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Agricultural Tour in 
turist be of great use here also — would our small farmers not be 
benefited by some little tracts upon improved modes of husbandry, 
of rearing cattle, or of domestic economy ? 
I may be permitted perhaps to ask, if some of our large county 
societies might not imitate with advantage some of the proceed- 
ings of those in Sweden. It is the nature of all human institutions 
to react upon one another. Sweden looks up to British agricul- 
ture as the model for imitation. Her agricultural societies look 
with admiration to the proceedings of ours. They have selected 
what is good in our procedure, so far as it was adapted to their 
different circumstances ; and, by the suggestions of their own 
judgment, they have added some things which nearly all our 
societies may find it beneficial to imitate. 
I have no doubt that, had we any general statement of all that 
is now doing by all the agricultural societies in our own islands, we 
should find that there was not only no practical idea which, as a 
nation, we have to borrow from other countries, none that in one 
corner of the empire or another is not known, and more or less 
extensively acted upon — but we have no such record. The 
leaders of most societies are only partially aware of what is else- 
where going on, and thus the idea not occurring to them, the 
opportunity for promoting this or that good purpose is permitted 
to pass away. It might be a laborious task for the presidents of 
our national societies to give an annual report of what has been 
recently effected in our several counties ; but it would be highly 
useful, not only as a record of past exertions, but as an index at 
once and a stimulus to new improvements. 
I shall make only one or two further observations in regard to 
Swedish agriculture. Five-sixths of the surface are said to consist 
of clay. This clay is often of a pale colour, runs together, and in 
dry weather becomes very hard. It is at all times difficult and 
expensive to work, but it is pronounced by good English judges 
to be well adapted to the growth of wheat. At present the only 
drainage practised is by open surface drains ; even with this good 
crops are frequently obtained. The idea prevails among the 
leading improvers that covered drains (our furrow-drain system) 
are not adapted to their climate — that they would be destroyed, or 
rendered more or less inefficient, by the severe frosts. Expe- 
rience, I think, will show that this apprehension is unfounded — 
and that the construction of the drains may be so modified as to 
secure their permanence. When, therefore, Swedish agriculture 
has gone through the first stage, along which it is now travelling — 
when the sarface water is carried off from the low lands and 
marshes, there will remain for it still a greater and more expensive 
undertaking — the furrow-draining of the stiff clay lands. This is 
