villager, deserving more approbation than my simple record will bestow;
and it affords an eminent example of what may be accomplished by
industry and economy, and a manifestation that high wages are not always
essential, or solely contributive to the welfare of the laborer.—When I
first knew A. B., he was in a state of poverty, possessing, it is true,
a cottage of his own, with a very small garden; but his constitution
being delicate, and health precarious, so that he was not a profitable
laborer, the farmers were unwilling to employ him. In this condition he
came into my service: his wife at that time having a young child
contributed very little to the general maintenance of the family: his
wages were ten shillings per week, dieting himself, and with little
besides that could be considered as profitable. We soon perceived that
the clothing of the family became more neat and improved; certain
gradations of bodily health appeared; the cottage was whitewashed, and
inclosed with a rough wall and gate; the rose and the corchorus began to
blossom about it; the pig became two; and a few sheep marked A. B. were
running about the lanes: then his wife had a little cow, which it was
“hoped his honor would let eat some of the rough grass in the upper
field;” but this was not entirely given: this cow, in spring, was joined
by a better; but finding such cattle difficult to maintain through the
winter, they were disposed of, and the sheep augmented. After about six
years’ service, my honest, quiet, sober laborer died, leaving his wife
and two children surviving: a third had recently died. We found him
possessed of some money, though I know not the amount; two fine hogs,
and a flock of forty-nine good sheep, many far advanced in lamb; and all
this stock was acquired solely with the regular wages of ten shillings a
week, in conjunction with the simple aids of rigid sobriety and economy,
without a murmur, a complaint, or a grievance!
I report nothing concerning our variously constituted soil, thinking
that no correct statement can be given by any detail of a local district
under cultivation, beyond generally observing its tendency, as every
soil under tillage must be factitious and changeable. As a mere matter
of curiosity, I might easily find out the proportions of lime, sand,
clay, and vegetable earth, &c., that a given quantity of a certain field
contained; but the very next plowing would perhaps move a substratum,
and alter the proportions; or a subsequent dressing change the analysis:
the adjoining field would be differently treated, and yield a different
result. I do not comprehend what general practical benefit can arise
from chemical analysis of soils; but as eminent persons maintain the
great advantages of it, I suppose they are right, and regret my
ignorance. That the component parts of certain lands can easily be
detected, and the virtues or deficiencies of them for particular crops
be pointed out, I readily admit; but when known, how rarely can the
remedy be applied! I have three correspondents, who send me samples of
their several farms, and request to know by what means they can
meliorate the soil. I find that B. is deficient in lime; but understand
in reply, that this earth is distant from his residence, and too costly
to be applied. D. wants clay; E. is too retentive and cold, and requires
silex or sand; but both are so circumstanced, that they cannot afford to
supply the article required. Indeed it is difficult to say what ought to
be the component parts of a soil, unless the production of one article
or grain is made the standard; for differently constituted soil will
produce different crops advantageously: one farm produces fine wheat,
another barley; others again the finest oats and beans in the parish. To
compound a soil of exact chemical parts, so as to afford permanent
fertility, is a mere theory. Nature and circumstances may produce a
piece of land, that will yield unremitting crops of grass, and we call
it a permanently good soil; but art cannot effect this upon a great
scale. A small field in this parish always produces good crops; not in
consequence of any treatment it receives, but by its natural
composition; consisting principally of finely pulverized clay, stained
with red oxide of iron, a considerable portion of sand, and vegetable
earth: but though I know the probable cause of this field bearing such
good wheat, I cannot bring the surrounding and inferior ones into a like
constitution, the expense far exceeding any hope of remuneration.
