ESSAY I.
Of that proportioned Farm, which is of all others the most profitable.

I HERE enter upon a subject in which my own ideas have not that perspicuity I could wish, but an attentive disquisition will, at the same time, give them a greater clearness, and explain to the reader several points totally unnoticed by all former writers. In this enquiry I do not mean to shew what farm will yield the greatest income, because in most cases, the largest will, in that respect, be the best; but I would discover if there be not a peculiar proportion between the parts, remark­ably favourable to profit and convenience; and this not in farms only of a certain rent, but in all sorts.

The first division of a farm is into arable and pasture land this at once points out a multitude of circum­stances in the arrangement of a business that call un­doubtedly for some proportion of the kind, which I am considering. The arable land requires draught cattle to cultivate it and carry out its products; and the grass must be applied to the seeding or fattening of other cattle. If a farm is totally arable or totally grass, the proporti­ons, of which I am speaking, do not embrace (especial­ly in the latter case) so many circumstances, as they otherwise would; but many nevertheless remain,

The want of proportion is to be observed every day. Nothing more common than to see farmers buying hay [Page 8] under many disadvantages: this results entirely from a disproportion between the grass and arable lands of a farm.

Oats they often purchase, and perhaps with a heavy carriage upon them; this comes from a want of proporti­on in the arable crops.

Cattle are very often put out to joist in a neighbour's straw yard; by which means much manure is lost: this evidently arises from the want of a requisite attention to the proportion between the cattle and the corn crops.

Many farmers cultivate turneps with great care, and raise fine crops of them, but want cattle in the winter to feed them to advantage: they are then to be sold to somebody else: and, as they must be sold, it is twenty to one, to disadvantage. The want of proportion is here plain enough.

In many situations, the dependance of a whole farm for manure is on the straw yard: if, in such a case, the farmer does not properly proportion his arable crops with feed cattle, to those which litter the yard, and both these to the quantity of his grass fields, the farm will be long enough before it gets well manured.

These causes might be multiplied almost ad infinitum; but a few are sufficient to explain the idea of proportion.

Farms vary so prodigiously, that no absolutely accu­rate corollaries can be drawn from the most judicious reasoning on this subject: the only method of treating it, is to state some points, and then reason upon the pro­portion between those and others.

Suppose in the stocking of a small farm, that twenty acres of arable land per horse, is the quantity to be ma­naged properly by the team; four horses will, in that case, cultivate eighty acres of arable. Now what are the proportions which can be drawn from this one fact?

Let me here remark that I state, in all these points, not what is every where found in common management, but what ought to be. Many farmers are such bad ma­nagers, that scarce one proportion is to be found through­out their farm.

[Page 9] Eighty acres of arable land, managed by four horses, may, if the soil is not heavy, be thrown into fourths; one sown every year with turneps, one with spring corn, one with wheat, and one with clover. If the soil is heavy, a fallow, or some other fallow crop, should be substituted instead of turneps. If a fourth be not clover the four horses cannot manage the farm properly.

Before we proceed farther, new proportions arise; the clover, we will suppose, totally keeps the horses in green food and hay; this is common husbandry, wher­ever clover is known. We will allow each horse two tons of hay per winter, which will leave him a little to spare for summer. The four will, therefore, eat eight tons; this, at two mowings, may be reasonably called four acres. For the summer food, we will allow the four horses six acres of green clover. Thus the whole quantity eat by the four horses is ten acres.

As much more is to spare; hence we must suppose other cattle to be kept; but further—there are twenty acres of wheat, twenty of spring corn, and twenty of turneps; besides twenty acres of stubble for littering the yard. Part of the straw of the wheat must be applied to littering the four horses, the rest given to the cattle. Here, therefore, is the following winter food:

The next enquiry is the cattle these will winter. The food is all well adapted to various kinds; but I shall sup­pose them heifers, or steers or oxen, for fatting. The order in which they should be fed, is to give them the wheat straw first with some turneps; next the spring corn straw with some turneps; and then the clover hay with the rest of the turneps; which progression will carry them forward in flesh, and get them in fine order to turn into grass to complete the fatting. The number I should assign (in this management) to such a quan tity of food is thirty head. Thirty middling steers [Page 10] would be well wintered on this food. If the beasts are above the middling size, about twenty or twenty-five. The reader should reme [...]ber they are not fatted; only kept; all that is wanting, is to keep them rather on the improving hand.

The quantity of winter food points out in this manner the number of cattle to be kept, and this will discover the quantity of grass land such a farm ought to have, this is at once determined, for we may allow an acre per beast, or thirty acres; but it would be prudent in such a farmer always to have a stock of hay before hand, to use in case of accidents, such as a bad time, to make his clover hay, &c. &c. &c. for this purpose he should have five acres of mowing grass every year; or, in all, thirty-five.

Thus we find the number of horses a clue to discover he whole oeconomy of a farm. I have taken this as one instance to explain what I mean by proportion. It plainly appears from hence, that it is a matter of vast consequence; almost any other point to begin with, would have yielded the same information; for instance, the annual quantity of wheat sown, of spring corn, &c. &c. or from different instances. But the connection is [...]ursued in a clearer manner from the number of horses.

If any of the proportions in this instance are broken, the whole chain is affected; take one horse from the [...]our, all is varied at once; instead of a proper quantity of arable land per horse, a larger, or a less portion is [...]ssigned; the very stock of the grass land is at once af­fected: so much does every part of a well arranged farm depend on each other.

Great variations are made by common farmers, with­out any important effects ensuing; this may seem to contradict my assertions; but most of them enter into farms with so little idea of just proportions, that such never existed in their farms, consequently, there were none to break: and yet common farmers cannot damage even their faulty proportions, without feeling the ill ef­fects. But they are, in general, so burthened with a [Page 11] too great quantity of land for their fortunes to manage, that they seldom remedy any thing of that sort. In­stead of the profitable management of turneps and clo­ver, they very often omit those crops, for want of mo­ney to purchase the cattle to eat them; the land does not from this omission lay fallow, but is sown with corn; thus the soil is exhausted, and all general management presently in confusion.

Having thus explained, by an instance, what is the proper meaning of the proportions of a farm in this case; I shall, in the next place, sketch such proportions as I apprehend to be the most profitable. In this enquiry some latitude must be used, because real farms are so prodigiously various. Perhaps a mere grazing farm may be found, in many countries, the most profitable of all that are commonly managed; but I shall reject those, as they would furnish, in this enquiry, very few useful conclusions. I shall therefore suppose a farm that contains many parts, and is conducted on a various plan, embracing some new discoveries in agriculture; proper, in a word, for a gentleman, or, at least, a far­mer, whose ideas are more enlarged, than those of ma­ny of his brethren: but it will be necessary, at the same time, so to suppose matters, that if a common one hired such a farm, the sketch I offer may be of service though he rejects any articles of culture, but such as are abso­lutely usual.

It would lead me into too wide a disquisition to de­termine, of various sized farms, which is proportiona­bly the most profitable; all that utility here requires, is to state proportions, that one well designed both for convenience and profit, and of such an extent as no [...] to fall below the proportional profit of longer farms, for want of more land. To have every thing complete, and well contrived, for mutual support, a farm must necessarily be a large one. But here I am sensible of the disadvantage of moving upon untrodden ground, and feel at every step the want of former writers, to take warning by their mistakes; nor is it any mortifica­tion [Page 12] to me to think that my humble labours will, in future times, be no more than a canvass for others to paint on. I shall at least be a canvass; which is more than any former writer is to me. The want of some­thing of a guide of this sort, occasians my entering into more explanations than otherwise I should. The per­son who enters on a subject that has been already treated by others, is in little want of explanations: for, as the first writers generally explain most, he takes that ad­vantage, and falls into the hands of readers, who know enough of the subject to want no introductory explana­tions. This is not my case; I must therefore proceed accordingly.

A small farm may (as far as it extends) be as profita­ble as a large one; but we are not to reason upon un­common instances: many circumstances of management require a large business to be carried on with advantage. A few will prove it. The neighbourhood of a great city, or town, requires that the farmers purchase ma­nures; but that is a work that goes on very poorly, if a team is not kept on purpose.

It is but a poor business that will not employ distinct▪ teams for both plowing and harrowing, and odd cattle besides for rolling. A business should be considerable enough also for the employment of a bailey; not one that has the whole management of the farm in his hands, but who is kept for the mere underwork, the oversee­ing labourers, &c. &c. &c. I give these instances by no means as a complete list, only to shew that there are points in which a great farm has the advantage of a small one, merely from being great.

But to come to particulars.

I propose that six ploughs be kept constantly at work: four ox ploughs and two horse ones, or four horses and eight oxen. One pair of harrows must be supposed al­ways to attend these ploughs, or three horses, Some­times, upon extraordinary occasions, one of the ploughs may stop for the working another pair of harrows; but those will be only in a hasty time, when the corn is laid in above ground, instead of under furrow.

[Page 13] One horse must also be assigned for rolling. Two for plowing between the rows of plants.

Four others should be allotted for bringing manure from the nearest city or town.

There are so many situations wherein this is practica­ble, that it would be unpardonable to omit the suppositi­on. But this team must be employed (except when the horses assigned to the business of tillage are idle through bad weather) in carrying out the corn and other pro­ducts of the farm.

Four oxen must be allotted for sundry articles of cart­ing: either in carts or a waggon: such as wood—food for cattle in winter—stubble straw, &c. &c. &c.

Two oxen should constantly be kept at cart the whole year round, with two small three-wheeled carts, in ^* carrying dung, clav▪ composts, &c. &c. &c. And two horses I allow for extras.

By means of such a disposition of the teams, none of the work will stand still, that the rest may be better exe­cuted. In common farms, all common work is at a stand, when a little that is extraordinary is to be done. To carry out corn, stops the ploughs perhaps at a criti­cal season: the fallows are frequently seen over run with weeds, because it is seed time: in a word, some business is ever neglected, that the rest may be decently performed.

But with such a disposition of draught cattle, as I have sketched, all kinds of work will go on briskly and regu­larly; the interruptions of hay and harvest will be no­thing for the two extra horses; and another allowed for rolling, and two for horse-hoeing, with some spare time from the harrowing team, which it must have, will an­swer all carting of that sort, and much other.

[Page 14] I am the more particular in this part of my scheme, as the inconveniences of the common opposite conduct are surprizingly great and obvious. One can scarcely walk over a farm, without remarking the neglect of some work or other o [...] importance, arising from the want of a proper number of draught cattle; by the end of harvest, the fallows are, many of them, either over­run with weeds, or at least very deficient in pulverizati­on: the farmer's team has been employed in getting in his corn; for that business which is soonest to supply his purse, will be sure to be done, at the expence of all other work. In seed time, favourable seasons are either lost, or but partially and slowly used, for want of ploughs and harrows: perhaps the farmer has nearly or just ploughs sufficient, but can ill spare any horses for har­rowing. In such a case, the latter work will be wretch­edly neglected: seed will be sown under furrow that ought to be harrowed in; and many fields only half har­rowed; the consequence of which, in numerous in­stances, is very fatal. In the article of manuring, this is yet more observable; for, instead of carting the farm­yard dung on to a compost hill, to mix with marle, earth, or clay; or carting the latter into the yard, and foddering upon it; the dung is often carried directly on to the land, although the soil be the least proper for such treatment; and this only to save a carting, while the horses or oxen are employed in tillage.

And however numerous the sences may be, that the farmer has found necessary to make, and consequently how great so ever the quantity of ditch-earth may be that lies ready for carting on to the land, yet none [...] little of it is moved, for want of draught cattle.

Nor are common farmers more considerate with re­gard to taking advantage of the neighbourhood of any great city or town in the purchase of manures so raised▪ when corn or hay is carried out, they may perhaps load back with dung or ashes, &c. but as to keeping a team merely for road business, scarce one of them had ever such an idea.

[Page 15] It would be endless to multiply such instances as far as could with ease be done: but these are sufficient to shew the necessity of providing teams for all sorts of work.

We must, in the next place, proceed to set all these cattle to work, and see what quantity they will be able to perform.

The six ploughs, at the rate of each doing an acre a day for 300 days, will amount to 1800 acres plowed once.

But lest objections should be made against the allow­ance of only thirteen days idleness, besides Sundays, I shall suppose the ploughs to move 270 days in the year; the plowing teams to be employed (in case of frost, or excessive wet weather, &c.) thirty days on other work; and to be absolutely idle thirteen days. I had six horses at work through the years 1766 and 1767, both re­markable wet, and they did not stand still ten days in the two years. Whatever be the weather, a farmer should always have work of some kind or other ready for his plowing teams, when thrown out of their own; thirteen days of absolute idleness are therefore a large allowance. Their working two hundred and seventy days amounts to sixteen hundred and twenty acres [...]et us next examine what sized and proportioned farm this plowing forms when divided.

This division gives us two kinds of farms, as follows:

[Page 16] Or there may be only one clover crop, in which case the arable land will amount to six hundred and forty acres.

The farm to be managed by a team that plows about 1600 acres annually, might be sketched in a great va­riety of other ways; and it will aid the general design of these essays to state a few of them.

But for the sake of the variety which there ought to be in a farm of this kind, that is sketched for the sake of the conclusions to be drawn from it. I shall adopt the following, which is rather an improvement upon the second.

I must upon this arrangement remark, that the com­mon crops are infinitely beyond the uncommon on [...]s; so that were the scheme in [...] execution, the cultivator would not have reason to dread the trial of vegetables, not every where used.

But to state schemes of conducting farms in this en­lightened age, with no eye to modern improvements, would be the height of ridicule. Sainfoin, cabbages, potatoes, carrots, are not common crops in every part of England, like wheat and barley; but every one of them are common in one part or other of the kingdom: if nothing was to be supposed on paper, but what com­mon farmers every where cultivated, turneps and clover would be rejected. I do not imagine above half, or at most, two thirds of the nation cultivate clover, and yet to interdict it, would be using much the same lan­guage, as to tell a man that he might farm how he pleased, but should not use a plough▪ It is a surprizing number of years that are necessary, firmly to introduce the cul­ture of a new plant. What an amazing instance is that [Page 18] of clover? And if gentlemen of the present age had not assumed a spirit in agriculture, vastly superior to former times. I [...] question whether that excellent vegetable would make its way fairly through the island in a thou­sand years.

Cabbages and lucerne are at present much more con­fined than sainfoin: they have not been introduced so long by, perhaps, two centuries: but no vegetable can have greater merit than both. Many of the nobility and gentry, in the north of England, have cultivated cabbages, with amazing success, these dozen years. A vegetable which supplies the place of turneps, and even exceeds that root upon heavy clay soils: where turneps cannot be cultivated, it must make its way; and, in this age, fast too.

