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CONTENTS OF PART IV, VOL. I.

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PAPERS READ

BEFORE THE

ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.

I.-On the present State of the Science of Agriculture in England.
By PHILIP PUSEY, Esq., M.P., F.R. and G.S.
March 13, 1839.

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THOUGH the national importance of husbandry will be at once admitted by every one, it may be well at the outset of our undertaking not to content ourselves with a general notion of that im- · portance, but to look for a moment at some of the items which constitute its annual value. The wheat produced in England and Wales is estimated by Mr. Mac Culloch, one year with another, at 12,350,000 quarters. This single head of produce, therefore, at an average price of 50s., will amount to nearly 31 million pounds sterling, yearly. The oats and beans have been reckoned at 13,500,000 quarters, and will give another head of 17 millions sterling per annum. The grass-lands, again, are supposed to yield, year by year, produce worth very nearly 60 millions sterling, (59,500,000.) The practical inference to be drawn from these large numbers is obviously this,-that, if by any improved process it be possible to add even in a small proportion to the average acreable produce either of arable or pasture land, this increase, small as it may seem, may be in fact a very large addition to our national wealth. The average produce of wheat, for instance, is stated at 26 bushels per acre: if, by a better selection of seed, we could raise this amount to 27 bushels only, a supposition by no means unlikely, we should by this apparently small improvement have added to the nation's annual income 475,000 quarters of wheat, worth, at 50s., about 1,200,000l. yearly, which would be equal to a capital of 24 millions sterling gained for ever to the country by this trifling increase in the growth of one article alone, and that in England and Wales only.

But it is not merely with regard to the total of any branch of produce that numbers afford a striking result. The value of one crop of a single article of produce on an individual farm may be large, and the loss of that crop very serious; and since in the

VOL. I.

B

improvement of agriculture we have to look, unfortunately, at least as much to the prevention of loss as to the increase of profit, it may be worth while on this head to take an instance from a vegetable of seemingly inferior value, the turnip.

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It is well known that in the south of England, during two or three dry summers preceding the last, many farmers have lost nearly the whole of their turnip crops; and that by the drought and the ravages of their accustomed foe, the turnip-fly only, independently altogether of their new enemy, the black caterpillar: after repeated sowings a crop came up, but so late in the year, that, for want of warmth, little or no root was formed, and the crop could not be valued at more than 17. an acre. In the north, on the other hand, where farm-yard manure is liberally given to this crop, and carefully applied in the ridges on which the seed is drilled in immediate contact with it, where bone-dust is also purchased for the same purpose, on such highly-cultivated ground there would be far less risk of failure arising from the ordinary causes tioned above. There is many a light-land farm in the south of England, of 500 acres, on which 100 acres have not produced turnips worth more than 2007. or 300l., while the more spirited culture actually practised in Yorkshire might have yielded 20 tons of Swedes, or 30 tons of turnips, from each acre. It is difficult to reduce the advantages of this superior yield to a money value. At the price for which the former roots have sold in one neighbourhood we are acquainted with, a high price it is admitted, but still one that has been paid for many years, they would have been worth 20007. so that the difference in the result of the two practices would be 15007., or, if an acre of the land be worth 17. yearly, a difference of produce from one-fifth only of the farm amounting to three times the rent of the whole. Without insisting, however, upon this case, which is an extreme one, the following quotation from a recent statistical work will be sufficient for all practical farmers: The produce of turnips, when cultivated in the broadcast manner, varies from 5 to 15 tons an acre; the latter being reckoned a very good crop. In Northumberland and Berwickshire, a good crop of white globe turnips, drilled, weighs from 25 to 30 tons, the Yellow, and the Ruta Baga, or Swedish, a few tons less."

We may consider, in another point of view, the national effect which might result from a general improvement of agriculture; that is, the additional employment that would arise from any general effort made on the part of the landowner or the tenant to improve permanently, as by drainage, for instance, the texture itself of the soil: we do not mean of waste ground, but of that which is already, and has been perhaps for centuries, in course of cultivation. If a pound, only, were thus laid out on each acre, a

very moderate supposition, we shall find that, since there are 48 millions of cultivated acres in Great Britain and Ireland, a demand for country labour amounting to 48 millions sterling would thus be created; a demand exceeding that which the railroad bills professed to create in the session before last, and far more advantageous in its effect on the labourers, inasmuch as the demand would be a gradual one, not severing them from their homes and their families. The assumed outlay, however, of a pound only, for the permanent improvement of each acre, is probably far too low; 31., 4., or even 5l., would be scarcely too much. There is much wet land on which 81. or perhaps 101. might be laid out to advantage; but at 41. only, the new progressive demand for the villager's only commodity, the work of his hands, would be about 200 millions. So large an outlay as this last must indeed, in part, be necessarily deferred for a long course of years; but in whatever degree it may arise, it has, on the other hand, the further advantage arising from the nature of the work to be done, that the demand would necessarily take place in the winter months, when labour is most difficult to be obtained, not in the summer, when the crops are in progress, and the labourer finds already sufficient employment.

It would be an inquiry of much importance to investigate in detail the manner in which this permanent improvement of the soil might be conducted in the various districts of England, but the subject is so extensive that it requires to be handled separately; or, rather, it must be a leading object of our members' future inquiries, to collect such facts and make such trials as may give a solid answer to so extensive a question. Great assistance may doubtless be derived from the knowledge which geological maps have lately afforded us as to the general outlines of the various subsoils which lie immediately under the surface of our fields, and powerfully affect, as every practical farmer knows, the produce of the upper soil through which alone the plough usually passes. These beds of sand, stone, or clay, cross England, in irregular courses, from south-west to north-east: the blue lias, for instance, from Charmouth in Dorsetshire, to Whitby in Yorkshire: and thus, by the help of a geological map, it might be known that a mode of improvement which had been well tested on a farm in Dorsetshire, would be applicable, due allowance being made for difference of climate, to another in Yorkshire. Manifest, however, as is the assistance that might long since have been derived by agriculture from geology, we know no book which has endeavoured until very recently* to secure that kindred aid for the Science which

* In 1837 Mr. John Morton had the merit of publishing a work on the application of geology to agriculture.

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