531 



before. The railroad is the connecting 

 medium which maintains the vast circula- 

 tion, conveying the agencies of production 

 to the farmer, and the produce of the 

 farmer to the market. The steam-cultiva- 

 tor is, perhaps, about to be added to the 

 triumphs of mechanism, and then will be 

 realized the expression in the fine lines of 

 Mr. Thackeray on the Great Exhibition of 

 1851 — an expression which was prema- 

 ture if it was intended to be historic, 

 but which we hope, and almost believe, 

 will prove to be prophetic. 



' Look yonder where tlie engines toil ; 

 These England's arms of conquest are, 

 The trophies of her bloodless war; 



Brave weapons these. 

 Vic'torions over wave and soil, 

 With these she sails, she weaves, she tills, 

 Pierces the everlasting hills 



And spans the seas.' 



The spirit of the old agriculture and the 

 new are diametrically opposite — that of 

 the ©Id agriculture was to be stationary, 

 that of the new is to progress. When 

 Young made his tour through the east of 

 England in 1771, he remarks as a pecu- 

 liarity that the turnip cabbage of a 

 Mr. Reynolds, which had a special supe- 

 riority, was gradually adopted by his 

 neighbours — 'a circumstance,' he adds, 

 ' that would not happen in many counties.' 

 His works are, in fact, a narrative of indi- 

 vidual enterprise and general stupidity. A 

 Mr. Cooper who went into Dorsetshire from 

 Norfolk could only get his turnips hoed 

 by working himself year after year with 

 his labourers, and refusing to be tired 

 out by their deliberate awkwardness for 

 the purpose of defeating his design. After 

 he had continued the practice for twenty 

 years, and all the surrounding farmers had 

 witnessed the vast benefits to be derived 

 from it, not a single one of them had be- 

 gun to imitate him. Mr. Cooper, with two 

 horses abreast, and no driver, ploughed an 

 acie of land where his neighbours with 

 four horses and a driver ploughed only 

 three-quarters of an acre. Yet not a 

 labourer would touch this unclean imple- 

 ment, as they seemed to think it, and no 

 farmer, with such an example perpetually 

 before his eyes, chose to save on each 

 plough the wages of a man, the keep of 

 two horses, and the extra exjienditure in- 

 curred by the diminished amount of work 

 performed in the day. No longer ago than 



1835, Sir Robert Peel presented a Farmers' 

 Club at Tamv/orth with two iron ploughs 

 of the best construction. On his next 

 visit the old ploughs with the wooden 

 mould-boards were again at work, 'Sir,' 

 said a member of the club, ' we tried the 

 iron, and we be all of one mind that they 

 made the weeds grow.' On Young recom- 

 mending the Dorsetshire agriculturists to 

 fold their ewes in the v»^inter they treated 

 the idea with contempt ; and on pressing 

 them for their reasons, they replied, 'that 

 the flock, in rushing out of the fold, would 

 tread down the lambs,' though no such 

 accident had ever been heard of, ' and that 

 the lambs would not be able to find their 

 dams in a large fold.' though certainly, 

 says Young, ' a lamb in Dorsetshire has as 

 much sense as a lamb elsewhere.' Wheth- 

 er the method had been beneficial or not, 

 the grounds for rejecting it were equally 

 absurd. Of two neighbouring counties one 

 was sometimes a century behind the other. 

 A lazy desire to creep with sluggish mo- 

 notony along an established path, and a 

 feeling of impatience at being pushed into 

 a novel track, helped to maintain heredi- 

 tary prejudices, and tenants invented 

 fanciful excuses for not doing what v/as 

 plainly advantageous to be done, because 

 they preferred present sloth to future 

 profit. They were like a man who had 

 lain upon one side till he shrunk from the 

 trouble of turning over to the other, though 

 when the process was performed the new 

 posture might be easier than the old. But 

 once roused and put in motion, and the 

 inherent reluctance to stir being overcome, 

 the gain in interest as well as in pocket 

 was felt to be great. He who has profited 

 b}' one innovation is ready to try another, 

 and his pride and his pleasure is to im- 

 prove where his fathers gloried in resisting 

 improvement. There are still large dis- 

 tricts of England which have yet to be 

 converted to a rational system of agricul- 

 ture — landlords who are ignorant of tho 

 principles of management which attract or 

 create intelligent tenants — and tenants 

 who are ignorant of the methods by which 

 the land is made to double its increase. 

 But the wave of agricultural pi?ogress has 

 acquired irresistible might, and they must 

 mount it or it will sweep them away. The 

 best thing which can be done for these 

 laggards in the race is to persuade them to 

 take an agricultural newspaper, to get 



