REVIEW.

"Every man his own Farrier," was the title of a work on the veterinary art, published many years ago. At that period, however, there were very few farmers who had education enough to understand the technical words and phrases used in surgery or medicine, and still fewer who would venture to practise the rules laid down, in the use of the lancet or the knife, or in administering medicine in the cure of disease. The practice of the art, more especially in the country, was chiefly in the hands of men destitute of a scientific knowledge of their profession, and who acted sometimes upon the rules laid down by their predecessors, as ignorant as themselves, or upon nostrums they had

themselves invented from their own observation and experience. Many of them possessed discernment and common sense, and by their constant exercise acquired a certain amount of skill, which enabled them both to

judge of the nature and seat of a disease, and the proper application for its cure. On the other hand, the majority were mere empyrics, who with that "little knowledge" which the poet declares to be "a dangerous thing," and a large amount of assurance, set up for "horse doctors" or "cow leeches," with a list of nostrums of that "kill or cure" character that were as likely, (or rather more), to do the first as the second. Nature, in fact, was more the handmaid of these men than skill or science, and whatever celebrity they acquired might, in many cases, have been gained by practising the "laissez faire" as well, or even better than by the application of their medicines.

At page 345, speaking of bleeding in cases of inflammation, the author says: "In the works on veterinary medicine, up to the present day, the dangerous recommendation of bleeding when the pulse is strong, because inflammation is running high, may be met at every page. In accordance with more enlightened pathological views, efforts must now be turned towards abolishing such ancient and dangerous methods of practice. It must not be forgotten that to save blood, and not to draw blood, is usually equivalent to saving an animal's life. The cases are extremely rare in which the abstraction of blood is of any moment; and to the non-professional reader we say, do not tamper with dangerous remedies; to the professional reader, as well, I have now to say, that the pulse alone cannot indicate when bleeding is advisable." The italics are ours, but the whole passage reminded us of the death of the late Count Cavour, which was accelerated, at least, by the repeated blood-lettings of the Piedmontese physicians.

examination, which unfolds the minutest fibres of vasWith anatomical study is connected microscopic cular disease-auscultation, or listening, which, by means of an instrument enables the practitioner to judge of "the condition of any organ of the body by means of sounds conveyed to the ear, when applied over the region in which such organ is situated;" perwith the view of eliciting sounds, whereby we may cussion, which consists in striking upon the surface form an opinion as to whether the subjacent organs are in a healthy or morbid condition." That portion of the work, on the nature and character of the fatal pleuro-pneumonia, and the mode of cure, will be read with deep interest by all persons concerned in the breeding and keeping of cattle. The numbers that are annually lost by it are fearful, and the success that has "school-attended Dr. Gamgee's methods of prevention as well as cure, renders his work, which lays down the treatment he practises, very valuable. From all that can be ascertained this disease is a foreign importation; for when importing cattle ceased during the long war, the disease disappeared, and has only been renewed since the freedom of commerce has brought great numbers of a series, is well worthy of a careful perusal by the of foreign cattle to this country. The work, as one farmer and grazier.

All this is now changed, since the medical master" has been abroad." Science in the cure of disease is no longer confined to those who minister to the human species. The health of a horse, an ox, or a sheep is a disease worthy of studious attention, economically speaking, as well as that of a man; and the practice of the veterinary art is found to be as amenable to the laws of science as that of the Royal College of Physicians itself.

MARKET DRAYTON AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.

There are now three Veterinary Schools, one in London and two in Edinburgh, where the prac tice of animal pathology is taught on those scientific principles which are founded upon anatomical investi-The following awards were made at this society's meetgation. At the head of one of the Scottish institutions is Professor John Gamgee, already known as the author of "Dairy Stock," and "The Veterinarian's Vade Mecum"; while we have now in hand a new work from the same author, which has given rise to the above remarks.* It is a highly scientific treatise, but at the same time written in a style so simple and easy that any man of common education may understand it with a little attention. We shall take a few short passages at random, as illustrating the manner in which the general subject is treated.

* "Our Domestic Animals, in Health and Disease; second division-Organs of Circulation and Respiration." By John Gamgee, Principal of the New Veterinary College, Edinburgh. (T. C. Jack, Edinburgh; Hamilton, Adams, and Co., London.).

ing last Thursday: For the best cultivated farm, not less than 100 acres, first prize, silver cup, Mr. Bourne, Child's Ercall; second, piece of plate, Mr. G. Boughey, Sayer Fields Farm; highly commended, Mr. Pooler, Calvington Farm; commended, Mr. Kemp, Tittenley Farm. Best and cleanest clover root, not less than five acres, first prize, silver cup, Mr. Pooler, Calvington; second, piece of plate, Mr. Heatley, Old Springs Farm; highly commended, MrBlockley, Newhouse, Wollerton. Best crop of swede tur. nips, not less than six acres, first prize. silver cup, Mr. Heatley; second, piece of plate, Mr. Boughey; highly commended, Mr. R. Heatley; commended, Mr. Kemp. Best crop of mangolds, first prize, piece of plate, Mr. John Broughton; second, medal, Mr. Wickham, Broomhall; highly commended, Mr. Bourne, Child's Ercall.