The benefit of lucerne has been tried also, with the greatest success, upon various soils, in most parts of the kingdom: this plant will likewise become common in time. Burnet I introduce only for a peculiar use; viz. the feeding sheep late in the spring: I do not apprehend from the experience I have had of it, that it is for other uses comparable to clover, sainfoin, or lucerne.

Now to sketch improvements in husbandry; when these vegetables are so well known, and to take little or no notice of them, would be voluntarily shutting one's eyes to day-light, and then complaning of dark­ness.

It is the business of the nobility and gentry who prac­tice agriculture, and of authors, who practice and write on it, to help forward the age▪ to try experiments on newly introduced vegetables, and if they are found good to spread the knowledge of them as much as possible; to endeavour to quicken the motions of the vast but un­wieldy body, the common farmers. But to omit thi [...] either in practice or in writing, is to reduce themselves to the level of th [...]se whom they ought to instruct; and to submit to that ignorance and backwardness, which left to themselves, cloud any country, in an enlightened age, with the darkness of many preceding centuries [Page 19] Common farmers love to grope in the dark: it is the business of superior minds, in every branch of philoso­phy to start beyond the age, and shine forth to dissipate the night that involves them.

But to return.

The arrangement of crops, in the preceding sketch, is so disposed, that the farm must always be clean and in good heart and this independently of manuring.

In 750 acres in tillage, only 300 are corn, the rest are ameliorating crops, that clean and enrich the soil, such as clover, turneps, cabbages, &c. &c. This is a most important point; which should not be overlooked, or in any wise neglected; a truly good farmer ought ne­ver to sow corn upon an uncertainty: his land should be so thoroughly clean, and in such great heart, as to yield an undoubted certainty of a crop. In answer to such an assertion I am sensible many will at once talk of sea­sons, but from much observation, and some experience, I have great reason to believe that bad seasons fall in­finitely the heaviest upon bad farmers, nor should it be forgot, that unfavourable times are generally such to corn not to grasses roots &c. &c. Wheat is certain­ly subject to some distempers that come from season; but sow barley or oats, turneps or clover: plant cab­bages, potatoes, &c. and observe fields of lucerne or sain­foin: let any or all of these be in the soils that agree with them, and perfectly well managed, and then take an ac­count of seasons, I am confident there will never be a bad crop. Too much attention should not be given to complaints of the seasons, respecting any lands until it is thoroughly known whether the whole process of the management was such as the vegetable required. Bad husbandry is too often laid to the account of seasons.

The grand article of all husbandry, is the keeping great stocks of cattle; for without much cattle there cannot be much corn. Even those farmers who would make corn their principal produce, should in one sense, let it be only a secondary aim▪ since a great plenty of cattle should be considered as the means to attain that [Page 20] end.—In the farm I have sketched, it is evident enough, only from a partial view (the natural grass not being in the account) that the number of cattle must be very con­siderable.

It is further apparent, from the general extent of the business here supposed, that a baily may be profitable employed; and that a great number of hands may be kept constantly at work the year round, upon distinct bu­siness; which is a matter of vast importance. In a small farm, one work (as in the case of draught cattle) stops, that another may be done. Turneps want hoeing but at the same time the harvest is going forwards, and all hands wanted for that▪ the former will certainly be ne­glected. Perhaps a large field wants to be clayed, chalk­ed, or marled; during hay time and harvest, such work will be sure to stand still, whatever loss may be sustained from it. In a word, some work or other, in a small bu­siness, is sure to be neglected, that other kinds may be done. The farm which I have sketched, is large enough to prevent any neglect of that sort,—Let us, in the next place proceed to draw forth the general oeconomy of this farm, from the particulars already given.

The stock of draught cattle amount to sixteen horses and fourteen oxen; upon which I should in general add one slight remark. I have divided them into teams, for distinct business, which is necessary; but at the same time mutual exchanges must sometimes be supposed; three horses are marked for harrowing, one for rolling, and two for extras; it does not therefore follow, that th [...]se are never to be employed upon other work. Perhaps 100 acres of clover are to be sown in a critical season: in such a case, all these horses, and all the plough­ing ones, may be set to harrowing; but the others will return the work in ploughing at a like pinch; the mean­ing of distinct teams is, that in general all this business is to be distinctly performed, but particular exceptions are not objections to the general arrangement.

The thirty head of draught cattle may be allowed (as they work in general much harder in a large than in [Page 21] a small farm) 24 acres of clover, and 24 of grass, for their summer's food. And perhaps 30 acres (60 tons) of sainfoin hay, and five of grass, will be requisite for the winter.—The quantity of food specified above, that remains, is therefore as follows:

The query therefore is, what cattle should be provi­ded for this food?

I have several reasons for preferring a variety of cat­tle, here, to all of one sort; a person who has such an extent of business, would choose to take more chances than one or two for success: besides the pleasure of gaining experience in many branches of husbandry at once. And as the quantity and variety of the food here stated are considerable, they will very well admit of several sorts of cattle.

Forty acres of turneps, and twenty of burnet, are sufficient. I reckon, to winter 500 sheep.

Thirty acres of carrots, and twenty of sainfoin hay will winter fat (in warm sheds) 100 steers, of fifty stone each, exceedingly well.

Thirty acres of cabbages, and twenty of natural grass hay, will winter 150 cows.

Twenty acres of cabbages, and ten of clover hay, will winter fatten eighty steers or heifers, of forty stone, and that plentifully.

[Page 22] Eighty acres of clover hay (which I calculate at 24 [...] tons) and sixty of turneps will serve extremely well to winter keep [...]40 oxen of sixty or seventy stone.

Fifty acres of pease, fifty of potatoes and ten of car­ [...]ots, will, at a moderate computation, fatten 400 large hogs.

Ten acres of carrots will, with the assistance of a dairy of fifty cows, and the offal corn of the farm yard, winter keep twenty sows, and wean all their pigs throughout the year, which I calculate in number at 200.

It is to be observed, that I take no notice of the straw although that of the spring corn will, in the very litter­ing the yard, afford no trifle of food to the lean cattle But such a farm as this, with such a vast stock of cattle requires upon the whole, more litter than is possible to be raised upon it with good husbandry: I know, in deed, of no method of improving land more effectual than keeping great stocks of cattle, and foddering the [...] with purchased straw or stubble: I treat in this essay par­ticularly of proportions, and I must be allowed to add that I have adhered to them as exactly as possible: fo [...] the straw and stubble of all the corn of this farm are suf­ficient for littering the cattle I have stated▪ but at the same time, they would make a greater quantity [...] dung: and consequently ought to have them bought fo [...] the purpose.

We must in the next place examine the summer foo [...] requisite for all this cattle.

The draught cattle require twenty-nine acres of gras [...]

240 oxen are winter kept, that are to be summer fa [...] ­ted for these we must allow, as they are large beast 480 acres This is a large allowance, but a farmer ha [...] better provide too much food than too little.

The 500 sheep before mentioned, must have assign [...] them about sixty-six acres of clover for their sum [...] food: this will be a good allowance, considering [...] richness of the manuring▪ which all the crops of [...] farm have. But to remove any objections, howev [...] trifling, it should be remembered, that the sheep may [Page 23] follow (every now and then) the 240 oxen; a conside­ration which would have justified the assigning a much greater number.

The 150 cows I suppose to be summer kept on the fifty acres of lucerne. This may appear a large allow­ance to those who are unacquainted with that vegetable; but I well know▪ from experience, that lucerne, not comparatively excellent, will more than feed at the rate of three cows per acre.

Twenty acres of clover remain to be accounted for▪ these I assign to the summer feeding of the young hogs that have been weaned, and kept a proper time on the dairy and the carrots: as they will be very nume­rous, and require a provision of this sort, no food can agree better with them than clover; and in all farms, where many are kept, it is highly requisite that a field of good clover be always preserved for them; or if not kept absolutely for them alone, at least the quantity al­lowed in the general distribution of the clover crop

The recapitulation of the stock and land is therefore as follows:

The land, therefore, applied to the feeding and fat­tening of cattle is,

The vast disproportion between these two numbers shews how rich and clean the land must necessarily b [...] kept. We may venture to lay it down as a maxim tha [...] if great stocks of cattle are kept, much money will b [...] made. Here are only 250 acres of wheat, barley, and oats; but I may venture to assert these 250 to be bette [...] than many crops of 1000 acres, where the proportion between the exhausting and ameliorating ones is not well attended to.

The cattle kept in winter are those to which a farme [...] should look for raising manure; these are,

Whatever farmer keeps such a stock of cattle, ought to raise this quantity of dung annually; but he will not be able to do it, unless he purchases straw, or stubble, regularly, by contract with his neighbours, that he may have a certain number of loads brought in every week throughout the whole winter. It is impossible, consis­tently with good husbandry, to allow, in such a sketch as this, corn land proportioned to the want of straw; because, as that is increased, so must the number of cat­tle, and, consequently, the disproportion will be the same, ad infinitum.

I allowed one team for carting the year round, and extras of other cattle, to the amount of another; a team, and two small three-wheeled carts, will carry at an average thirty loads a day, or rather half loads, as those carts do not hold above half a load; that is when the drive is not long; in other cases, larger carts are to be used, and the teams thrown together. In the whole, it is sixty small loads a day, or thirty common ones; that is, 9000 per annum, reckoning them to work three hundred days in the year; which total leaves them time, after carrying away all the farm-yard dung, to carry nine hundred loads more of marle, chalk, clay, ditch earth, &c. annually.

One circumstance, however, should here be noticed; in general, it is highly adviseable to cart a large quanti­ty of marle, chalk, clay, or earth, into the farm yard, to fodder the cattle upon; after winter, to mix that and the dung well together, and cart the compost on to the [Page 26] land; the reason I have varied from that maxim in the instance before me, is the nature of the vegetables cul­tivated on this farm, that most require dunging; viz. cabbages and potatoes first: and secondly, turneps and carrots; and lastly, clover. I have already stated an annual manuring of [...]0000 loads; to this we must add 300 waggon loads of town manure; (if the farm is within five or six miles, many more: as in summer the waggon may go twice a day:) or above 900 cart ones; the total may be called 10 000 loads annually. This quantity I should divide as follows:

Now this manuring is, upon the whole, so fully suf­ficient to keep all the farm in excellent heart, that I thought the doubling the quantity with clay, &c. needless; in farms where a much greater proportion o [...] corn is sown, that conduct is absolutely necessary, because raw dung should never be laid on corn land; but these vegetables, especially cabbages and potatoes, delight in it. However, the addition of another team for carting, which is but a trifle in such a farm as this, will at once remove the objection, if it is thought a good one, by enabling the farmer to carry 9000 loads of earth, &c. annually to the farm yard.

Having thus stated the land, cattle, and manuring, we must, in the next place, enquire into the labour that will be necessary: an article that requires the proper proportioning, if possible, more than the teams. It is of the highest consequence, that there are men for every work, at all seasons of the year; to have the teams idle for want of men, is the way to ruin any farmer.

[Page 27] Six ploughs, two horse, and four ox ones, require regularly six men, and four boys to drive the oxen. These should all be servants in the house.

One harrowing team requires one man; a servant also▪ It is common for farmers to set boys to harrow­ing: but if their harrows are [...] as they ought to be, the work will be more than they are able to perform, besides the danger of wounding the horses with the teeth; of which the person should be more careful than a boy can be supposed to be.

One boy will be wanted always in readiness for rol­ling▪ a servant likewise.

Two men (servants) for the horse hoeing teams; sometimes they will work with single horses: sometimes with two: as they will have their share of the extra ones, and the rolling horse.

One man and a stout lad should be allotted to the waggon team, for bringing manure▪ &c. these should also be servants; and two men to the miscellaneous ox team.

One man must always be ready to drive the ox cart­ing team, and when it is doubled, another or a stout lad, will be wanting. The small threewheeled tumbr [...]ls are so extremely handy, that a man and a lad will ma­nage two sets very well. These also must be servants.

One man (servant) must be assigned to the extra hor­ses to work with them, at whatever they are set about.

The 500 sheep will require one man, who should be called the shepherd; but as the sheep are all kept in in­closures, he will have much leisure for other work; he may particularly, assist with the cows.

The 240 oxen, kept the year round, must have one servant allotted to see to them; in winter he will want assistance, and there will be enough to spare in other hands, without a direct increase.

The 180 steers, that are winter fatted, must be at­tended by five men, and as many boys. These may be labourers or servants, but the latter are preferable for all business that concerns cattle.—It should be remarked, [Page 28] that I suppose their conveniences complete; otherwise, three times as many hands must be kept. Nor should it be taken for granted, that because a given number of men and boys can manage a certain number of any sort of cattle, that therefore boys alone can do for a much fewer, however proportioned the quantity may be; boys are never to be trusted at any work whatever, but in company with men, who will make them work for their own sakes.

400 fatting swine, and twenty sows, with the pigs and young hogs, may be easily managed, thro' the winter, by three men and two boys: but this depends totally upon the hog-houses, sties, &c. being excellently well contrived for convenience. I have seen such as would require twenty men to manage this number of swine. In summer, one man would be sufficient.

The 150 cows are divided, fifty for the dairy, and 100 for suckling. These will require three men and three boys. And the dairy, one head dairy woman that can be trusted, and two others, with assistance of the boys, &c. at milking.

[...] far the servants, labourers, and boys, are,

[Page 29] In some situations, it would be adviseable to have more of them labourers; but in others, it is the most be­neficial practice, to employ nothing but servants: varia­tions of this kind must exist in every county of the kingdom.

A certain portion of hands are assigned to each busi­ness; but at times some will want more; while the cows are milking and sucking, the cowherd must take some of the tillage boys, for as the care of the draught cattle is not left to them, they should be employed in the morn­ing, while the horses and oxen have their breakfast and are harnessed, about other cattle; and again, during all the afternoons, the same.

In the teams, four horses are to be allotted to a man, (without any assistance) for feeding, cleaning, &c. &c. The sixteen horses must therefore be allowed four men, and the fourteen oxen will be very easily managed by one man and a stout lad, But the man who drives the road team must be allowed his boy, in consideration of his waggon being unloaded every day. All the teams there­fore require five men and two boys. But in the above table there are fourteen men and six boys employed by them; deducting therefore the necessary number, there remains nine men and four boys; and these are at hand, and at leisure for any kind of work, both of mornings and afternoons, either in assisting the men who have the care of the other cattle, or in any other work that is wanting.

