

Dec. 22, 1855.1 



THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE 



843 







average crop. Alfred 8. Huston, Wenny Road, Chatteris, 



Dec. 1 8. 



Gloucester. — Wheat about 12| per cent, or one- 

 eighth below average, arising from the best deep lands 

 being much laid early in the season, and the produce 

 consequently light ; and the light land having lost plant 

 in consequence of the intense frost of last winter w.-»s 

 too thin in patches; also the ears not well filled, from the 

 wet weather when in blossom. The quality is, however, 

 much better than expected. Other kinds of corn about 

 average. /. F. Peacey, Winchcomb, Gloucestershire. 



Hertfordshire. — The Wheat on the light lands in 

 this district disappointed at harvest the hopes enter- 

 tained by the growers throughout the spring ; there is 

 less than an average yield. But on the heavy lands the 

 cropba6 proved abundant and good. Of iiarley the 

 yield is of an average quantity, but rather under an 

 average quality. Of Oats I think the crop is satisfac- 

 tory. 1 believe in this respect, as usually happens, that 

 we have more to be thankful for than we care to admit. 

 Charles F Humbert, Watford. 



Kent. — I grow scarcely any other grain but Wheat, 

 as you are awarej and cannot give you very positive 

 information of my yield, except as regards the rakings, 

 which may be a tolerably accurate criterion for the 

 sheaf corn, as we term it. The rakings produced 1 1 

 quarters 2 bushels, being 6 gallons per acre, which 

 should have been 15 quarters, viz., 1 bushel per acre. 

 I have no doubt my produce will be from one- quarter 

 to one-fifth short of an usual average growth. M. Sand- 

 ford, Dover. 



Ha 



The Wheat is a fair average crop in the 



inclosed districts, but much of that grown on very dry 



soils and exposed situations turns out very badly, and 



full 6 bushels per acre under the average produce. 



Barley is everywhere a bulky crop, and over an average 



produce, but the quality very inferior; and a less portion 



of the crop fit for malting purposes I never recollect. 



Oats are a good crop, although rather light in sample, 



yet the produce considerably exceeds an average crop. 



Beans and Peas under an average produce, but the 



sample good. Joseph BlundeV, Bursledon, Southampton. 



Carlow.— The yield of our Wheat crops in the best 



Wheat growing districts of this county of the past 



harvest is fully one-third under an average crop; 



Barley about one-fourth and Oats over one-third, and on 



some of the best Oat-growing districts the yield is from 



one-third to one-half under an average crop. This applies 



to the neighbouring counties, generally speaking, through 



which my engagements take me. In making these 



statements I speak also the sentiments of the most 



intelligent rent-paying farmers I so frequently meet. 



We want correct agricultural statistics other than those 



Bupplied the Government by our police, whose reports, 



no matter how honestly intended, are looked upon by 



every sound-thinking impartial-minded man capable of 



judging of such matters as little short of " a mockery, 



a delusion, and a snare/' Edward Carroll, Clonegal. 



Co. Kilkenny. — Having two threshing machines 

 for hire 1 have had rather a good opportunity of 

 knowing the general yield of corn this year, and my 

 opinion is that Wheat is nearly one- fourth below 

 average. Barley, average in quantity, but very bad in 

 quality. Oats fully an average. Dawson Athelward, 

 New Ross. 



Home Correspondence. 



Agricultural Economy. — One advantage (and one has 

 need oi finding advantages) of a state of war, of a defi- 

 ciency of provision, is the necessary economy it forces 

 us to use, and the impulse it gives to us to exercise our 

 ingenuity in extending the means left to our use. When 

 We are in a state of abundance and superfluity we be- 

 come wasteful and neglectful even of the proper use of 

 what we use. Our abundance not only does us no good, 

 and even leads to a careless treatment of what we have, 

 but it leaves u-i unprepared to meet any future difficulty 

 in supply. This may only apply to a very great abund- 

 ance, but such abundance we have had, of it we have 

 wasted, and from it we suffer. Conceiving that 

 bread-stuffs would always remain at an equable 

 *ate, we have indulged all our ancient predilections 

 for an unmixed and unchangeable article, and now 

 when such scarcity arrives we seem at our wits 1 ends 

 to provide a remedy. For all of us to practise the 

 closest economy, in our individual case, to ease our- 

 selves of the great expense caused by present prices, is 

 not only the duty but also the advantage of all educated 

 and competent people; but combined with this economy 

 B^d exercise of contriving powers, we must still look 

 further, and endeavour to scan the future to determine 

 &e prospects of coming harvests, and the probable 

 Supplies of the necessities of existence. Can we really 

 beheve that future harvests will in our own country be 

 jjuch more productive than the present one has proved ? 

