Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 353, March 1845

"Summer is the only season in which the farmer has liberty to leave home without incurring the blame of neglecting his business, and even then the time which he has to spare is very limited. There is only about a fortnight between finishing the fallow, the turnip and potato culture, and hay-making, and the commencement of harvest, in which the farmer has leisure to travel. This limitation of time is to be regretted, because it is proper that he should take a journey every year, and see how farm operations are conducted in other parts of the kingdom. An excursion of this nature is seldom undertaken by a farmer, who is generally a man capable of observation, without acquiring some hints which may induce the adoption of a practice that seems good, or the rejection of one which is bad. Such a journey exhibits mankind in various aspects, and elevates the mind above local prejudices; and as husbandry is a progressive art, a ramble of a week or two through different parts of the country, cannot fail to enlighten the mind of the most experienced farmer much beyond any thing he can observe by always remaining at home." – (Vol. iii. p. 742.)

In his excellent chapter on the sowing of turnips, he quotes several instances of the successful preparation of land in the autumn – breaking up, harrowing, cross-ploughing, drilling, and dunging – for the turnip crop, and he adds the following opinion: —

"Were such modes of culture adopted in the south of England, I have no doubt certain and abundant crops of turnips would be raised, in spite of droughts and insects; and the slovenly practice of broad-cast culture would then give way to the more scientific mode of the drill system." – (Vol. iii. p. 747.)

In the following passage he notices a curious but generally received fact regarding the effect of different quantities of bones; but we quote chiefly on account of another observation at its close, which may be interesting to our southern readers: —

"I have tried to raise turnips with different quantities of bone-dust, varying from twelve, sixteen, twenty, and twenty-four bushels to the imperial acre, and have found the crop improved up to sixteen bushels; but any quantity beyond that, even to twenty-four bushels, produced no greater effect on the turnips in the same field, and on the same sort of soil, than sixteen bushels. Nay, more than this, my late agricultural preceptor, Mr George Brown, when he farmed Hetton Steads in Northumberland, raised as good crops of turnips as sixteen bushels of bone-dust, with only eight bushels of bone-dust, combined with an indefinite quantity of sifted dry coal-ashes; and yet eight bushels of bone-dust, or an indefinite quantity of coal-ashes applied separately, produced a very poor crop of turnips. It is therefore unnecessary, in so far as the crop of turnips is concerned, to sow more than sixteen bushels of bone-dust alone, or eight bushels with coal-ashes, or perhaps street-manure. Both coal-ashes and street-manure, when proposed to be used with bone-dust, should be kept dry under cover, and sifted free of large lumps. * * *

"The very best mode of using bone-dust in small quantity, both for increasing the fertility of the soil and rearing a good crop, is to sow the seed along with it in drills already manured with farm-yard dung. The bone-dust secures a good and quick braird of the plant, and the dung supports it powerfully afterwards. This plan I would recommend to be pursued, particularly in England, on the land prepared for turnips in autumn; and were it practised, we need not despair of raising heavy crops of turnips, especially Swedes, on the strongest soils, and most certainly they would be obtained after thorough-draining." – (Vol. iii. pp. 748, 751.)

To the drop-drill as a means of husbanding manure, too little attention has hitherto been paid in Scotland. We strongly recommend, therefore, to the attention of the Scottish farmer, the following brief quotation: —

"The saving of manure, in the first instance, by the use of the drop-drill, appears to be considerable, since it has been frequently asserted that ten or twelve bushels of bone-dust per acre, will produce a braird equal, if not superior, to sixteen or eighteen bushels put in by the continuous mode. The subject is, therefore, of great importance, and calls for close observation; for if the drop system is really so important, it cannot be too widely adopted." – Vol. iii. p. 806.

