410 in the excessive preservation of game. This evil has been greatly aggravated since that mode of sporting called the battue has unhappily become the fashion. For this amuse ment a very large head of game is reckoned to be indis pensable, and proprietors who engage in it are naturally enough led to vie with each other as to who shall show the greatest quantity of game, and report the heaviest bag, at their respective shooting parties. All this necessarily implies a grievous waste of farm produce, and frightful loss to farmers whose crops are exposed to the incursions of the privileged vermin. Worst of all, these hordes of game present such irresistible temptation to poaching that the rural population is demoralised by it to an alarming extent. So long as field sports were in a great measure restricted to resident landowners and their personal friends, they were, with rare exceptions, careful not to allow their tenants to be injured by game. Now, however, there are multitudes of men who, having acquired wealth in business, are eager to engage in field sports, and ready to give almost any amount of money for the privilege of doing so. These game tenants are often utterly regardless of the interests of farmers, and cause them both loss and annoyance. All this is occasioning such an amount of heart-burning and aliena tion of feeling between different classes of society as cannot fail to have disastrous consequences. A few years ago the removal of hares and rabbits from the list of animals pro tected by the game-laws would, so far at least as landlords and their tenants are concerned, have put an end to all this misery, The refusal of so moderate a concession has in all likelihood sealed the fate of these oppressive laws which have so long embittered society and disgraced our country. Section 6. Concluding Remarks. On carefully comparing the present condition of British agriculture with what it was forty years ago, the change for the better is found to be very great indeed. But on all hands there are many indications warranting the an ticipation that the progress of discovery and improvement in future will be more steady, more rapid, and more general than it has hitherto been. There is not only a more general and more earnest spirit of inquiry, but practical men, instead of despising the aids of science, seek more and more to conduct their investigations under its guidance. Experi ments are made on an ever-widening scale and upon well- concerted plans. Their results are so recorded and published that they at once become available to all, and each fresh investigator, instead of wasting his energies in re-discovering what (unknown to him) has been discovered before, now makes his start from a well-ascertained and ever-advancing frontier. Formerly the knowledge of the husbandman con sisted very much of isolated facts, and his procedure was often little better than a groping in the dark. As the rationale of his various processes is more clearly discovered/ he will be enabled to conduct them with greater economy and precision than he can do at present. A clearer know ledge of what really constitutes the food of plants, and of the various influences which affect their growth, will necessarily lead to important improvements in all that relates to the collection, preparation, and use of manures. What may truly be called a revolution in agriculture is now in the act of rapid development, in the application of steam-power to the tillage of the soil, which is spreading on every side. Enough has already been accomplished to show that, under the combined influence of drainage and steam tillage, the clay soils of England will speedily have their latent fertility brought into play in a manner that will mightily augment our supplies of home-grown bread- [PROGRESS. corn and butcher-meat. It may indeed now be reasonably anticipated that these hitherto impracticable soils will again take their place as our best corn-growing lands, and that those large portions of the country where for a long time our national agriculture presented its poorest aspect, may ere long exhibit its proudest achievements. In closing this rapid review of British Agriculture, it is gratifying and cheering to reflect that never was this great branch of national industry in a healthier condition, and never were there such solid grounds for anticipating for it a steady and rapid progress. The time has hardly yet gone by when it was much the way with oiir manufacturing and trading men, and our civic population generally, to regard our farmers as a dull, plodding sort of people, greatly inferior to themselves in intelligence and energy. Many of them seem now, however, to be awakening to the fact that their rural brethren possess a full share of those qualities which so honourably distinguish the British race. Nay, some of them may have experienced no little surprise when they became aware that in a full competition of our whole industrial products with those of other nations, as at Paris in 1855, and at similar and more recent international expositions, the one department in which Britain con fessedly outstripped all her rivals was not in any of her great staple manufactures, but in the live stock of her farms, and in her agricultural implements and machinery Plate List of Plates accompanying this Article. No. III. Plan of Covered Homestead for a small Farm, by Mr J. Cowie. IV. Ground Plan of Steading and Offices on the Home Farm of the Earl of Soutkesk. V. Shorthorn Bull and Cow. VI. Hereford Bull, and South Down Eve and Lamb. VII. Cheviot Ewe and Blackfaced Heath Sheep. VIII. Leicester Ram and Ewe. IX. Eomsey Marsh Ewe, and Sow of the Large English Breed. The following description has been supplied along with the plan given in Plate IV. : " It represents the ground plan of a steading of offices recently built on the home farm of the Earl of Southesk, planned by Charles Lyall, Esq., his lordship s factor. It contains a powerful thrashing- mill, corn-bruiser, oil-crusher, chaff-cutter, and turnip- slicer, all driven by a portable steam-engine ; and is amply supplied with water for the troughs, and is lighted by gas. It may be regarded as a .model, containing as it does all the conveniences and appliances necessary for the complete development of the stock and implement departments. It is calculated for an occupancy of 500 acres, and was built, including the steam-engine, at a cost of about 5000." This plan may very well illustrate the present state ol opinion as to whether or not cattle should be kept wholly under cover. It gives an affirmative answer to this ques tion in the case of fattening cattle ; but for breeding stock of all ages it provides accommodation in open yards. This we consider the best arrangement ; for it is impossible in the case of breeding stock to retain that fine coat of hair which so enhances the good looks and value of high-class cattle without such an amount of exposure to the weather as is afforded by open yards with covered sheds. There is one feature in this plan which we cannot but regret, viz., its bothy. It is indeed one of the best of its kind, having a separate sleeping-place for each of its inmates, and suitable arrangements for their cleanliness and com fort ; but the meanest cottage in the country, inasmuch as it admits of family life, is to be preferred to the most
perfect bothy. (j. w.)
