10 





THfi AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 



[Jan. 



own 



tale that it* was not in its own power to stand upon . a young and rising, and the drain taken from an old and 



.. . i i i ± _ ;1 j n 1 I .1.1! I ^x_i_ ?i M L_ M i ! __j » 



in a short time the difference must become." Alisons 

 Hist, of Europe ; vol. ib, p. 165 [1815 — 52]. 



By which we are given to understand, 

 that an overflowing and enterprising population is a 



drain 1 incident to states 



what all things and persons long cramped and ener- 

 vated by artificial aids and stimulants must find, 

 that self-reliance long suspended has not only sacri- 

 ficed strength, but lost time and stunted growth, 

 leaving the individual behindhand, and with much 

 ground to make up, in the race of social progress. 



Look at the question of Agricultural Statistics ; 

 look at the question of farming tenures ; take the 

 subject of farm-buildings, the feeding of stock, the 

 adulteration of manures, the collection, and the 

 application of town-sewage ; last not least, look at 

 that Augean Stable of accumulated rubbish that 

 blocks up and stifles the sale and purchase of land : 

 will anybody acquainted with the state of opinion 

 in the agricultural world upon these subjects, say 

 that they are in a condition, we will not say ot* fair 

 progress, but of respectable debate ? All these are 

 questions in different degrees vital to agriculture, 

 questions that, perhaps with one exception, might 

 have been discussed fifty years ago as well and use- 

 fully as now. Look at them, as you would into a 

 horse's mouth, and say how many years' discussion 

 do they show ? Compare them now, after forty 

 years of peace, with the cotemporaneous progress 

 made in the other industrial arts. While the sea was 



firt by steamvessels, the land by railroads, and both 

 y the electric telegraphs, what has been done for the 

 soil ? While even lawyers have been reforming and 

 simplifying their procedure in other respects, what 

 have the owners, or the occupiers of the soil obtained 

 from them, or attempted for themselves towards the 

 emancipation of their article from a thraldom which 

 in proportion as makes it unfitted for the market, 

 reduces by so much its market value. 



Nothing but the magnitude of the scale, or to 

 use a phrase of more common coinace. ' the 

 importance of the 



public eye to the anomalies that oppress the Com- 

 merce of the Soil. Let any man of business expert 

 in the transfer of any other description of ' stock ' 

 that the world contains — that man acquires employs 

 or improves to the behoof or service of his 

 brother man, by the application of labour capital, 

 or both, — examine the incidents attendant on 

 the sale, or the hiring, of a hundred acres of 

 land ; let him study the title, and the costs, of the 

 * purchaser ' in the one case, or the tenure taken by 

 the ' tenant ' in the other ; let him simply draw for 

 himself the conclusion which would occur to one 

 regarding the transactions from a purely mercantile 

 point of view : let him then look at the distribu- 

 tion of land in ownership in this country, on the 

 one hand, and the average condition of land r* ted 

 on the other : and in aid of his conclusion let us 

 suppose him, in addition to his mercantile experience 

 possessed of the skill of the lawyer without his 

 habituated tolerance of fiction, the practical knowledge 

 of the farmer without his devotion to routine. We 

 believe the conclusion he would be driven to would 

 be that the subject of the economy of the soil lingers 

 in a state of serni-feudal infancy ; that the marks 

 remain upon it of some latent cause long operating 

 to check the progress of material civilisation, in this 

 regard, and to give an exceptional character to the 

 dealings between man and man in all that relates to 

 The Soil. 



Let us, however, look at this question by the 



have specified in detail the girth and length of~onlv 

 stationary state, it may easily be foreseen how important those animals whose carcase weights w,e have sin/* 



been able to obtain : 



1st, 



sort ot senile dysentery, a 

 that are grown old, aud so strangely tortured by the 

 complicated maladies of age, as to be overflowing, 

 declining, and stationary, all at once : 2ndly, that 

 all the corn a shipped from the harbours of Russia" 

 is Russian corn ; it being but too well known that 

 jealousy of the enormous- increase (more than 

 doubling, year upon year,) of the corn of Moldavia 

 and Wallachia shipped at the principal R 



more common coinage, 

 interest ' blinds or dulls the 



port of Odessa, \vith a corresponding decline of 

 Russian trade, was not the least among the collateral 

 motives which led to a certain c material guarantee' 

 — the invasion and occupation of those provinces by 

 the troops of the Czar, — the infamous first act of the 

 disastrous war in which we are involved, 3rdly, ! 

 we are to believe, upon the instance of two or three j 

 wretched harvests in succession, in England, and the 

 wholesoftie. cessation of a forced and unnatural 

 export from Ireland of a grain-crop unadapted 

 to her soil and climate, (with raritv presenting 

 the specimen of a perfect ear of Wheat,) — that 

 il the production of cereal crops in the British 

 Islands has declined four million quarters ! " 