We regret the necessity of passing over the remainder of this chapter on turnips. We merely extract the following mode of preventing the destructive attack of the turnip-fly, because, though the method has been heard of by many, it has been tried by comparatively few. Mr Stephens recommends

"To put the seeds for some time before they are sown amongst flour of sulphur, and sow the sulphur amongst them. The late Mr Airth informed me, that when he farmed the Mains of Dun, Forfarshire, his young turnip crops were often very much affected, and even destroyed, by these insects; but that, after he used the sulphur, he never suffered loss, though his neighbours did who would not use the same precaution, and that for as long as he possessed the farm afterwards, namely, fifteen years." – (Vol. iii. p. 772.)

It is also with regret that we pass over the making of butter and cheese, the chapter upon which we commend to the attention of our dairy farmers. The subjects of hay-making, liming and forming water meadows, we also pass; but we stop a moment at his chapter upon flax and hemp.

The culture of flax is now very much advocated both in Great Britain and Ireland; and we fear very erroneous notions are entertained and propagated regarding both the profit it is likely to yield to the farmer, and the effect it is fitted to produce upon the land. The following passage is not entirely free from objection, but it contains a great deal of truth and much common sense: —

"It has been proposed of late, with a considerable degree of earnestness, to encourage the growth of flax in Britain. The attempt was made some years ago and failed; but in the present instance it is recommended with the view of raising flax-seed for feeding cattle in sufficient quantity to render us independent of foreign oil-cake, of which, no doubt, large quantities are annually imported, but to what extent I have not been able to ascertain. The object of the suggestion is laudable, but the end, I fear, unattainable; for if good seed is raised to make good oil-cake, or compounds with oil, the flax will be coarse, and flax of inferior quality will never pay so well as corn: and it should never be lost sight of, in considering this question, that to raise flax must bring it into competition with white crops, and not green crops, because to raise it as a green crop would be to deteriorate its quality by bringing it into immediate contact with manure; and, on the other hand, if it is raised without manure as a fallow-crop, it must deteriorate the soil materially – no species of crop being more scourging to the soil than flax, not even a crop of turnip-seed. There is, therefore, this dilemma in the matter – the quality of the flax or of the seed must be sacrificed. The seed separately will not pay the expense of culture. Seed is produced from six to twelve bushels per acre. Taking the highest at twelve bushels, that is, one and a half quarter, and taking it also for granted that it all will be fit for sowing, and worth the highest current price of 60s. per quarter, the gross return would only be L.4, 10s. per acre. The flax-crop varies in weight of rough dried fibre, according to season and soil, from three to ten cwt. per acre; and taking the high produce, five cwt. per acre of dressed flax, at the highest price of L.6 per ton, the yield will be L.31, from which have to be deducted the expenses of beetling, scutching, and heckling, and waste and loss of straw for manure, and the profit will not exceed L.8 per acre; but though such a profit would certainly repay the expenses of cultivation, yet it presents the most favourable view that can be taken, even with the sacrifice of the entire loss of seed – the loss, in fact, of the greatest inducement for renewing the culture of the plant. In Ireland the case, I believe, will be the same, though much of the soil of that country, being mossy, is more favourable to the growth of flax than that of England or Scotland; yet even there it will be found impracticable to raise good flax and good seed from the same piece of ground at the same time; and if the seed is not good, the oil-cake will be bad." – (Vol. iii. p. 1046.)

Among the arguments in favour of the extensive culture of flax, now urged by so many, we are sorry to see a scientific one lately put forth by our friend Dr Kane of Dublin, and which has been much vaunted and relied upon by himself, and by those for whose benefit the opinion was propounded. The proposal is, it will be recollected, to carry off the stalk of the flax crop, and to convert the seed into manure. This is the same thing as carrying off the straw of a corn crop, and eating or otherwise converting the grain into manure upon the farm. Every one knows that carrying off the straw will exhaust the land, as will also carrying off the stalk of the lint. But, says Dr Kane, I have analysed the steeped and dressed flax, and find that it contains very little of what the plant peculiarly draws from the soil. This is left for the most part in the pond in which the flax is steeped, or at the mill where the flax is dressed. Therefore, to carry off the flax is not necessarily to exhaust the soil. You have only to collect the shows of the flax mill, and pump out the water from the steeping hole, and apply both to the land, and you restore to it all that the crop has taken off.

