THE QUESTION

OF LANDLORD AND TENANT.

The application of capital to agricultural purposes most useful of the local clubs is that at Newcastlehas necessarily become a very old story at the Farm-upon-Tyne, of which Mr. Ramsey is himself, we beers' Clubs. It has been considered, year after year, lieve, an active member. But do the members geneunder every variety of phase, and from every possible rally of that society think with him that the question point of view. Practice and theory have alike been of landlord and tenant ought never to be introduced? brought to bear upon so important a question; and the If so, we must say that we shall have only a keep of cart-horses and a change in the currency laws qualified opinion of their usefulness for the future. have shared attention with claims for unexhausted im- Nay, even beyond the action of this home society, Mr. provements, long leases, high farming, and other items Ramsey, if we recollect aright, once drew an ideal of argument, always "in order" with so open-handed a picture of what a Farmers' Club should be. A Farmtext word. The gentleman who suggested, the other ers' Club, that must be, with the heart cut out of itevening, that the Central Club should venture to deal that must not touch upon the question of landlord and with snch subjects as land tenure, might have as well tenant, or any of the many features associated with the recommended the employment of capital as another hiring and letting of land. For these, forsooth, are novel feature to touch upon; both, as the Chairman purely mercantile matters! How admirably a line to put it, being hobbies almost ridden to death at one this effect would read in the RULES AND REGULAtime by the supporters of these discussions. And, in TIONS! fact, the connecting line in Mr. Sanderson's course of reasoning was just and logical enough. In any broad comprehensive treatment of the matter, the terms upon which a tenant holds must be the inducement for what he spends. If he has a long liberal lease, or an agreement with compensation clauses for all he may leave behind him-if he starts fair, with the permanent improvements duly effected-if the game be kept under, and due freedom of action allowed him to farm the land in the best way he knows how-the very fact of such a letting will go far of itself to absolutely create capital. Friends will come forward, and men of business will always be accessible when there is some security for the money about to be lent to the land. But, on the other hand, allow the landlord to have it all his own way in the deal between the two parties to the contract-let him bind himself to nothing in the adjustment of tenure, or the encouragement of improvement beyond the obsolete form of some "standard" agreement, and then capital-the most susceptible of thingsshrinks within itself, and withdraws from any very active part in the proceedings. Even in farming, men with money to lose are beginning to get cautious as to how they lay it out, and the word-of-mouth, do-as-we-havedone system of holding can never continue where sufficient means are to be employed and due improvement to be accomplished.

And yet at this same June meeting of the Central Farmers' Club, one of the members, Mr. G. H. Ramsey, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, is reported to have said, "A great deal had been talked about landlord and tenant. That was a question which he had always thought ought not to be introduced in clubs or societies like that. The landlord had to let, and the tenant to take land, and the question between them was as purely a mercantile one as any question on the face of the earth." It is next to impossible to gather this extraordinary opinion in all its full force until one has carefully reperused it, as we recommend our readers to do. The question of landlord and tenant ought never to be introduced at a Farmers' Club meeting! That is to say the very foundation of the whole business should never be looked to; while, if this delicate view of the subject be the correct one, the next point would be to ascertain what really is the use of such a society? But, fortunately for the advancement of agriculture, the great majority of Farmers' Clubs in the kingdom have long been doing that they "ought not," and discussing the question of landlord and tenant over and over again. Certainly one of the

Now, what is it that has led to the many improvements in agriculture we see going on around us? We auswer unhesitatingly that above everything else, this advancement has its foundation in a better understanding between landlord and tenant. And how has this better understanding been arrived at? By talking the question over at the Farmers' Clubs and Agricultural Societies. And not merely by " talking over," but by framing resolutions, organizing evidence, and drawing out forms of leases and agreements as examples for landlords and tenants to act by. The Suffolk Agricultural Association, one of the soundest in the kingdom, has the offer of a premium pending at this moment for "the best and shortest form of lease, giving the greatest liberty to the. tenant consistent with the interests of the landlord." Who ever would have thought of liberty to the tenant twenty or thirty years since? Who would have ventured to mention such a thing now, if the question of landlord and tenant had not-as it ought not to have-been introduced at the Farmers' Clubs? How is it that agents have come to remodel their old agreements, and where is it that landlords have confessed they have learnt so much of their proper duties, but by studying these landlord and tenant questions as they have been discussed at the Farmers' Clubs ? Mr. Ramsey no doubt would say nothing publicly of leases, or lettings, or compensation clauses; but would leave these matters, as he evidently would the over-preservation of game nuisance, to right and remedy themselves. The basis of a Farmers' Club's discourses "ought not" to extend to the killing of old doe rabbits with half-adozen young ones in them, but extend and expend itself in unmeaning compliments and purposeless generalities.