It remains to proportion the rest of the labourers that must be employed upon the crops above mentioned. All the plowing, harrowing, horse-hoeing, carting of every kind, (the drivers) and all the cattle are provided for; the best way of examining the rest, will be to cal­culate the total sum it will amount to, and then divide the sum into labourers annual earnings; and this I shall calculate in as few words as possible.

Suppose they earn (as it is mostly piece-work) 1 s. 3 d. a day the year round, that is 19 l. 11 s. 3 d. per annum; but we will call it 20 l. the above total is, at that rate, equal to thirty labourers; which, all things considered, is the number I am inclined to assign, in addition to those before minuted.

I allow nothing for extraordinaries, nor take any no­tice of small articles not inserted, because, in the first account of labour, seven men (besides boys) are mi­nuted for winter employment alone; consequently all their time in summer is to be disposed of, and this additi­on will be fully sufficient to answer all unspecified arti­cles, and to allow for extra's.

I should also remark, that upon casting the above la­bour up distinctly in summer and winter work, I find the latter amounts to 271 l. 9 s. 6 d. which (considering the rate of earnings at that time of the year) is more than half; consequently the farmer is secure of men at [Page 32] all times of the year, a point of very great importance. Whoever finds winter work regularly, is sure of his men in summer; for it is highly the interest of the labourer to work in summer (if demanded) where, in consequence of such work, he is sure of winter employment. Those who are known to hire men in summer, and pay them off upon winter coming, must always expect to pay ma­ny degrees dearer, upon the long-run, than others who find regular employment the year through.

The general state of land, cattle, and labour, will appear in the following sketch.

Upon this general scheme, I should observe that eve­ry part of such a farm is of consequence enough to meri [...] a distinct attention. In the tillage and manuring, six ploughs may be at work, several pairs of harrows, [...] roller, a waggon upon the road bringing manures, [...] [Page 33] team carting manure at home; another, employed in any sundry kind of waggon or cart work that is wanted. Two ploughs, horse-hoeing crops in rows. And while all these are at work, above fifty other hands employed besides on various business: thus all may work in their distinct apartments, and yet every business go on briskly and well.

On the contrary, in case of very critical seasons, fif­teen ploughs may at once be set to work, and plough for instance the 150 acres of spring corn land in ten days time; and in three days more sow and harrow the whole (clover with it) three times over. Thus the great pinch of a sowing is over in a fortnight, which, with common management, and common farms, last six or eight weeks. The difference of this is prodigious. We sometimes see a fortnight of fine dry weather the end of February, or the beginning of March; and afterwards so wet, that the spring sowing is not over in general till the first or second week in May.—To catch the dry and early time, is, in such a case, to be estimated at from one to two quarters per acre; and oftentimes as much more.

On the other hand, thirty draught cattle are at once to be set to carry the dung out of the farm, and above 1300 loads carried in three days.

The same vigorous dispatch of business holds through­out all the work of such a farm, And in every article concerning labour it is the same. All the teams are constantly employed; and yet no work, that wants men alone, stops.

In respect of cattle, each sort are numerous enough to be well attended: the contrary of which is remarkably the case in most small farms. When there are only a few sheep, a few cows, a few hogs, and an ox or two, the farmer cannot dream of setting men to attend each: we even never see one man strictly confined to take good care of all. One or two boys have an hundred things to do, without being regularly overlooked in one. La­bourers or servants, by way of broken jobs, and at odd [Page 34] times, have the charge of all the cattle of a farm; which are all sure to suffer, if any business of tillage, threshing corn in a hurry, carrying it out, &c. &c. intervenes. The profit which arises merely from a different conduct, ought in reason to be estimated very high.

The sheep have in this farm a shepherd to attend them at all seasons, and at all hours. The beasts that are fat­ted throughout the year, have men for the mere service of attending them. Those which are fatted in winter alone, do not suffer from the others being taken such good care of, having men, &c. distinctly appointed to them. Nor does this arrangement in the least injure the cows, who are considered in the same manner, and have separate men. At the same time that these cattle are thus attended, other servants have the swine con­stantly in charge. Those which are fatting, are regu­larly fed and littered: nor are the sows, pigs, and lean hogs, therefore neglected; hands being on their account likewise allowed.

Such a number of objects, and so many men employ­ed, render it well worth the expence to pay a bailey; by which means an overseeing eye is constantly examin­ing how every thing [...]es on; and a farmer can depend, whether absent or present, on every person's doing his duty.

The advantages resulting from such an arrangement are prodigious; equally so in tillage labour, and cattle; and, as the result of all, in the agregate of PROFIT.

This is what I mean by the proportions of a farm: which evidently require a certain extent of business to be properly attended to: it is very difficult to assert, which sized farm is, minutely speaking, the most profit­able: but we may, from the preceding sketch venture to pronounce that these proportions are requisite for considerable profit in any farm. They may be reduced to a less scale than I have instanced and they may be extended to a much larger one, but there is a ne plus ultra on both sides, beyond, or short of which, the pro­fit will not proportionably hold.

[Page 35] Respecting cattle in the reduction of this scale, I think every sort ought to have one man absolutely appointed to them: as many sheep must▪ therefore, be kept as will pay a shepherd: as many hogs as will make a hogherd answer: as many cows as will require a cowherd: and the fatting beasts a respective attendant: dependance may be had on other men's odd time for assistance in all these, but in none of them solely. Nor is there much conduct in giving one man several sorts of cattle to at­tend; for one person, in that manner can do very little well, much less than commonly imagined: a quick change, and that several times a day, from one employ­ment to another, suits farming people less than any in the world; a plain regular business of the same kind, is the only way of being well served by them. The misfor­tune of a small farm, is the allowance of nothing regular. Confusion and the loss of time, are the only sure conco­mitants of such.

ESSAY II.
Of the best method of conducting a farm that consists all of arable land.

TO have introduced the few remarks I have to make on this head, under another would have oc­casioned a confusion, which ought more to be avoided in works that tr [...]t of agriculture, than perhaps in any other.

Farms that consist entirely of arable land, are con­ducted in some few parts of the kingdom in a very judi­cious manner; but such conduct not being general, nor generally understood, a few words in explanation of it may not be useless.

Food for cattle is so absolutely necessary in every [Page 36] farm that no farmer is found without it: the great point in debate is, which is the best way of securing it under difficult circumstances?

There is no article, in the whole range of husbandry, of more consequence, than the proper division of a farm into the two grand parts of grass and arable: the common mischief is having too little of the former: the manner in which most farmers (especially little ones) re­medy this evil, is what every person should exert him­self to oppose and change.

The obvious remedy is to lay down, in a masterly manner, a sufficient quantity of the arable land to grass, which is, at once removing the evil: but when we con­sider any points in the business of common farmers, it is necessary to span a greater latitude, and aim at those circumstances, (however contracted in themselves) which operate the most powerfully among them.

Many farmers cannot afford to do what they know to be right; and others who can afford it, are so fearful of the expences, that they let slip the best opportunities. Many of them, that really want grass land in a great de­gree, shew, in their conduct, that they are sensible of the evil, but either know not how, or will not remedy it: thus we see them depending upon clover for feeding their horses (the only cattle they concern themselves a­bout) and yet rest their dependance on every season to gain a crop▪ and will not give that crop the chance of a fallow. Others lay a field or two down to grass, but do it in such a manner, that the constant loss they sustain, is a burden upon them as long as they remain in their farms.

In the first case they take two, three, four, or per­haps, more corn crops, and when they find the soil will yield no more, they throw in the clover seed and take the chance of a crop: if they are so lucky as to succeed in a certain degree (beyond which mediocrity no season can carry them) they plow it up again the first year for harrowing in wheat on one earth; a compendious mode of husbandry which well suits their pockets; and thus [Page 37] they every year run the chance of being defeated in their resource.—In the other method of remedying the evil, viz. of laying down a field to grass, they are sure first to take as many crops of corn, as the land can possi­bly yield, even till the produce is little more than straw▪ after this, many of them let it alone to graze of itself, never sowing any grass seed, nor troubling themselves further about it: others, whose industry may be some­what greater, will throw in some common clover and rye-grass, as they are cheap seeds, and leave it to gain a turf in that manner.

There is no occasion to expatiate on such methods, which carry in their face the stamp of their own absurdi­ty. So much was necessary to shew, that what I at present treat of, is an evil, and requires a remedy. The reader must judge how far the following propositions are likely to answer the purpose. One previous remark is, however, necessary; there may be reasons, and not bad ones, for avoiding the obvious method of laying a part of the farm down to natural grass in a sufficient manner; we must therefore suppose, for the sake of the argument, that such reasons are good.

The course of crops most to be recommended to a farm in this situation, provided the soil is light enough for turneps, is this:

• 1 Turneps.
• 2 Barley.
• 3 Clover for two years.
• 4 Wheat.

A farm in this management is thrown into fifths; two of which are always in clover, half one year, and half two years old.

The advantages of this course are many, and must be obvious. A large portion is always grass, which answers the grand aim of providing food for the necessary cattle▪ Before one year's clover is plowed up for wheat, the suc­cess of the new crop is known; a point of vast import­ance [Page 38] with farmers, who either cannot, or will not keep their land in such excellent heart, as always to be sure of a crop; so that in case of such an unfavourable season, as to have their clover fail, there remains no such dan­ger of the cattle starving, as the last crop, instead of be­ing plowed up for wheat, may remain, to answer the de­mand of the new year; and, at the same time, the usual quantity of wheat be sown: which could not be the case if only a fourth of the farm was in clover.

In the provision for such cattle, as clover will keep, this method effectually answers the purpose of natural grass; but clover will not do for all uses: beasts cannot be fatted upon it; nor must cows be fed on it, whose butter is made into pounds to be sold fresh; but for [...] dairy that puts down the butter salt in firkings, or for suckling the cows, nothing does better▪ Sheep are kept upon it, and fatted, even to greater profit than on [...] natural grass. Hogs affect it uncommonly; and no food agrees better with horses. At the same time that the ve­getable answers the purpose of feeding cattle so well, [...] is remarkably profitable in another respect, that of pre­paring the land excellently for wheat, which is sown af­ter it on a single earth, and in that cheap method, yields crops equal to those the best fallowed for.

There must, however, be many of my readers, who have remarked the culture of clover among common far­mers, (and many of them such as are generally esteem­ed good ones) without seeing such very beneficial effects at [...]nd it, as I have ventured to sketch. But, without recurring to such instances of execrable husbandry as [...] set out with quoting, it must be observed that clover, like most other vegetables, requires good husbandry, to yield good crops; and that not merely relative to the crop with which it is sown, but all that compose the course in which it is introduced. In a word, it requires a general good management.

Suppose the turneps, which I state as the first crop in the proposed system, are managed after the manner of many whole counties, that is not hoed at all, but le [...] [Page 39] at their utmost thickness, and full of weeds, as such crops mostly are; this management does not affect only the turnep crop, but every one that follows; for the crop of turneps, which is the first in the course, if it is badly managed, will much prejudice even the wheat one, which is the last. They leave the land full of weeds for the barley; and as such gentry are always on the increase, like other bad company, when once they have got a head, the barley that succeeds is sure to be full of them; with that clover is sown, and must infalli­bly be pestered with them; since in all probability the land had as many seeds of weeds in it as of clover, con­sequently much of the latter must be destroyed, and all impoverished, for no soil can carry twenty crops at once. After the clover comes the wheat, which must infallibly suffer from the poverty of the clover crop. All who have the least experience of this husbandry, must be sensible that the wheat is ever the best after the best crops of clover: for the roots of the grass are the manure for the succeeding crop and operate in loosen­ing and mellowing the soil, as much, perhaps, as the ut­most efforts of tillage can reach▪ but I never heard that the roots of weeds were attended with either of these effects; not to notice the vast difference between suc­ceeding a vegetable that maintains a great many cattle, and others that yield food for none. In this manner, every crop is successively injured by the weeds until the last is almost destroyed by them▪ and then the cir­cle goes round again upon the same principles, in so much, that every course increases these grand enemies, until at last the ground, however good it may naturally be, becomes quite exhausted, and will yield nothing but trumpery. In this management. I think it is pretty clear, that the clover husbandry may be woe­fully unsuccessful, and yet in itself be no wise wanting in merit.

But supposing the turneps are well hoed, and ma­naged in all respects upon the best principles, still the goodness of the clover crop will depend upon the inter­mediate [Page 40] mediate conduct. Many farmers, who cultivate their turneps in the manner they ought, think they have therein done so much for the land, that it will very well carry more successive corn crops than I advise; in­stead of sowing their clover with the barley, they take two following ones of barley, throwing in the clover with the last: or, perhaps, two crops of barley, and then one of oats, and the clover with that; all the con­sequences of which conduct are as bad as can well be conceived. In the first place, the land is filled with weeds, which is the infallible event (in any management however otherwise good) of several successive crops of corn; the clover is necessarily much damaged; and the succeeding wheat very poor. Secondly, the farm is divided into a greater number of parts, more land sown with corn, and less with food for cattle; all which con­siderations are of the utmost importance.

I must, lastly, mention another mode of conducting such farms as these; which is to sow no more clover than just to maintain the horses; to omit turneps alto­gether, and to gain from the land as many crops of corn as it will possibly yield, and then to give what such farm­ers call, a fallow to it.

In other words, every means of exhausting the soil are taken, but none of replenishing it: nothing but corn raised; and no cattle maintained, and, consequently, no manure raised. This management is execrable, and yet surprizingly common among little farmers. I know not to what to attribute it, but the want of mo­ney.

Turneps and clover are both crops that require much cattle to consume them, and, consequently, large sums of money generally in hand: and this can never be found, while they over-trade themselves to such a de­gree, as is almost universal at present; scarcely a man amongst them, that ought to have more than half the land he possesses. This want of money is surprizingly evident among them, in the want of cattle: many of them have as much as their food will serve, but that is [Page 41] not the point; it is the providing a proper quantity of food; which provision may almost be said to form the basis of all good husbandry.

In the course of crops, of which I am at present treating▪ viz. fifths, two of clover, and one of turneps, the sum of money requisite for cattle is no trifle. Sup­pose the farm so small as 100 acres: forty acres will be clover, and twenty turneps. Suppose four horses and sixteen cows are kept as regular stock, these may be al­lowed thirty acres of clover for their summer food, and they will spare enough to run a few hogs or sheep after them, the former best; ten acres mown twice for hay, will serve them in the winter (if the horses are not hard worked) with the assistance of the straw and five acres, suppose of turneps; there remains, consequently▪ fif­teen acres of turneps, and these will winter fatten twenty five heifers or steers, of five pounds value lean.