Now there is a fallacy in supposing that all that is taken from the land would in this way be restored – one which the advocates of this non-exhausting view are of course not anxious to discover; but, supposing the result and conclusions correct, what are they worth in practice? It is only a little bit of fireside farming. What practical good has come out of it? Put all the steeping water upon the land! Have any of the members of the flax societies tried this? Then let them tell us how it is to be done – what it cost – what was the result and the profit of the application. They use this prescription as an argument to induce men to introduce an exhausting culture, and they take no means to introduce first a general employment of those means by which it is said that the naturally exhausting effect of the culture may be prevented. What our friend Dr Kane has said and done is in perfect good faith; the form which his opinions have assumed upon paper, has arisen solely from the want of a sufficient knowledge of the usages and capabilities of sound and profitable practical husbandry. If we cannot persuade our farmers to collect and apply to the land the liquid manure of their farm-yards, when can we hope to persuade them to empty their flax-ponds for the purpose of watering their fields? Can we ever hope soon to persuade them to preserve and use up the thousands of tons of shows that are now yearly sent down the streams by which our flax mills are set in motion?

We are far from saying that flax or any other crop may not be grown without necessarily exhausting the soil – chemistry, we know, will by-and-by put all this within our power; but we are very much of Mr Stephens' opinion, that our English and Irish flax societies do not as yet clearly see their way to that end, and that unintentionally they will lead many to inflict a permanent injury upon their land, without any adequate compensation to themselves, their landlords, or the country.

We had marked the early cutting of corn in harvest as a subject of general importance to practical men, and that of the smearing of sheep, so interesting especially to our northern agriculturists; and we wished to confirm Mr Stephens' recommendations upon those points by some observations of our own; but we are compelled to leave the chapter which treats upon them to the private consideration of our readers.

We quote the following passage from the chapter on fertilizing the soil by means of manure, as containing much good common sense: —

"Dung is applied at the commencement of every rotation of crops with the fallow green-crops, and with bare fallow; and when applied at any other time, it is near the termination of a long rotation. A rule for the quantity of farm-yard dung to be applied according to the length of the rotation, as given by Dr Coventry, is, that five tons per acre are required every year to sustain the fertility of soil; and, therefore, land which is dunged every four years in a rotation of four courses, should receive with the fallow-crop twenty tons per acre; in a five-course shift, twenty-five tons; in a six-course shift, thirty tons, and so on. These quantities constitute, no doubt, a sufficient manuring to ordinary crops; but it appears to me to be reversing the order of propriety, to give land under the severest shift – a four-course one – the smallest modicum of manure, when it should receive the largest; for there is surely truth in the observation, that land grazed with stock becomes ameliorated in condition – actually increased in fertility. A six-course shift, therefore, having three years of grazing, should require less instead of more manure even at a time than a four-course one on land of similar quality." – (Vol. iii. pp. 1230, 1231.)

The chapter on the points of stock – cattle, sheep, pigs, and horses – would of itself have afforded us materials for an interesting article. Breeding and crossing of stock, both so necessary to be well understood by those who would breed for profit, are also ably discussed by our author; and it is only want of space which prevents us from quoting from this chapter.

But there are some kinds of live cattle which of themselves breed too fast even for Mr Stephens; and these he as anxiously instructs his readers how to exterminate. Among these are rats, in regard to the destruction of which the following passage will interest our readers: —

