the fork, if the rains, and roots, and air, are to descend, and the full
benefits are to be derived from the drains. With our existing
implements--especially with the fork--the soil may be stirred to a depth
of twenty-six inches. The top of the drain, therefore, should be at least
this depth under the surface; and this, again, brings the whole depth of a
perfect drain to within a few inches of three feet as before.
Then as to the material, it seems advisable to use either stones or tiles,
according as the one or the other is the cheaper, provided always that the
stones are properly broken, and carefully put in. The tide seems now to be
running in favour of smaller tiles than have hitherto been generally used
in Scotland, and even of pipe-tiles of a very small diameter. Our friend
Mr Smith of Deanston has taken out a patent for a pipe-tile, with
projecting fingers at the ends, which dovetail into each other, so as to
unite the tiles together, and at the same time to keep them in their
places. Should these pipes be found generally efficient, the cost of
draining will be considerably diminished, while the small space they
occupy will afford greater facilities for deepening the soil.
But the economical considerations connected with draining, are as
important as the practical methods to be adopted, both to the cultivator
of the soil and to the country at large. We shall advert only to one of
these.
In what light ought the expenditure of money in draining to be regarded by
the practical man?
He ought to consider it only as a mercantile speculation, by which he may
or may not make a profit, according to the degree of prudence with which
it is undertaken. He has the usufruct of his farm for a certain number of
years, with liberty to crop it in a certain way. By this he hopes to make
a certain sum of money. But it is capable of improvement by draining, and
he has liberty to drain if he likes. "Well," he says to himself, "I make a
certain sum by farming my land as it is; I have here fifty pounds of ready
money, could I make more profit if I were to lay this money out in
draining it?--would it be a good speculation?" He calculates the cost of
draining and the probable return of profit, and the result is apparently
that he _can_ make more profit by this use of his money than by any other
way in which he could employ it. This being the result, the prudent man
embarks in this safe speculation. He does not bury his money in his land;
he does not give it away to the land to the loss of his family; he only
lends it for a season, and for the benefit of his family. He has made his
calculations badly, and has only his own arithmetic to blame, if he does
not get all his capital back from the land, with a handsome profit in
addition, some years before his lease has expired.
Many tenants think the interest of the landlord should enter into their
calculations, and some cherish or excite in their own minds ill feelings
towards their landlords at the idea of leaving their drains in the land
when they quit, and the land itself in better condition than when they
entered upon their farms. But this feeling arises altogether from a want
of familiarity on their part with the ordinary feelings of mercantile men
and the transactions of mercantile business. The farmer's sole aim is to
promote his own interest. If that interest is to be promoted by draining,
let him do it immediately, and with all his heart; his own profit will not
be a whit the less that the landlord comes in for a little profit too when
the lease has expired. The builder who takes thirty or forty years' lease
of a bit of land in the neighbourhood of London, is not deterred from
planting houses upon it, by the reflection that at the end of his lease
the houses will become the property of his landlord. Long before that time
has expired, he hopes to have his principal and his profit both safe in
his pocket. If he does not cherish these hopes, he is either a fool or a
rogue.
On one other point connected with draining, we are anxious to quote Mr
Stephens' own words. In reply to the question, is your land drained? we
have so often received the answer--"Oh, sir, my land is dry, it does not
require draining"--that we request the serious attention of such of our
readers as are interested in the improvement of land, to the following
passage:--
"Land, however, though it does not contain such a superabundance of
water as to obstruct arable culture, may nevertheless, by its
inherent wetness, prevent or retard the luxuriant growth of useful
plants, as much as decidedly wet land. The truth is, that deficiency
of crops on apparently dry land is frequently attributed to unskilful
husbandry, when it really arises from the baleful influence of
_concealed_ stagnant water; and the want of skill is shown, not so
much in the management of the arable culture of the land, as in
neglecting to remove the true cause of the deficiency of the crop,
namely, the concealed stagnant water. Indeed, my opinion is--and its
conviction has been forced upon me by dint of long and extensive
observation of the state of the agricultural soil over a large
portion of the country--that this is the _true cause of most of the
bad farming to be seen_, and that _not one farm_ is to be found
throughout the kingdom that would _not be much the better for
draining_. Entertaining this opinion, you will not be surprised at my
urging upon you to practise draining, or at my lingering at some
length on the subject, that I may exhibit to you the various modes of
doing it, according to the peculiar circumstances in which your farm
may be placed."--(Vol. i. p. 483.)
