Retrospective Criticism, 705 



tially ripe, are intermediate between these two. If a field of rye or any other 

 grain is harvested, and another ploughed in green, and both sowed with any 

 other crop, that crop will grow for a considerable time much better after 

 the former than the latter. I do not yet see the philosophy of this. Is 

 the soil more exhausted whilst the rye is yet green (always admitting that 

 it returns more than it takes, after it decays when ploughed in), than after it 

 is ripe and all the roots gone ? My observation v/ould lead me to suppose 

 that it is. All this puzzles me. When a crop of grain is ploughed in 

 green, the land turns up almost like an old sod, and full of roots : so 

 much so that we can scarcely cover the Indian corn when planting (sow- 

 ing) unless the hoes are very sharp. Indian corn is universally grown in 

 this country, and so ought horsebeans to be in England in all soils that 

 will grow them. The former matchless crop you cannot grow unless you 

 can i-aise the temperature at midnight from 70° to 84". I have known it 

 83°, and felt it. Meal and turnips are much superior for fattening cattle 

 to either alone. This practice, with green crops ploughed in, as far as the 

 climate will permit, would revolutionise the face of the whole of this 

 country. 



Is all this nonsense and quackery, or is it a bombshell cast into the 

 established system and opinions ? My views, I think, show the very im- 

 poverished condition of the soil whilst clover is living, and its great fertility 

 when decayed. Wheat fails after clover in Scotland and the north of 

 England, and is by far the best after it in this country. Difference of 

 temperature will account for this. For the " something is removed ; " read 

 " the clover roots being decayed makes the wheat successful." * There is 

 nothing removed but the poverty which is unfavourable to wheat. These 

 somethings, rootings, and tirings are poor guides and explanations. 



There is much to be learned and done yet in England, as well as else- 

 where, and it needs no ghost to tell it, in this most difficult and complex, 

 most noble and godlike, of all the arts and sciences. The future condition 

 of hot climates is a darling dream of mine. All they have yet done (with 

 the exception of this country), and how transcendent in some instances ! 

 was previous to the art of printing, or when it was of little value. The day 

 is not far off (and close at hand, if free trade were established, so much 

 talked of every where and practised nowhere, or likely to be so soon ; 

 northern countries had better keep trade as it is as long as they can) when 

 hot climates will as far exceed cold ones (the minerals alone of the United 

 States would make a respectable island) in productiveness and variety of 

 food, comforts, luxuries, &c., and arts, sciences, and refinements, personal 

 size, strength, and beauty of man and beast, as latitude 52° now exceeds in 

 all these latitude 60°, and the face of nature will be as much more intensely 

 green too. But all this is as heterodox, visionary, and absurd here now, 

 and in " the fast anchored isle," as republicanism was sixty years ago 

 every where. 



In less than another century poor despised and neglected agriculture 

 and its professors will be at the top of the ladder ; " they who are first 

 shall be last, and they who are last shall be first," if I read the glorious 

 and cheering signs of the times rightly. We are thought little of here, I 

 assure you. What stronger proof of this is required than the fact, that our 

 farmers themselves think meanly of the first and most important of all 

 professions ? Please to put this on record from a man who has seen, thought, 

 and read much, and who does not herd much with the world as it now is. 



When a man advances any thing new and startling, perhaps his readers 

 have a right to know something of his pretensions. I give you some of 

 mine : — I was a pupil of the late excellent Mi-. Runciman of Woburn, and 



* See Sinclair's Husbandry of Scotland, vol. i. p. 325—327, 3d edit. 

 Vol. VII. — No. 35. z z 



