AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES IN ENGLAND. 
709 
a visionary, or condemned as a schemer ; or, more frequently, 
some other person improves upon his plan, remedies his 
defects, and ultimately robs him of the fruit of his talents and 
the profit of his outlay. 
The advantage of a knowledge of hydraulics I need not 
descant upon. The scientific application of water upon, or 
its abstraction (in excess) by draining from, the land is too 
palpable to require enforcing. Perhaps more labour and 
expense has been bestowed upon draining and irrigation the 
last twenty years than for a century previous ; and we anti- 
cipate the time when all the bogs and marshes of this country 
will be freed from surface water, by the passing of an act 
for general arterial draining. The rivers of England, in 
fact, form the principal obstruction to the universal relief of 
the land from those physical blemishes which meet us in 
different parts of the kingdom in the shape of shaking bogs 
and flooded marshes. When this desideratum — arterial 
drainage — is carried into effect by a legislative enactment, as 
in Ireland, the local drainage of the land will be an easy task. 
“ The science of pneumatics includes, or is closely allied 
to, meteorology ; and both are essentially necessary in the 
proper education of an agriculturist. The thermometer and 
barometer are to be found in most farm-houses, but a scien- 
tific acquaintance with their use is not generally possessed ; 
and although experience and observation of the various 
atmospheric phenomena have given the farmer — ignorant 
otherwise of science — a portion of knowledge useful to him 
in the various operations of husbandry, it will surely be 
advantageous to him to become acquainted with the prin- 
ciples upon which those phenomena proceed or are founded. 
It is true the science of meteorology is far from having 
arrived at any degree of perfection, and, indeed, may yet be 
considered to be in its infancy ; yet much light has been 
thrown upon it by late investigators, and many of the phe- 
nomena have been more clearly defined, classed, and ex- 
plained, so as to bring out their characteristics and uses in 
the economy of nature, and thus render a more intimate 
acquaintance with them subservient to the benefit of man ; 
especially the agriculturist, who depends so much upon 
atmospheric agency in the prosecution of his farming opera- 
tions. 
Is it needful for me to point out the benefits to a farmer 
of a knowledge of botany — that science which embraces the 
history of the most beautiful and useful of the physical 
creation ? Would it be of no use to a farmer to know the 
nature, habits, uses, mode of growth, and propagation to the 
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