But, if it had ? If, that is to say, one thirty- 

 seventh of the land, in England alone (to leave out 

 Scotland and Ireland), once under Wheat, were now 

 under some other crop — what then ] If the writer 

 could only have proceeded to show that one single 

 acre was consigned to idleness, returned to normal 

 rabbit-warren, gorse-bed, thicket, or morass, — that it 

 was not in fact better employed — yes better — in 

 virtue of this very importation of ' Russian' corn, 

 the argument would have been followed out and 

 had meaning. The answer to it, had it really any 

 truth in fact, were this, that what everybody saw 

 and remarked of every ill-managed farm he passed, 

 what each owner felt and each tenant as well as 

 agent knew upon each individual estate and farm, 

 was equally true, of course, of the aggregate — viz., 

 that the very thing wanted for the perfectionising of 

 British agriculture was less grain-crop and more 



less corn and more meat, less hand-to- 



and the two or three 

 years of cotemporaneous low price and low produce 

 (traceable to the most obvious temporary causes), 

 while doubtless a season of great agricultural depres- 

 sion, had the 'jewel' of adversity 'in its head,' 

 and went no small way to effect what c agricultural 

 societies,' and c farmers' clubs/ and ' improving 



and ' active agents,' and • example 



. but the averages given under 

 each class are those of the whole of the animals 

 shown in each, — so that these averages may serve as 

 a record of the actual measurements of all the fat 

 stock exhibited at these two shows. They will serve 

 as records with which to compare the shows of future 

 years. And while single instances of extraordinary 

 weight are interesting as proofs of the early maturity 

 to which, under the most favourable circumstances 

 cattle have attained, these general results will 

 indicate with greater certainty the progress which 

 is being generally made. 



The table is interesting, too, as indicating the 



of certaintv with which measurement 



In 



degree of certainty 

 furnishes the 



light 



great 

 cultural 



of a comparison 

 historian of 



recently instituted by 



between the 



a 



day 



Great 



Britain 



Russia. 



^our 



systems in 

 After alluding to the annual 

 emigration of nearly 330,000 

 British Islands, and asserting 



out of 



digious drains 



s 



printing 



a year 



that "such 

 the 



agn- 

 and in 

 stream of 

 from the 



passu »is 



necessities of civilisation cannot go on for 



length of time without seriously 



weakenin 



pro- 



and 



any 

 the 



strength and lessening the population/' (as if an 

 ovei flowing and a declining population could be a 

 permanently co-existing condition) ; he proceeds as 

 follows : — 



* To this it must be added that the introduction of 

 the free-trade system into Great Britain has already 

 given a very great impulse to agricultural industry in 

 Russia, where it is advancing as raj ily us it is d Uwing 

 in the Britizk I ds. As this change has arisen from 

 the necessary effect of the weahh, civilisation, and 

 am xlyc of the British Empire, so there is no 

 chance of its oadergmn- y alter ion, and it must 

 come every day to eviu. a more powerful influence on 

 the relative strength and fortuuea of the two empires. 

 Even before the free-trade system had been two yearn 

 established in Great Britain, it had, despite the "rude 

 system of agriculture there prevalent, nearly doubled 

 die exportation of grain from the harbours of llussi 

 and tripled its value, while it has caused the production 

 of cereal crops in the British Isiai a to decline 4 000 000 

 quarters. The effect of such a continued and inn wing 

 augmentation on the one side, and d ine on the < ier 

 cannot fail ere Ion? to exergue & i^waJ»i :..a.. ' 



of estimating weight, in an 

 ordinary cattle guage (Carey's for instance), having 

 set it to the ascertained girth and weight of the 

 animal before you, the weight is read off at but 

 one place ; and though the same measurements 

 might in different animals result in different weights 

 of beef, according to the breed and age and sex and 

 degree of fatness of the stock, nothing whatever is 

 left to the judgment of the valuer in using such an 

 instrument as this — his instrument gives hut one 

 weight for all these various cases. 



In E wart's cattle gauge,* however, the indications 

 of the instrument are various, according to the 

 estimate which the valuer makes of the influence of 

 these several circumstances. He reads it differently 

 according to the breed and fatness of the animal 

 before him ; and with a lot of animals of even 



quality and one breed, 

 certaintv is attainable. 



a 



great 



degree of 



tional cases 

 table- 



green-crop, 



mouth farming and more stock 



owners, 



farms/ and all the other 



organs 

 'agricultural improvement,' had "laboured at with 

 but modest results for many years, namely to get 

 more beef and mutton out of the land trodden by 

 the most beef-and-mutton-eating people in the 

 world, and to employ British men, British horses, 

 and British implements upon that branch of farming 

 business which the nature of the climate especially 



favoured, and the habits of the people especially 

 required. 