Here, therefore, besides horses and swine is a stock of cattle, to the amount of near 200 l. which is full four, or perhaps five, times as much as ever found on such a farm. But how comes this? say some. The answer is extremely easy; a man who possesses the sum requisite for thus managing 100 acres of land, will [...]corn such a little farm, and hire twice, perhaps thrice, as many acres: and this false ambition is so universal a­mong them, that scarce an instance (at least among small and middling sized farms) to the contrary is to be met with.

The gaining of good crops of corn must for ever de­pend on possessing plenty of manure, and the course of crops, which I here sketch. If well stocked with cattle, will raise considerable quantities; and as the ameliorating crops, viz. clover and turneps, amount to sixty acres, and the exhausting ones to only forty, that favourable proportion is another capital advantage to the corn crop.

Besides the dividing a farm in this manner, I have seen another method of cultivating arable ones, which should not be here omitted. The farmer provides just clover enough for his horses, and for one or two cows, [Page 42] the rest are all kept in corn for several successive crops, a part summer fallowed every year: and to keep his land in heart, he has more horses than are wanted in tillage, so that a team is employed most part of the year in bringing dung, coal ashes, mortar rubbish, &c. &c. &c. from the nearest town, to manure his fields. In the course of crops, no regard is paid to any rules, but such lands sown as are pretty full of manure, and not very weedy—the worst piece or two, according to the size of the farm fallowed every year.

The manuring principle of this conduct is excellent: but one remark must be palpable to every one, which is, that [...]e expends so much money on the farm, that he might certainly as well lay a portion of it down to grass—but then again comes money. Buying manure in this manner takes much money, but it takes it gra­dually, small sums at a time: whereas to lay down [...] proper quantity of land to grass and stock it sufficiently with cattle, requires a large sum of money at once: and this distinction must ever be made in all points that con­cern the general management of common farmers,—There are many indeed, who would not lay down their land, were they ever so rich, and that from [...] habitual liking to the plough▪ which they think the only profitable part of husbandry.

Supplying the place of cattle with purchased manure is, however, no bad succedaneum and certainly there are many farmers who grow rich by the practice: but still they would find a greater benefit resulting from it if they were not to crop their land so often, in conse­quence of a manuring. This is a fact much worthy o [...] their consideration.

The reader doubtless, remarks that I say nothing of perennial artificial grasses, such as lucerne, sainfoin &c. but the evil is much easier removed, by laying down a part of the farm to natural grass, and I began with supposing (as we often see in the case) that, [...] some reason or other, the farmer would not submit [...] an expence, the benefit of which would remain when [...] [Page 43] left his farm. Whereas, in the remedies I offer of sup­plying the want of clover, the advantage is all the farm­er's▪ whatever expence (in moderation) is bestowed on the clover, will be repaid with interest, by the suc­ceeding wheat.

These principles, it is true, are very contracted; but it is necessary, when we address common farmers, or even write concerning their practice, not to forget their prejudices and contractions. To suppose them what they ought to be, and always urge them accordingly, would, at last, be nothing more, to use Swift's expres­sion, than hewing blocks with a razor.

ESSAY III.
Of the best method of conducting a farm that consists all of grass land.

A FARM that contains nothing but grass, appears, at first sight, to admit only of the most plain and simple conduct, and to exclude variety; but a very slight examination will shew that such an idea is a mis­taken one, and that there is much difference in the pro­fit, by different modes of conduct.

I should premise, that I suppose the grass sufficiently good for any purpose, and that it will fat a large ox.

Now the questions at once are—Whether a farmer should apply it to the feeding cows—or to the fatting of cattle, or sheep? Whether he should keep his stock through the winter, as well as through the summer?—And whether he should mow the whole for hay? Let us spend a few words in considering each of these me­thods.

If cows are his stock, whether for the dairy or for suckling, he must provide winter as well as summer [Page 44] food. I have known some of these farms, and the common method is to feed them all winter long with hav [...] ▪ and the remains of the last year's grass, which they keep very late for that purpose; and this conduct is sometimes profitable. Of some grass, it takes three acres to keep a cow the year round; and of some, two and a half is sufficient. There are many pastures so ve­ry rich, that it requires no more than one and a half, or two:—but in all enquiries of this [...]ort, we should rea­son upon the medium. Let us suppose two and a half the quantity: that is, on some grass, an acre for her summer food, and the hay and after feed of an acre and a half for her winter support;—or, in other fields, it may be an acre and half for the first, and an acre for the latter. These are variations which must arise from the various nature of pasture, some feed better, others are best for [...]ay.

From this little sketch it appears at once, that grass land▪ thus applied, is by no means free from expences▪ a large portion of it is to be made into hay every year; that hay must be carted and stacked; nor is this the only labour requisite, the cows must be constantly attended both in summer and winter, regularly brought up and drove out: and in winter much care taken of them, if they are used for the dairy, the milking requires seve­ral hands for no great number▪ and if they are suckled, that must be attentively performed by men. Then a­gain the dairy must have maids to manage it: the wear and tear of all the implements is something; firing is no inconsiderable article, which also requires carting; and lastly, the sale of the products require more carting, which and the carrying hay, will render a certain number of draught cattle (though a small one) requi­site: nor is it different with suckling, as the calves must probably be bought and sold at such a distance, atleast, as will require a cart

These circumstances are all evider, enough, and will admit something towards a calculation of their amount▪ but no person, who is practically acquainted with hus­bandry, [Page 45] will venture calculations under the idea of per­fect accuracy, which is impossible in any thing but mere facts: these I am by no means—deficient in▪ as I know by experience every one of these articles minutely; but that experience concerns particular lands, whereas, in an essay of this nature, it is only a general experience—the average, if I may so express myself, of many particular and various experiments, that is of use. The nearer one's suppositions come to a general average, of the more use will they be. For this reason, however, individuals should not be too severe in criticising gene­ral calculations from particular practice: my own ex­perience tells me, that method of judging would be ve­ry unfair.

I calculate the expence of a dairy, in the abovemen­tioned circumstances, to be as follows:

Suppose a dairy maid and a boy to fifteen cows.

or

Which remainder is the product of three acres of grass; but two other deductions remain to be made, which are the fencing, and the carrying out and spread­ing the manure, which arises in the winter.

This is 1 l. 7 s. 10 d. per acre. Which is very trif­ling and yet upon revision of every article. I do not see wherein I have over-rated the expences; nor do I think 7 l. produce▪ below the medium. Some profit may, however, remain, and as it is not hazardous, may give a farmer a decent income from a large num­ber of cows. One thing is however observable, there are a great number of these farms in different parts of the kingdom, but it is very seldom one finds them ma­naged in this manner, which gives some reason to sup­pose the real event not unlike the result of this calcu­lation.

This is somewhat beyond the dairy article, but not enough to found different conclusions on. It appears to me that both methods are unequal to the end, which every man, who farms at all, ought to have in view, if any thing concerning profit is his aim. If a farm be si­tuated very near a great city or town, butter and milk, and cream, will sell at an high rate, and within the reach of Smithfield-market, suckling is peculiarly pro­fitable; but such instances are out of the common course, and therefore must not be taken into the account.

Let us, in the next place, consider the application of a grass farm to the fatting of cattle; and first, of oxen or heifers.—According to the preceding state of a cow consuming the product of three acres of land, we must suppose, in proportion, an acre to fat a beast of forty stone, and this in the summer, without having any thing to do with winter [...]eeding. All the expence of this ma­nagement, upon the preceeding plan, is the shilling per acre, for repairing the fences.

[Page 48] Now the profit upon summer fatting such a beast I calculate to be upon an average▪ something b [...]tter than 3 l if we suppose that sum exclusive of the fences, we shall not be far from the mark.

This management at once appears vastly superior to that before sketched▪ of cows; being thrice as benefici­al. Small variations there certainly may be, and I may have mistook▪ the particular averages of every article relative to cows: but that I have [...]rred so far▪ as not to leave a vast superiority on the side of fatting▪ is impossi­ble. I should again remark, that the common practice of grass farms again confirms my conclusion, for where one is applied to the keeping cows, and hundred are used for grazing.

In respect to the stocking such a farm with sheep, the point depends on the proportion between a beast of forty stone and a sheep. I reckon it to be five to one, that is, an acre of this land will fat five times as many sheep as such beasts. I calculate the difference between buying a sheep in the spring to fat, and selling him in autumn, is about 10 s. upon an average, the product per acre is▪ therefore, 2 l.10 s. but then there is the wool, which must be reckoned at 1 l. 6 s. or 2 s. per head that is, 10 s. per acre, or 3 l. in the whole; which is (the fencing ex­cepted) just the same as the beasts.—I apprehend how­ever, that the average profit in the long run, will be better from the latter; and I should prefer them ac­cordingly.

Next comes the method of fatting beasts through the whole year, and on this head a very few remarks will suffice. It is evident, from the preceding minutes, that the profit will be more considerable than from cows, but it is impossible that it should equal the advantage of summer fatting, for reasons evident enough from the preceding accounts. The beasts should be larger than forty stone; they must, in the spring at least, have the utmost plenty of hay, and that of the best sort, as the progression of the victuals, given to a fatting animal, should always be from good to better: consequently [Page 49] they consume a very large quantity. The most profita­ble fatting of all is, that which lasts through the year; but then the winter part is not on hay.

Lastly, I must notice the management of a grass farm by mowing the whole for hay: but this is very de­fective in general, however profitable it may be in the near neighbourhood of a great city. The after feed in this method can only be let out to other cattle, as it can never answer to buy cattle merely for feeding it off. The amount of labour, of keeping draught cattle, of wear and tear. &c. &c. must all be very consider­able, and deduct greatly from the produce; and if ma­nure is not constantly brought by the return of the wag­gons that carry out the hay, the whole farm must soon be exhausted; nor will the quantity of manure, bro [...] alone by such means, keep a farm in heart under this management.

Of these methods, which are those commonly prac­tised, the buying beasts in the spring, and selling them fat out of the grass, appears to be the most advantageous: next is the fatting of sheep: the rest are all greatly in­ferior to these. There are some other methods, not commonly practised, of which I shall offer a few hints: but these depend on certain circumstances, which should first be explained.

If hay, straw, stubble, or turneps, can be bought at will, new methods at once open upon us: and as those commodities are to be purchased in every part of the kingdom, with which I am acquainted, and in any quantities, there will be no impropriety in supposing such a case; and then enquiring whether or not grass farms may not be applied to more profitable uses than any hitherto sketched.

First with cows. When straw is bought, the quan­tity of manure is very considerable, consequently the product much longer than when the improvement is but trifling: no reasoning can be clearer than this. With the assistance of straw, in the double use of af­fording food and manure. I calculate an acre to keep [Page 50] a cow through the summer, and half another of hay for the remains of the winter; both which allowances are very ample.—The account will therefore stand as fol­lows. First with the dairy:

Which remainder is the product of one acre and a half, or 2 l. 9 s. 8 d. per acre.

This is nearly double the product of the former me­thod, which is a prodigious difference: and it appears clear to me, that if the detail of an hundred acres was explained in both cases, this difference would be yet greater. It is needless to calculate the suckling, as both depend on the same facts; if one is superior in this me­thod, the other necessarily must. I should however remark, that in suckling, if turneps are always to be purchased, they will go much farther than hay; and might very nearly be quite substituted for it which would greatly increase the profit, even upon this account.

[Page 51] In respect to fatting cattle, there are many advanta­ges in buying in autumn: beasts of all kinds are then much cheaper than in the spring, and that beyond the proportion of the wintering: add to this, their being, in all probability, in much better order, with one's own keeping, at the end of the winter, than out of the drover's hands, unless such are bought as have been well kept on the improving hand, which must necessa­rily be extravagantly dear, as they have passed through their first keeping, with a profit on wintering them; such as are then bought lean, are so truly lean, that much of the following season is lost in fatting them, and the profit consequently the less.

For oxen of seventy stone, the principle winter food purchased should be turneps, if they can be had, and with them straw: if turneps are not to be procured, straw alone, which, if good, and given them with at­tention, will improve them; that is, they will thrive, which is all that is want [...]ng. In the spring, each should have a ton of hay▪ which may be called two-thirds of an acre, which will bring them into good flesh, and greatly aid the whole fatting. With this management, an acre and one third of grass will complete his fatting. The account will stand thus:

[Page 52] Which remainder is a product per acre of 3 l. or, in other words, the same profit as by summer fatting; which shews the necessity of substituting a cheaper pro­duce than hay, for concluding his winter keeping. I do not calculate upon turneps, because they are not every where to be bought. However, as cattle are in many places to be joisted on them, I shall form a va­riation of the calculation.

Upon the whole it appears, from these calculations, that the scale of product, according to different me­thods of managing, is as follows:

Mowing the whole, admits too many variations to know where to place it.

[Page 53] A few general remarks should be here made on these methods. One circumstance is unsusceptible of calcu­lation, although a small allowance is made for it, which is the improvement by the manure that arises in winter feeding and fatting; this is of so much importance, that I am confident the purchase of any thing respecting it, will answer greatly; for the sake of similarity, I have supposed the grass of equal value, and all good. But how many grass farms are there of a low rent, parts of which are in very poor condition? Without resorting to calculation, we may pronounce it highly necessary, in such, to raise great plenty of manure; calculations will not give us that improvement of turning bad land into good, without appearing too much to exaggerate, however far from it in reality. I know several farms, of which kind there are vast numbers in the kingdom, all grass, but three-fourths over-run with rubbish, mole­hills, ant-hills, briars, &c. with other tracts, not so co­vered, but poor and wet. Sometimes it is absolutely necessary to plow these, but in many cases they may be as well improved without. Let us suppose a grass farm of this nature, what is the best method of managing?

The wet lands should be drained immediately, and all the bushes, briars, &c. &c. grubbed up. A team of three-wheeled carts, drawn by oxen, should be kept constantly at work at carting. The mole and ant-hills should be sliced off in summer, and carried to the farm yard, to form a layer to fodder the cattle upon: no ex­pence should be spared to cover them to a great depth with stubble, which is in almost every country to be bought, and nothing makes a greater plenty of manure. If turneps are to be had, a few acres should every year be purchased. I should also, on such a farm, advise that all the hay expended should be bought; it is idle to add if it can, because there is no place where hay and straw are not to be had in any quantities; for instance, in every paltry town in England. But as there should al­ways be a certainty of food, it would be absolutely ne­cessary always to have two years hay, at least, before [Page 54] hand, and the advantage of a cheap year (if it is a good one for making) should not be omitted to buy, even three or four years before hand. In the same manner when straw is good and cheap, a large stack should be built. Upon these principles. I would mow none of my own farm, till I had got it into great heart, and was sure of fine crops of hay; for nothing is such unprofitable trifling as mowing poor ground. I would summer stock the whole with cows, and winter seed them in the man­ner I have described: at the end of the spring, when the cattle were turned to grass, the manure in the yard should be stirred over and well mixed, and then carted either to a compost heap for further rotting, or at once on to the land, according to the nature and condition of the soil.