THE AGRICULTURE OF SWEDEN.

SIR,- Having just concluded a two months' fishing occupation of a very enterprising agriculturist at whose tour in the central provinces of Sweden, I extract from house I had the honour of being most hospitably ensome memoranda, chiefly relating to matters piscatorial, tertained. The farm of Graffuaas, near Allingsos, coma few notes on the farming of the country, which per-prises 9,000 acres, of which 1,000 are arable, 500 pashaps may not be entirely without interest to some of ture, and 7,500 forest. The rent is £800 a-year. your readers. The soil varies from stiff clay to light loam, but is chiefly loam on a clay bottom. The fields are large-from 40 to 80 acres; 400 acres are in oats, the land being at a high elevation; 40 in wheat, 80 in rye, a few acres in oats and vetches for horses, and 20 in turnips and potatoes. The land reserved for pasture is such as is not sufficiently good for arable, being for the most part marshy or cumbered with rock or brush-wood. All the best of this pasture is mown yearly, without any return of manure, which is never applied to meadowland in Sweden.

slight, the sludging up of the pipes as the work proceeds. The pipes used at Graffnaas are 1-inch, the main drain consisting of six, laid pyramidally.

of scientific cultivation, would meet with much success in a country where the conditions of climate and labour are so different from his own; but were he first to acquire, by a year or two's tutelage under some intelligent farmer, a knowledge of the language of the country, and of the system of agriculture, which the observation and experience of practical men have established there, and, after maturely considering the nature and requirements of the soil and climate, cautiously and gradually to improve upon, rather than alter, existing practices, judiciously applying the cheap labour at his command, and making the most of the internal resources of the farm, so as to avoid all unnecessary outlay on experimental farming, implements, and manures, he would then, probably, receive better interest on his outlay than appears to satisfy so many of our agricultural farmers at home, in these days of high rents and heavy taxes. Were he, further, to possess the requisite mechanical skill and mercantile knowledge, he might probably turn the mills and factories, so frequently appertaining to Swedish farms, to very profitable account. Thus, on one farm north of Uddevalla, were two flour mills, with eight pairs of stones, working night and day the year round, and yielding a clear annual profit of above £400 a-year. The manure left by the horses bringing grist to the mill, and waiting there, exceeded 1,000 cart-loads yearly. There was here also a tape manufactory employing 40 hands; a small iron-foundry where castings were made, and nails, ship-anchors, hawsers, and wheel tires forged-the ponderous hammers, the furnace blast (of three cylinders), and whole machinery being worked by the never-failing waterpower of a magnificent trout and salmon stream. The farm here had evidently suffered from the attention of the tenant being divided between it and the more important occupation of his mills. It was neglected and unproductive, though I observed upon it a source of fertility invaluable in a granite district-extensive beds of calcareous matter in the form of marine shells, in an apparently calcined state, sometimes imbedded in blue clay, and retaining their perfect shape; and sometimes, where almost unmixed with earths and crumbled by ex