With the substance of these remarks we entirely agree. We would only not
put the point so broadly as to imply, that the want of draining was the
only cause of the bad farming we see. We have, however, been over large
tracts of Scotland, and we are quite sure that whole counties might be
made to yield the double of their present produce by an efficient
drainage, and proper subsequent management.
We pass over the very succinct and methodical description of the processes
of threshing, winnowing, &c., and can note only one point out of the great
mass of very interesting matter Mr Stephens has brought together, in
regard to the composition, qualities, and uses of the different kinds of
grain. The point to which we shall advert is the composition of oatmeal.
Every country is naturally prejudiced in favour of its national food. We
Britons look with real or affected disgust on the black rye-bread of the
northern nations; and yet on this food the people thrive, are strong,
healthy, and vigorous. The bread, too, is sweet to the taste. It is only
disagreeable associations, therefore--connected in our minds with the
darkness of the colour--that make us consider it disagreeable or
unwholesome. In like manner, our Irish brethren are strong, vigorous, and
merry, on their potato diet. Why should we condemn it as the lowest kind
of diet, or pity those who are content to live almost wholly upon it? It
is true that, from its being the main staff of Irish life, great distress
ensues when a failure takes place in the potato crop. But such would be
the consequence of a general failure in any kind of crop on which they
might happen chiefly to rely. The cure for such seasons of suffering,
therefore, is not to be sought so much in bringing about change of diet,
as in introducing a better system of husbandry--an improved system of
drainage especially--by which a general failure of any crop will be
rendered a more rare occurrence. The spread of railroads will soon render
it comparatively easy to transport even the bulky potato from one county
to another, and thus to prevent the recurrence of famine prices.
But in South Britain the oatmeal of the Scottish peasantry--the national
food--is looked upon with as much prejudice, and those who live upon it
with as much pity, as the black bread-eaters of Germany and Sweden, or the
potato-diggers of Ireland. But the health and strength of the Scottish
peasantry, who live entirely upon oatmeal, is proverbial. On this subject,
in speaking of the Scottish ploughmen, where the bothy system is
practised--that is, where the single men all live together in a room or
bothy provided for them, which serves them both for sleeping and
cooking---Mr Stephens has the following characteristic passage:--
"The oatmeal is usually cooked in one way, as _brose_, as it is
called, which is a different sort of pottage to porridge. A pot of
water is put on the fire to boil, a task which the men take in turns;
a handful or two of oatmeal is taken out of the small chest with
which each man provides himself, and put into a wooden bowl, which
also is the ploughman's property; and on a hollow being made in the
meal, and sprinkled with salt, the boiling water is poured over the
meal, and the mixture receiving a little stirring with a horn spoon,
and the allowance of milk poured over it, the brose is ready to be
eaten; and as every man makes his own brose, and knows his own
appetite, he makes just as much brose as he can consume. The bowl is
scraped clean with the spoon, and the spoon licked clean with the
tongue, and the dish is then placed in the meal-chest for a similar
purpose on the succeeding occasion. The fare is simple, and is as
simply made; but it must be wholesome, and capable of supplying the
loss of substance occasioned by hard labour; for _I believe that no
class of men can endure more bodily fatigue, for ten hours every day,
than those ploughmen of Scotland who subsist on this brose thrice
a-day_."--(Vol. ii. p. 384.)
The quantity of oatmeal allowed to the ploughman--_as his sole food_--is
two pecks, or 17-1/2 lbs. in a week, exactly 2-1/2 lbs. a-day--or 3/4 lb.
for each meal--and yet it often happens that a hard-worked ploughman
cannot consume the whole of this allowance. Speaking again of oatmeal
_porridge_, Mr Stephens says, "there are few more wholesome meals than
oatmeal porridge, or upon which a harder day's work can be wrought.