By such a system of management a prodigious stock of cattle would always be kept, a circumstance alone sufficient to improve any farm, and a vast quantity of dung annually raised. This would presently improve all the land, and sit it for any other method of conduct­ing it (respecting stock) that might be thought more profitable.

This method of laying in a large quantity of hay, whenever cheap, and always before hand I should like­wise remark, would render winter feeding, both of cows and fatting beasts, in the farm of the preceeding scale, greatly more profitable in some situations than they there appear to be.

Some grazing farms are so very rich, that you may buy a large ox of sixty, seventy, or eighty stone (14 lb) in spring, and sell him fat from one acre of grass in au­tumn. Such will admit of very little, if any, improve­ment by manuring, and certainly are the most advan­tageous farms in the world; for there are no expences, but immense profit; the product cannot fall short of eight, nine, or ten pounds per acre, which will very well afford a rent of three or four pounds.

But in general, tenants of grass farms have great rea­son to desire their landlords to give them leave to break [Page 55] up a portion of them, for the mere raising of turneps or cabbages, or some green winter food. Even if it was no more than the mere quantity cultivated every year, without ever introducing [...] crop of corn, the advantage would be very great, for such plants go infinitely fur­ther than any dry food. I much question whether an acre of turneps will not go farther than five, six, or se­ven pounds in hay: and an acre of cabbages far beyond that. Tenants, indeed, are sensible enough of this, and frequently petition for a little tillage land; but many landlords lay it down as a rule of conduct, never to al­low of any grass to be broken up. It is absurd enough, but no less true.

The scale was inserted merely as the rough outline of an imperfect idea: every part of it, and all the preceed­ing calculations, are liable to numerous objections: of these I am so sensible, that I could myself offer no slight list: but the subject is almost new, and it is of some con­sequence to stimulate other writers (though it be by means of errors alone) to search deeper than I have done▪ to display more numerous connections; and to compare them with a greater accuracy and penetration. This essay must be considered no more than as a hint which should lead to more important conclusions. Others may better reconcile particular facts as the foun­dation of general reasoning; in which case a much grea­ter perfection might be given it.

ESSAY IV.
Of the means of keeping, the year round, the most cattle on a given quantity of land.

GREAT stocks of cattle will appear to all, who have considered the practice of agriculture, to be of much importance, not only to the farmer but even [Page 56] to the nation at large; for it is a loss to the community as well as the individual to have an acre of land feed but one cow, that is capable of maintaining two; in the same way, as that man is a useful member of society, according to Swift, who makes two blades of grass to grow, where but one grew before.

All who assert the consequence of manure (and none but visionaries can deny it) must necessarily be sensible how requisite large stocks of cattle are to obtain it; it is no uncommon thing to see whole farms improved merely by the feeding of cattle; and that without col­lecting and increasing the manure in a farm yard. I have already attempted to show the importance of cat­tle, towards raising good crops of corn; and that an hundred arable acres will yield more wheat and barley, from being connected with a large tract of land used for raising food for cattle, than three times the quantity, without such advantage. Some mistaken writers have found much fault with converting arable to pasture land, and with the use of artificial grasses, as if they decreased the quantity of corn, and produced and raised the price of bread. But such a notion can arise alone from [...] attending to the course of country management▪ the quantity of land sown with corn, may undoubtedly be decreased; but this is wonderfully different from the quantity produced.

Survey a farm of 800 acres of land; one of these writers, if he found but thirty acres of grass, and 270 of arable, yielding ninety acres of wheat, and ninety of barley and oats, would at once conclude, that it was a farm well calculated for national profit at least. Shew him another, in which 200 acres were grass, and 100 arable, and only 33 acres of wheat annually, he would determine such a farm to be prejudicial to the public [...] but nothing would be farther from truth.

I have no doubt, upon an average of such farms, but the thirty-three acres would yield more than the ninety▪ but without supposing the difference so great, one assertion will not be thought rash, that the quantity [Page 57] of food for man will be vastly more considerable from the latter, than from the former farm. Wheat is the staff of life among the poor, but it is not their only food: in many countries, the quantity of cheese they eat is prodigious: butter, in cheap places, is much consumed by them, to speak nothing of meat; and if meat be not their common food, yet the greater the quantity in the markets, the more cheap joints will come within the reach of their purses. But there is another fact, which shews that every thing that is food for man, has a mutual effect on every constituent part: it is this▪ a great plenty of one kind of food sinks the price of all the rest, Suppose beef sold at 2 d. a pound, do they think the neighbouring poor will eat so much bread as at present? Sell good cheese at 1 d. a pound, will not that have the same effect? Gaining plenty of beef and cheese, is, in fact, increasing the quantity of your wheat. And so far are grass lands from lessening the quantity of food, that they not only yield much themselves, but enable the adjoining arable to produce a vastly greater quantity than usual of corn.—It is upon these principles that I assert the quantity of food for man to be much greater from a farm of 300 acres, two-thirds of which are grass, than from another of which only a tenth is grass.

With respect to turneps and artificial grasses, the case is yet stronger, for they maintain more cattle, and are at the same the means of producing much more corn. In Norfolk, the course pursued in all the improved parts, is, 1. Turneps, 2. Barley, 3. Clover and rye grass, for three, four, or five years, 4. Wheat. The quan­tity of corn appears in this course to be very trifling: but suppose, instead of two crops in six or seven years, they took three or four—the acres sown with corn, would increase greatly; but does any one suppose that the number of quarters produced, would increase in pro­portion? So far from it, they would not get enough to pay charges, instead of making fortunes. Turneps and clover, at the same time that they maintain great [Page 58] stocks of cattle, may be called the nurseries of corn.—Were I not afraid of the imputation of starting para­doxes. I should assert (with a certain limitation however) that the less corn is SOWN, the more is PRODUCED. Take the general practice of many large tracts of country, this would be true: it would not, therefore, be a fair reply, that the way to have vast quantities, would be to sow none at all.

This slight disquisition was necessary, to shew that the practice I recommended, is of real utility; and not only to individuals, but to the collective body of the state, consequently the means of keeping the most cattle on a given number of acres is a subject of undoubted importance.

In this enquiry it will be necessary to throw purchased food out of the general question; because, however profitable that management may be, in numerous cases, it would prevent our discovering the method of arrang­ing those crops that yield food in the most advantageous manner: indeed the supposition may some times be al­lowed for the sake of particular variations in comparison between different kinds of food: by assigning to each the same amount of that which is purchased, which will preserve the balance.

The most common summer food is natural grass, which is happily, from its great plenty, applicable to a prodi­gious variety of uses. Oxen of all kinds are fatted and fed upon it: cows it keeps for every purpose; whether butter, milk, cream, cheese, or suckling: sheep are also maintained on it for all uses; whether breeding, fatting, folding, or suckling. Nothing agrees better with horses. Its use respecting swine is but little known to the world, for no experiments have yet been publish­ed, to prove in what degree they can be kept alone up­on it; which is a point of some consequence, and me­rits the attention of the curious in agricultural trials.

In considering the quantity of cattle grass will main­tain; it is necessary to suppose the soil proper for pasture land; not light and sandy; and that it is imagined in at [Page 59] least a common husbandlike manner; not suffered to b [...] poisoned with wet, and kept clear of destructive rub­bish, such as thorns, briars, thistles, docks; and like­wise mole and ant hills: these suppositions are absolutely fair, because such evils arise merely from bad conduct and have nothing to do with the merit of any vegetable:—Throwing out of the question such as are very badly conducted, I take the product of grass lands in England varies between these two points—the keeping three mid­dle sized sheep per acre▪ and the fatting an ox of 90 or 100 stone (14 lb.) and a large Lincolnshire sheep.

I state the product, by such an ox and sheep, per acre, as the highest, because it is the greatest return I have heard from one acre: it is a common assertion, that it is often had in the rich parts of Lincolnshire.—Lower than the keeping three flock sheep, I do not think it would be fair to descend. It is a vast variety of degrees of product that come in between these points: if one could fix a medium, it would be of great use to the present design, but it cannot be done with tolerable accuracy; the following products I take to be near the central point, but they admit a great variety among themselves.

Summer feeding a milch cow per acre, of a mid­dling size; for instance, forty-five stone weight

Summer feeding a cow of forty stone.

Summer feeding such a cow, and also one middling sized sheep and lamb.

Summer feeding a horse.

Summer fatting an ox of thirty-five stone.

Summer fatting an ox of thirty-five stone, and a mid­dle sized wether.

Summer fatting an ox of forty stone.

Summer fatting an ox of forty stone, and keeping a sheep and lamb.

Summer fatting an ox of forty-five stone.

Summer fatting an ox of forty-five stone, and keep­ing a sheep and lamb.

Summer fatting an ox of fifty stone.

[Page 60] Summer fatting an ox of fifty stone, and keeping a sheep and lamb.

Summer fatting an ox of fifty-five stone.

Summer fatting five wethers.

Summer keeping five sheep and five lambs.

Summer keeping six sheep and six lambs.

Summer keeping seven sheep and seven lambs.

Summer keeping eight sheep and eight lambs.

These points might be multiplied, and yet none possi­bly very far from the medium. Suppose I was asked which four of the preceeding I thought nearest the truth? I should reply.

Summer feeding a milch cow of forty stone.

Summer feeding a horse.

Summer fatting an ox of thirty-five stone.

Summer keeping five sheep and five lambs.

This is, however, but an idea, and I should be rash i [...] I built conclusions, absolutely upon such a supposition.

In respect to the product of hay, it varies from grass, which at one mowing will yield 15 l. (lower than which I think we should not descend) to that which at two affords five tons per acre.

Clover is the most common of the artificial grasses, and should therefore be next considered: but as I re­jected the natural grass, which was very badly managed, it is highly requisite I should do the same here: this grass is sown by many slovenly farmers with the third, fourth, and even fifth crop of corn, but the ill success arising from such methods, is not to be laid to the ac­count of clover in general: sowing with a second crop of corn, is by no means good husbandry, but as it is the common practice of many tracts of country, it is neces­sary to take it into the account.

Clover in product varies like grass; but I believe not quite so much, I take the bounds to lie between these points—Keeping three middling sized sheep per acre; and feeding two horses, and two sheep and lambs. I have heard on good authority, of clover doing the last: which, it must be confessed, is a vast produce.

[Page 61] Among particulars, which are nearest the medium, believe the following.

Summer feeding a milch cow, of about forty-five stone.

Summer feeding a milch cow, of about forty-five stone; and also two sheep and two lambs.

Summer feeding a horse.

Summer feeding a horse, and a sheep and lamb.

Summer feeding a horse, and two sheep and lambs.

Summer feeding two heifers of three years old.

Summer keeping six sheep and lambs.

Summer keeping seven sheep and seven lambs.

Summer keeping eight sheep and eight lambs.

Summer feeding nine sheep and nine lambs.

Summer feeding ten sheep and ten lambs.

Summer keeping seven hogs, half and three quarters grown.

Summer keeping eight hogs, half and three quarters grown.

Summer keeping nine hogs, half and three quarters grown.

Summer keeping ten hogs, half and three quarters grown.

Out of these I should fix on the following, as nearer the mean point than the rest.

Summer feeding a milch cow of about forty-five stone.

Summer feeding a horse and a sheep and a lamb.

Summer feeding two heifers, of three years old.

Summer keeping eight sheep and lambs.

Summer keeping eight hogs.

In mowing▪ I should fix the extremes, at a ton and a half; and five tons and a half, both at two mowings.

Sainfoin comes next in order; of which it is obser­vable, no very bad crops are known, for if it succeeds, it never is in an inferior way, being either destroyed▪ or coming, some how or other, to nothing; or else, suc­ceeding well, and proving a very advantageous crop. It is necessary with this, as well as the other grasses, to [Page 62] suppose a good husband-like treatment; this is, the soi [...] to be dry, or at least not a weeping clay, which is the only land it is absolutely averse from: that the field be made very fine at sowing, and free from weeds; as to being rich, or in good heart it is not so nice about that▪ The extremes of produce I calculate at: from keeping an heifer of three years old per acre, to keeping three cows per acre.

The intermediate steps are various; among others should apprehend the following near the medium.

Summer feeding a milch cow of about forty-five stone▪ and maintaining a young heifer besides.

Summer feeding a milch cow, and maintaining two young heifers besides.

Summer keeping a horse and a heifer of three years old.

As to fatting of beasts, I know of no experiments of it; sheep, the best authors assert, should never come near sainfoin:—nor did I ever read or hear of hogs being kept on it; not that I imagine it an improper, o [...] unprofitable food for them, having tried it with success myself; but a few experiments of an individual should not be made the foundation of general reasoning.

In mowing, the produce varies from 15C. to three tons and an half, both at one cutting, besides the afte [...] feed, which must be of value, proportioned to the quan­tities of hay I never heard of its being mowed more than once: not because it will not yield enough to make it answer two cuttings, but there is a notion that it bleed [...] it; and writers who have treated on it, give the same opinion: in the experiments, however, which I tried on it, in Suffolk, under various modes of culture, I have cut it three times often, and once or twice four times and I could never find that the crop suffered by such treatment; but as I remarked before the experiments, of a single person, on one or two soils, should not be taken into the account, when we treat of the average of a whole kingdom.

[Page 63] Lucerne must be next examined, which, like sainfoin, is in general, either very good, or so bad, as not to be suffered to remain; in the latter case (unless the soil is peculiarly unfavourable) it commonly fails for want of good management. But there is more difficulty in sta­ting the produce of this vegetable, than in any of the rest, all which are much better known: it would, how­ever, be unpardonable to omit the most valuable, per­haps, of the kind in England, because the use of it was not so general as it ought to be. Many experiments have been tried on it that will serve to guide us though not with such general authority, as in the preceding plants.

The extremes I apprehend to be, the summer feeding a milch cow of forty-five stone, and a heifer, on one side, and summer feeding six horses on the other side. The latter is a vast produce, but it certainly has been done.

As to fixing a medium the following suppositions are offered, as not probably far from it.

Summer feeding two milch cows.

Summer feeding two milch cows and one three year old heifer.

Summer feeding two milch cows and two two-year old heifers.

Summer feeding two horses, and a three year old heifer.

Summer feeding three horses.