"The

Of course Mr. Ramsey was at once corrected. Mr. Smythies, who followed him, said: last speaker remarked that landlord and tenant questions ought never to be introduced in that room. He, for one, did not coincide in that view (Hear, hear). Supposing Mr. Mechi to be correct as to the sum per acre employed in agriculture, the question naturally arose why was the amount so small, and he could not help thinking it was owing to the state of the relations between landlord and tenant. He thought that the arrangements-they might call them what they pleased

between landlord and tenant were such as to discourage the employment of capital in the land in such proportions as would pay. He thought, therefore, that they could not too often-provided of course it was

CONDITION AND PROGRESS

Last year we called attention to the condition of agriculture in Austria, but we had then no very recent data to refer to. The Austrian Government, however, for the purposes of the International Exhibition, has thought fit to condense and arrange for publication the latest details and statistics calculated to throw light upon the condition and progress of the empire. The task has been carried out by Mr. Fricker, the Secretary of the Minister of Finance, under the supervision of his excellency Baron Czoernig, chief of the department for administrative statistics, and we shall be doing our readers a service in drawing their attention to some of the chief facts brought out with respect to land and agriculture in that country.

The Austrian empire comprises an area of 11,252 Austrian square miles, and had, at the census of 1857, a population, exclusive of the army, of 34 million souls. At the present time the population is computed to be 35,795,000 inhabitants. Austria is the most mountainous state of Europe, Switzerland excepted, three-fourths of its area comprising mountain regions. There are 878 cities, 2,264 towns, and 66,878 villages. Vienna numbers over 500,000 inhabitants, Pesth near 200,000, Prague 150,000, and Venice 120,000. There are also ten towns having more than 50,000, and fifteen towns with more than 25,000 inhabitants. More than two-thirds of the population are engaged in husbandry. In Bohemia only about half are, however, so occupied, and in Lower Austria and Moravia this proportion is also but little exceeded.

OF AGRICULTURE IN AUSTRIA.

Austria produces on an average 30 million fathoms of wood, mostly of excellent quality. The forests yield to commerce valuable oak spars, 500,000 cwts. of galls, 100,000 cwts. of potash, 250,000 cwts. of turpentine and rosin, and 4,000,000 cwts. of tanning bark annually. Within the forests there are considerable tracts used as pasture, and there are also in the empire 2,820 square miles of grass lands. From the grass lands 363 million cwts. of hay are made, and 200 million cwts. more of fodder of various kinds are cropped for the sustenance of the cattle. The largest amount of arable land is in Hungary, Galicia, Bohemia, and Transylvania. There is excellent corn land in the alluvial soil of the Danube valley, the flat country about Salzburg, the Windian hills in Styria, the environs of Laibach and Wippach in Carniola, the lowland portions on both sides of the middle Elbe and the lower Eger in Bohemia. But the richest corn lands are in the Moravian Hanna, the north-east of Galicia, the level part of Bukowina, a larger portion of the Hungarian lowland, including the Banat, eastern Slavonia, and the continuous military frontier of the south-east of Transylvania. The central Alps and Carpathian mountains generally form the northern boundary of extended growth of maize and buckwheat. The Lombardo-Venetian kingdom contains five square miles of rice fields; and rice is also cultivated in the Littorale and Southern Hungary. Agricultural improvements have been much attended to, and have made great progress in Austria in the last ten years. The extended application of drainage, the manufacfrequent substitution of agricultural machines for manual labour, and the thorough improvement of implements, have greatly advanced the interests of agriculture, and extended production. The gross value of the principal products of the soil of Austria averages yearly £160,000,000 sterling. More than one-third (36 million of Austrian acres, the Austrian acre being to the English acre nearly as 16 to 11) of the whole area of the empire is under cultivation. The extensive Danubian plains of Central Hungary on the east, those along the Vistula in the north, and the LombardoVenetian plains along the Po in the south-the first for wheat, the second for rye, the third for rice and maize, may be considered as the chief grauaries of the Austrian empire. The numerous valleys fertilized by rivers in the north-west provinces of the empire are more or less fit for agricultural purposes; so that their amount of production is nearly everywhere adequate to the wants of their own population, In those provinces agriculture has attained to a higher degree of improvement than in the eastern provinces. The Alpine regions alone depend on the import of cereals from Hungary and Southern Germany for the sustenance of their population. The statistical and general details of the agricultural produce and live stock of Austria we must defer to another occasion,

