out 

 the laws of nature upon which that practice depends." 

 And as the youthful philosopher proceeded to lay bare, 

 in the clearest and most intelligible language, the recent 

 discoveries in physiology, which he had himself the proud 

 task of translating into our own language, the look of 

 distrust and the smile of incredulity vanished : the vital 

 and obvious interest of the subject at once arrested every 

 eye and every tongue. If there was a heart there— 

 and many there were— that beat with enthusiasm in the 

 cause of Science, that was indeed a moment of pure and 

 disinterested gratification. From sources as unexpected 

 as they were beyond suspicion for genuinely scientific 

 fidelity, he announced and explained their own most 

 treasured maxims of economical and successful "feeding/' 

 deduced and eliminated as the natural and necessary 

 results of ascertained chemical causes. True it was, that 

 many of the important results there advertised, were well 

 known to many present as matter of the most advanced 

 and skilful practice of the farmyard. But why was it 

 that the more conscious they were of the practical truth 

 of his deductions, the more the hearers were riveted, 

 and the lecturer applauded ? Because he showed them, 

 with the fact which they did know, the why and the 

 wherefore which they did not know : because he exhi- 

 bited as a patent and apparent result finable to reason 

 and to argument, that which was before wrapped in 

 the mystery of a mere arbitrary and isolated fact ; thereby 

 opening a vista of future application of the same prin- 

 ciples to analogous cases. Then first it was heard stated 

 as a sure and incontestable result of chemical principles 

 that warmth and shelter form a quantitative equivalent 

 for a certain and measurable portion of food : and why ? 

 for a reason as simple as it is beautiful : that the bodily 

 he.it of animals is the result of combustion — not meta- 

 phorical but actual, proceeding in the lungs without 

 intermission during life, and derived from its universal 

 cause, the union of oxygen with carbon ; the former ob- 

 tained from the atmosphere by the act of breathing ; the 

 latter supplied by the food through the organs of diges- 

 tion to the blood, and brought into contact with the 

 atmospheric air in the lungs ; that by a manifest conse- 

 quence, the greater the amount of food consumed as fuel 

 for the defence of the animal against external cold the 

 greater the resulting demand upon the provender, for 

 the purposes of nutrition. 



It would be beyond our purpose to advert even to a 

 tithe of the facts brought to light or explained, in the 

 course of those invaluable lectures ; but we cannot for- 



Science, one day is as a thousand years ; analytical truth I course of those lnvalua ble lectures ; but we cannot for- 

 revealiug itself before her JEgis, soon assumes the form j b * ar t0 P. omt to one more as instancing the applicability 

 and proportions of synthetical instruction. She collects ? f ^ x P erlraenta l Science, even to the most ordinary and 



: 1 A.' 1 __ .1 .. • .,. . ._ _ _. familial- eOAnnmw r\f flin f-— I T ._ 1 It «• .« 



proportions ot sy 

 inductively the scattered and detached fads furnished in 

 the rough by the practice and experience of thousands ; 

 she arranges and classifies them into a distinct and suc- 

 cessional series, following surely and deductively one 

 from the other ; and the chaotic mass assumes the clear 

 and symmetrical outline of a living creation of defined 

 truth, tangible by reason, and applicable by skill. 

 Be the subject-matter what it may, the result- is 

 in every human heart the same. Be it Navigation upon 

 the sea, or Agriculture upon the land ; be it the marsh al- 



* Baron Stanley's speech at the recent meeting of the Liver- 

 pool Agricultural Association. 



familiar economy of the farmyard. It had been frequently 

 observed, and is so to this day, by dairy-farmers, that 

 the cheese made from the milk of cattle •* soiled up" 

 turns out of inferior quality to that from the same ani- 

 mals when pastured ; whilst the milk, cream, and butter, 

 are greater in quantity, and equal in quality. Now 

 Chemistry explains to us that the production of casein 

 (the principle of cheese), is favoured, and indeed only 

 perfectly performed when the animal is in motion ; that 

 in fact its peculiar quality depends upon the exhaustion 



* On the Application of Physiology to the Breeding and 

 Rearing of Cattle. 