"Of all the modes I ever witnessed rats being killed, none equalled that of a Yorkshireman, of the name of John Featherston, by means of steel-traps. He had twenty-one small steel-traps, which he kept clean and bright. He soon traced the tracks of rats along the floor to a corner, or on the tops of walls, leading commonly by the corners of apartments to the partition wall, which they surmounted between it and the slates; the very place which I have recommended the filling up, to break off such communications. After he had discovered the different runs of the animals, he made a number of small firm bundles of straw, which he placed against the bottom of a wall where the run was on a floor, and upon its top where the run was to the roof. He used seven traps at one place at a time, and a sufficient number of bundles of straw was used to conceal that number of traps at each place, employing the entire number of traps in three places, at a little distance from each other, and in different apartments. The traps were set, but not allowed to spring at first, and baited with oatmeal, scented with oil of rhodium, and placed in a row, with a little chaff over them, in the run behind the bundles of straw. The traps were baited for two days, the baits being replenished as soon as it was discovered, by inspection, that a bait disappeared. On the third day the traps were baited as before, but the restriction was removed from the spring, and then began the capture. In all the three days, people were prevented as much as possible from frequenting the apartments in which the traps were placed, and dogs were entirely excluded. Removing the check from the spring, from one set of traps after another, armed with short stout stick, and furnished with a bag slung from his shoulder, Featherston put himself on the alert, and the moment he heard the click of a trap he ran to it, removed the bundle of straw, knocked the rat on the head if alive, threw it out of the trap, set it again, replaced the bundle again, put the rat into the bag, and was again on the watch from one place to another. In the course of the third day, from morning to the afternoon, he had collected 385 rats in the bag, and allowing all the traps to have done equal execution, each had caught more than eighteen rats in the course of a single day. He bargained for 1d. a rat and his food, and in three days he earned his food and L.1, 12s. 1d. – such was his expertness. It was not supposed that all the rats were cleared off by this capture; but they received such a thinning, as to be comparatively harmless for years after. Featherston's first business, on the day following the capture, was to clean each trap bright before setting out on his journey; for he seemed to place greater reliance on the clean state of his traps than on any other circumstance – that the suspicion of the rats, I suppose, of the danger of the traps might thereby be allayed. The brown rat burrows in fields, and commits ravages on growing crops, whether of corn or turnips. I have seen many burrows of them in Ireland, and assisted at routing them with spade and terrier, but have never heard of their having taken to the fields in Scotland."

Farm book-keeping is a subject too little attended to by our practical men. In our own neighbourhood we know that keeping books is the exception – keeping none is the rule. The smaller farmers know the state of their affairs only by the money they have in their hands at certain seasons of the year. But, as better systems of husbandry spread, this lax method of carrying on business must be discarded. Husbandry is becoming more and more an experimental art. New trials must now be made, year after year, by those who would hope to live and thrive; and it is only those who keep regular accounts of the outlay upon each trial, and the income from it, who can know what methods and manures they ought to adopt, and what to reject from a system of profitable husbandry.

Upon this subject Mr Stephens is entirely of our opinion, and he gives very copious examples of the way in which books ought to be kept.

Such is a hasty sketch of the contents of the book, in so far as the farming part of it is concerned. The way in which the work is illustrated by 608 woodcuts and 33 plates, by eminent artists, is as creditable to the publishers as the matter of the book is to the author.

To the full and accurate descriptions of agricultural implements – to the illustration of which many of these woodcuts and plates are devoted – we feel ourselves wholly unable to do justice. That they are all from the pen and pencil of Mr Slight, will, to those who know him, be a better recommendation than any words of ours.

There is only one other test to which, in criticising the work before us, we are entitled to put it. It contains much useful matter, but is it likely, is it fitted, to answer the end which the author had in view? His object, he says, was to put into the hands of young men desirous of learning practical farming, a manual from which, being upon a farm, they would be able to learn all that was necessary to fit them for the several successive stations to which the industrious son even of a farm-labourer may fairly hope to rise. This we think he has accomplished, and in that graphic and living way which has all along led us into the persuasion that Mr Stephens must himself have "played many parts," and entered into the feeling and spirit of them all.

When he speaks of the shepherd and his dog, and of driving stock to market, he seems to look back with much satisfaction, almost with regret, to the time when he himself served as a drover, and took his cattle to the South over the cold Northumbrian moors. He delights to linger by the way, and tells you where you will still get the best gill on your road, and how it will be safest for you to make the last glass you take into toddy, before you go to bed. We think he must often have taken up his night's quarters at Tommy Robson's on the Reed Water, on his travels by Watling Street to the Stagshaw Bank Fair.

