the professor of mathematics, by exeeating, on the plan he has pointed out, the survey and measurement of certain portions of land. After two years' training in the theory and practice of rural economy, the pupils undergo an examination from the professors collectively, and, if satisfactory, a diploma is granted, which certifies to the capacity of the pupil for fulfilling the duties of what may be styled an “Agricultural Engineer."

Institutions designed for the improvement of agriculture, and supported by the state, have been established in most parts of Germany. In Prussia there is a public model farm and agricultural academy in nearly every province. The most important of these institutions is the one at Mögelin, in Brandenburg, about forty miles from Berlin, which was founded by the late king. Von Thaer was at one period the director. The establishment consists of a college and a model farm of 1200 acres. When visited by Mr. Jacob, in 1820 (Agriculture, &c. of Germany'), there were three professors, who resided upon the premises: one for mathematics, chemistry, and geology; one for the veterinary art; and the third for botany and the use of the various vegetable productions in the Materia Medica, as well as for entomology. Attached to the institution there was a botanic garden, arranged on the Linnæan system; an herbarium; a museum containing skeletons of domestic animals, models of agricultural implements, specimens of soils, &c. The various implements were made in workshops upon the farm, and the pupils were expected to acquire a general notion of the modes of constructing them. The sum paid by each pupil was very high, not less than 80l. a year.

At Hohenheim, in the kingdom of Wirtemberg, two leagues from Stuttgard, an old palace has been appropriated as an agricultural college. The quantity of land attached to the institution is about 1000 acres. The pupils are of two grades, and those belonging to the superior class pay for their board 150 florins, and for their instruction 300 florins a year, or altogether 371., and extra expenses make the annual cost |

about 50l. Natives of Wirtemberg are admitted at a lower rate than the subjects of other states. The higher class of students do not, as at Grignon, take part in the actual labours of husbandry, but the means of theoretical instruction are very complete. Lectures are delivered by twelve professors on the following subjects:-Mathematics and physics, chemistry and botany, technology, tillage and other departments of rural economy, forestry, and the veterinary art. The lectures are so arranged that they can be either attended in two half-years or three or four. In the former case much preliminary information must have been acquired. There is attached to the institution a small botanical garden; a museum of zoological, botanical, and mineralogical objects; skeletons of domestic animals; collections of seeds and woods; and a library of works on rural economy. The establishment also comprises a manufactory of beet-root sugar, a brewery, a distillery of potato-spirit, and there is an apartment devoted to the rearing of silkworms. A part of the farm is reserved for experiments. The second class of students do the manual labour, but they are nearly maintained at the expense of the institution, and, when they can be spared from field-labour, they have the opportunity of attending the lectures at the college.

In Bavaria the king has given up the domain attached to the royal palace of Schleissheim for the purposes of a model farm; but a great mistake has been made in selecting land much below the average standard of fertility, which, as well as land of extraordinary productiveness, should be avoided. It is on a much inferior scale to the establishment at Hohenheim. In 1840 there were twentyone scholars who paid about 15l. a year, and eleven who paid about 67. latter are merely field-labourers; and those who belong to the upper class are of about. the same grade as the second class at Hohenheim.

The

There are agricultural institutions supported by the state at Vienna, Prague, Pesth, and various other places in the south-east of Europe. (On public Institutions for the Advancement of Agricul

of Royal Agric. Soc. of England; Dr. Lindley's Gardener's Chron. and Agric. Gazette, &c. &c.)

AGRICULTURE, STATISTICS OF. In several countries of Europe there is a department of government organized either for collecting the statistics of agriculture or superintending institutions which have immediate relation to that branch of industry. In France these duties devolve upon a department of the Minister of Commerce and Agriculture. The management of the royal flocks, veterinary schools, and the royal studs; the distribution of premiums in agriculture; the organization and presidency of the superior and special councils of agriculture, are comprised in the duties of this ministerial department. The councils-general of agriculture, &c. in each department of France collect the agricultural statistics from each commune; and the quantity of land sown with each description of grain, the produce, and the quantity of live stock for the whole of the kingdom, are accurately known and published by the Minister of Commerce and Agriculture. In Belgium these facts are ascertained periodically, but not every year. In the United States of North America, at the decennial census, an attempt is made to ascertain the number of each description of live stock, including poultry; the produce of cereal grains, and of various crops; the quantity of dairy, orchard, and garden produce, &c., in each State. There are twenty-nine heads of this branch of inquiry. The only countries in Europe which do not possess statistical accounts of their agriculture founded on official documents are England and the Netherlands. In England the quantities of corn and grain sold in nearly three hundred markettowns, the quantities imported and exported, and the quantities shipped coastways, are accurately known, but no steps are taken by any department of the government to ascertain the quantities produced. On the same principle that a census of the population of a country is useful, it must be useful to have an account of its productive resources. The absence of official information is supplied by esti

