304 AGRICULTURE [RECENT 5,278,685, or considirably more than double in twenty years. But of the causes which have influenced the agriculture of the period under review, none have been so powerful as the extraordinary increase of our population, which, in round numbers, has twice doubled during the past seventy years. Not only are there four times as many people requiring to be fed and clad now as there were then, but from the increased wealth and altered habits of the people, the individual rate of consumption is greater now than formerly. This is particularly apparent in the case of butcher- meat, the consumption of which has increased out of all proportion to that of bread-corn. To meet this demand, there behoved to be more green crops and more live stock ; and from that has resulted more wool, more manure, and more corn. While this ever-growing demand for farm- produce has stimulated agricultural improvement, it has also operated in another way. The productiveness of the soil has been greatly increased, and will no doubt be still more so in future ; but the area of the country cannot be increased. Land the raw material from which food is produced being thus limited in amount and in increasing demand, has necessarily risen in price. So much is this the case, that whereas the average price of wheat for the five years preceding 1872 was 2, 15s. per quarter, or 2, 7s. Gd. less than during the five years preceding 1815, the rent of land is much higher now than it was then. The raw material of the food-grower having thus risen in price, his only resource has been to fall upon plans for lowering the cost of producing his crops and for increasing their amount. To such an extent has he succeeded, that the produce market has been kept full, and prices have decreased. The business of farming has in the main been a less prosperous one than most other branches of national industry, and yet agriculture, as an art and as a science, has made steady progress. We believe it is only in this way that the contemporaneous existence of two things apparently so incompatible as a steady rise in the rent of land, and a steady decrease in the price of its produce, can be satisfactorily accounted for. PROGRESS SINCE 1816. Section 3. Laivs affecting Agriculture. The abundant crop of 1813, and restored communication with the continent of Europe in the same year, gave the first check to these unnaturally exorbitant prices and rents. The restoration of peace to Europe, and the re-enactment of the Corn Laws in 1815, mark the commencement of another era in the history of our national agriculture. It was ushered in with a time of severe depression and suffering to the agricultural community. The immense fall in the price of farm-produce which then took place was aggravated, first, by the unpropitious weather and deficient harvest of the years 1816, 1817; and still more by the passing in 1819 of the Bill restoring cash payments, which, coming into operation in 1821, caused serious embairassment to all persons who had entered into engage ments at a depreciated currency, which had now to be met with the lower prices of an enhanced one. The much- debated Corn Laws, after undergoing various modifications, and proving the fruitful source of business uncertainty, social discontent, and angiy partisanship, were finally abolished in 1846, although the Act was not consummated until three years .later. Several other Acts of the Legis lature, passed during this period, have exerted an important influence on agriculture. Of these, the first in date and importance is the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836. All writers on agriculture had long concurred in pointing out the injurious effects on agriculture of the tithe system as it then stood. The results of the change have amply verified the anticipations of those who were instrumental in procuring it. Since the removal of this formidable hindrance, improvement has been stimulated by those Acts under which the Government has been empowered to advance money on certain conditions for the draining of estates. An important feature in these advances is, that the 6 per cent, of interest charged upon them provides a sinking fund by which the debt is extinguished in twenty- two years. Additional facilities have also been granted by the Act passed in 18-i8 for disentailing estates, and for burdening such as are entailed with a share of the cost of certain specified improvements. Section 4. Cattle Murrain and Potato Disease. Another class of outward events, which has had an important influence upon agriculture, requires our notice. We refer to those mysterious diseases affecting both the animal and vegetable kingdoms, the causes and remedies for which have alike baffled discovery. The murrain, or " vesicular epizootic," appeared first in 1841, having been introduced, as is supposed, by foreign cattle. It spread rapidly over the country, affecting all our domesticated animals, except horses, and causing everywhere great alarm and loss, although seldom attended by fatal results. It has prevailed ever since, in a greater or less degree, and has been more widely diffused as well as more virulent in 1871 and 1872 than ever before. It was soon followed by the more terrible lung-disease, or pleuro-pneumonia, which continues to cause serious mortality among our herds. In 1865 the rinderpest, or steppe murrain, origi nating amongst the vast herds of the Eussian steppes, where it would appear to be never altogether wanting, had spread westward over Europe, until it was brought to London by foreign cattle. Several weeks elapsed before the true character of the disease was known, and in this brief space it had already been carried by animals purchased in Smithfield market to all parts of the country. After causing the most frightful losses, it was at last stamped out by the resolute slaughter of all affected animals and of all that had been in contact with them. In the autumn of 1872 this cattle plague was again detected in several cargoes of foreign cattle brought to our ports. Happily the stringent provisions of the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act had the effect of preventing its entrance, except in the case of one cargo brought to Hull, from which the plague was conveyed to several herds in the adjacent parts of Yorkshire, and caused considerable losses before it was again stamped out. Severe as have been the losses in our flocks and herds from these imported diseases, they have been as nothing in comparison wilh the effects of the mysterious potato blight, which, first appearing in 1845, has since pervaded the whole of Europe, and in Ireland especially proved the sad precursor of famine and pestilence. This seemingly insignificant blight for a time well-nigh withdrew from cultivation one of our most esteemed field crops ; it influences the business of farming in a way that baffles the shrewdest calculators, and is producing social changes of which no man can predict the issue. Section 5. Leading Improvements. We can here do little more than enumerate some of the more prominent improvements in practical agriculture which have taken place during the period under review. Before the close of the past century, and during the first quarter of the present one, a good deal had been done in the way of draining the land, either by open ditches, or by Elking- ton s system of deep covered drains. This system has now been superseded by one altogether superior to it both in principle and praetice. In 1835, James Smith of Deanston
(honour to his memory !) promulgated his now well-known