Rudolph Glauber obtained gold from common sand, but it was an expensive
article! Temporary food for a crop may be found in animal, vegetable, or
earthy manures, but these are exhaustible; and when aliment ceases, the
crop proportionably diminishes. In one respect, chemical investigation
may importantly aid the agriculturist, by pointing out the proportion of
magnesian earth in certain limes used for manure, and thus indicate its
beneficial or injurious effects on vegetation. I should not like lime
containing 20 per cent. of this earth; but when it contains a much
smaller proportion, I should not think it very deleterious. This earth
acts as a caustic to vegetation, and, neither being soluble in water,
nor possessing the other virtue of lime, diminishes the number of
bushels used according to its existence, and thus deprives the crop of
that portion of benefit: but after all, as Kirwan says, the secret
processes of vegetation take place in the dark, exposed to the various
and indeterminable influence of the atmosphere; and hence the difficulty
of determining on what peculiar circumstance success or failure depends,
for the diversified experience of years alone can afford a rational
foundation for solid and specific conclusions.
The real goodness of a soil consists principally, perhaps, in the power
it possesses of maintaining a certain degree of moisture; for without
this, the plant could have no power of deriving nutriment from any
aliment: it might be planted on a dung-hill; but if this had no moisture
in it, no nutriment would be yielded; but as long as the soil preserves
a moisture, either by its own constituent parts, or by means of a
retentive substratum, vegetation goes on. Continue the moisture, and
increase the aliment, and the plant will flourish in proportion; but let
the moisture be denied by soil, substratum, or manure, and vegetation
ceases; for, though certain plants will long subsist by moisture
obtained from the air, yet, generally speaking, without a supply by the
root, they will languish and fade.
Our dairy processes, I believe, present nothing deserving of particular
notice. From our milk, after being skimmed for butter, we make a thin,
poor cheese, rendered at a low price, but for which there is a constant
demand. Some of our cold lands, too, yield a kind greatly esteemed for
toasting; and we likewise manufacture a thicker and better sort, though
we do not contend in the market with the productions of north Wilts, or
the deeper pastures of Cheshire or Huntingdon.
The agriculture of a small district like ours affords no great scope to
expatiate upon: great deviations from general practice we do not aim at;
experimental husbandry is beyond our means, perhaps our faculties. Local
habits, though often the subject of censure, are frequently such as the
“genius of the soil” and situation render necessary, and the experience
of years has proved most advantageous.
Our grass in the pastures of the clay-lands, in the mowing season,
which, from late feeding in the spring and coldness in the soil, is
always late,[6] presents a curious appearance; and I should apprehend,
that a truss of our hay from these districts, brought into the London
market, or exhibited as a new article of provender at a Smithfield
cattle-show, would occasion conversation and comment. The crop consists
almost entirely of the common field scabious (scabiosa succisa),
loggerheads (centauria nigra), and the great ox-eye daisy (chrysanthemum
lucanthemum.) There is a scattering of bent (agrostis vulgaris), and
here and there a specimen of the better grasses; but the predominant
portion, the staple of the crop, is scabious—it is emphatically a
promiscuous herbage; yet on this rubbish do the cattle thrive, and from
their milk is produced a cheese greatly esteemed for toasting—melting,
fat, and good flavored, and, perhaps, inferior to none used for this
purpose. The best grasses, indeed, with the exception of the dogstail
(cynosurus cristatus), do not delight in our soil: the meadow poa (p.
pratensis), and the rough stalked poa (p. trivialis), when found, are
dwarfish; and having once occasion for a few specimens of the foxtail
(alopecurus pratensis), I found it a scarce and a local plant: but I am
convinced, from much observation, that certain species of plants, and
grasses in particular, are indigenous to some soils, and that they will
vegetate and ultimately predominate over others that may be introduced.