 Can we also l eiieve that foreign supplies will come in 

 30 abundantly hereafter as to keep down our home 

 Prices ? Or can we hope that superior cultivation will 

 Provide us at home with a sufficiency to balance the 

 doubtful foreign supplies? Of the first point, I think 

 We can hardly look torward to a greater yield on an 

 average than we have lately received ; also, that w.th 

 *«te Competition which seems likely to occur between 

 ourselves and other countries, that itee V\ heat fields ol 

 America and the East will not be so exclusively our 

 0w n as th-y have been. On the whole, then the 



pteatest pro*p< ct of tuture supply seems to be derived 



**oni superior cultivation at home, yielding larger 



turns. Any one looking over the average yield of 



counties of corn per acre and comparing this with the 

 returns made in cases of unusual care and cultivation, 

 apart from the instances of soil, must conclude that a 

 greater activity and perfection in the farming interest 

 will yield the deficiency we have. It seems pretty clear 

 that by moderate manuring and some little extra labour 

 iu cultivation we may increase our yield by 25 per cent., 

 and a' tain at the same time a much more profitable 

 rotation of crops. The first of these points attained, we 

 are at once rendered independent of foreign supplies of 

 grain, and the second as a reserve gives us a well 

 grounded belief in its possibility. The only point to he 

 attended to to attain this end is to put on the land as 

 much of solid and mineral products as you remove. 

 Soda, potash, lime, and nitrogen laid on in ascertained 

 proportions will only leave to nature to turn them into 

 food, and by keeping our accounts with our fields 

 honestly, as a balance at our banker's, never drawing 

 more than we pay in, we may continue on living even 

 extravagantly, without fear of stoppage and difficulty. 

 But we- must make use of our national manures; we 

 must turn to account the thousands of tons of general 

 sewage which our towns and cities produce. Over and 

 over again has this point !>• n alluded to, but how to 

 do so has ever been a stumbling block. Some talk of 

 pumping it up to stations at a high level and thence dis- 

 tributing it to the surrounding country ; then again it 

 is proposed to consolidate the results of sewage, and to 

 dispose of it in a soluble form to farmers everywhere : 

 this latter seems by far the most promising plan, to 

 carry our sewage down the river to some convenient 

 spot and there, by a series of filters, to extract the solid 

 matter, and by again treating this with the necessary 

 adjuncts, as salt and gypsum, to preserve the nutritive 

 properties, to consolidate it, and render it available for 

 transportation to any part. The calculations on which 

 the success of such a scheme depend seem much more 

 likely to be realised by this than by any other. The 

 nitrogen of one man's excrement in a year is stated to 

 be about 1 St., capable of producing 800 lbs. of Wheat ; 

 the value of such manure must certainly be equal to 5s.; 

 t iking 2,500,000 as the population, 600,000/. appears 

 as the product. This of course looks perfectly 

 astounding, but we must recollect the immense 

 value of the food that annually enters the metro- 

 polis, and remembering also that farmers well 

 know that cattle fed on a field, and growing and in- 

 creasing in weight on that field, yet render the soil 

 more fruitful than if they had not been there, we may 

 reasonably allow that the same would in a commercial 

 sense prevail in a considerably less degree in the value I 

 returned for the manure restored to the fields, which 

 even at this high estimate would not amount to barely 

 a tenth of the value of the food consumed. Do we 

 flinch then from the great expense and difficulty con- 

 nected with the filtering of the water and collection of 

 the solid matters ? Of course it will be a very dirty 

 job, a very nasty one, and must be done ou a prodigious 

 scale. Then, again, the solid state is by far the most 

 useful — it is portable, it can be removed by ships or 

 railways to any part of the country, it can be used 

 when and where we like, and only requires the farmer 

 to collect the water in suitable tanks in his fields, then 

 to add his manure, and by a hose distribute it over or 

 under his acres. Every prudent farmer who appre- 

 ciates the value of irrigation would run the drainage 

 of his individual fields into their own tanks, storing it 

 there for days of drought, to be applied either pure or 

 by admixture with manure. When the sewage scheme 

 is put into execution, we may expect the full 

 benefit of prolific production 

 individual cased as at present 

 produce a sufficiency for our 

 may even become exporters, 

 from monetary crises caused 

 which generally results lrom 



corn. 