The rotation on this farm is-first year, fallow dunged; second, rye or wheat; third, clover and timothy, one crop; fourth and fifth, ditto pastured; sixth, wheat, half dunged; seventh, oats; eighth, peas, tares, potatoes, or turnips with bone-dust, or oats again without manure. 18 pairs of work horses are kept, and there are 160 bead of dairy cows and 40 heifers and calves, which (contrary to the usual custom in Sweden of keeping the cows in the house till the hay crop is off) are pastured from the beginning of May till the end of September. Two-thirds of these cattle are of the native breed (worth about £6 a head), the rest either pure Ayrshire or crossed with Ayrshire, 20 cows and a bull of that breed having been entrusted by the Swedish Government to the farmer, with a view to the improvement of the breed of the district. The only return required by the Government for this gift is that of two bull calves yearly, which are sold on behalf of the State, or consigned gratuitously to other farmers. The consignee of these 20 cows is further restricted from selling their male offspring till they are two years and a-half old, prior to which period they are not supposed to have attained the requisite vigour or development. The improvement effected by this cross on the native breed-which are too frequently such as the patriarch Noah would, probably, have hesitated to admit into the ark-is very marked; and my opinion was frequently and earnestly asked, as to whether any superior advantages would accrue from the use of a Shorthorn bull in the place of an Ayrshire; a question which it is difficult to decide, considering that the inferiority of the pasture and the severity of the winters generally combine to render necessary the house-feeding of the cattle 7 months in the year, and that the staple food of the people is not beef and mutton (of which they produce and import but little), but rather bread, milk, cheese, and butter, the imports of which two latter articles actually exceed in value (in this extensive and thinly populated country) £400,000 yearly. The question was more than once asked of me, "Why do not Englishmen, possessed of a little capital, come here in-posure to the air, closely resembling bone-dust. stead of going out to Canada or Australia?" and it is perhaps worthy of consideration, whether a country so near our own shores, and in many respects so favoured, might not afford scope for the energies and enterprise of British agriculturists who feel the want of elbow room at home. My own impression, however, is, that were a man of moderate capital to emigrate there, with the idea of teaching the Swedes, and to introduce costly implements or expensive cattle, or any material innovations upon the established system of farming, without due regard to the peculiar exigencies of the climate and country, he would soon find himself at the end of his tether. For example, high-bred cattle would scarcely be remunerative in a country where beef and mutton, generally indifferent enough in quality, but excellent under the Swedish mode of cooking, may be bought for 3d. and 4d. per lb., and capital veal for 5d. Reaping machines would hardly effect a saving, where stout men can be had for the work at the rate of a penny per hour; or threshing machines, where threshers are contented to take every fifteenth or sixteenth sack in lieu of money wages. Two steam-ploughs have been introduced into Sweden by a wealthy landowner-one into the South, the other to a farm 20 miles from Wenersborg; but it is credibly reported that the labour of men and horses employed in the transport alone of English coal, by necessarily light loads over the hilly country, would suffice to plough the whole farm.

It is more than doubtful, therefore, whether any English settler, embued with English notions

In one respect, and under not unusual circumstances, a Swedish farm would seem to hold out, to a man of small capital, advantages which are not offered in this country. I mean that of taking the farm with the live stock, horses, and implements upon it, thus enabling the tenant to retain his farming capital to meet rent and expenses till his grain crops become available for that purpose. Thus, a Swedish friend of mine lately had the offer of a farm at Linkoping, the capital of the rich province of that name, lying on the east of Lake Wettern, consisting of 520 Scotch acres in 10 fields of 50 acres each, 20 acres being in meadow. The soil is principally loam and marl on clay subsoil, about 50 only being hard to work, and that not so stiff as much of the land in the Carse of Gowrie. The stock, which is let with the farm, consists of 60 cows, 19 pairs of working oxen, 5 pairs of horses, some young colts, 50 sheep, and excellent and extensive buildings and dwelling house, the latter with 13 rooms. The rent asked was £525 English, and if from this be deducted £50 a-year as the produce of a saw mill and flour mill, and £50 on the score of cattle and implements (which may be estimated as worth £1,000), it leaves the rent about 16s. a long acre. £60 a-year covers all government, parochial, and other outgoings, and there are six torpare or free labourers.

The yield of grain in Sweden varies, according to the season, soil, and husbandry, from four to six quarters of wheat to the long acre, and from four to eight of barley. The price of wheat is from 458. to 60s. the qr., accord

ing to quality and the markets; barley, 25s. to 30s.; rye, 328. to 35s. ; oats, 16s. to 20s. This year the yield and quality of the grain, owing perhaps to the moist spring and cloudless summer and autumn, is without precedent. The farmers know not where to bestow their increase, and it is calculated that at least three millions of barrels will be available for exportation.

