72 
THE CULTIVATOR, 
Feb 
of a country, a man must not only view the country with his own 
eyes, but his eyes must be taught both what to look for, and how to 
look for it. The reports of travellers who are unskilled in rural mat¬ 
ters—the educational institutions of the country itself—and even its 
agricultural statistics, are all unsafe guides where a really correct 
appreciation is desired of its t.ue position in reference to this import¬ 
ant branch of social economy. This observation is illustrated by the 
actual condition of the several branches of rural economy when 
compared with the state of agricultural instruction, and with the at¬ 
tention that has been paid to statistics in the different kingdoms of 
Germany and France. 
Saxony. —In Saxony, a country greatly favored by nature in the 
character of its soils, the chief attention of the great landholders and 
of the government, has been long directed to the improvement of the 
breed of sheep, from which the celebrated Saxon wool is obtained. 
This state exhibits generally a very different appearance from the 
.neighboring country of Bavaria. In passing from the latter king¬ 
dom to the former, you “ seem to pass,” says Mr. Royer, “ from the 
desert into the land of promise.” “ Two-thirds of the rich proprie¬ 
tors in Saxony,” he observes, “ cultivate their own properties, and 
have established an order, neatness, and method, which, though far 
from agricultural perfection, you seek for in vain in France.” 
Wurtemberg. —In the Kingdom of Wurtemberg, where the in¬ 
struction at the agricultural school of Ilohenheim and elsewhere, is 
better organized, and at this moment more famed, than in any other 
part of Germany, and where in fact, the art of culture as a whole is 
the farthest advanced, the general cultivation is described by Mr. 
Royer as being melancholy, and, at a distance from the capital, very 
different from what the eulogies of authors had led him to suppose. 
Bavaria. —-In Bavaria we find an imposing array of institutions 
and means of instruction specially provided for the rural communi. 
ty, which are fitted to impress the superficial observer with a high 
idea of its agricultural condition. As in Wurtemberg, there is a 
central school of agriculture. There are also Chairs ot Rural Eco¬ 
nomy in the Universities, and more than twenty Chairs of Agrienl- 
ture in the Seminaries and polytechnic schools of the provinces, be¬ 
sides a general Agricultural Society, counting more than 8,000 mem¬ 
bers. These facts convey the impression of much zeal on the part 
of the government; much interest in agriculture on the part of the 
people; and an advanced state of the art of culture in the kingdom 
generally. But “the miserable aspect of Bavarian agriculture would 
lead one to suppose that all these means of encouragement are very 
inefficacious.” (Royer.) 
The schools are badly organized or conducted. The great land- 
owners are indifferent on the subject, while the miserably defective 
condition of the roads and other means of internal communication 
indicate, that even the government which has organized all the for¬ 
mal apparatus we have mentioned, it is not itself alive to the most 
fundamental element of agricultural progress. 
Prussia cannot boast cither of its practical agriculture, or of its 
system of agricultural instruction. It is a proof of how very little 
has in past ages been done in the way of teaching the rural popula¬ 
tion the principles of the art of culture, that Prussia should so long 
have derived an undeserved celebrity from the existence of a pri¬ 
vate agricultural school at Moeglin, established in 1806, and conduct¬ 
ed till his death in 1819, by the distinguished Yon Thaer. After his 
death, the school he had founded was made a Royal Academy, and 
is still in existence. It contains at present only twenty pupils; and 
even in Yon Timer’s time it never contained more than thirty-four. 
In the much praised primary schools of Prussia, a little instruction in 
gardening is the only teaching which bears an immediate relation to 
the future occupations of the rural population. 
In the nature of its soils, indeed, which are sandy, light enough to 
bo blown by the winds, and apparently almost sterile, Prussia has 
much to contend with. This is especially the case in its most ancient 
and central Dutchies. Westphalia and the Rhenish provinces are 
naturally richer, and are also more advanced and better cultivated. 
Besides, until the revolution of the past year, the burdens of servi¬ 
tudes upon land, of a feudal kind—and of which in the New World 
you have no examples, except a few of a milder form in the seigno- 
ries of Lower Canada—were so onerous and so unequally distribu¬ 
ted, as greatly to retard the development of its agricultural capabili¬ 
ties. The state of the roads and other means of communication al¬ 
so, as in Bavaria, and the scarcity of large towns, have concurred 
with other causes, in retaining the agriculture of Prussia in a very 
backward condition. 
Holland. —If from the uplands of Germany we descend to the 
lowlands, and especially to that country which includes the islands 
at the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt, and the low country 
stretching northward to the Zuyder Zee and the Doilart, we shall 
find reason to stay our steps and to consider calmly the cause, and 
purpose, and extent of the wonderful system of canals and embank¬ 
ments which the kingdom of Holland presents. 
In a sketch of European agriculture, indeed, Holland is deserving 
of distinguished mention. Above all other European people, the 
Dutch, though slow, have been patient and persevering in their agri¬ 
cultural labors. Occupying a few more, elevated and fertile alluvial 
spots, in the midst of downs and bogs, and marshes and lakes, and 
the endless ramifications of many rivers, they have century after 
century, struggled against nature. Draining marshes, pumping out 
lakes, damming back seas and rivers, reclaiming bogs, fixing by' art 
the wandering downs, interlacing their country with an interminable 
net-work of gigantic canals;—by such labors as these, they have 
extended the productive surface of their country, secured its posses¬ 
sion, and made its natural riches available. And what makes their 
praise the greater and more deserved, is the constant watchfulness 
and care which the retention of their country demands. Exposed 
on the average of the last thirteen centuries, to one great sea or river 
flood every seven years, the possession of the land they have gained 
is never secure. Lying below the actual level of the sea. large 
tracts of it are only prese rved by the huge dykes that surrouua them, 
and to maintain these dykes requires unceasing vigilance, and a 
large yearly expenditure of money. 
