there is a certain class-colouring perceptible in farming, as in other professions, and tenant-farmers may be safely spoken of as a worthy and well-conditioned body of men. If, as is sometimes feared, a general prevalence of the lease should displace the homely and neighbourly class with whom in English country districts one has so long enjoyably associated, by a set of energetic, ruthless, restless, money-making "sharps," the change would be lamentable indeed; but the fear is ludicrous. However many new men may be entering Agriculture from other walks of life, it will always be that the bulk of farmers have been bred by farmers. And it is an easier and a better thing to engraft upon the characteristic good qualities of this class, or rather (for they already exist) to foster in them the intelligence and enterprise, and energy of commercial life, by adopting more generally a commercial view of the relations between landlord and tenant, than it will be to engraft a strict valuation and acknowledgment of tenant right upon the system of tenancy-at-will.

Although this Journal is devoted rather to the consideration of science than of business, yet the case of Agriculture, owing to the peculiarity of its raw material, land, is so exceptional, that these general remarks on what, more than anything else, determines its progress and improvement, may be permitted in a paper introductory to a quarterly series, descriptive of the progress and improvement which from time to time will have to be recorded.

And as a preliminary study of the subject which will thus at intervals engage us, we will now shortly enumerate the particulars in which this progress consists, or to which is owing increased produce of food from the land.

1. It is owing in the first place to better tillage. The object of tillage is the creation of an increased available surface within the soil, on which may be prepared and deposited food for plants, and over which the roots of plants may feed. The greater the quantity of this internal superficies to act as a laboratory, as a warehouse, as a pasturage, and the better stored it is, under a given extent of land, then so long as the fitness of the mechanical condition of the land with reference to particular plants is preserved, the more fertile is that land with reference to those plants.

In order to the creation of this inner surface a greater depth of soil is stirred, and clods are comminuted. In order to the increased accessibility of this inner surface land is drained. The air and rain water which then traverse soil and subsoil instead of merely lodging in them, introduce substances into this warehouse and activity into this laboratory.

The air which rain-water thus draws through the soil as it sinks downwards to the drains is as necessary to the fertility of the soil as it is to the heat of burning coals. The fire will merely smoulder until, by the erection of a chimney over it, a current upwards through the burning mass is impressed upon the air. And even then, in fires of caking coal, the heap may smoulder until, by the smashing of the fuel, that inner surface of the fire, where the action of the air takes place, throughout is multiplied, and the impervious ceiling-or floor, as we

might call it, to an upward current-which has hindered the passage of the air over that inner surface, is broken up.

Land drainage is the provision of a passage for the rain-water, along with which the fertilizing air has thus a downward current given it through the soil and subsoil. And tillage, especially tillage by steampower, which does not cake a floor, as horse-power does, beneath the soil it stirs has all that enlivening effect of the poker on a caked coal fire, which the parallel suggests. Extended drainage has a great deal to do with our increased produce. Mr. Bailey Denton estimates that nearly 2,000,000 acres have within the past fifteen years been underdrained, and the fertility of these acres has no doubt been largely increased.

Deeper and better tillage has contributed to the same result. The extension of autumnal tillage is an undoubted fact; the enormously increased use of implements of the grubber class is another; the general adoption of a better form of plough is a third; the more general adoption of the fertilizing practice of burning clay soils is a fourth. The success which has at length rewarded unconquerable perseverance in the attempt to use steam-power for tillage operations is a further great fact, which, if it cannot yet be quoted in explanation of agricultural progress, will unquestionably be looked back upon ten years hence as having contributed largely to the increased fertility which will then have to be recorded.