Burke was wont to say that the unhappy conflict 

 between England and her once American Colonies 

 was begotten by a metaphor 

 state and the offspring' Something 

 conviction occurs to one on contemplating the figi 

 of Russian agriculture glori ed as that of "a young 

 and rising state " by contrast wi th th e " advan ce'd 

 years of the British empire." Defend us all from 

 murder, manslaughter, and metaphor ! If Moldavia 

 I Wallachia are Russian provinces, and the corn 



to wn there, Russian corn ; if serf-labour is better 

 than that of free men ; if farming that takes " six 

 cultivators to feed themselves and owe other member 

 of society " be in a fair way to oveitake that of a 

 country where H the labour of one man raises food 

 for seven " [see Alison's " History of Europe," II., 

 127.]— then indeed is "agriculture advancing in 

 Ru la as rapidly as it is declining in the British 

 Islands ; * and if, on the other hand, a branch of 

 British industry only just out of leading-strings, 



nd suffered to walk without the fostering care "of 



Parliament and the preventive arms of the'Custom- _.„. m 



house, and still employed upon a ' raw material ' crW-bred 



unemancipated from some of the costliest relics 



of < feudal tenure/ be citable as an arm of British 



enterprise and skill past the meridian of national 



treugth aud prog* and verging on decline, then 

 indeed ■' . •• - ....... 



very 

 Excepting a few excep- 

 by which an asterisk is placed in the 

 the actual weight of the animals measured is 

 very near indeed to the estimated weight ; an J we 

 have given in three columns the weights read off, as 

 u fat," and " very fat," and u extra fat n respeciively ; 

 and it will be seen that, on the whole, the cattle 

 were a "very fat" lot— those at Smithfield exceed- 

 ing those at Birmingham in this respect. The 

 general results given at the foot of the table prove, 

 we think, that for estimating the value of a number 

 of fat cattle, a little skill in measuring, and the 

 very slight skill needed to determine the degree of 

 fatness which the animals possess, will, with the use 

 of this instrument, lead to as safe a judgment of their 

 weight, and therefore of their value, as the longest 

 and most matured market experience ; the only 

 difference — though we admit its great importance — 

 being that the valuer in this way is not likely to 

 have so much confidence in his own ludtrment The 

 rule for measuring is to take the girth immediately 

 behind the shoulder, where it is least : and to take 

 the length as thje distance between two vertical 

 lines, one of which lies on the general outline of the 

 hind quarters, and the other cuts the shoulder blade 

 just in front of its highest point. 



As instances of extraordinarily early maturity 

 among the cattle shown at Baker Street .we may 

 refer to Nos. 36 and 38 among the Hereford oxen, 

 2 years and 11 months old, and weighing 1)1 J and 

 100 stones respectively ; and to 56j 60, 62, and 64 

 among the short-horn cattle, the same age as the 



vv _ x ^ Herefords, and varying in weight from 00 to 103 



that of the 'parent stones each — the latter being the weight of the Duke 

 ething of the same ', of Rutland's prize ox, purchased by Mr. Ferris, 



recognised 



of 



of Bath. 



Among the sheep we note the following instances 

 which have been furnished to iv — Lord Walstng- 



Hams pen of 32-month South Down wethers, 

 bought by Mr. Bannisti.r, of Threadneedle Street, 

 weighed 483 lbs., besides 60 lb«. of loose fat. The 

 pen shown by the Duke of Richmond, No. 195 

 three 20-month South Down wethers bred hy his 

 Grace — purchased by Mr. King, of Paddingtbn Street, 

 weighed 3.90 lbs., which for anim o purely bred is 

 astonishing. Indeed the South Down eed are 

 rapidly becoming in actual weight what relatively 

 to bulk they have long been, i.e., the first of English 

 breeds of 



Druce's pen of 21- 



lbs. a 



sheep. 



We may also refer to Mr. 

 month cross-bred wethers, 

 quarter, as another instance 



The 20-month South 



weighing 



4 



of 



turity. 



wethers shown bv Mr. Ovf.uman, 



very early ma- 

 Down and Leicester 



of 



that 



may the most unfavourable picture be true 

 the prejudice even of 



- - party-feeling can 



draw for Great Britain by the side of BttSsia, in a 

 comparison of "the relative strength and future 

 fortunes * of the two empires. 



Rayham, Norfolk, weighed 484 lbs., besides 50 lbs. 

 of loose fat ; and for extraordinary Weight Mr. 

 Clarke's 4 years and 8 months long-wo led ewe 

 may be instanced, weighing 64 11 a quarter. 



We add as an isolated fact that the only instance 

 in which we have been provided with the live as 

 well as carcase we it is in the case of the ox, 



In 



No. 128, at Baker Street, purchased by Mr. Taylor, 

 of Multon, which we -:ed 1104 1 i. alive, while ii 

 carcase weifi ed 771 lbs., or rather more than two* 



our next p; e will be found the measure- thirds of i liviag weight! 



the fortunes and relat ve siren U of the two empires • 



and when it is reco cted that die increase '"a ev- d \u\- a * fci t ; w j n • i" r 7 V" 



* uinv*io « <ju't am baker bireet and Birmingham last month. 



ments and weights of ru : of the cattle shown at 



We 





* Made by :>Ir. Tree, of Charlotte et, Blackfriara Road 