Respecting sheep, fatting of beasts and feeding hogs, aur authority is too small to found any suppositions on: nor can we decide more of its merit in yielding hay; some writers asserting it to be good for nought, for that purpose, and others praising it extravagantly.

It would be useless to form any scale of burnet, as it is pretty well known to be of secondary merit in respect of the general maintenance of cattle, though extremely useful for particular purposes, such as spring feeding sheep and lambs.

Having thus reviewed the principal sorts of summer food of cattle, we must next perform the same on those [Page 64] vegetables that yield the chief articles of winter food: in doing which, however, some limitation is requisite, for only such must come into the account as will alone sup­port cattle. Straw is a winter food, but as it is applied in a secondary manner to that use, it must not here be reckoned:—nor will it be altogether satisfactory to in­clude any vegetable, supposed to suit only one fort of cattle; so that potatoes should not be included, though an excellent food for hogs. The articles I shall examine are, hay, turneps, carrots, and cabbages.

It would be a useless multiplication of enquiries to examine hay singly; it apparantly will not bear any comparison with the other three.—Every one, the least skilled in husbanday, must be sensible, that mean acre of any kind of hay can never come in competition with the mean acre of either of the other foods. The exa­mination must therefore be confined to turneps, carrots, and cabbages.

There is no vegetable depends more on soil than tur­neps; and on culture, if possible, yet more than soil: but it is necessary to suppose these, and all the rest of the vegetables I here treat of, to be managed at least in a commonly good husband like manner; consequently, we must take no notice of the product of those crops▪ which are not hoed; and yet vast tracts of the kingdom are never hoed. Turneps, it is true, sell in many of those countries at an extravagant price; but we are not therefore to suppose the crops good: the reason of such high prices being the uncommonness of the crop; fo [...] in many of those tracts they do not cultivate a tenth par [...] of what are raised in other parts of the kingdom. In [...] word, we must suppose the soil, culture, &c. &c. if no [...] precisely what they ought to be, at least, upon an ave­rage, to be in the stile of good husbandry. The variation of the crops, thus considered, are very great, rising i [...] weight from ten to fifty tons per acre, tops and tails ex­cluded, and the clean apple weighed alone. Of catt [...] maintained, the extremes I apprehend, are,

[Page 65] From keeping seven months a steer, or heifer of forty-five stone, to fattening in five months four steers, of forty-five stone each.

The medium cannot be precisely fixed; but it is near the following points.

Fatting, during five months, an ox of seventy-five stone.

Keeping, seven months, three steers of forty stone.

Fatting, during five months, two steers of forty-five stone.

Fatting, during five months, one steer of forty-five stone; and keeping one steer of forty stone, seven months.

Keeping, during seven months, two milch cows of forty-five stone.

Keeping one milch cow during seven months, and two two year old heifers.

Fatting eight wethers.

Keeping, during four months, fifteen sheep.

And of these I should apprehend the following nearer than the rest.

Fatting, during five months, an ox of seventy five stone.

Fatting, during five months, one steer of forty five stone; and keeping seven months, a steer of forty.

Keeping one milch cow during seven months; and two two year old heifers.

Carrots are by no means so easily drawn into medi­ums, for the culture is but little known, though com­monly practised in some parts of the kingdom: the value is, however, exceedingly great; and rises. I apprehend, from fatting an ox of forty-five stone, to fatting six of that weight. For carrots have frequently yielded a pro­duce of 20 l. per acre. Perhaps the average may be fatting three such beasts▪ or keeping, during 7 months, two milch cows, and fatting one beast of forty-five stone. Where a culture is not very common, it is difficult to six averages.

Cabbages I am last to speak of; which although no [...] common as food for cattle in all parts of England, have yet, by the spirited conduct of some of the [...] and gentry in the North, [...] almost at once from [...] to perfection. Cabbages have not been [...], even [Page 66] there, above a dozen years, and yet they have been carried to above thirty guineas an acre. In respect to the mean value, I reckon the extremes, from keeping two milch cows during seven months, to fatting eight steers of fifty stone. Perhaps the medium lies not far from wintering five cows, or fatting five steers of fifty stone: for we should consider that cabbages being a transplanted crop, and requiring good treatment and rich land, they are either not cultivated at all, or to a good purpose.

This is the last vegetable in my list of summer and winter food. Some of my readers may possibly think it superfluous: but those who reflect on the great conse­quence of keeping considerable stocks of cattle, and who, perhaps, possess foils that would yield beneficial crops of all these plants, will not condemn me for aiming at some­thing of a comparison between them. Husbandry can never arrive at the perfection which all wish for if its principles be not thoroughly understood; if the exact degree of every vegetable cultivated be not known, in relation to foil and management; and, in a word, if all the various branches of this complex art be not so thoroughly fisted and examined, as to be familiar in every combination.

The comparative merit of different sorts of the food of cattle, is a subject that has been strangely neglected by the writers on agriculture. One has treated of lu­cerne; another of potatoes; another of clover; and another of all these; but none has thought of compar­ing all sorts of food upon the same soil. From an ac­curate, though short description of a soil, it ought to be known at once what species of summer and winter food would keep or fat most cattle; but as no such knowledge is in the world conjecture must supply its place; which, when built on some facts is certainly of more use than leaving the subject as it was found▪ Thus in respect to the state of the mean produce of th [...] preceding vegetables, had many experiments been pub­lished on them, they might have been exact; but with [Page 67] out such authority, there is good reason to believe the mediums, at least, not far distant from the points in which I have ventured to fix them; and if not accurate, yet, as I before remarked, some knowledge is better than none▪ such mediums certainly being a better guide in considering the method of keeping most cattle, than mere incidental conjecture as I proceeded.

They are a fresh instance of what was observed in a former essay, that he who writes upon a subject, vari­ous from what has been treated by preceding authors, must spend some of his time in explanations, either in an endeavour to clear away the rubbish of false ideas, that he may afford what, to him, appear juster ones; or in preparing step by step for introducing opinions and observations, which, not being common, may be thought paradoxical. But to return.

The scale of vegetables for food shews us, that all are very useful in different ways; and some in all. The knowledge of some is much more complete than of others; but it is worthy of observation, that not one is perfectly known in an experimental manner. Even common natural grass, although the only food for cat­tle during so many ages, and which, at present, is to be found in vast plenty wherever land is to be found—yet even this is not fully known. In what degree can a farmer depend on grass as a food for hogs? No book ever yet published will answer that question: I have asked it of some hundreds of farmers, and never had a satisfactory reply.

In the whole list, lucerne for summer feed, and cab­bages for that of winter, appear to be much the most advantageous; at least, as far as we can judge by quan­tity of produce. As to expences of cultivation, and clear profit, it would be endless to take them into the account. There can be no doubt but a vegetable that will maintain such a number of cattle, will pay, and well too, for culture. It is not my present purpose to enquire, how a farm of two, three, or four hundred acres should be conducted respecting crops for the food [Page 68] of cattle. Probably it would be found advantageous to have some of all these vegetables, for reasons too numerous to be inserted here. I confine myself, for the present, to the vegetables that will enable a man, on a given number of acres, to keep the most cattle; an hundred circumstances and situations may render such a conduct much more profitable than cultivating any thing else.

A farm may, therefore, be divided into two parts, one under lucerne, and the other under cabbages; and so proportioned, that the one will keep in summer the same quantity of cattle as the other in winter; and this I take, in two words, to be of all methods that which, on a given quantity of land, will keep most cattle.—And this conclusion equally respects a medium of these crops, and the utmost perfection; they are as much beyond other vegetables in the first as the last.

The method, however, of commanding great suc­cess, (and it is some question whether greater may not be attained than ever was done yet) most certainly is to give both plants all advantages of soil, manure, and culture; it is impossible that land should be too rich for either. Some crops are destroyed by rendering the foil exceedingly fertile; but this is very far from the case with lucerne and cabbages.

Supposing the medium of lucerne to be, summer feeding two milch cows, and one three-year old heifer, we may call it two cows and a half per acre, or five to two acres: and of cabbages, wintering five cows per acre. According to this proportion, the lucerne should be just double the quantity of the cabbages; ten of the latter to twenty of the former, &c. &c.

It-is not of consequence to the present enquiry, whe­ther other land be applied to the draught cattle; or whe­ther the proportion be varied in the lucerne to feed their in summer, and oats and hay for the winter: these cir­cumstances must vary according to an hundred others of which no mention is here made. The plan upon which I should conduct a farm of this exclusive sort would be as follows:

[Page 69] I should first six my team; suppose four horses, and assign a portion of land for raising oats for them, as these might follow a part of the cabbages every year, and the crop be immense. Hay I would buy, and have a good stack always before hand, not only for my horses, but also to allow the cows just at calving a small quantity. (N. B. This. I think, would be right; but have no authority to assert the omission would be wrong) I would every year, buy as much stubble or straw, as my cattle could make into manure; which would be, in propor­tion to the number of acres, a vast quantity, consequently the land always in great heart, and the crops uncommonly good. The horses would be used in plowing for the cabbages; in horse-hoeing them and the lucerne (for, I think, notwithstanding many instances of success in the broad-cast way, that drilling or transplanting are better methods) in carrying the food to the cattle: in carrying out the dung, &c. and their leisure time should all be employed in bringing manure from the nearest place where it could be purchased. This management would be the same, whatever use was made of the crops, either suckling, milking, or [...]atting. The latter should be tried with the lucerne, and I think would hardly fail; but no food whatever fats a beast better than cabbages. Such a system, I apprehend, would be attended with very great success.

As to the particular treatment of the crops, it is fo­reign to the present design to enter into particular expla­nations on that head; but a few remarks I find difficult to omit. Lucerne is a vegetable surprisingly tender in its infant state, and as remarkably hardy when arrived at maturity; but it will at no age bear to be incommoded with weeds. Whatever be the method of cultivating it, one may venture to pronounce the crop very profitable, if kept clean from these enemies. There are many rea­sons for preferring the drilling, or transplanting methods to the broad cast; the weeds are thereby absolutely at command, and want nothing but resolution and money totally to eradicate them at any time. But all the reso­lution [Page 70] and all the money in the world will not keep [...] broad-cast crop equally clean. The horse and hand hoeings also loosen and pulverize the soil, whi [...]h is, of itself, a matter of no small consequence: and yet o [...] greater in enabling any manure, that is spread on the surface, to take full effect of the crop. In an annual crop I have found, by experience, that the plants in the new husbandry reap, by no means, an equal benefit from manure with those in the old. But it is the very con­trary with perennial ones; the surface of a field of broad­cast lucerne, when three or four years old, is almost [...] hard and compact as a barn floor; nor is the effect o [...] severe harrowings a remedy half sufficient to the evil [...] such a state much of the manure is useless.

But in annual crops, the manure is turned into the foil to the roots, and takes full effect.—Another reason for preferring transplanting or drilling to broad-cast sowing is the duration of the crop, which from divers experiments, as well as from reason, there is good foun­dation to believe will be five times as long; which i [...] undoubtedly a matter of no trivial consequence; but the great point is the destruction of the weeds, for which purpose a horse and hand-hoeing are necessary to every cutting; and the men who hand-hoe the crop should stoop down and pluck out all weeds with their fingers, which their hoes cannot get at. Nor would it be wrong once a year, in drilled crops, to chop out the weeds with an instrument called an hack, and not regard cutting up some of the lucerne with them, for, where it is thick in the rows, that will be a benefit. This system of cleaning will, with good manuring, insure an ample cutting eve­ry month, from April to October, both inclusive▪ and enable it to maintain far more cattle than the medium a­bove mentioned.

For cabbages, the land should be double plowed [...] that is, one plough to follow another in the same furrow, and rendered very fine; it should at last, be thrown on [...] to ridges (arched up) of that breadth the rows are de­signed to be from each other, and, after an ample [Page 71] manuring, the plants set, one row on the top of each ridge; they should▪ while growing, be horse-hoed four times, and hand-hoed thrice; with this attention the large Scotch sort will grow to a vast size.

I have not ventured these hints by way of instructions how to cultivate these vegetables; that would require much more room than I have to spare at present▪ besides the only valuable instructions are the relation of experi­ments. Those who give directions to raise plants, in the stile of receipts to make puddings, might as well be asleep. All I meant by this little detail was a hint by which to judge of these crops. Such as have been ma­naged upon a more saving and contracted plan should not be thought to prove any thing against the existence of such as I have before mentioned.

Many of the vegetables inserted in the scale I offered, are extremely profitable, and highly deserving the cul­tivator's attention▪ and nothing here inserted concern­ing lucerne and cabbages, as their superiors, should be construed into a general disapprobation of them▪ nothing has been further from my thoughts. As much as I ve­nerate lucerne, I have cultivated ten times as much clover: and yet the quantity of lucerne I have had has been no trifle. As warmly as I have expressed myself on cabbages I have had twenty times as many turneps, notwithstanding my cultivating that uncommon vegetable on a large as well as a small scale ^*.

Indeed▪ to a common farmer before these new modes of culture become quite familiar and general to them, clover will prove a more profitable plant than lucerne; unless he makes his attempts with much greater spirit than is common with that set of men. Clover, as a [Page 72] vegetable that will succeed well under a cheap compen­dious practice, is invaluable; it will pay the cultivator excellently well for taking very little trouble. A farmer that has lucerne put into his hands, as better than clover, will certainly try it as he would that grass; that is, sow it broad-cast among a crop of corn; and, very likely, af­ter two or three other crops of corn; and, at the end of the first year, he would expect a special crop of wheat upon plowing it up and harrowing in the seed. In this culture, what crops of lucerne would he get?—Be­sides, the expence of stocking this grass is so great, that we may suppose it will keep many farmers (as I freely confess it did me) from cultivating it upon a very large scale. Lucerne, well managed, will carry above twen­ty pounds worth of cattle per acre. The stock, there­fore, of 100 acres only, amounts to 2000 l. besides all standing and incidental charges.

But before [...] conclude this slight essay. I must be al­lowed to add a few words on the general system of keep­ing very large stocks of cattle. I have, in this enquiry concerning lucerne and cabbages, spoke much of keep­ing cows. We have no experiments extant that prove the efficacy of the first in fatting cattle: therefore more attention should be given to its application to cows. Another circumstance▪ which should not be overlook­ed, is a collateral profit by cows, that of hogs. From the experiments which I have tried, and the observati­ons I have made. I think there is great reason to believe the grand profit of dairies to be a secondary one; that arising from the hogs maintained by them. And this circumstance points out the propriety in dairy farms, of preparing some articles of food merely with an eye to hogs; yet this practice is scarce ever found among common farmers.