In my own very small practice, a field of exceedingly indifferent
herbage was broken up, underwent many plowings, was exposed to the
roastings of successive suns, and alternations of the year under various
crops; amongst others that of potatoes; the requisite hackings, hoeings,
and diggings of which alone were sufficient to eradicate any original
fibrous, rooted herbage. This field was laid down with clean ray grass
(lolium perenne), white trefoil, and hop clover, and did tolerably well
for one year: and then the original soft-grass, (holcus lanatus)
appeared, overpowered the crop, and repossessed the field; and yet the
seed of this holcus could not have lain inert in the soil all this time,
as it is a grass that rarely or never perfects its seed, but propagates
by its root. The only grass that is purposely sown—trefoils are not
grasses—is, I believe, the ray, or rye, no others being obtainable from
the seedsman: this we consider as perennial; yet, let us lay down two
pieces of land with seeds, from the same sack, the one a low, moist,
deep soil, the other a dry upland, and in three or four years we shall
find the natural herbage of the country spring up, dispute and acquire
in part possession of the soil, in despite of the ray grass sown: in the
deep soil, the predominant crop will probably consist of poæ, cockfoot,
meadow-fescue, holcus, phleum, foxtail, &c.; in the dry soil it will be
dogstail, quaking grass, agrostis, &c., not one species of which was
ever sown by us. It appears that the herbage of our poor thin clay-lands
is the natural produce of the soil, for every fixed soil will produce
something, and would without care always exclude better herbage.
Attention and manures, a kind of armed force, would certainly support
other vegetation, alien introductions, for a time, but the profit would
not always be adequate. In a piece of land of this nature I have
suppressed the natural produce, by altering the soil with draining,
sheep-feeding, stocking up, and composting: and scabious, carnation
grass, mat grass, and their companions, no longer thrive; but if I
should remit this treatment, they would again predominate, and
constitute the crop.
Most counties seem to have some individual or species of wild plants
predominating in their soil, which may be scarce, or only locally found
in another; this is chiefly manifested in the corn-lands—for aquatic or
alpine districts, and some other peculiarities, must form exceptions.
This may be in some measure occasioned by treatment or manure, but
commonly must be attributed to the chemical composition of the soil, as
most plants have organs particularly adapted for imbibing certain
substances from the earth, which may be rejected or not sought after by
the fibrous or penetrating roots of another. Festuca sylvatica abounds
in every soil without an apparent predilection for any one: F.
uniglumis, only where it can imbibe marine salt: F. pinnata, is found
vegetating upon calcareous soils alone, and I have known it appear
immediately as the limestone inclined to the surface, as if all other
soils were deficient in the requisite nutriment. Many of the maidenhairs
and ferns, pellitory, cotyledon, &c. are attached in the crevices of old
walls, seeking as it were for the calcareous nitrate found there, this
saltpetre appearing essential to their vigor and health. The
predominating plants in some corn-fields are the red-poppy,[7] cherlock
(sinapis arvensis), mustard (sin. nigra.), wild oat, cornflower
(cyanus); but in some adjoining parish we shall only sparingly find
them. With us in our cold clay-lands we find the slender foxtail grass
(alopecurus agr.) abounding like a cultivated plant: when growing in
clover, or the ray grass, the whole are cut together, and though not a
desirable addition, is not essentially injurious; but vegetating in the
corn, it is a very pernicious weed, drawing nutriment from the crop, and
overpowering it by its more early growth, at times so impoverishing the
barley or the oats, as to render them comparatively of little value. The
upright brome grass (bromus erectus) is a pest in our grass lands,
giving the semblance of a crop in a most unproductive soil; hard and
wiry, it possesses no virtue as food, and is useless as a grass: this
bromus inclines to the limestone, the lias, or clay-stone, as if alumine
was required, to effect some essential purpose in its nature; but this
is a plant not found universally.