The nature of the soil, the abundance of water, and the quick succession of isothermal lines are circum-ture and more general use of artificial manures, the stances eminently favourable to the growth of those products which Austria is daily studying to improve. Many extensive landed estates can be pointed out in Austria, and the sub-division of the land into small plots has not been carried generally to that excess which prevails in western Germany and France. The number of large landed estates in the Littorale, Carniola, part of Tyrol, Voralberg, Venice, and Dalmatia is, however, but few. The area of soil continuously or intermittingly used as tillage land, comprises 3,582 square miles.

It is extremely difficult to fix any general value for the land throughout the whole empire, but the average price per acre is given at £15 for meadow and arable land, £40 for garden ground, £30 for vineyard, £4 for woodland, and £5 for pasture ground; but these are the means between two extremes, arable land ranging from £3 to £150, meadow land rises to £300 an aere, and woodland fetches £1 to £80. Farm rents necessarily vary with the value of the soil. There are 3,186 Austrian square miles of woodland. The prevailing forest tree in the high mountain ranges is the pine, in the middle heights intermingled with firs and pitch trees. The principal indigenous tree of the low-lying tracts in the Carpathian mountains and Alps is the birch; in the north-west of the empire, partially, still the oak; in the south the elm, chestnut, and walnut tree, and farther southward thrive the laurel, olive, and fig.

THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE.

OUR SUPPLIES FROM

The production and shipment of grain from Russia are carried-on on so extensive a scale, and the samples which that country has this year sent to London for inspection are so varied and excellent, that a few statistical details respecting the commerce in grain of the empire may prove interesting. The demands for its European population, numbering 67,000,000 souls, must be alone considerable; but it has always a large surplus for export, the wide extent of area, and the attention given to agriculture, enabling it to produce great quantities of grain.

The system of culture pursued is in Central Russia chiefly a tertiary one. The fields are divided into three parts-one is sown with winter wheat, one with spring wheat, and one left fallow. The crops raised on this plan are rye, oats, and buckwheat; to the north barley; and on the south-east wheat. In the Baltic states a rotation of crops is pursued.

In respect to the commerce in grain, and the relative production of cereals in different localities, European Russia presents three distinct zones, each one marked by a special character.

The first comprises the southern districts of the governments of Perm, Viatka, Kasan, and Nijni Novogorod, having for its boundary towards the west the rivers Oka and Desna, and an imaginary line traversing the governments of Kiev and Volhynia parallel with the river Pripete. All the country to the south of these limits is of great fertility, and produces the cereals in abundance, with the exception only of certain sterile portions on the south east, and especially the lands on the saline border of the governments of Samara and Astrakan. From the eastern part of this fertile region the surplus of grain is conducted by the Volga into St. Petersburg, from the southern ports by land to the ports of the Black Sea, and from the central part by land and by the river Oka to Moscow. A small radius of this zone forwards its grain for the most part to Riga, whilst the southern ports of the government of Kiev and Volhynia transmit considerable quantities of wheat to Odessa. In the northern part of this zone, the largest grain-producing localities, the governments of Viatka and Vologda, send it to Archangel.

The second zone comprises the countries situated to the north of the line indicated above, having as its boundary in the west the Narova, Lake Peipus, and the river Velikaia. All this extent of country is less fertile, and produces only sufficient grain for local consumption, without any excess for export.

The third zone, situated to the west, is bounded on the north by the Gulf of Finland, on the east by the rivers Narova, Velikaia, and Desna, and on the south by an imaginary line which traverses the governments of Kiev and Volhynia. This region produces a certain excess of grain beyond the demands for local consumption, but this excess is employed for distillation, and very rarely enters into commerce.

From the foregoing outline it will be seen that it is principally the north of Russia through which a constant supply of grain from the interior is shipped, or that part of the empire which comprises eleven governments, and a population of 10,000,000 souls, of whom 2,200,000 inhabit the towns.

When we

consider that this town population, the country people not employed in agriculture, and the agriculturists themselves (about one million), with

RUSSIA.

the troops quartered in these various localities, are large consumers of grain, and that the food for the numerous horses employed in the transport demands a large quantity of oats, it is certain that the quantity of grain consumed in the interior is far larger than that. shipped to foreign countries.