Then he changes the scene for us. He is a ploughman for the time. He tells how he managed his horses, guided his plough, turned over his furrows, mended his harness, and how three times a-day he fed heartily and well upon his oatmeal brose, and was healthy and strong in limb, happy in mind, and free from care. We question if he is heartier or happier now.

Next we find him writing like one who has been promoted to the rank of grieve or farm-steward. He has assumed the tone and look of a man who has responsibility upon his shoulders – who has graver duties to perform, and from whom more is expected. He tells us how he manages his men, apportions their hours of labour, and distributes to each his appropriate quantity and time of work. The scene shifts, and we see him in the market selling his corn. He wants threepence a bushel more, and he will hold out till he gets it. His sample is good, for his land has been well managed, and his grain well cleaned; he knows what his article is worth, as things are going in the market, and he will be an old corn-merchant who takes him in.

Or he has stock to sell, and there he goes into the whisky shop to finish his bargain. You heard him ask ten shillings more than he meant to take? That was because he knew the buyer was a higgler, and would have left him at once had he refused to come down in his price. Now they are gravely discussing the point over the gill-stoup. They are within half-a-crown now. Another gill will close the bargain. It is finished; the buyer is pleased; and our grieve is five shillings richer than if the bargain had been closed briefly and in the open air.

He is not a bad writer for a practical man who enables you, in a book upon farming, to call up successive transactions in a manner so vivid as this.

Next, he wishes to become a farmer on his own account, and he looks about for a farm that will suit him. On this subject he has an excellent chapter in his third volume. He has been faithful to his master, and now he acts honourably towards his equals: —

"Here," he says, "let me mention at the outset, that it is considered amongst farmers a dishonourable act to look at a farm, until you are, in the first place, assured that it is in the market. To do so, until you certainly know that the tenant in possession is to leave it, or at any rate, until it is advertised in the public prints, or otherwise declared to be in the market, whether the possessing tenant wishes to take it again or not, is an unfeeling act, and regarded as equivalent to telling him that you wish to take the farm over his head. Such an act would be as unbecoming as to intrude yourself into a house in town, which you think would suit you, to look at its internal arrangement, before you are aware the possessing tenant is leaving it, by the usual announcement of the ticket." – (Vol. iii. p. 1304).

But having obtained possession of a farm, he enquires, can I now make money for myself – quickly but honourably – in a way that will be at once creditable to myself, beneficial to my landlord, and of advantage to my country?

Two points Mr Stephens insists upon as indispensable to the making of money in this creditable way. The tenant must keep his land clean, and he must farm it high. Those who make most money in each district – their natural prudence being alike – are those who are kindest to the land. Use me well, says the soil every where, and I will use you well in return.

In other parts of his work he rises to the station of a land-steward. He discusses, in a clear and judicious manner, large agricultural questions – he writes with the gravity and thoughtfulness of one whose business it is to superintend and regulate extensive improvements, and to look after the proceedings and modes of farming of a large body of tenantry. This, indeed, we hope and trust will be the case with many of those who carefully read, learn, and inwardly digest the lessons and precepts of his book; for in whatever capacity it may be their lot to minister to the welfare and progress of agriculture, they will find aid and assistance and counsel from the Book of the Farm.

It is, indeed, in very many cases of much importance that a better instructed race of men should be entrusted with the immediate management of the larger estates of the country. We have met with many skilful and intelligent members of this class, many able to understand, and advise, and superintend the most enlightened improvements, and to conduct them to a prosperous and economical issue. But the mass of these men in our island is not up to the knowledge of the time; too many of them are almost entirely ignorant of the most elementary principles of agriculture. How, indeed, can it be otherwise, when a landholder is contented to place this delicate management in the hands of his retired butler, or his failing groom, or even of his solicitor or attorney, who has been bred up to a totally different profession? If law and medicine require separate schools and training, so do farming and the management of estates, if they are to be farmed to a profit, or managed with economy and skill.

