016 
ON BREEDING. 
causes. The superiority of English agriculture over that of 
Fi ance and most other continental states may chiefly be attri¬ 
buted to the different plan that has been followed in England 
with respect to the letting of land. 
The limits of this paper prevent us from entering into a dis¬ 
cussion on the “ metayer system ;” indeed there can be no 
occasion, for we need only to be acquainted with the practice, 
that the lands are let by proportional rents—that is, by the 
occupier paying a certain proportion, generally a half of the pro¬ 
duce, to the landlord, the latter sometimes furnishing the tenants 
with the oxen and other cattle used in farming*, and a portion of 
11 \ • • i i ® • • 
the seed—to pronounce, a prion , that such a system is ruinous in 
the extreme. 
The “ Metayer system"’ is also spread over almost all Italy, 
Tuscany, and Lombardy, where it is equally injurious as in France; 
for it is an impossibility that the domestic animals of any 
country can be in very high perfection when the soil which 
they inhabit is cultivated by a beggarly population, without 
either skill or capital, and who, though they possessed both, if 
employed, must be chiefly for the advantage of the landlord. 
We conclude this digression in the words of Baron Louis, the 
present Minister of the Finances, in a debate relative to the 
“ Contributions Indirectsf that “France is a fine and rich country; 
but the true key of prosperity, is to know how to apply those 
sources of her riches.” 
But to return to our subject. Most of the causes which 
contribute to the formation of a living body have hitherto 
eluded research; yet there are few subjects that have afforded 
more materials for controversy ; so true is it, as Condillac has 
observed, “that we have never so much to say as when we 
set out from false principles.” Thus, those parts of nature 
which are hidden from our view, and perhaps beyond human 
comprehension, afford the greatest scope to our imagination. 
It would be engrossing too much of your valuable publica¬ 
tion to enter into an historical account of the theories and 
observations of the different antient and modern authors who 
have written on the interesting though ambiguous subject of 
the multiplication and succession of animated beings: we shall, 
therefore, briefly state, that the most rational physiologists ap¬ 
pear to agree, that the embryo is formed by the joint operation of 
the two sexes, by a system of organs directed by laws and prompt¬ 
ed by stimuli, with many of which we are as yet unacquainted. 
In all animals the incipient embryos are very probably neu¬ 
ters, and the sex determined according to the predominancy of 
the male or female stimulus on the parts. 