In this point a particular management is requisite; the dairy should be applied alone to that use for which it is peculiarly adapted, viz. the weaning pigs, and feed­ing sows that have young pigs; but nothing can be more absurd than the common management of feeding hogs [Page 73] half and three-fourths grown, and fatting large hogs upon skim milk, and butter and cheese whey.

I think it is evident enough, from this state of the case, that a different management is much wanting, that the utmost profit may be made of perhaps the most useful of all animals, and that which most affects, though almost unseen and unknown, the price of provisions. For this purpose it is very plain that the number of young pigs just weaned, and sows which have young pigs that can be maintained by a dairy, should regulate the number of hogs kept, and the food provided ac­cordingly. In other words, that there should be such a succession in the litters, that the skim milk, or but­ter milk, and cheese whey, may never be applied to any use but feeding such young pigs, and sows that have pigs.

This, it must be confessed, opens a most extensive field of proportion; but, I am confident, not more extensive than profitable. Suppose, for instance, it is found by experiment that twenty cows will yield in a year food sufficient for maintaining three or four litters of pigs; now, during some months, the quantity may not be half sufficient for this, and during others, greatly more than sufficient. The means, therefore, of divid­ing it equally, is by assigning the given number of lit­ters, and feeding them out of cisterns in which the milk, &c. is preserved, that there may never be a necessity of wasting it, or giving it uselessly to the other hogs in the height of the season, when the quantity is very great.

Having by this experience discovered the proportion between the litters of pigs and the number of cows, the next business is to enquire the number of pigs whose weaning is completed,—of those that are turned out af­ter weaning,—of hogs half and three-fourths grown.—and, lastly, of such as annually come to be fatted, that meat of different kinds may be provided for the respec­tive uses. We have supposed the dairy food applied to keeping when young, and to weaning them; in the next [Page 74] stage, I apprehend, we must use carrots and potatoes, both which roots are much affected by hogs; and I know, from experience, will even wean young pigs; consequently a sufficient provision of their crops should be made for keeping the pigs after they are weaned, till they are large enough to turn out to green food

In respect to the latter, that which, in several parts of the kingdom, is most known as a peculiar food for hogs, is clover ^*, which agrees with them wonderfully well; keeping them without any assistance of other food, from being a third part grown till they arrive at their full size; and, if they are well managed, they will be kept totally in the field (there must be water in it) and never suffered to come home till the clover season is over, that is, till the wheat feed-time; after which they should at once (if there is no fall of acorns for them) be shut up to fatting; in which last operation carrots and potatoes should again be called in, and they will fully fat them; though the most advantageous way is to complete their fatting with a few pease.

From this train of management appears the crops which should be cultivated, and the proportions of them for the collateral uses of a dairy; an object which is, beyond doubt, of great importance to agriculture▪ but which, I am sorry to say, is little known or attended to by nine-tenths of the kingdom. It is however, much to be regretted, that a large series of experiments, in which the due proportions were preserved, are not un­dertaken, that all points might be experimentally known; and this, notwithstanding the expence o [...] procuring such an undertaking, for the benefits that would certainly re­sult to the agriculture of the whole kingdom, are un­doubtedly too great to render the expence of trials an objection.

ESSAY V.
Considerations on the Oeconomical conduct of such gentlemen as make Agriculture either their business or amusement.

PERHAPS we might, without any great impropriety call farming the reigning taste of the present times▪ There is scarce a nobleman without his farm; most of the country gentlemen are farmers; and that in a much greater extent of the word, than when all the country business was left to the management of the stewards, who governed in wheat and barley, as absolutely as in cove­nants of leases, and the merit of tenants; for now the master oversees all the operations of his farm, dictates the management, and often delights in setting the coun­try a staring at the novelties he introduces. The prac­tice gives a turn to conversation, and husbandry usurps something on the territories of the stable and the kennel, an acquisition which I believe, with reasonable people, will be voted legal conquest.

But to speak in another strain▪ all parts of rural oeco­nomics are, at present much studied, and no less practised. It is impossible but this admirable spirit, which does so much honour to the present age, must be attended with great effects. For men of education and parts cannot apply to any thing without diffusing a light around them▪ much more so when they give their attention to a busi­ness that hitherto has occupied few besides the most contracted and most ignorant set of people in the world. And facts, as far as they have been discovered, warrant this opinion; for, I apprehend▪ no one will dispute there having been more experiments, more discoveries, and more general good sense displayed, within these ten years, in the walk of agriculture, than in an hundred preceding ones. If this noble spirit continues, we shall soon see husbandry in perfection, as well understood, and built upon as just and philosophic principles, as the art of medicine.

[Page 76] This general pursuit hurries all kind of people to farming. Even citizens, who breathe the smoke of London five days in the week throughout the year, are farmers the other two; but, what is more to the present purpose, many young fellows of small fortune, who have been brought up in the country, addict themselves to agriculture; numbers even desert the occupations to which they were brought up, and apply to a trade so much more pleasing and independent.

Many are the young people whose relations having left them a farm or two, (by no means to make them country gentlemen, but as a fund to raise money for prosecuting the business perhaps of a compting-house, or a shop) they are captivated at once with the idea of living in the country, upon their own estates, and turning over a book or two of husbandry, (they can scarce lay their hands on one but will promise them a fortune in six weeks) find nothing so easy as to make a great income by farming. So flattering a resolution is soon taken, and they commence their new profession.—Nor is this the only instance; all sorts of people, not absolutely fixed in other employments, partake of the fashion, and turn farmers. Physicians, lawyers, clergymen, soldiers, sailors, merchants. The farming tribe is now made up of all ranks, from a duke to an apprentice.

No fault is to be found with this rage for agriculture; in whatever manner it is conducted, many beneficial ef­fects must inevitably flow from it; but what I shall aim at in this little sketch, is to offer some cool advice to those who embrace husbandry as a trade, without know­ing any thing of its practice; who embark themselves and their fortunes in a ship which may either be per­fectly found, or equally rotten, for any thing they know of the matter; to such, a few cautions, relative to the oeconomical parts of their new business, cannot be un­important. In one respect the consequences may be exceedingly beneficial; a little prudent attention may prevent losses and ruin, which will bring discredit, how­ever unjustly, on the business in general; a circum­stance [Page 77] which all who love agriculture should do their utmost endeavours to prevent.

The first and grand evil to which adventurers in hus­bandry lay themselves open, is the want of money to conduct their farm properly. In this respect they mis­take worse than common farmers, who never proporti­on their land to their fortune as they ought; but gentle­men should apply a much larger sum of money [...] it than farmers, for reasons obvious to all the world.

No human power can controul or remedy this error while persisted in; it must inevitably grow every day worse and worse, till utter ruin succeeds. And here I speak of the most common practice, without giving into any expences, but those usual in agriculture. But if any account is taken of experimental husbandry, or the practice of what is met with in books, all this becomes ten times stronger. As this matter is the most import­ant of all others in the conduct of young beginners, I shall beg leave to enter a little more into the nature of the case.

The great error of common farmers, is the hiring too much land in proportion to their fortunes. We constantly, through three-fourths of their lives, see the effects of this, notwithstanding their practising the most severe oeconomy, notwithstanding their constant atten­tion to their business, and their even labouring very hard themselves. The inconvenience must, in neces­sity, be much greater with a person who can neither labour, practise a regular oeconomy, nor give a con­stant attention to his business; and who, added to all this, knows nothing of the matter. If he depends on the advice and assistance of another person, that person must be paid; so that in whatever light we view the case, he is undoubtedly under a stronger necessity of having a sufficiency of money than any common farmer.

A gentleman of small fortune walks over a farm of perhaps two hundred acres of land; he sees an old wag­gon or two, three or four carts, some ploughs and har­rows, seven or eight shabby looking horses, a cow or [Page 78] two, and a few ragged sheep. He goes into the house and sees the men seeding on sat pork, or bread and cheese; he views nothing that gives him any idea of ex­pence; very possibly all he sees might be purchased for an hundred pounds; and this apparent want of but little money, must give him a notion that a trifling sum will stock such a farm. Nothing is further from his head than conceiving the prodigious expence dependant on every thing he sees. If he looks at an old rotten plough that lies in the yard, it never occurs to his mind what a train of expences that instrument, which may not be worth five shillings, draws after it. If he asks advice, it will probably be of some farmer or bailey he designs to employ; now the event is too much their interest to undeceive him, however mistaken; for his ruin cannot ensue without their being much the richer for it. These suppositions may appear somewhat far stretched: but not to those who have had experience of the lower kind of country life.

There is no doubt but a gentleman may turn farming to good account, and yet be cheated for some time by the people around him; he pays for experience: but then he gets it, and that will, with good management, afterwards pay him again; but then large sums of mo­ney are requisite for this; and in the stocking a farm, good allowances ought to be made for such unseen ex­pences.

After the view of such a farm as I now supposed, which convinced the gentleman that a small sum of money would do for farming, we will say he hires it. From that day he will be very busy in viewing his land, in pointing out improvements, and talking the whole matter over with his assistant or adviser. Every hour (if he has the least genius) will disclose something or other that wants to be done. His men will tell him, very plausibly and sensibly too, that such a ditch should be done; that this field wants draining most terribly; that that pond would pay exceedingly well for empty­ing; and, in a word, an hundred things that plainly [Page 79] ought to be executed. This crowd of business renders him desirous to know what others have done in the some situation▪ he turns to books, a new world starts upon him at once; all he has been advised is demon­strated to be right, and a million of things besides, he never dreamt of, proved as clearly as any axiom in Euclid. His first half year's rent is not paid before he wants money.

The truth of the matter is this; every common la­bourer can point out many things that should be dore; the baily many more; and books, ten thousand times as many as both the others put together. Now, in this immense mass of advice, the mischief ( to such a gentle­man) is, that much of it is very rational and good; if all was absurd, the whole would probably be rejected; but the best advice upon earth cannot be executed with­out money. It matters not a groat that a work is de­monstrated to be expedient, and even necessary, if I have not cash to execute it.

The great point therefore, is the assigning a proper sum of money to the business; and if a man trades upon his all, to take no more land than he can perfectly ma­nage, with proper allowances for his not being experi­enced in the business. As to the particular sums re­quisite for given quantities of lands, it is impossible to sketch any thing of that sort in the bounds of an essay; but I have treated that matter pretty largely in another work, called The Farmer's Guide. One hint, however, I shall give here; when the gentleman has made all en­quiries and estimates, let him quadruple the amount, and he will be much nearer the truth. Every considera­tion that can have influence on a man thus engaging himself in agriculture, call on him to be cautious in not taking too much land. If he purposes to make his business an amusement, sure there is more pleasure in viewing a few fields in a neat and garden-like order, than in wandering over a great many that exhibit no mark of being cultivated by a gentleman!

[Page 80] If experimental agriculture, or the practice of suc [...] methods of culture as are recommended in books, be thought of, it can alone be practised by having little land, but much money. If a gentleman would shine among his neighbours, if he would farm (as many, by the by, do) that he may talk of farming, he should▪ by all means, confine himself to such a space as he [...] absolutely command; for none of his company would give six-pence to be shewn a parcel of common crops managed no better than by a common farmer; such will not afford him matter for conversation. One acre cultivated in a masterly manner, will, in this respect be a much more fruitful source, than an hundred ma­naged like his neighbours. But all this requires plenty of money, which no man can have who over trade himself.

Respecting the providing money, one remark is re­quisite. A person, at the beginning of his practice who designs to make agriculture a trade, should un­doubtedly possess the sum he throws into it, clear of all debts whatever; for borrowed money may be an excel­lent means of advancement to a man who has laid a stou [...] foundation in a handsome sum of his own, and much experience; but is a very fatal one where these requi­sites are wanting. When once a man has really gain­ed, and, probably, paid for experience, finds that [...] business, though small, is profitable; that he could di­spose of a sum of money to good advantage, in some addition that he has tried with success; in such a case money should undoubtedly be had; and if a farmer possesses it not himself, he should borrow it of another A spirited resolution is as necessary for advancement by husbandry, as prudence. In gaining due experi­ence it is impossible to be too prudent; whatever [...] doubtful, requires much caution; but when uncertain­ty gives way to conviction, real prudence consists [...] discarding caution; and having once determined a mea­sure to be right, to execute it with spirit and celerity A situation in which borrowing large sums of money [Page 81] may be the highest prudence. All men, whatever [...] their business, that act not upon these principles, wa [...] either prudence or resolution; the one is as necessary [...] the other. The want of the first, will overthrow hi [...] in the very beginning of his career; and the absence o [...] the second, will sink him when in sight of the goal.

Another point which a person who begins farming [...] to consider, is, the employment of a bailey. He will find this determination a matter of some consequence and ought to be well reflected on. Many reasons ar [...] to be offered for, and many against it. It may, in the first case, be asserted, that in every species of business the master should know more, or, at least, as much [...] the man, that no errors may pass in the conduct of the latter, without being seen and understood by the for­mer. That the question does not turn on the employ­ment of such an excellent bailey as may easily be de­scribed, but of such an one as chance or the common course of such matters will probably discover; in which case he may be supposed bad, or indifferent, as well as good, and the master without the requisite knowledge to discover whether he is the one, or the other. That the idea common in most countries is, that of nine bai­leys out of ten being knaves; which notion could not become general without having some foundation in truth; nor is this anywise surprising, for a servant placed in a trust which in itself abounds with the temptation of breaking it, and over-looked by a master ignorant of the business, most certainly is a situation that would, in any other trade, as well as farming, prove wonderfully fertile in creating knaves.

That a bailey, from the nature of his office, has so many opportunities of being unfaithful without detection, that he may, in one year, defraud his master of more money then twenty labourers or servants can cheat him of; that the expence of one proper to oversee and re­gulate a business is so great, that it would swallow up all the profits of a small farm; consequently can ne­ver, with propriety, be recommendeded but in a large [Page 82] business; and such no gentleman, ignorant of husbandry, should at once venture on. That a bailey having been brought up totally in the common practice, has an aver­sion (found among all farmers) to new practices, and could, therefor, give [...]is master no assistance in many cases wherein he might want it; but, on the contrary, would probably thwart his measures, and occasion a want of success. For these, and many other reasons, baileys are thought in most cases useless, and in many detrimental.

