26 
Fifty Years' Progress of British Agriculture. 
satisfaction about them, which spoke of the green fields of 
England, and must have puzzled a Hungarian magnate, ac- 
customed to his vast droves of white lean cattle, roaming for 
miles over the sometimes parched plains of the Teiss, in search 
of their scanty pasture. Not less astonished was the German 
flockmaster, familiar with his fine-woolled but scraggy-looking 
sheep, when he saw the matchless symmetry of the Southdowns. 
From the new starting-point in 1851, when the best farming 
was exceptional, there has been little advance from the best 
practice then reached. Drainage was well understood and was 
rapidly extending. The use of purchased manure and linseed 
cake, in addition to the manure of the farm and its green pro- 
duce, was spreading slowly in the better-farmed districts. Bone 
manure had a well-established reputation, especially in dairy 
counties. Peruvian guano and nitrate of soda, wherever tried, 
were found a most useful mode of promoting growth and in- 
creasing the bulk of the crop. 
And the literature of agriculture was not found wanting. 
Foremost of all were the most readable and practical essays of 
Philip Pusey, in nearly every number of the Journal of the 
Royal Agricultural Society, the embodiment of that Society's 
motto, "Practice with Science." From week to week, up to 
the present time, the pages of the Agricultural Gazette, edited 
till his lamented death, from its commencement forty years ago, 
by John Chalmers Morton, have poured forth from the experience 
of practical farmers a continuous flood of knowledge and light 
upon every subject connected with agriculture. The famous 
experiments of Sir John B. Lawes, at Rothamsted, as described 
by him and his scientific assistant, Dr. Gilbert, in the pages of 
the Royal Agricultural Society's Journal, from year to year, have 
formed a guide to improved practice in this country, both with 
crops and in the feeding of live stock. 
The train was thus laid for a rapid extension of the best 
practice in all parts of the country, when the sh'ong motive- 
power of personal interest should come into play. In 1850 and 
1851 the price of wheat was 39s. kl. a quarter, and of salt beef 
and pork, '36s. a cwt. From that time prices began to rise, and 
continued to do so with slight exceptions till 187 1. The price 
of wheat, meat, and dairy produce, many times between these 
dates, reached an increase of from 50 to GO, and in more than 
one instance 100 per cent., above that of 1851. The price and 
rent of land rapidly increased in the same period, and a great 
stimulus was given to land improvement, and to the extension 
of the best agricultural practice. Earlier maturity in perfect ing 
cattle and sheep for the market, by good feeding from their 