We have in use generally here a very prudential method of saving our
crops in bad and catching seasons, by securing the hay in windcocks, and
wheat in pooks. As soon as a portion of our grass becomes sufficiently
dry, we do not wait for the whole crop being in the same state, but,
collecting together about a good wagon load of it, we make a large cock
in the field, and as soon as a like quantity is ready we stack that
likewise, until the whole field is successively finished, and on the
first fine day unite the whole in a mow. Some farmers, in very
precarious seasons, only cut enough to make one of these cocks, and
having secured this, cut again for another. Should we be necessitated,
from the state of the weather, to let these parcels remain long on the
ground, or be a little dilatory, which I believe we sometimes are,
before they are carried, or, as we say, hawled (haled,) the cocks are
apt to get a little warm, and only partially heat in the mow, the hay
cutting out streaky, and not perhaps so bright or fragrant as when
uniformly heated in body: but I am acquainted with no other disadvantage
from this practice, and it is assuredly the least expensive, and most
ready way of saving a crop in a moist and uncertain season. For wheat it
is a very efficacious plan, as these stacks or pooks, (a corruption
perhaps of packs,) when properly made, resist long and heavy rains, the
sheaves not being simply piled together, but the heads gradually
elevated to a certain degree in the centre, and the but-end then shoots
off the water, the summit being lightly thatched. An objection has been
raised to this custom, from the idea that the mice in the field take
refuge in the pooks, and are thus carried home; but mice will resort to
the sheaves as well when drying, and be conveyed in like manner to the
barn: we have certainly no equally efficacious or speedy plan for
securing a crop of wheat, and thousands of loads are thus commonly
saved, which would otherwise be endangered, or lost by vegetating in the
sheaf.
We will admit that grain, hardened by exposure to the sun and air in the
sheaf, is sooner ready for the miller, and is generally a brighter
article than that which has been hastily heaped up in the pook; but when
the season does not allow of this exposure, but obliges us to prevent
the germinating of the grain by any means, I know no practice, as an
expedient, rather than a recommendation in all cases, more prompt and
efficacious than this.
Two of our crops not being of universal culture are entitled to a brief
mention. We grow the potato extensively in our fields, a root which must
be considered, after bread corn and rice, the kindest vegetable gift of
Providence to mankind. This root forms the chief support of our
population as their food, and affords them a healthful employment for
three months in the year, during the various stages of planting,
hacking, hoeing, harvesting. Every laborer rents of the farmer some
portion of his land, to the amount of a rood or more, for this culture,
the profits of which enable him frequently to build a cottage, and, with
the aid of a little bread, furnishes a regular, plentiful, nutritious
food for himself, his wife, and children within, and his pig without
doors; and they all grow fat and healthy upon this diet, and use has
rendered it essential to their being. The population of England, Europe
perhaps, would never have been numerous as it is, without this
vegetable; and if the human race continue increasing, the cultivation of
it may be extended to meet every demand, which no other earthly product
could scarcely be found to admit of. The increase of mankind throughout
Europe, within the last forty years, has been most remarkable, as every
census informs us, notwithstanding the havoc and waste of continual
warfare, and most extensive emigration; and as it seems to be an
established maxim, that population will increase according to the means
of supply, so, if a northern hive should swarm again, or
“Blue-eyed myriads from the Baltic shore”
once more arise, future historians will probably attribute this excess
of population, and the revolutions it may effect, to the introduction of
vaccination on the one part, and the cultivation of the potato on the
other.
The varieties of this tuber, like apples, seem annually extending, and
every village has its own approved sorts and names, different soils
being found preferable for particular kinds, and local treatment
advantageous. We plant both by the dibble[8] and the spade: our chief
sorts are pink eyes, prince’s beauty, magpies, and china oranges, for
our first crop; blacks, roughs, and reds, for the latter crop; and
horses’ legs, for cattle. We have a new sort under trial, with rather an
extraordinary name, which I must here call “femora dominarum!” But we
find here, as is usual with other vegetable varieties, that after a few
years’ cultivation the sorts lose their original characters, or, as the
men say, “the land gets sick of them,” and they cease to produce as at
first, and new sets are resorted to. We have no vegetable under
cultivation more probably remunerative than this, or more certain of