its proper rank, and provided all classes with a suffi- 

 ciency of necessaries. In fact the simple truth, the 

 simple necessity, seems to be — sewage — plenty of sew- 

 age — turned to account. //. C. Lloyd, Kingston-on- 

 Thames, 



A new form of Agincultural Statistics.— At the Cattle 



Show of last year the descr ption of food upon which the 

 individual animals had been fed was stated on the same 

 card which announced their breeder, and exhibitor, as 

 also their ages, but this year this piece of information 

 appears to have been left out. The mere fact of an ani- 

 mal's having been fed on Linseed and Turnips is not in 

 itself particularly interesting, as merely stated in that loose 

 form there is not very much to be generalised from it ; 

 but if the exhibitor coald have added to this an account 

 of what was given daily of each kind of food, and could 

 also state the total weight produced by a given 

 quantity of food, we should be at once the gainers 

 in knowing the economical fattening of the different 

 breeds. Such an account has been kept by indi- 

 vidual farmers in their experiments on the relation 

 of breeds ; and it has produced most valuable results. 

 Also in an economical point of view it would be a great 

 encouragement to know that highly bred, highly fed 

 animals, seemingly fed only to produce the greatest 

 perfection totally apart from expense, were yet ec »n-i- 

 mically fed, and realised a iair price for their expens s 

 For without tins the cattle show loses half iis advantage. 

 It may be admirable for improving the breed an 

 helping the perfection of parts, but if it merely produce 

 animals of a perfection of symmetry and substance 

 without doing so m an economical sense, it proves very 

 useless to the great number of farmers who can only 



produce that which pays, and who must leave t-xciu 

 sively to the rich and noble the prize fattening of 

 animals. Should this statement be made, and with the 

 careful, scientific habits of the day it might easily be 

 obtained, the substantial advantages of breed and 

 food will receive a great advance, and would tell upon 

 the popular mind much more strikingly than the un- 

 known greatness of the present system. Given the cost 

 price, and then every one, farmer or not, cau more or 

 less judge of the advantages of feed and breed. Herbert 

 C. Lloud, Khigston-on'Thamet. 



£octctteg. 



up to the standard of 

 We may then easily 

 own consumption, and 

 We shall then be free 

 by deficiency of gold, 

 a demand for foreign 

 We shall then have advanced agriculture to 



ROYAL AGRICULTURAL OF ENGLAND. 



Special Council, Dec. 12.— Lord Portman, President, 



in the chair. 



Mr. Pusey.— On the 7th November, on the motion of 

 Lord Tort man, seconded by Colonel Challoner and Mr. 

 Raymond Barker, the following resolution having been 

 carried unanimously : 



" That a letter be written to the family of the late Philip Posey, 

 Esq., ex p r es s i ng the gratitude of the Royal Agricultural Society 

 f England tor his hi vices as Chairman of the Journal Com- 

 mit ee, and their pxeat sorrow for his early death. That it be 

 engrossed on vellum, and signed by the President, with the seal 

 of the Society attached." 



Lord Portman reported, at this meeting, that in pur- 

 Buartce of that resolution he had addressed the following 

 letter to the family of the late Mr. Pusey : 



• The Council of ths Royal ARricultural Society of England 

 has directed me, as the President, to assure the family of the 

 late Ph. Pusey, Esq., that the Society deeply and unfeig-nedly 

 unte with them in tnilr prief for the irreparable loss which they 

 hare sustained in the early and lamented death of their beloved 

 father. In this bereavement the Council and the Society parti 



< Lpate with the surviving and sorrowing raembersof Mr. Pusey'* 

 family; for while the recollection of parental stfection and do- 

 mestic virtue will lonj* endear his memory to all the members of 

 is familv. his distinguished position when twice elected Pre- 

 dent of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, and his un- 

 ceasing labours for 17 years as Chairman of the Journal Com- 

 mittee, will long be cherished by his surviving colleagues, and 

 be rememnered with gratitude and respect by every membe 

 of this Society. (Signed) Portmak, President:' 



To which he had received the following reply ; 



" London, Dec. 12. 



