430 
Steam Culture. 
one cries " How romantic ! how beautiful ! " tlie other exclaims 
" Ah, que c'est triste ! " Happy is it then for steam-cultivation 
that the school of " breadth " and " distance " is in the ascend- 
ant. These are quite incompatible with small old-fashioned 
enclosures. They must give place ; and thus the steam-j)iough 
will find an unexpected auxiliary in the landscape-gardener. 
Moreover, the real lover of trees must be nearly as often pained 
as pleased when he looks at the stunted hedge-row timber, with 
wide-gaping wounds from the billhook of the hedger, who 
" primes them well up " every time he lays the quick, or from 
the ditcher's mattock, who polishes off the roots till they coincide 
with the face of his work. If the amateur woodman could only 
secure greater consequent attention to trees planted in parks and 
pastures, or to woods and plantations kept up in masses for the 
sake of sport or rural beauty, he, too, will hardly be an opponent 
of operations necessary to the introduction of the steam-plough. 
If value be given to large regular supplies of water, and to 
this end that derived from the drainage be collected in ponds 
from tunnelled drains instead of open ditches, even the game- 
keeper, that " bete noir," will not grumble at the loss of a few 
fences which harboured game and vermin alike, and will rejoice 
in having more of green crops to drive the partridges into, and 
some power of marking which way they go ; and he, too, will 
think well of steam. 
With respect to roads, it is but a question of time and money. 
They are important in every point of view, and materials may 
always now be had, if not raised on the spot, delivered near at 
hand by the railroad, which in this, as in so many other respects, 
has done good service to agriculture. 
In proof of this I may say that an estate of 5000 acres, which 
within my memory had hardly 100 yards of hard road within its 
border, has now metal conveyed to it along 10 miles of railroad, 
with 8 more miles of carting ; and yet, from the superiority of tlie 
materials, does not feel the charge excessive, whilst it looks 
forward to being supplied at a much shorter distance from a new 
station. 
In the matter, then, of roads, as well as in other respects, the 
railroad has shown itself a most useful ally of steam-cultivation. 
These hints are not so much drawn from fancy as from twenty 
years' experience of those Downing College estates which obtained 
unenviable notoriety for their broad, high fences, &c., in Mr. 
Jonas's Report on the Farming of Cambridgeshire (Journal, 
vol. vii. part i.) Their aspect is now much changed — it is 
hoped not for the worse, — but even yet they aie not prepared to 
receive a Fowler, although a 7 or 8 horse engine might be 
successfully conveyed to most of the fields. 