being in demand sooner or later; it consequently becomes an article of
speculation, but not to such an injurious extent as some others are: it
gives a sufficient profit to the farmer and his sub renter. Our land is
variously rented for this culture; but perhaps eight pounds per acre are
a general standard: the farmer gives it two plowings, finds manure, and
pays the tithe; the seed is found, and all the labor in and out is
performed by the renter; or the farmer, in lieu of any rent, receives
half the crop. The farmer’s expenses may be rated at—
£. _s._ _d._
Rent to his landlord 1 10 0
Two plowings 1 6 0
Twelve loads of manure 1 16 0
Tithe 0 10 0
Rates 0 3 0
───────────────────────────────────────────────
£5 5 0
leaving him a clear profit of 2_l._ 15_s._ per acre. The sub renter’s
expenditure and profit will be—
£. _s._ _d._
Rent 8 0 0
Labor in and out 3 0 6
───────────────────────────────────────────────
£12 12 6
£. _s._ _d._
Produce 50 sacks, at 6_s._ 6_d._ 16 5 0
Trash, or small pigs 1 0 0
───────────────────────────────────────────────
£17 5 0
leaving a profit of 4_l._ 12_s._ 6_d._ per acre. The produce will vary
greatly at times, and then the price of the article varies too. The
returns to the laborer are always ample, when conducted with any thing
like discretion, and the emolument to the farmer is also quite
sufficient as, beside the rent, he is paid for the manuring his land for
a succeeding crop, be it wheat or barley; hence land is always to be
obtained by the cotter, upon application. We have a marked instance in
the year 1825 how little we can predict what the product of this crop
will be, or the change that alteration of weather may effect; for after
the drought of the summer, after our apprehensions, our dismay (for the
loss of this root is a very serious calamity), the produce of potatoes
was generally fair, in places abundant; many acres yielding full eighty
sacks, which, at the digging out price of 6_s._ the sack, gave a clear
profit to the laborer of 11_l._ 7_s._ 6_d._[9] per acre! But at any rate
it gives infinite comfort to the poor man, which no other article can
equally do, and a plentiful subsistence, when grain would be poverty and
want. The injudicious manner in which some farmers have let their land
has certainly, under old acts of parliament, brought many families into
a parish; but we have very few instances where a potato land renter to
any extent is supported by the parish. In this village a very large
portion of our peasantry inhabit their own cottages, the greater number
of which have been obtained by their industry, and the successful
culture of this root. The getting in and out of the crop is solely
performed by the cotter and his family: a child drops a set in the
dibble-hole or the trench made by the father, the wife with her hoe
covering it up; and in harvesting all the family are in action; the baby
is wrapped up when asleep in its mother’s cloak, and laid under the
shelter of some hedge, and the digging, picking, and conveying to the
great store-heap commences; a primitive occupation and community of
labor, that I believe no other article admits of or affords.
It has been said that the culture of the potato is injurious to the farm
in general, and I know landlords who restrict the growth of it; but
perhaps the extent of injury has been greatly overrated. The potato, it
is true, makes no return to the land in straw for manure, and a large
portion of that which is made in the barton is occasionally required for
its cultivation; and thus it is said to consume without any repayment
what is equally due to other crops: but the cultivation of this tuber
requires that the soil should be moved and turned repeatedly; it is
generally twice at least plowed, trenched by the spade for sets, hacked
when the plant is above ground, then hoed into ridges, and finally, the
whole turned over again when the crop is got out: thus is the soil six
times turned and exposed to the sun and air and it is kept perfectly
free from weeds of all kinds—both of which circumstances are essentially
beneficial to the soil. If the potato must have manure, it does not
exhaust all the virtues of it, as the crop which succeeds it, be it
wheat or barley, sufficiently manifests: there are, besides, exertions
made by the renter to obtain this profitable crop, that greatly improve
the farm, and which a less promising one would not always stimulate him
to attempt—he will cut up his ditch banks, collect the waste soil of his
fields, composting it with lime and other matters as a dressing for the
potato crop, and it answers well: the usual returns from corn, and
fluctuations in the price, will not often induce him to make such
exertions. All this is no robbery of the farm-yard, but solely a
profitable reward and premium to industry.
Much has been said and written about the potato; but as some erroneous
ideas have been received concerning its early introduction into Europe,
perhaps a slight sketch of the history of this extraordinary root may
not be uninteresting,—a summary of the perusal of multitudes of volumes,
papers, treatises!