2. In the second place our agricultural progress has been owing to the greater richness of home-made manures, and to the greater use made of imported fertilizers. The imports of guano since 1840 have amounted to 34 millions of tons; the imports of cubic nitre, which averaged 10,000 to 14,000 tons per annum up to 1858, have since varied from 25,000 to 40,000 tons per annum. The imports of bones since 1848 have increased from 30,000 to 70,000 or 80,000 tons annually. All these are manuring substances. 75,000 to 80,000 tons of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire coprolites, and 15,000 to 20,000 tons of Sombrero phosphate, are also used in the superphosphate manufacture, which now probably exceeds in worth £1,000,000 per annum. To facts like this add the enormous extension in the use of oil cakes and richer foods in the meat manufacture, by which the richness of home-made manure is increased-the increased adoption of the practice of applying manure at once to the land, instead of rotting it in heaps, which is an economy, and so an addition to our resources worth naming the increased practice of feeding and collecting manure under shelter, which is another great economy and the increased care to properly pulverise and even dissolve manures, so as to distribute them thoroughly through the soil, which is another first-class example of a most important improvement in farm practice. On the other hand there is the increased value of the town sewage-due to the improved drainage of our towns-which is still suffered to go to waste. On the whole, however, there cannot be a doubt that the increased fertility of the soil is due not only to improved drainage and tillage, but to the direct application of fertilizing ingredients in a more liberal and economical manner.

3. Leaving now the soil, there is the way in which its increased

fertility is developed and expressed. It will on the whole be admitted that, at least on arable lands, there are fewer weeds; our fallow crops are cleaner, our tillage and manures are not so much wasted on plants we do not want to grow.

Another fact of importance is the prevalence of rotations of crops in which bare fallows are diminished, and in which there is a larger acreage of the more valuable crops. The prevalent rotation of the country is the four-field course, in which wheat, turnips, barley, and clover occupy one-fourth of the land apiece. But it is common on well-cultivated land-where the land is folded by cake-fed sheep, and where a top-dressing of guano is given to the corn, to take a crop of wheat between the turnips and the barley, so that three-fifths instead of two-quarters of the land are in grain crops. One-half of the clover land, too, is often sown instead with peas or beans, so that five-eighths instead of three-fifths are in grain. Again, over large districts, especially in Scotland, potato culture to a great extent, displaces turnips or other fallow crops, and thus provides a great increase of food for

man.

But besides the adoption of improved rotations, we have to report the improved cultivation of individual crops. We suppose that the gradually diminished quantity of seed used per acre in growing grain crops- -as drill husbandry extends, and as an increased independence of mere custom becomes the rule, each man determining his practice for himself-will be admitted by most people as an example of this kind. Certainly every one will admit that the extension of drill husbandry in the cultivation of root crops, the extended use of the horsehoe in the cultivation of grain crops-the extended use of so-called artificial manures as top-dressings and otherwise in the cultivation of all crops-all illustrate the improved cultivation of the plants by which the greater fertility of our soils is expressed and utilized.

Again, we owe our better crops to the selection and adoption of better sorts of the plants in cultivation. We do not suppose that individual sorts have improved upon our hands. Probably, as a general rule, they have deteriorated. But new sorts are being perpetually introduced; and of wheat, barley, and oats, mangold-wurzel, swedes, turnips and potatoes, cabbages and vetches, a man can grow sorts as good as any-we think probably better than any-that his predecessors have known.

4. We now come to the produce of meat, and the question of sort has a great deal to do with our improvement here. Our sheep are now ready for the butcher at 14 months old; our cattle at 24 and 30 months. Formerly it needed at least two years of feeding to make a smaller carcase of mutton, and at least three or four years' feeding to make a smaller carcase of beef. A thousand sheep upon a farm in March or April now mean something like 500 ewes in the lambing fold, and 500 sheep ready for the market. Formerly they meant not more than 300, and those a smaller lot ready for the butcher. And this great increase in the meat produce of a given head of stock is witnessed as much in pork and beef as it is in mutton.

All the important breeds of cattle, sheep, and pigs have improved

and increased in numbers during this period. Mr. Strafford receives entries for his herd book from fourfold the number of short-horn breeders; and the influence of this, the dominant breed of cattle, in crossing the general stock of the country, has wonderfully increased. Messrs. Duckham and Tanner Davy report no falling off in the number and quality of the more local breeds of Hereford and Devon. Both Down and long-woolled sheep, and especially the latter, have made great strides, both as to increase of numbers and general improvement; and much more general interest is taken in the improvement of the breeds of swine. The public attention has lately been drawn, or rather driven, to the fact that disease is rife among our stock, and it is said to be increasing. It is one great point in proof of great agricultural improvement that an evil of this kind, whether general or local, and wherever it exists, is not now left to fester, but is exposed and probed by an energetic public agitation, which will undoubtedly promote its

cure.