At Archangel there are received yearly for sale about 140,000 chetwerts of flour, 219,000 chetwerts of grain, 23,000 chetwerts of meal of different kinds, 2,800 vedros (of 24 gallons) of grain spirit, and 45,760 vedros. of spirits of wine. There is also received at the White Sea, by the river Onega, some grain, obtained principally from the district of Kargopol, in the government of Olonetz; but the quantity is inconsiderable. The export of grain from the White Sea is about 162,000 chetwerts per annum.

The most important port for grain is that of Samara, situate on the river of that name, which receives and disposes of the best spring wheat of the government of Samara. The grain shipped from the ports of the governments of Saratov and Samara averages 1,200,000 chetwerts.

The trains of boats proceeding by the Volga and the Kama are partly augmented by the supplies of grain they receive from the neighbouring localities, and there is a good deal of commercial speculation carried on in grain. The purchase and transmission of grain attains considerable importance at the port of Kasan. Here is collected especially large quantities of rye and wheat, which are ground into flour, and sold in that form. The shipment of rye-flour from that port reaches 135,000 kouls of about 300lbs., and of wheat-flour about 25,000 sacks.

Of the grain ports situate on the Volga, Promzino is the most important. The purchase of grain employs 40 to 60 dealers, and from 200 to 225 vessels yearly. The commerce there is chiefly in rye-flour, oats, and wheat. The rye-flour of Promzino, from its whiteness and the care with which it is prepared, bears a high character. That sent from the port of Lyskovo, near the town of Makariev, is nearly as good, and reaches, with oats, about 400,000 kouls annually.

The greater part of the boats from the Lower Volga cannot ascend the river beyond Rybinsk, and hence their cargoes have to be transhipped. The merchants and dealers of Rybinsk and the upper towns profit by this circumstance, to speculate largely in grain. A part of their purchase is usually stored, and the remainder forwarded on immediately to the capital. In the five years, 1851 to 1855, there were sent from Rybinsk 1,967,250 chetwerts of grain, 1,911,497 kouls of flour, 57,506 sacks, 46,858 pouds, and 301,719 chetwerts of meal, 155 pouds of buckwheat, 162 chetwerts of millet, 15,921 chetwerts of "drège," 95,363 pouds and 966,116 vedros of grain spirit.

All kinds of grain are received in large quantities at St. Petersburg-oats about 1,300,000 chetwerts, rye meal 1,020,000 kouls, rye 95,000 chetwerts, buckwheat 143,000 chetwerts, wheat flour 375,000 sacks, wheat 101,000 chetwerts, barley 95,000 chetwerts, oatmeal 22,000 chetwerts, peas 18,000, and millet 17,000.

Of late years a large quantity of grain has been received by the Moscow railway, the average being 1,500,000 pouds of grain, (the poud 63 to the ton), 1,567,000 of flour, 357,540 of hulled barley, and 86,000 pouds of grain spirit.

NATURAL FOOD v. MEDICINE.

THE HERDS OF GREAT BRITAIN.
CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE BIDDENHAM AND CLIFTON HERDS.

"A fast thing of an hour without a check, through the Packeridge and Lord Dacre's countries, and across Cardington Field, so dear to the leash, brought us to the Bedford station, on the brightest of mornings towards the close of May. Britannia with her shield and sheaf, and her adopted text, "He that tilleth the land shall have plenty of bread," had caught our eye as we swept over the Ouse, which runs through the heart of the town; but we had to make a long circuit past the Grammar Schools and The Swan, "which Oakley men know well," before we were among the clang of hammers, over which she presides, hard by the old site of Caldwell Priory. We were only following in the footsteps of Commissioners from seven different countries, who had descended on this temple of industrious peace two days before; and it is to them and their reports, that we must look for a fresh ringing of the changes on the story, which so many English feuilletonists have told already of the triumphs of the Britannia Works and its five hundred.