In speaking, however, of this year's yield of grain in Sweden as unprecedented, in must be remembered that a greatly extended area of land was brought under cultivation in the time of the Russian war, when rye rose from 13s. to 30s. per barrel, and land, temporarily at least, about 50 per cent., and that, under the impetus then given to agriculture, deep drainage and tillage, with careful cultivation, have yearly made rapid progress, and resulted in increasing produce; the very peasantry beginning to feel that agriculture is a progressive art, and exhibiting, in many instances, a spirit of active improvement. The marvellous increase of produce in Sweden, wherever thorough-drainage has been effected, leads irresistibly to the conclusion, that the vast tracts of stiff retentive soils yet undrained, or drained only by open trenches and water furrows (the inefficiency of which appears in stunted crops and coarse herbage), would afford profitable employment for English capital. Sweden is pecuniarily a poor country, and there are everywhere (but especially now, under the depression caused by the American war,) estates on sale. Not more than one-third or one-fourth of the purchasemoney is usually required to be paid down, the payment of the rest being extended over a series of years. It is impossible, of course, to give any very accurate idea of the value of estates in that country; but, at a loose computation, it may be said that five hundred acres of average land already under cultivation, and wanting only effectual drainage to be highly productive, may be purchased for £10,000; the addition of two or three thousand acres of pine forest not materially enhancing the price, unless where the vicinity of a naviga-1 ble river gives a marketable value to the timber. Such purchases should, of course, be judiciously made; if possible, near some line, or projected line, of railway, canal, navigable river, or seaport-the land sufficiently concentred, and as level as consistent with easy drain. age, and the buildings-as is almost always the case in Sweden-conveniently placed, extensive, and wellarranged. Such farms, I think, let to careful and intelligent tenants-the landlord providing for them draining pipes, and subsequently lime, and exacting, under occasional supervision, a proper system of drainage and cultivation, but at the same time an easy rent at the outset, augmentable to a certain extent in a specified ratio yearly, as the condition of the farm and its tenant improved-could hardly fail to return a much higher rate of interest than is compatible with anything like good security in England; to say nothing of the prospect of more or less increase to the saleable value of the land, as the resources and riches of the country are opened up and increased by the construction of railways, Thus, land in the neighbourhood of Gottenburg has increased cent. per cent. in the last ten years; and in the event of the expected union of Denmark with Sweden and Norway, when Gottenburg, from its central position and advantageous seaboard, would probably become the seat of government and the converging point of numerous railways, must continue

to advance in value.

The climate of central Sweden is delightful, the atmosphere being, in the opinion of old Australians, more clear, buoyant, and invigorating than that of their own settlement; and the scenery, without attaining to the wild grandeur of Switzerland or even our own Lake districts,

is generally picturesque. The winters, though severer, are drier than ours; the weather in summer steadier and warmer; wet hay-times and harvests are of rare occurrence; and vegetation is so rapid that corn is sometimes sown and reaped in six or seven weeks. Nowhere on the face of the earth will an Englishman meet with more hospitable welcome and hearty kindness than in Sweden people of Britain and of Scandinavia there seems to be a and Norway. I say an Englishman; for between the mutual sympathy and bond of alliance, arising probably from the affinity, and, in great measure, common origin, of race, manners, customs, and institutions. In Scandinavia alone, perhaps, of all the nations of Europe, is England regarded with feelings where envy and dislike have no place; and to that quarter alone must her statesmen look, should it ever be deemed desirable to form a powerful and enduring Northern League.

I have spoken of the steadiness and warmth of the climate in Sweden; yet with these advantages they adopt measures for the speedy drying of their crops, which might be copied with benefit in the rainy districts of these islands, especially where access can be had to the thinnings of fir plantations. The most simple mode of drying grain is by rearing a number of light poles, about 9 feet high, in holes made for their reception by an iron crowbar. A pair of sheaves are placed upright against the pole to support the other sheaves, which are then linked two and two together and threaded upon the pole at the junction of the bands, so as to rest in a horizontal position one on each side of the pole. The rest are similarly placed till the top is reached, where one sheaf is then impaled through its centre. In the districts bordering on the Baltic extensive frame-works are used. A number of fir poles, about 20 feet high and 4 yards apart, are erected in a row, usually running north and south. At each side of these poles, namely, east and west of them, and 2 feet apart from them, is erected a lighter pole, foot shorter. Across each of these three poles are then nailed or pegged nine cross-bars, 2 feet apart, and two sloping pieces are placed at the top to support a roof, falling two or three feet each way. From each of these nine cross-bars to the opposite cross-bar are then laid four loose poles, generally of split fir, thus making between each pair of uprights a series of nine shelves, 4 yards long and 4 feet wide, on which the fresh-cut vetches, clover, or timothy, or, in wet seasons, grain, are placed and closely packed, and there remain till dry, proof against any damage from rains. It is of course necessary to prop against every other upright a sloping pole as a buttress; and this on both sides, unless when two parallel ranges are constructed a few yards apart, in which case it is sufficient to spur them on the outside, steadying them on the inside by a few poles stretched from roof to roof, and fixed at the ends as tie-rods.

A simpler and less expensive plan is in use in the western districts. Several couples of fir poles, about 8 yards long, are raised, at intervals of three or four yards, against each other, after the manner of a steep house-roof; the upper ends, which are pegged, cross or over-lap each other sufficiently to afford a rest for the horizontal ridge-pole, which combines the couples. On the outside of these couples are inserted, at right angles to the slope of the pole, and 2 feet apart, wooden pins, about 8 inches long, to afford support for a series of loose horizontal bars, which are then laid from one to the other, thus completing the frame or rack. The laying on of the crop (which, whether of grass, clover, or grain, and however laid and twisted, is all cut with a short light scythe, which the mower wields in an upright position, cutting close to his feet) is then commenced by hanging the swathes over the lowest bar

THE SMALL-POX IN SHEEP.