88 Chronicles of Science. [Jan., 



topic. Among the most valuable and suggestive of the many 

 pamphlets which have been lately published on this subject is one 

 by Sh. James Caird, in which he insists upon the curative influence 

 of the lease of land for a term of years,, as that which by its proved 

 effect elsewhere is more likely than any other agency within our 

 reach to be serviceable in Ireland. The Lothians of Scotland, which 

 are the very model farm of British agriculture, were a century ago 

 as badly off as Ireland is at present. Since 1780, owing chiefly to 

 '•' enabling laws '" affecting the condition of strictly entailed estates, 

 the principle has become established, and the practice has become 

 universal there, that the duty of the landlord is to provide the farm 

 with buildings and other permanent improvements, and that the 

 duty of the tenant is to find the capital for cultivation under the secu- 

 rity of a lease for a fixed term of years. It is the influence of the 

 lease for a term of years that has been so wonderfully illustrated in 

 Scotland ; and Mr. Caird would accordingly confine all Government 

 assistance in land-improvement t: :-: tee and farms let on lease; and 

 in other ways he would urge on Irish landlords and Irish tenants 

 the acceptance of the lease, certain that it would create fertility 

 and ensure industry and promote contentment in Ireland, as it has 

 elsewhere. — A very striking picture of foreign agriculture has been 

 drawn by Mr. James Howard, ALP., in a lecture before the London 

 Farmers' Club. He has proved conclusively that the small-farm 

 m prevalent in many continental countries is greatly inferior 

 to our own plan of large holdings in almost every particular in 

 which they admit of comparison. In the actual maintenance of a 

 large population directly on the land we presume the former must 

 be acknowledged superior ; but the condition of both occupier and 

 owner under such circumstances is shown to be below that of 

 the English farm-labourer, while the labouring class in such a case 

 are in a miserable plight indeed. The small-farm system, and 

 still more the small-estate system, may possibly be defensible on 

 other grounds of state policy, but for its power to turn the soil to 

 the most useful account ; and for its power, or rather want of power, 

 to w stock n the country with an intelligent middle-class population, 

 it admits of no defence. ILr. Howard's excellent paper is indeed a 

 sufficiently convincing proof that English agriculture, in spite of 

 our higher northern latitude, is on the whole more productive than 

 that of such districts as he had visited ; and that taking even Bel- 

 gian farming with which to compare it, and with which it has 

 been occasionally contrasted to its discredit, the agriculture of our 

 country is on the whole superior, whether as to its produce of grain 

 and of meat or as to its maintenance of an intelligent and well- 

 conditioned tenantry. — The condition of the English agricultural 

 labourer has lately occupied the attention of several Farmers'" Clubs, 

 and it seems proved that the mere labourer in the country is on the 



