1867.] Agriculture. 217 



higher money wages. Add to these domestic advantages offered 

 to married labourers a system of piecework payments, by which 

 young men shall he remunerated according to the actual value of 

 their services, and it is probable that the ranks of the agricultural 

 labourer may not be so rapidly thinned as, to the great incon- 

 veirienee and difficulty of the farmer, of late years, they have been. 

 The increased supply of animal food — meat and milk — which was 

 the next topic referred to in Mr. Thompson's address, is rapidly 

 becoming a more important branch of English agriculture. Cattle 

 food is being grown in larger quantity, not by the laying down of 

 ploughed lands to permanent pasture so much as by the better 

 cultivation of green crops on arable farms. Eotations of crops are 

 altered to suit the demands for an increased live-stock. Two green 

 crops are cultivated in succession, and clovers and grasses, taken in 

 alternate husbandry, are kept down more years than one ; and the 

 smaller portion of each farm which may thus sometimes be devoted 

 to corn-growing, yields, nevertheless, an increased quantity of grain, 

 owing to the fertilizing effect of the larger flock of sheep or herd of 

 cattle which is thus maintained. 



An instructive paper "On the Application of Manures" was read 

 by Dr. Yoelcker before the London Farmers' Club in December, in 

 which he argued for the immediate application of farmyard clung to 

 the land, not on the ground that loss is incurred during fermentation 

 in the dungheap, but because there is considerable loss of soluble 

 substances during that process by the exposure of the dungheap to 

 rain. The unprofitableness of the old-fashioned dungheap is alleged 

 to be owing, not so much to evaporation, as to the washing effect of 

 rains. There is as much actually of ammonia in the reduced mass 

 of the rotten heap, as there was "potentially," to use Dr. Ure's 

 phrase, in the original bulk of the fresh manure there hauled 

 together. The recommendation to put the manure at once upon 

 the land, even though it be autumn, and for a spring crop, is 

 perhaps hardly safe on very light land, where the soil has less 

 ability to retain the products of its slow decomposition. The 

 remedy for the immense loss of fertilizing material, which takes 

 place under the ordinary management of the dungheap, on such 

 farms, is to adopt the plan of covered yards, where the manure is 

 allowed to accumulate under shelter until it is carried out in the 

 spring. Another urgent recommendation of the Professor's, in con- 

 nection with the application of all kinds of manures, was to take 

 care that they were thoroughly mixed with the soil. It is doubtless 

 owing to the perfect distribution of their fertilizing matters through 

 naturally fertile soils, that a good season is, on such soils, able to 

 produce an excessive crop. And the aim should be, whether in 

 applying bone-dust, guano, or nitrates, so to triturate, reduce, or 

 dissolve them, that, after application, every portion of the land 