Children of all ranks in Scotland are brought up on this diet, verifying
the line of Burns,
"'The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia's food.'"
As southern prejudices have a tendency to make their way northward, and,
in the face of old experience at home, are leading many to undervalue the
oatmeal, on which we trust our peasantry will long rely as their staple
food, it is interesting to find that, on this point, science has at length
come to the aid of reason and experience. Chemistry has already told us
many remarkable things in regard to the vegetable food we eat--that it
contains, for example, a certain per centage of the actual fat and lean we
consume in our beef, or mutton, or pork--and, therefore, that he who lives
upon vegetable food may be as strong as the man who lives upon animal
food, because both in reality feed upon the same things in a somewhat
different form. Now it appears, from analysis, that wheaten flour contains
on an average not more than ten per cent of actual dry beef--of that which
forms the living muscle of the animal that feeds upon it--with three per
cent of fat, and fifty of starch. And because of this chemical
composition, our southern neighbours think wheaten flour the most
nourishing, the most refined, and the most civilized of all food.
But Professor Johnston, in the recent edition of his Elements,[28] tells
us, that, from experiments made in the laboratory of the Agricultural
Chemistry Association of Scotland, it turns out that oats are far richer
in all the three things above named than the best wheat flour grown in any
part of England--that they contain eighteen or twenty per cent of that
which forms muscle, five to eight of fat, and sixty-five of starch. The
account, therefore, between shelled oats (groats) and fine wheaten flour
stands thus. One hundred pounds of each contain--
Wheat. Oats.
Muscular matter, 10 lbs. 18 lbs.
Fat, 3 ... 6 ...
Starch, 50 ... 65 ...
------ ------
63 lbs. 89 lbs.
What do you say to these numbers, Mr Cockney?--You won't pity us, Scotch
oatmeal-eaters, any more, we guess. Experience and science are both on our
side. What makes your race-horses the best in the world, may be expected
to make our peasantry the best too. We offer you, therefore, a fair bet.
You shall take ten English ploughmen, and feed them upon two pounds and
a-half of wheaten flour a-day, and we shall take as many Scotch ploughmen,
and feed them upon the same weight of oatmeal a-day--_if they can eat so
much_, for that is doubtful--and we shall back our men against yours for
any sum you like. They shall walk, run, work--or fight you, if you like
it--and they shall thrash you to your heart's content. We should like to
convince you that Scotch parritch has some real solid metal in it.
We back the oatcake and the porridge against all the wheaten messes in the
world. We defy your homemade bread, your baker's bread, your household
bread, your leaven bread, and your brown Georges--your fancy bread and
your raisin bread--your baps, rolls, scones, muffins, crumpets, and
cookies--your bricks, biscuits, bakes, and rusks--your Bath buns and your
sally luns--your tea-cakes, and saffron-cakes, and slim-cakes, and
plank-cakes, and pan-cakes, and soda-cakes, and currant-cakes, and
sponge-cakes, and seed-cakes, and girdle-cakes, and singing-hinnies--your
short-bread and your currant-buns--and if there by any other names by
which you designate your wheaten abominations, we defy and detest them
all. We swear by the oatcake and the porridge, the substantial bannock and
the brose--long may Scotland produce them, and Scotchmen live and fight
upon them!!
"The first great event in spring on a farm of mixed husbandry," says Mr
Stephens, "is the calving of the cows." He then describes the symptoms,
the preparations, and the treatment of the cow and the calf, the diseases
to which they are respectively liable, and the treatment to which they
ought to be subjected, in his usual clear, methodical, and remarkably
complete manner. We have been struck with the kind tone which pervades the
whole of this chapter, the gentle treatment he prescribes in all
cases--indicating at once a practical acquaintance with the details of
these operations, and a love also for the quiet and patient animals of
which he is treating.
We should have quoted, had the passages not been too long, his description
of the different modes adopted, apparently with equal profit, by the veal
manufacturers for the London and Glasgow markets respectively. We should
like to know the comparative profit of the French mode of feeding calves
for the Paris market, _on cream and biscuits_. In his next edition, we
hope Mr Stephens will instruct us upon this point also.