at best only on local and partial obser vation. In France it is positively ascer tained that the average produce of wheat for the whole kingdom is under fourteen bushels per acre. In England it is known that the maximum produce of wheat per acre is about forty bushels, and that the minimum is about twenty bushels. The usual conjecture is that the average produce of the kingdom in years of fair crops is about twenty-eight bushels, but the total superficies sown with wheat or any other grain, and the total quantity of the produce, are matters simply of conjecture. The only statement the public or even the government are in possession of in respect to the quantity of land cultivated and uncultivated, and of land incapable of producing grain or hay, in Great Britain, rests upon the authority of private inquiry made by one person, Mr. Couling, a civil engineer and surveyor, who gave the details to the parliamentary committee on emigration in 1827, now seventeen years ago. As there is an account pub lished weekly in the London Gazette of the quantity of each description of grain sold in nearly three hundred markettowns in England, with the average prices, and the quantity of foreign corn and grain imported is also officially published, it would be putting into the hands of the community very important elements of calculation in reference to the supply of food, if they could also learn after each harvest what had been the breadth of land under cultivation for each species of produce respectively, and the amount of produce harvested. The result coul! not fail to be felt in greater steadiness of price, which is particularly desirable for the interests of the tenant farmer, and also highly advantageous to the publ. For example, the harvest of 1837 wis deficient to so great a degree, that before the produce of 1838 was secured the great superabundance of the two preceding harvests was all consumed, and the stock of grain was more nearly exhausted than it was ever known to have been in modern times. A reasonable advance price would have checked consumption, which, as regards wheat, had been going on with unwonted profusion, but i

August, September, and October, 1837, the markets fell from 60s. 1d. to 51s. per quarter, and it was not until the middle of the following May that the average was again as high as it had been just before the harvest of 1837. By the third week in August, 1838, the average had risen to upwards of 73s., and wheat was admissible at the lowest rate of duty. The buyers consequently resorted suddenly to nearly every corn-market in Europe, and prices, aided by a wild spirit of speculation, which subsequently was productive of great loss to importers, rose enormously. It is contended that these losses and the fluctuation of prices would not have occurred if the produce of the harvest of 1837 had been more accurately known. (On the Collection of the Statistics of Agriculture by G. R. Porter, Esq., of the Board of Trade.) The probable operation which statistical facts officially collected would have upon agricultural improvement is thus adverted to by Mr. Porter:-"It has been stated that if all England were as well cultivated as the counties of Northumberland and Lincoln, it would produce more than double the quantity that is now obtained. If the cultivators of land, where agricultural knowledge is the least advanced, could be brought to know, upon evidence that could not admit of doubt, that the farmer of Northumberland or Lincolnshire procured, from land of fertility not superior to his own, larger and more profitable crops than he is in the habit of raising, is it likely that he would be contented with his inferiority?" In 1836 the late Lord Sydenham, while president of the Board of Trade, in order to test the probability of success that might result from a more extended attempt, caused circular letters containing fifty-two simple but comprehensive queries relating to agriculture to be sent to each clergyman in the one hundred and twenty-six parishes of Bedfordshire. Out of this number only 27, or about one in five, replied, and further inquiry was abandoned. The tithe commissioners make returns of the crops in all parishes, but they do not do so simultaneously. There is, however, no insuperable difficulty in collecting the national statistics of agriculture, whenever government

thinks fit to undertake such a duty. On the 18th of April, 1844, on a motion in the House of Commous for an address to the queen praying for the establishment of some method of collecting agricultural statistics, the vice-president of the Board of Trade, on the part of the government, concurred in the object of the motion, but from various causes he declined at that time giving the motion his support. The yearly expense of the inquiry would be from 20,000l. to 30,000l.; and probably not a long period will elapse before the appropriate machinery will be in operation. In this way can government advance the interests of agriculture and of the public at the same time. In a country like England, which abounds with men of rank, wealth, and intelligence, who engage in scientific agriculture as a favourite pursuit, it is quite unnecessary for the government to assume the superintendence of matters which relate to practical agriculture; but this may be done with propriety in other countries, which are placed in different circumstances.