The rooms for models, the model agriculture and engineering library, and all the other natty arrangements of the interior (which is Mr. Frederick Howard's more especial domain), had but little charm for us by the side of the old picture of the Woburn sheep-shearing. Either the painter of nearly sixty years ago allowed his brush or his feelings, or both, to bear him into the sentimental latitudes, or the catholic spirit which could induce the great chiefs of the agricultural world once a year to call together a congress of men, who had won a name with stock and crops, is now fain to confess that it "cannot see my way," or has lost its ancient energy. Royalty is there in the person of the future "Sailor King,” and so are three Dukes of Bedford: Francis the Fifth on his Irish mare, handling some Merino cloth; John the Sixth on his horse on the left; and the late Duke, with his brother Earl Russell, as little boys in knee-breeches, and probably thinking far more of ponies and rabbits than staple and touch. If Ellman and Overman have had an invitation to ponder over the Southdown; Buckley, Stone, and Stubbins have the Bakewell interest equally in keeping, and a word to say on the Welsh and Spanish specimens. On the Root table we read the name of "Gibbs." Arthur Young, that learned Thane of agricultural travel, is talking to Mr. Coke and Sir Joseph Banks, who has four other baronets-Davy, Sebright, Wynn, and Bunbury-all well known in their lines, from the Safety Lamp to the risky Turf, to keep him in countenance. Leave out Sam Whitbread, and a critic might safely deny, two hundred years hence, that it was a Bedfordshire picture of the period at all. The Suffolk Punch has a place; but the Shorthorn, then unblest by a Comet prestige, had not shed its primitive title of "Teeswater." The "Oakley Hereford bull under the tree" would seem, from his name, to be the reigning favourite; but the key is dark as to breed, when it treats of the responsibilities of Wetcar the herdsman, and merely introduces him to posterity as the man "who fed all the beautiful oxen sent from Creslow. '

The boy Duke of this picture and Mr. Buckley alone re-appear in the companion print of the Royal Agricultural Society's Meeting at Bristol in '42; and there,

with Ransome, Garrett, Crosskill, and Hornsby to back them, the Implements take up their legitimate ground in the great social system of agriculture. Gardner's turnip cutter and Garrett's horse hoe are still the foremost in the modest array from A to P, which is there delineated; and if we give ourselves "leave to report progress," we have only to glance from the front door before we make our sally, over a couple of acres covered with iron ploughs, waiting till autumn begins to summon them a-field.

Upwards of six thousand of them leave the Works annually, and, although the great run is upon the H & HH, a sixth of last year's orders were for the Chelmsford PP and 124 for the Bristol JA, which has a peculiar aptitude for hard work and clay land. A few red Hottentot ploughs with their strong wood frames and shares-which will turn two furrows at a time of that light Cape soil-lend colour to the mass. Peat thirty-six inches under the alluvial soil of the fens will not be proof against the gentle violence of those sturdy clunch ploughs, which contrast quaintly with their nimble iron compatriots in the blue interest; and stacks of harrows with reversible tines, cultivators, horse and steam, and horse rakes for Russia and Australia, take up the same tale of yellow, green, and fallow-brown fields, all over the world. Russia, with no tariff to fetter her, is far away the best all round customer. Fifteen per cent. stares each plough in the face as it enters a French port, and the Treaty did not touch it. Subject to a moderate duty (which is reduced one half on application to the Governments), steam engines and thrashing machines especially find their way in large numbers to Austria, and Hungary, which is struggling hard to be the garden of Europe.

A few steps bring us from the heart of the finished to the noisy regions of the raw material. The Ouse, so big with mischief of late, glides stealthily by the edge of the works, and bears its hundred tons of coal weekly from Lynn; and a troop of Priory rooks in the elms are cawing their hopeless protest against the hammers, and the invasion of their ancient solitudes. Tier after tier is built up, by the water's edge, of pig-iron, from Scotland and Barrow; and nearly 100 tons of it is weekly served out, "all hot," by the furnace-men to the moulders, along the little tramways. Red Mansfield sand, yellow local, with more clay in it, and cream-coloured Woolwich, make up, with coal-dust and a coating of charcoal, the wherewithal of the moulder's art; and, although we cared more to see the moulds in which future Dukes of Thorndale were to be cast and quickened, we had a very pleasant hour's ramble. Our notes seem of rather a discursive character. Three men, they observe, were bending, flattening, and hardening horserake teeth at one movement; and we seem to have learnt, in reply to leading questions, that they may be safely backed to turn out six dozen in the hour, and that twenty-eight go to a rake. Five or six men, chosen for their stalwart size, were holding plough-breasts of forty pounds to the grindstone as deftly as if they were razors; the clock was telling with its unresting pointer of four yards of wire rope woven in 25 seconds; jets of water were giving the chill shares their earliest and most enduring notion of temper; and welding cast and wrought iron together for haymaker-barrels, was the great order of the day. We found the original hay