It is one of the merits of this book, and in our estimation a very high
one, that method, order, and economy of time and labour are invariably
recommended and insisted upon, in every process and at every season. But
these points are especially insisted upon in his chapter _on the
advantages of having field-work always in a forward state_. The following
extract is long, but it contains such admirable advice, that we insert it
for the sake of those who may never see the book itself, or have an
opportunity of buying it.
After describing how every favourable day should be taken in preparing the
land for wheat, beans, oats, potatoes, turnips, tares, or naked fallow, in
their respective order, he continues:--
"And when every one of all these objects has been promoted, and there
is found little or nothing to do till the burst of spring-work comes,
both horses and men may enjoy a day's rest now and then, without
incurring the risk of throwing work back; but before such recreations
are indulged in, it should be ascertained that all the implements,
great and small, have been repaired for work--the plough-irons all
new laid--the harrow-tines new laid and sharpened, and fastened
firmly into the bulls of the harrows--the harness all tight and
strong--the sacks new patched and mended, that no seed-corn be spilt
upon the road--the seed-corn thrashed, measured up, and sacked, and
what is last wanted put into the granary--the horses new shod, that
no casting or breaking of a single shoe may throw a pair of horses
out of work for even one single hour--in short, to have every thing
prepared to start for work when the first notice of spring shall be
heralded in the sky.
"But suppose the contrary of all this to happen; suppose that the
plough-irons and harrow-tines have to be laid and sharpened, when
perhaps to-morrow they may be wanted in the field--a stack to be
thrashed for seed-corn or for horse's corn in the midst of the sowing
of a field--suppose, too, that only a week's work has been lost, in
winter, of a single pair of horses, and the consequence is, that six
acres of land have to be ploughed when they should be sown, that is,
a loss of a whole day of six pair of horses, or of two days of three
pair--suppose all these inconveniences to happen in the busy season,
and the provoking reflection occurs that the loss incurred now was
occasioned by trifling offputs in winter. Compare the value of these
trifles with the risk of finding you unprepared for sowing beans or
spring-wheat. Suppose, once more, that instead of having turnips in
store for the cattle, when the oat-seed is begun in the fields, and
that, instead of being able to prosecute that indispensable piece of
work without interruption, you are obliged to send away a portion of
the draughts to bring in turnips, which _must be brought in_, and
brought in, too, from hand to mouth, it being impossible, in the
circumstances, to store them. In short, suppose that the season of
incessant labour arrives and finds you unprepared to go along with
it,--and what are the consequences? Every creature about you, man,
woman, and beast, are then toiled beyond endurance every day, not to
_keep up_ work, which is a lightsome task, but to _make up_ work,
which is a toilsome task, but which you said you could easily do,
when you were idling your time in a season you consider of little
value; and, after all, this toil is bestowed in vain to obtain the
end you wish, namely, to prepare your crop _in due season_. You who
are inexperienced in the evils of procrastination may fancy this to
be an overdrawn picture--even an impossible case; but unfortunately
for that supposition, it is drawn from the life. I have seen every
incident occur which I have mentioned, both as to work being in a
forward and in a backward state."--(Vol. ii. pp. 489, 483.)
This one extract will alone illustrate the opinion we have already
expressed, in regard to the soundness and safety of the advice on
practical subjects, which our author ventures to give.
We pass over a hundred pages devoted to ploughing and sowing, and the
selection of seed. On the last of which points our inclination would lead
us to dwell--especially in reference to the steeping of seeds, a subject
which at present engages so much attention, and upon which so much
nonsense and mercantile puffing has been recently expended. But our limits
restrain us.
Whether it is that our own predilections incline us more to those parts of
his book, or that Mr Stephens writes these better--with heart and
kindliness he certainly does write[29]--we scarcely know, but we certainly
like all his chapter upon animals. _The lambing of ewes_ is the subject of
chapter fifty-four.