AIDE-DE-CAMP, a French term, denoting a military officer usually of the rank of captain, one or more of whom is attached to every general officer, and conveys all his orders to the different parts of his command. A field-marshal is entitled to four, a lieutenant-general to two, and a major-general to one. The king appoints as many aides-de-camp as he pleases, and this situation confers the rank of colonel. In January, 1844, the number of aides-de-camp to the queen was thirty-two. There were also eleven naval aides-de-camp to the queen, one of whom, of the rank of admiral, is styled first and principal aide-de-camp, and has a salary of 365l. per annum; and ten others, of the rank of captain, have 1821. 11s. per annum. There are also two aides-de-camp appointed by the queen from the officers of the Royal Marines, whose salary is the same as that of the naval aides-de-camp.

AIDS (directly from the French Aides, which in the sense of a tax is used only in the plural number). Under the feudal system, aids were certain claims of the lord upon the vassal, which were not so directly connected with the tenure of

The nature of these claims, called, in the Latin of the age, Auxilia, seems to be indicated by the term: they were originally rather extraordinary grants or contributions than demands due according to the strict feudal system, though they were certainly founded on the relation of lord and vassal. These aids varied according to local custom, and became in course of time oppressive exactions. In France there were aids for the lord's expedition to the Holy Land, for marrying his sister and eldest son, and for paying a relief to his suzerain on taking possession of his land. The aids which are mentioned in the Grand Coustumier of Normandy for knighting the lord's eldest son, for marrying his eldest daughter, and for ransoming the lord from captivity, were probably introduced into England by the Normans. But other aids were also established by usage or the exactions of the lords, for, by Magna Charta, c. 12, it was provided that the king should take no aids, except the three above mentioned, without the consent of parliament, and that the inferior lords should not take any other aids.

The three kinds of aids above mentioned require a more particular notice, as this contribution of the vassal to the lord forms a striking feature in the feudal system of England.

1. When the lord made his eldest son a knight; this ceremony occasioned considerable expense, and entitled the lord to call upon his tenant for extraordinary assistance. 2. When the lord gave his eldest daughter in marriage, he had her portion to provide, and was entitled to claim a contribution from his tenants for this purpose. The amount of these two kinds of aid was limited to a certain sum by the Statute of Westminster 1, 3 Ed. I. c. 36, namely, at 20s. for a knight's fee, and at 20s. for every 20l. per annum value of socage lands, and so on in proportion. It was also provided that the aid should not be levied to make his son a knight until he was fifteen years old, nor to marry his daughter until she was seven years old. 3. The third aid, which was to ransom the lord when taken prisoner, was of less frequent occurrence

Aids is also a general name for the extraordinary grants which are made by the House of Commons to the crown for various purposes. In this sense, aids, subsidies, and the modern term supplies, are the same thing. The aids were in fact the origin of the modern system of taxation.

Auxilia is the Latin word used by Bracton and other writers when they are speaking of the feudal aids above enumerated. The word Aide is not derived from the Latin Auxilium, but from the Low Latin Adiuda. (Du Cange, Gloss. Med. et Infim. Latin.) The Spanish form ayuda, assistance,' and the Italian aiuto, also clearly indicate the origin of the word 'aide,' which is from the participal form adjuta of the Latin verb adjuvare.

ALBINATUS JUS. [AUBAINE.] ALDERMAN. This word is from the Anglo-Saxon ealdorman or eoldorman. The term ealdorman is composed of ealdor, originally the comparative degree of the adjective eald, old,' and man; but the word ealdor was also used by the AngloSaxons as a substantive, and as such it was nearly synonymous with the old English term elder, which we so often meet with in the English version of the Bible. A prior of a monastery was called Temples ealdor; the magistrate of a district, Hiredes-ealdor; the magistrate of a hundred, Hundredes-ealdor, &c. In a philological sense, the terms ealdor and ealdorman were synonymous and equivalent; but in their political acceptation they differ, the former being more general, and, when used to express a specific degree, commonly denoting one that is lower than ealdorman. In both terms the notion of some high office, as well as that of rank or dignity, seems to be inherent;