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EXPLANATION OF PLATE I.

FIG. 1.-Right Side of Neanderthal Skull.

A A. Glabello-occipital plane.

B B. Line intersecting the forehead at right angles to the last plane through both outer orbital processes.

(These lines are interrupted so as not to obscure any parts of

the skull.)

a to a'. Border of squamosal impression.

(Letter 'a' is just below the widest part of the skull.)

b. ? Alisphenoid.

c. Portion of additamentum.

FIG. 2.-Top of Neanderthal Skull.

a, a. Outer orbital processes.

The transverse line on the middle of skull represents the coronal suture. (This and the corresponding line in Fig. 1 are copied from Busk's figures.)

The semicircular line at the posterior part of skull represents the lambdoidal suture.

The medio-longitudinal line represents the sagittal suture.

FIG. 3.-Front of Neanderthal Skull.

a, a. Outer orbital processes or horns of the brow-ridges.
b. Inter-orbital space.

c. Portion of roof-plate of right orbital cavity.

(Only the anterior half of the frontal bone is represented.)

The figures in this plate are taken from a plaster cast.

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FIG. 2.-Right Parietal of Neanderthal Skull.
a, b, c, d. Same as in last Figure.
e. Additamental edge.

FIG. 3.-Occipital of a Human (Irish) Skull.

a a. Lambdoidal edge.

b, b. Transverse ridges.

c. Occipital or posterior tubercle.

FIG. 4.-Occipital of Neanderthal Skull.

Letters same as in last Figure.

FIG. 5.-Right Side-view of Dome of Human Skull

A A. Glabello-occipital plane.

B B. Glabello-occipital intersecting plane.

a. Frontal.

b. Parietal. (The letter is on the centre of ossification and widest part

of the skull.)

c. Occipital.

d. Temporal.

e. Alisphenoid.

VOL. I.

H

CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE.

I. AGRICULTURE.

THE movements in the Agricultural world during the past few months have related more to the business than to the Art of land cultivation. Agricultural Societies and Meetings have concerned themselves more with such questions as the relations of landlord and tenant, or of master and servant, than with details of the processes of the farm, or of the appliances by which they are carried out. And just in proportion as the motive-the efficient cause-is important in comparison with the mere machinery, so the nature of these business relations will, in any occupation or profession, always be the chief of all the influences affecting progress or success.

This is especially the case in Agriculture:

When the landowner guarantees possession of a farm for a number of years, and does not restrict its cultivation to any precise routine of operations, he induces the tenant of that farm to apply all his mind and all his money to its management, for then there is given to him hope and opportunity of a reward for his outlay and his labour. The land is to a certain extent a machine, and its fertility depends on the use that it can make of the fertilizing influences of air and rain. Its powers as a machine in this respect can, in the case of wet and waterlogged soils, be wonderfully increased; but the alterations needed for this purpose are very costly. Land-drainage, marling, liming, burning, are all expensive operations. A man may, in the case of wet clay soils, sometimes profitably spend nearly as much again in these improvements as the land is worth. It is folly to suppose that he will do this on the lands of another. They must be made his own on certain conditions and for sufficient time to enable him to reap the reward of that increased fertility which has been conferred. A lease is thus, for all purposes of considerable land improvement by the farmer, absolutely necessary.

Where, however, the improvements do not involve so large an expenditure, and where that expenditure can, under the several branches of it, be accurately recorded, it becomes possible so to keep an account between the landlord and tenant as to enable the former to repay the latter at any time, whatever may be due from the one to the other. And the system of tenancy at will, coupled with an agreement for the repayment of the balance of this account, does, in many parts of England, both maintain and promote a very high degree of cultivation. Nevertheless, this is but a makeshift arrangement, by which landowners hope to obtain the full advantage to all classes of a large expenditure of tenant's capital without in any degree abandoning those special privileges to themselves which the possession of landed property alone confers. And thus the Earl of Shrewsbury, at one of the recent discussions on the form of an agreement on this principle between landlord

and tenant, gave the fullest acquiescence to the principle of repaying the tenant for his outlay; but at the same time the completest refusal to the principle, far more influential for good, of granting leases to his tenants for terms of years. On the one hand, he said :"I should feel it to be dishonest if I allowed any tenant of mine to leave me in debt to him. If a man put on to a farm that which would improve it, I should feel bound not to let that man leave my estate without being remunerated for what is unexhausted."

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On the other hand, he also said :

"I adhere to what I have always said respecting leases, namely, that nothing will induce me to give a man a lease, because in the first place a lease is all on one side. The landlord remains, but the tenant, if he be inclined to be fraudulent, may go. I boldly and honestly state that I will never surrender my property to a tenant. I mean that no man who will allow his sons to poach and act disgracefully shall have control over my land for a number of years.'

With whatever cordiality we may admire the evident honesty in every sense which these remarks display, it is also evident that they are dictated by an erroneous judgment, not only of the interest of landowners, but of the general character of tenantry.

The lease is not "all on one side." It not only confers advantages on the tenant, but it secures the annual payment of the sum at which those advantages have been valued by the landlord. The landlord does not "remain:" his successor may be either himself in a different mood of mind, or the inheritor of his estate; and in either case it is within his power to put an end to an unwritten bargain.

Again, a landlord does not "surrender his property to a tenant under the lease, so much as the tenant is asked to surrender his property to the landlord under tenancy at will. Unlike the tenant's share in the improvements he confers upon the land he occupies, the land remains. Baron Liebig indeed speaks of the exhaustion of the land, but no such thing is known in practice. The "worn-out" farm of the practical man would be readily taken again by another tenant at the former rent, if only it were let to him for a year or two for nothing. Two years' rent, 31. or 41. per annum, are thus probably the utmost injury ordinary land receives by cross-cropping and hard usage. And if land be let on lease, you must suppose its tenant to be not only fraudulent but a fool, to do even this amount of injury to it. The fear which a landlord expresses lest his property should be injured by letting it out of his hands for so long a time is thus altogether visionary. The tenant's capital is to a great extent the cause of, and it is the security for, its fertility. That system which most encourages the outlay of this capital is best in the interest of the landlord as well as in that of the tenant and consumer.

And the fear of having an ill-conditioned set of neighbours permanently collected round you by granting leases, is equally visionary. It has been proved in other walks of life that the plan of universal restriction-of treating all men with suspicion of making your general arrangements hinge on the possibility of every man being a rogue, is a blunder. It is an especial mistake in Agriculture. For

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