In all lines of life there are the skilful and the unskilful, and the
former are always the fewer in number. In reference to shepherds, Mr
Stephens says:--
"No better proof need be adduced of the fewness of skilful shepherds,
than the loss which every breeder of sheep sustains every year,
especially in bad weather. I knew a shepherd who possessed unwearied
attention, but was deficient in skill, and being over-anxious, always
assisted the ewes in lambing before the proper time; and as he kept
the ewes in too high condition, the consequence was, that every year
he lost a number of both ewes and lambs; and in one season of bad
weather the loss amounted to the large number of twenty-six ewes, and
I forget of how many lambs, in a dock of only ten score of ewes. I
knew another shepherd who was far from being solicitous about his
charge, though certainly not careless of it, yet his skill was so
undoubted, that he chiefly depended upon it, and his success was so
eminent, that the loss of a ewe or lamb under his charge was matter
of surprise. Of these two shepherds--the attentive and the
skilful--it would appear that the skilful is the safer, and of course
the more valuable, though it must be owned, that it is better to
_prevent_ evils by skilful attention, than to _cure_ them by
attentive skill; yet it is only by the union of both these qualities
that a perfect shepherd can be formed."--(Vol. ii. p. 600.)
Perhaps some of our readers are acquainted with _Price on Sheep_, a book
in which the treatment of the Leicester sheep is especially described.
After commenting upon what this author says of the losses experienced in
lambing-time by the southern breeders, Mr Stephens pays the following
deserved compliment to the intelligent shepherds of Scotland:--
"I would not have noticed these egregious blunders, said by Mr Price
to be committed by shepherds in a low country like Romney Marsh, in
Kent, so prominently, had not Mr Youatt adopted the sentiments of Mr
Price in the very particulars quoted above, in his excellent treatise
on the history and diseases of sheep. Were a shepherd of a Leicester
flock in Scotland made aware that he was suspected of such ignorance
of the nature of sheep, he would be quite ashamed; and so would
shepherds even of the hill country, who cannot have so intimate a
knowledge of every individual of their flock, usually occupying a
wide range of mountain land, as their brethren of the profession
tending flocks within much more limited bounds."--(Vol. ii. p. 602.)
Among the more immediate symptoms of lambing, there are two which have
struck us as very interesting. We have put them in italics in the
following quotation:--
"The more immediate symptoms of lambing are when the ewe stretches
herself frequently; separating herself from her companions;
exhibiting restlessness by not remaining in one place for any length
of time; lying down and rising up again, as if dissatisfied with the
place; pawing the ground with a forefoot; _bleating as if in quest of
a lamb; and appearing fond of the lambs of other ewes_."--(Vol. ii.
p. 603.)
In regard to _pet_ lambs--such as are brought up by hand because their
mothers have died, and it has been impossible to mother then upon other
ewes--the following observation shows their innocent simplicity:--
"When the same person feeds the lambs, and this should be the
dairymaid, the lambs soon become attached to her, and would follow
her every where: but to prevent their bleating, and to make them
contented, an apron or a piece of cloth, hung on a stake or bush in
the paddock, will keep them together."--(Vol. ii. p. 611.)
After treating of the various risks which ewes and lambs are subject to,
the final result for which a skilful shepherd should look, is thus
stated:--
"He should not be satisfied with his exertions unless he has
preserved one-half the number of ewes with twin-lambs, nor should he
congratulate himself if he has lost a single ewe in lambing. I am
aware these results cannot always be commanded; but I believe an
attentive and skilful shepherd will not be satisfied for all his
toil, night and day, for three weeks, if he has not attained these
results. The ewes may have lambed twins to greater number than the
half, and yet many pairs may have been broken to supply the
deficiencies occasioned by the deaths of single lambs. * * * In
regard to Cheviots, it is considered a favourable result to rear a
lamb for each ewe; and with blackfaced ewes, eighteen lambs out of
the score of ewes is perhaps one as favourable. Cheviots yield a few
pairs, blackfaced very few. The former sometimes require assistance
in lambing, the latter seldom."--(Vol. ii. pp. 614, 615.)
An entire chapter is given to the _training and working of the shepherd's
dog_. Like master like man, says the old adage--like shepherd like dog,
says Mr Stephens:--