Quarterly Journal of Agriculture. 173 



moral character, who shall have creditably brought up the largest family^ 

 without parochial relief, 3 guineas, to William Wragg, aged 58, who has 

 worked 35 years with the Rev. Joseph Ashbridge, of Heath, and brought up 

 10 children. Also, one guinea and a half to Christopher Marsden, aged 63, 

 who has brought up 8 children, and worked 33 years with Mr. Wild, of 

 Birchill." 



The Manchester and the Bedford Agricultural Societies have, in our opi- 

 nion, done better in awarding premiums for " The best cultivated farms." 



On Improving Cultivation, by Thomas Myers, LL. D. — Dr. Myers is the 

 Director of an institution at Dartford Hill, Blackheath, where the sons of 

 gentlemen may pursue a regular course of studies in the subjects most es- 

 sential to the landed interest. We should like to see in the British Farmer's 

 Magazine, even if it should extend through several volumes, a series of pa- 

 pers by Dr. Myers, detailing his plan, and giving the whole course in an 

 abridged form, or even without any abi'idgement. Such a series of papers 

 would add much to the interest of the magazine, and would show the value 

 to the sons of farmers, of scientific knowledge, and to the sons of country 

 gentlemen, of such an institution as that of Dr. Myers. 



The Qiuarterly Journal of Agriculture ; and the Prize Essays and Transac- 

 tions of the Highland Society of Scotland. Edinburgh. In 8vo Numbers, 

 quarterly. 5s. 6d. Nos. I, II. III. and IV. 



The farmers of Scotland, though unquestionably the first in the world, 

 have hitherto been more remarkable for practical skill than for scientific 

 knowledge. The papers in the Farmer's Magazine, which commenced with 

 the current century, and terminated in 1825, with the 26th volume, attest 

 the truth of this assertion. The principles of political economy were evi- 

 dently much better understood by many of the writers in the magazine al- 

 luded to, than those of natural history, animal or vegetable physiology, or 

 chemistry. The Quarterly Journal of Agriculture aims at a more scientific 

 character, and will only succeed by maintaining this character ; not only 

 because the former magazine was felt to be rather unvaried in its subjects, 

 but because a new class of readers has arisen, moulded in some degree by 

 the pi'ogress of the age. The contents of the four numbers of this new 

 agricultural journal, exhibit a judicious assortment of scientific papers on the 

 sciences on which agriculture is founded, blended with others of a practical 

 nature on various departments of rural improvement, and we shall now look 

 them over, and give the essence of what we think of most value to gar- 

 deners. 



The editor, Mr. Macvicar, has commenced a series of papers on Natural 

 Science as applied to Agriculture, which sufficiently prove him to be a scien- 

 tific man. The grown up market-going farmer, of 50 harvests, will pay little 

 attention to these papers ; but they will be read by his sons, and even by 

 his daughters ; and in both they will create and nourish a taste for observ- 

 ation, and for entering into the minutiae of nature's processes, on which all 

 the more grand and obvious operations of agriculture depend. Agriculture, 

 Mr. Macvicar observes, is no less a subject for theory than navigation or 

 mechanics ; astronomy supplies the principles of the former, and mathema- 

 tics of the latter. " The science of agriculture, compared with that of most 

 other arts, is still very far behind. But this is scarcely to be wondered at, 

 when we reflect that the slowness of its processes renders observation more 

 difficult J that chemistry, on which it partly depends, is not of many years' 

 standing; and our knowledge of the vegetable,and even the animal, economy 

 only in its infancy." He begins his series of papers with a general view 

 of the vegetable economy, both " because of its primary importance, and 

 because it presupposes a knowledge of the other branches of natural science 

 less, perhaps, than any other which will fall afterwards to be discussed." 

 The seed, the flower and fruit, the structure of a plant, the root, and the 