The greater rapidity of growth, and the increased size of our improved stock, are owing partly to the better food we give our stock, as well as to their increased precocity, and the enormous extension of better bred stock. And thus, as part of this experience, we have a supply of more fertilizing manure and an increased growth of grain crops. It is, we believe, the fact that there are more acres of corn grown now than before has been ever known in England, and we look upon this as a proof of agricultural progress. And, so long as this is consistent with the maintenance of fertility, it is certainly for the interests of the consumer. It is said our climate is especially favourable for the growth of green crops. We believe there are more bushels of wheat per acre grown here than in any other country, whether we have so good a climate for it or not. And if the pre

sent extravagant cry for laying land down to grass which has hitherto grown grain and green crops in alternate husbandry shall to any extent prevail, we do not know who is to benefit by the change. Landlord, tenant, labourer, and consumer are alike interested in the larger produce and more energetic cultivation of arable land.

The progress which we have thus sketched has been achieved rather by the extension of good Agriculture than by the invention of any new process during the period of it; and yet there is enough of novelty and change apparent, too, on comparing the present farmer with his predecessor. Bones and rape cake, soot and salt and gypsum, lime and marl, and composts used to be the principal methods of adding directly to fertility; and indirectly the same end was attained by the cultivation of successive green crops, feeding rye and rape, vetches and turnips, and cabbages off successively upon the same field. This "double" culture was advocated confidently as the perfection of arable cultivation twenty-eight or thirty years ago. Hear Mr. Middleton, who edited the 20th edition of Arthur Young's Farmer's Calendar,' writing on this very practice. "That very numerous class of supine -persons," he says, "whose minds are so weak as not to adopt this practice, which is the most improved that is known, will certainly continue to complain of hard landlords and bad times. Such characters

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do not succeed in any profession; neither can they in Agriculture. I had nearly said they deserve to be poor, but, whether they deserve it or not, their destiny is to be so."

Notwithstanding, however, Mr. Middleton's vigorous assertion of this practice, it is not thus that the farmer now in general seeks the increased fertility of his lands. He has guano, superphosphate, and other fertilizers at his command. He has machinery, not only for the increased efficiency, but for the cheapening of all agricultural processes. Steam-power both tills the soil and threshes out its produce. The mowing machine, hay-tedder, and reaper-the chaffcutter, pulper, and steamer-cheapen the labour of securing his crops, and economize the after-use of them. Better plants are grown, and better animals are fed, and the fertility which formerly came with profit under the best management in two or three years, is now achieved, with at least an equal profit, almost at once.

It will thus be seen that there is a large field over which the reader of the agricultural section of this Journal may expatiate. And in the improvements of machinery and soil, of manures, and plants and animals, there is scope enough both for the ingenuity and energy of the practical and scientific man, and in the present activity of both in the agricultural world, for the industry of the recording Journalist.

GERMANY, ever foremost in practical astronomy has, within the last few months, seen the inauguration of a movement likely, if well carried on, to render valuable services to the science. The celebrated band whose organization in the early years of the present century resulted in the discovery of the planetoids, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta, may be said to have paved the way for the new institution we have now to report upon, and there is no reason to doubt that the results in the present case will be equally, if not still more satisfactory. “The Astronomical Society of Germany," modelled in some respects on our own, is distinguished therefrom by including in its programme a scheme for united work which appears very promising. It is well known that there are certain classes of research demanding for their proper development more time and attention than a single observatory, much less a single observer, can possibly be expected to afford-variable stars and comet sweeping are two noticeable examples. By a welladjusted subdivision of labour amongst several persons, each undertaking a prescribed department or area of the heavens, as the case may be, it is obvious that results of extreme magnitude and importance may be arrived at. A copy of the prospectus has been forwarded to us from Germany: from it we learn that Leipzic will be the general head-quarters, and that German will be the official language for the transaction of business, though the Society will be open to all nationalities and all languages. Both the entrance fee and annual subscription are fixed at five thalers (15s.), a very moderate sum by the side of