But the purpose of our book does not end with the mere practical man. It professes, and is fitted, to instruct the proprietor too. How much have the landlords yet to learn? Which of them has ever, at school or college, had an opportunity of obtaining any instruction in regard to what was to be the occupation and support of his after life! Some do indeed, when they settle on their estates, apply themselves, by reading and otherwise, to make up their deficiencies, and to fit themselves for the new and useful sphere in which they are called to move. But in broad England, how few are the landlords who know the principles on which their land ought to be cultivated – who feel an enlightened interest in the prosperity and real advancement of agriculture – who understand how to set a useful, and prudent, and enlightened example to their tenantry! If knowledge such as that contained in the book before us require to be diffused among the humble walks of agricultural life, it is no less necessary, we are assured, among those who frequent its highest places.

But a spirit not only of improvement, but of eager searching after knowledge, has sprung up among the entire agricultural body. From our own experience we say this; for we have seen with delight the eager eyes of listening audiences, for whole hours, fixed upon a single speaker, who was attempting zealously and simply, to instruct them. And it is those of the agricultural body who already know most, among whom this eagerness is observed to be most intense. They have tasted of the value of the new lights which recent science especially has thrown upon agricultural practice, and they are eager for the acquisition of more.

We are proud to say, that the first decided proof of this desire for higher knowledge has been manifested among the farmers and proprietors of Scotland. The Agricultural Chemistry Association of Scotland is their work. Through this association they have professedly attached chemistry and geology and physiology to the car of practical agriculture; and under the guidance of these sciences, the art of culture will not long lag behind her sister arts, for which these sciences have already done so much. We have before us a list of the members of this patriotic association. In this list we find the names of nearly every man in Scotland who is at all known to agricultural fame. If there be a few whose names we miss, the reason probably is, that they hardly yet know much of its existence; for it has only just finished its first year of active life. The new list of another year will contain the names of all who are really alive to the wants and capabilities of our national agriculture.

We are sincerely desirous for the credit and advancement of Scottish agriculture. We are, therefore, anxious that no means should be left untried to keep up the perhaps artificially high character which the natural intelligence and shrewdness of the Scottish nation has gained for the practical farmers of the country. Granting, what we have ourselves seen, that there is much good farming and well-farmed land to the north of the Tweed, we cannot deny there is also much neglected land and much unskilful tillage. Though much has been improved in this end of the island, there is far more still almost in a state of nature. Hitherto the high-roads of the country have gone through such pleasant places as lie between the Pease bridge and Edinburgh; but the railroads now projected will lay open the waste and neglected tracts of country to southern eyes, and the agricultural reputation of Scotland may suffer a rude shock in English estimation. We are not the less good patriots while we agree with Mr Stephens, that there is a greater breadth of skilfully farmed land in England than in Scotland, and that the germ of all, or nearly all, our improvements, has been drawn from the South. Give England her due, and Scotland has still much to be proud of in picking up a germ here and a germ there, and unfolding and developing these germs under her own colder sky, and, almost against nature, conquering for herself fruitful fields and a high agricultural reputation.

But England and Ireland having awoke to new exertions in improving their soil, we in the North must open our eyes too. We must, if possible, keep the name we have acquired. If our practice is faulty, let us amend it – if our science is defective, let us enlarge it. "Science with practice," is the well-conceived motto of the Royal Agricultural Society of England; such a motto, we hope, all Scottish farmers will adopt. Let them conjoin the science of the books of Johnston with the practice of that of Stephens, and they may still hope, as a body, to occupy the foremost rank among the agriculturists of Europe.

STANZAS

With every joy we haste to meet,
In hopefulness or pride,
There comes, with step as sure and fleet,
A shadow by its side;
And ever thus that spectre chill
With each fair bliss has sped,
And when the gladden'd pulse should thrill,
The stricken heart lies dead!

The poet's brow the wreath entwines —
What weight falls on the breast!