Agricultural and Commercial Society. 51 
tricts, a description of a small farm is likely to be 
considered at the first blush a highly superfluous under- 
taking. The chief occupation of the peasantry in 
every part of the country is the cultivation, in a more 
or less intelligent form, of ground provisions and vege- 
tables for the breakfast table. The idea is, however, 
entirely erroneous that the manner in which the small 
farmer pursues his calling, the series of difficulties he 
has to meet and overcome before his fields surrender 
their crops, the contingencies as to profit and loss 
arising from a peculiarly fitful market, are matters of 
general knowledge. A sort of hazy notion prevails, 
in quarters which, on other subjects, are usually pretty 
well informed, that the land falling to the small culti- 
vator is so fertile as to require merely to be coaxed 
into a bountiful yield. Also that he is so invariably 
master of the situation as to be absolute^ without an 
excuse for anything like indifterent success in his ven- 
tures. Indeed the major portion of the inhabitants 
are altogether oblivious to the heavy odds which planters 
in the colony — be they of the type whose broad acres 
ai'c covered with the sugar cane, or the humbler and 
more numerous body who ply their own shovels and 
forks — have to contend against. Of the latter especially 
it is good philosophy to assert what Sir Walter Scott 
in his^' Antiquary " makes one of his characters say of 
the fisherman, that it is his liCe blood he is offering in 
exchange for the pence of his patrons. This, in a 
limited sense, is true of every department of production 
and the necessary traffic flowing out of it. But hon\ 
whei'e both muscle and mind are taxed to their utmost, 
the one to produce the article to be disposed of, and 
the other to bravo the chagrin of an unfavourable 
G 2 