" My Lord,— The family of the late Mr. Pusey have requested' 

 me, as one of the executors under his will, to expre*s to your 

 Lofdship and the Council of the Royal Agricultural Society of 

 England their graceful sense of the sympathy shown to them in 

 their bereavement. 



" They will not fail to appreciate duly such a common icatior 

 from the Society, remembering bow their father cherished the 

 memory of Earl Spencer, its first President, and of others with 

 whom he had the honour to be associated in its foundation. 



w Of Mr. Pusey himself, it will long be remembered that to 

 practical habits of business he joined deep philosophical thought, 

 accurate scholarship, and genial appreciation of the arts and 

 letters of modern as well as ancient times—that he applied e 

 powerful intellect, with a keen forecast of the want- of his 

 country, to develop the resourc of British farming, and that, by 

 a rare union of endowments, he did much to render science 

 practical, and to win for agriculture a worthy place among the 

 intellectual pursuits of the present day. 



•'How much labour he underwent, what forbearance and discri- 

 mination he exercised, how considerate he was of the feelings of 

 others, how modest in the expression of his own, may never be 

 known except to his personal friends; but some of the results of 

 his unceasing exertions during many of the best years of his li'e 

 are to be found in the Journal (to which the Council have 

 referred by their resolution) ; and by that Journal at least his 

 name will be permanently and honourably connected with the 

 Society from the date of its commencement. 



u This may not be the occasion on which to speak of his exer- 

 tions for the labouring poor, or of his private virtues, but I trust 

 that I shall be pardoned for having said thus much in response 

 to the recognition of Mr. Pusey's rvices by the important public 

 body over which your lordship presides. 



* I have onlv further to request that you will be pleased to con- 

 vey to the Council the respectful acknowledgments of Mr. 

 Pusey's friends, and that you will accept personally their sincere 

 Thanks for the kind terms in which your letter to the family is 

 expressed.— I have the honour to be. my lord, your lordship's 

 faithful servant, Thomas Dyke Acland, Jun." 



44 The Right Hon. Lord Portman." 



On the motion of Mr. Jonas, seconded by Mr. 

 Fisher Hobbs, it was resolved that the foregoing 

 letters be entered in the proceedings of the day, and be 

 printed in the forthcoming number of the Journal, 



Mr. Raymon A Barker having 

 submitted the report of the Guano Substitute Commit- 

 tee, on a formal claim made for the Society's 1000?. 

 prize, the Council adopted the opinion of the Committee 

 that proposed substitute was not entitled to the prize 



offered. 



Trial of Implements.— Colonel Challoner, chairman 

 of the Implement Committee, having read to the Council 

 tlie su-gestions of the implement makers, who had met 

 that committee in conference two days previously, it was 

 carried on the motion of Mr. Thompson, seconded by 

 Colonel Challoner, "That at future country meetings 

 the competitive trials of implements shall be c »nfined to 

 certain specified classes of implements, and that it be re- 

 ferred to the Implement Committee to make such a classi- 

 fication as shall ensure the trial of every description of 

 agricultural implement once in three years ;" and on 

 the motion of Mr. Brandeth, seconded by Mr. Slaney* 

 " That after the word • Implement ' in the previous reso 

 lution, the words be added * for which alone in each 

 year prizes shall be offered.'" The Implement prize 

 sheet was accordingly referred to the Implement Com 

 mtttee to report to the Council in February what prizes 

 they would recommend to be offered at the Chelmsford 

 Meeting. 



Steam-Cultivator. 



Guano Substitute. 



-It was carried, on the motion o 



Mr. Evelyn Denison, M.P., seconded by Mr. Hamond : 

 " That the sum of 500L be offered by the Society for 

 the best steam cultivator that shall be an economical 