And though in past times the Hollanders have done great engineer¬ 
ing works, y r et the spirit of the sires is not degenerated in their living 
sons. The draining of the Haarlem lake, now in progress, is the 
boldest mechanical effort ever yet made in the cause of agriculture 
in any country, and promises to add no less to the material wealth, 
than to the engineering and constructive fame of the United Pro¬ 
vinces. 
I feel a pleasure in thus adverting to the impression made upon my 
own mind, during my various tours in Holland, in the presence of a 
meeting of agriculturists, many of whom may inherit from the ear¬ 
ly settlers of New York, a portion of that industrious and patient 
blood, which makes every end sure to the determined and perseve¬ 
ring man.* * * § 
I may mention as an indication of the early desire of the Dutch 
authorities to promote the diffusion of Agricultural knowledge, that 
a very old regulation prescribes attendance on agricultural lectures 
as a necessary branch of study to the established clergy of Holland.t 
A nd though in that as in many other countries, men of the old school 
at present act as a drag on the progress of scientific agriculture, yet 
enlightened and zealous men are at work in various parts of the Ne¬ 
therlands, and advance is gradually being made. The name of Mul¬ 
der ought especially to be mentioned as most eminent among the sci¬ 
entific men of Holland, not only in advancing; pure science, but in 
advocating and promoting its general applications to the agriculture 
of his native country. 
Italy. —From Holland turn for a moment to Italy, in which coun¬ 
try drainage works somewhat akin to those of the Dutch, form the 
proudest monuments of which even that famed land can boast, of 
the victory which persevering intelligence cun achieve over the dif¬ 
ficulties and seeming hostility of nature. 
Did time permit, I might present to you a most interesting histori¬ 
cal sketch of the changes in agricultural condition and capability 
which that country has undergone from the period of the ancient 
Etrurians to the present day. And to the man of science, such a 
sketch would be the more interesting, from the circumstance that in 
all the changes that have taken place, the physical and geological 
structure of the country, has exercised a far more prominent and 
permanent influence, than either the remarkable industry and con¬ 
structive skill of the Etruscan inhabitants, or the hostile incursions of 
its foreign invaders. 
To the rich alluvial plains of Lombardy, of which rice, and Indian 
corn, and wheat and abundant milk, are the natural productions; 
and to Tuscany, in which something of the ancient industry and per¬ 
severing practical skill of the old EtruriansJ still survives, the agri¬ 
cultural inquirer must proceed to see the bright side of Italian culti¬ 
vation. 
But it is in Tuscany chiefly that he will find the most interesting 
evidence of the conquering power of the living mind over the obsta¬ 
cles of physical nature. The Maremme of Tuscany and the marsh¬ 
es of the Val di Chiana, like the Campagna and the Pontine marshes 
of the Roman dominions, have long breathed forth that pestilential 
malaria which, like the summer exhalations of the sea islands and 
river mouths of your Southern states, carries on its wings fever and 
lingering ague and frequent death. It is one of the great modern 
triumphs of engineering skill, applied to the promotion of rural in¬ 
dustry-second only to the gigantic labors of the Dutch, of which I 
have spoken, and to the artificial drainage of our English fens—that 
the terrors of the Maremme have in a measure been bridled in—that 
the Yal di Chiana, in so far as it lies within the borders of Tuscany, 
has been drained and dried—and that cheerful health and rich crops 
prevail over large tracts of country, in which it used to be almost 
certain death to linger. 
Among a Republican people, I, who owe allegiance to a constitu¬ 
tional Monarchy, maybe permitted to name toyouJLeopold the First, 
of Tuscany, as the principal author of all this good. Whatever our 
opinions on other matters may be, we shall all, I am sure, agree in 
this, that those men are great and worthy to be honored, who having 
been gifted by God with large means and great opportunities, make 
use of those means and opportunities for the glory of God and the 
good of their fellow creatures—who, instead of war and scarcity, 
and suffering and death, promote peace and plenty, and health, and 
the multiplication and prolongation of human life—the moral lesson 
of whose life inculcates the truth that man’s proudest triumphs are 
not those he aefeifeves over his fellows, but those which he gains over 
himself, or by 7 which he compels the unwilling powers of nature to 
minister to the material comforts of mankind—who encourages what 
will unite instead of distract, what will cement instead of divide the 
nations of the world—as that broad belt of water which laves alike 
the shores of your country and mine, instead of separating, as in for¬ 
mer years, now binds us together more closely than if the same con¬ 
tinent contained us. 
As the promoter of such ends for twenty-five long years in his 
country of Tuscany, the name of Leopold the First will not sound 
unpleasantly even in your republican ears.§ 
* For a fuller account of the Rural Industry and Drainage of 
Holland , which I wrote for the Edinburgh Review, seevol. 86, p. 419 
of that work. 
t This must be considered an admirable provision, enabling the 
pastor to advise in regard to the temporal pursuits, no less than the 
spiritual affairs of liis flock. 
t To those who are desirous of obtaining the means of forming 
clear notions of the physical structure of Italy, of its climatic condi¬ 
tions in the times of the ancient Etrurians, and of the industrial skill 
as well as the social relations of this people, I venture to recommend 
a perusal of Denis’s Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria. 
§ For an account of the reign of Leopold, see Napier’s Florentine 
History^ vol. vi, and for a detail, with drawings, plans and maps, of 
the engineering operations by which the Maremme were dried, see 