On the other hand it is alledged, that a young prac­titioner in farming must necessarily be so much at a loss about a great variety of matters that come before him, of which he is ignorant, that if he does not keep a bai­ley, his whole business will infallibly suffer; his servants will impose upon him in an hundred points, and assert every thing to be the custom of the country; his labour­ers will do the same in all their work and prices; his cat­tle will be ill managed, and his crops spoiled; conse­quences much more fatal than the dishonesty of any bai­ley, be he ever such a knave. That a gentleman who does not employ a person of this sort must, so far from rendering his business a pleasure, submit to it as a slave. He must be absent from home no more than the lowest farmer; and he must at all seasons, hours, and weathers, attend to every motion of his people. He must ride about the country to fairs▪ he must frequent markets; in a word, he must let himself down to the lowest com­pany; and if he has the least taste, or the ideas of a gen­tleman, suffer continual uneasiness. That, by the em­ployment of such a person, he not only escapes all these disagreeable circumstances, but likewise learns, at the same time, the principles and the practice of his busi­ness; by the help of a bailey, well skilled in common husbandry, he will, in a few years, acquire an equal knowledge; and consequently have it fully in his pow­er to oversee and controul the bailey himself, and ne­ver lay himself open through his ignorance, to be im­posed upon. That the propriety of keeping a bailey, [Page 83] even in an oeconomical view, is proved by the practice of most great farmers, a set of people so sharp-sighted to their interest in these matters, that they would never suffer a constant, or, indeed, any train of imposition. That all gentlemen▪ whether they have farmed a long or a short time, but especially beginners, find that ser­vants and labourers will not obey them so well as a person nearer their own level in life. Gentlemen never have the work done that common farmers have; but a bailey will procure as much for his master as any farmer ha [...], provided the master encourages this head servant, and makes it his interest to use him well. For these reasons, as well as others that might be urged, the expediency of employing baileys is asserted.

Sir Roger's decision, much may be said on both sides, is here very applicable; for neither opinion should be embraced in absolute exclusion of the other. It may, therefore, be of some use to point out, in the supposed conduct of the gentleman just going to farming, such a course of management as may obviate, if not remove, the objections of both parties.

The most difficult point is the size of the farm; as nothing but a considerable business will pay the ex [...]ence of a bailey; and there can be no doubt of the impru­dence of beginning with a large farm, dependant wholely on the honesty and skill of another man. I think, for this reason▪ the gentleman should begin with a small farm, no [...] under the expectation or the notion of mak­ing a shilling profit, but for the more important advant­age of gaining experience enough to keep a bailey when he enters on a larger business. I am sensible there are objections to this conduct; but none in difficult poin [...] can be invented that is free from them; the only choice is that which has fewest.

In a small farm, he will not find the trouble of gain­ing a pretty tolerable stock of knowledge and experi­ence, so great a drudgery as some may think; he will learn the prices of the country of all sorts; and discover the proportions between price and labour in [...] a [Page 84] manner, that he will not be much to seek, in any cou [...] ­try,—the common management of arable lands;— [...] will soon gain the application of manures, as known b [...] country farmers; and such a knowledge of cattle as wil [...] at least, prevent his falling into gross errors. In [...] conversation with labourers and farmers, he should make enquiries after different methods of farming; an [...] make memorandums of such replies as he thinks most sensible. But a greater source than all this is ob­servation; let him look over his hedges, and see wha [...] his neighbours do with their land; let him walk abou [...] the country for the same purpose, and compare the practice wich he sees with the opinions which he hears▪ It would be for his interest to be acquainted with one or two decent sensible farmers, that will not take a plea­sure in misleading him; such are every where to be found; it only wants a little penetration to discover the proper people to apply to. Let him invite them to dinner, and now and then give them a bottle of gene­rous wine, and chat freely about country business. He will find it no difficult matter to learn from them the chief of what they know.

Now I do not offer these means as an instruction how to make himself a complete master of agriculture, or to make at once a fortune by it; all I pretend he will gain by it, is such a ground-work as will afterwards allow him to erect the wished-for building on. He will, in this manner, gain experience sufficient to venture, I should apprehend, in three years, on a large farm, with the assistance of a bailey. There is no reason for a man of small fortune, or rather of not a large one, repining at his time sacrificed merely to experience in common husbandry.

One of the chief objections to a bailey is the igno­rance of the master; by such an apprenticeship as I pro­pose, he will know enough of the business to direct the bailey what he would have done, without fearing to ex­pose himself by absurd orders (I am here speaking of the common practices), and without any necessity for its be­ing [Page 85] conducted without his own assistance. He will also know enough of prices to direct the bailey how far he should bid for any commodity at a fair or a market; and the price he will allow him to sell at; all which are powerful means of controuling even the allowed knave­ry of such a servant.

Unless a gentleman reduces his business to very great simplicity, he will find too great a fatigue, and too constant an assiduity, requisite to render farming of con­siderable profit. Keeping all the people employed strictly to their bargains; overlooking the servants as to their hours of plowing, and other work; and like­wise the manner every thing is done in, with a variety of other articles, require an unceasing attendance; no gentleman that keeps any company, or, indeed, that amuses himself with any thing besides his business, can perform it; he must employ a bailey, whatever be his opinion.

Respecting his management of that bailey, a little consideration and experience will shew that business, of ever such an extent, may be thoroughly overlooked and known by a master through such first servant. It is not requisite to observe and watch him as much as he does the rest of the people▪ a much less degree of attention will effectually do. The gentleman should have a mi­nute book of work laid before him every evening, that he may know distinctly every thing his teams and men have that day been employed about; as he knows the measure of his fields, he can, at any time, tell if the proper quantity of work of all sorts be executed or not; and reprove his bailey for omissions. As to the man­ner in which the work is performed, it is very easy, when he rides out, to come unawares upon ploughs, to see if they go their proper depth; or upon carts, to see that they load fair; or into the hay or harvest field, to see what hours the people work, and how they per­form their business. When a bailey finds the business under him observed in this irregular manner, for which neither he or the men can be prepared, he must neces­sarily [Page 86] be spirited, and alive in his attention, and keep every part of the business in good order. In case of absence, when he returns, he has recourse to the mi­nute-book, for every day's work of all kinds; a method so exact will not allow him to be deceived. When corn is thrashed, carried out, or sowed, or bought for any purpose, all is entered, so that neither mistakes, no [...] soul play can ensue without confusion, and consequent­ly discovery.

All money matters should go through the hands o [...] the bailey, who must keep an open book in the most regular manner, to which the master can have recourse at any time; (a room, for instance, with each a key) this book should be balanced every Saturday night; and whenever much money is in hand, which the master must always know by the minute-book of transactions he should order the bailey to bring him such sums as h [...] thinks proper, to be charged to his own account, tha [...] no temptation of consequence should ever exist to in­duce the man to swerve from his fidelity. But when [...] say all money dealings, I except the most important▪ a considerable balance in the hands of a corn merchant or a salesman, may be drawn for by the master; but i [...] should be entered by the bailey in the account of re­ceipts, and immediately wrote off in his master's ac­count. The reason of this is, that the bailey may him­self be convinced of the annual profit or loss; that i [...]case the latter happens, he may receive a proper re­primand for general conduct; and, on the contrary, i [...] case of considerable profit, the gentleman should make him a gratuity, by way of encouragement.

This mention of accounts reminds me of the vast im­portance of regular accounts to a gentleman farmer [...] This is one of the advantages he has over the commo [...] farmer; and, I think, one of the greatest. The latte [...] knows whether his business is, upon the whole, profita­ble or not, but only guesses the particulars; some articl [...] may even be unsuccessful, without his knowing any thing of the matter; and as to the aggregate of annual profit [...] he never knows the real amount o [...] that.

[Page 87] But I have heard some people ask, What is the good of account? Will accounts turn a bad farm into a good one? Or will they recover losses that ignorance have occasioned? Nothing can be more mistaken than such ideas. If a farmer knows not the degree and amount of his profit or loss on every article and by every field, it is impossible he should possess a due experience of the past, or ever be able to make it a guide to the future. Every com­mon farmer guesses at all these particulars, and acts ac­cordingly, which shews their ideas of the utility of the knowledge. What is experience, but knowing that certain causes have been attended with such and such effects? But what is the knowledge of effects, where a thousand are all jumbled into one account, with nothing but random guesses to form distinctions?

Various fields of wheat are managed in a very diffe­rent manner; is it not of consequence to the farmer to know exactly the product, the expe [...]ces, and the neat profit of each? Is he not thereby a better judge of the merit of each method he uses? And will he not be able to manage future crops with more experience than if he had gained none of this knowledge? From keeping such an account of each field, he knows the proportions of rent, seed, labour, wear and tear. &c. &c. and the crop; and sees in what manner the latter answers to the former; and, by a comparison between different fields and modes of culture, is enabled to judge which is most probable, in future, to pay him best. Two fields of the same soil are cultivated exactly in the same manner, save, that one is manured at a large expence, the other not. To what degree does this manuring answer? is the answer to this question of no importance? Where is it to be gained, without exact accounts? This instance might be multiplied to ten thousand▪ in not one of which would experience be clear and valuable, without a regu­lar account.

It is the same with grass lands; their products of all kinds; with every sort of cattle. Twenty beasts are annually fatted, that are kept the year through, and [Page 88] twenty milch cows are also kept: which pays the farmer the best? This is a point of no slight importance; for the difference may be very great: but is it to be known from that general account which every man carries in his head, which is nothing more than an idea? What ac­curacy can there be in accounts so kept?

The farmer stocks himself with two sorts of sheep, ewes and wethers; they are both fed alike: which answers best, and to what degree? Even this plain case can be resolved with no degree of certainty, without a regular account being kept of each.

When a man turns over his books, and finds a regu­lar balance of profit and loss on every article, he is en­abled to review his business, to consider what have pro­bably been his errors, and wherein he has been most successful. The result of such reflections is true experi­ence, not the random notions that are carried in the memory. After some years farming, upon looking over his accounts, he finds that wheat has in general paid him very indifferently; and that, upon an average of all sorts of treatment and seasons, barley, on the con­trary, has been attended in the like variety, with a con­siderable profit. Upon such a review he finds that his dairy of cows pays him far better than his fatting beasts; that his ewes and lambs are much more profitable than his wethers. He finds by the quantity of work per­formed by his horse and ox teams, and the expence of each, that the latter are more advantageous, as five to three. This knowledge is beyond all doubt the most valuable part of experience, and can no ways be gained but by regular accounts; for in what manner can such a review of one's business be otherwise made? Will any one be so absurd as to assert all, or any part accurately, can be carried from year to year, for four, five, six, or seven, in the head, and founded originally in nought but conjecture? Nor should fugitive notes and memo­randums be called accounts; nothing can effect this great end but a ledger regularly kept.

In this light surely accounts may be said to be the foundation of good husbandry; and highly possible to [...] [Page 89] convert a bad farmer into a good one. It is by means of them that gentlemen, in one instance, have so great an advantage over common farmers, as to balance, in a good measure, all the superiorities of the latter. It is by these means that the gentlemen may, if they please, gain more experience in five years, than a common far­mer can in twenty. Many of them give into unneces­sary expences; prosecute more experiments than their fortunes will admit; and bring themselves, by degrees, and unknowingly of the amount, into a want of money. A man that keeps regular accounts may certainly do the same; but he must infallibly know how much he so expends, and be warned regularly of the danger; which are points of no slight importance.

It is, at present, a common thing to hear disputes in conversation about gentleman's profit by farming. Some, with great earnestness, assert they make money by it; and others are as strenuous in contradicting the possibi­lity of it. When I hear these disputes. I conclude, of course, that neither party know any thing at all of the matter; as twenty to one whether accounts are regularly kept by any of them.

It may be said that regular accounts would be too much trouble; but, on the contrary, nothing is so trou­blesome as irregular accounts; and, as to none at all, I never yet met with any body that did not pretend to keep some. A very little thought would make any man perfectly acquainted with all the accounts a farmer can want. The subject is of importance enough to demand a little further consideration.

The first book to be mentioned that a gentleman far­mer should open, is A Minute Book. This should be a regular journal of all the transactions of the farm. The bailey should keep this. The following is the form which I use.

(left blank)June 21. (left blank)

Three ploughs in six acres.

(left blank)

(left blank)

[...]

[Page 90] The frosty cow calved.

(left blank)

The waggon to London for ashes.

(left blank)June 22. (left blank)

Four ploughs, half a journey in eight acres; the hor­ses then went to (left blank), for dung.

(left blank)

(left blank)

The black sow pigged 9.

(left blank)

(left blank)

Begun to hand-hoe the carrots in the three acres the second time.

(left blank)

(left blank)

Sold five fat beasts to the butcher; the price 43 l.

This will explain my meaning; there can be no trans­action of any sort but what should be thus registered. I recommend the short lines between each article, to keep the bailey from crowding his writing close together. Those kind of people will be so sparing of paper, that it is difficult to read what they write.

Next comes the Cash Book, to be balanced every Sa­turday night; this is only for a check upon the person who keeps it; and that the disbursements and receipts may be regularly known. If a gentleman keeps his own books, it is not necessary.

The Ledger comes next; in which an account, deb­tor and creditor, is opened for every field, by name in the farm; also for every article of live stock: one for wear and tear; &c. &c. &c. so as no money can be paid or received, no exchange of commodity made on the farm, without an account there being open for it. Two of them should be kept; one the bailey [...] post the cash book into; that is, enter each [...] cash expended or received, in its proper account, and one also to substitute for a Journal, the use of which book is too complex for a bailey to keep.

What I mean by this, is the carrying transactions tha [...] have an amount in value, without any money being paid or received, to their regular account. For instance an account is opened in the Ledger for the Six-acr [...] [...] grass field. On one side all the expences, on the othe [...] [Page 91] the receipts for hay sold; but, instead of selling this hay, suppose it delivered from this stack to the horses, how is this to be carried to account? In regular book-keep­ing, a merchant would enter this in his Journal, Horses debtor to six acres grass for so much hay delivered; and then post the sum to both accounts in the Ledger. But the gentleman farmer turns at once to the account of horses in his Ledger, and writes on the debtor side, To six acres grass, so and so; and then, in the field account, on the creditor side, By horses, so and so.

In a word, he skips the Journal, and, at the same time that he simplifies his account, keeps them perfect­ly regular.

All this I suppose to be done by the bailey; and all is so very plain, that any ingenious fellow would form a clear idea of it in half an hour. But the master should keep the fair Ledger, in which he enters every thing in the same manner as in the the other; but reduces them to distinct heads. In the first Ledger they stand in con­fusion; many small sums of cash, and parcels of hay, corn, &c. &c. delivered at different times, his business therefore, is to throw them, at the end of the year, in­to one view, under distinct heads. For instance; he finds a corn field account, with a great number of sums of cash; and corn sold, and some delivered at home for cattle. He consolidates all the expences into a few to­tals thus;

[Page 92] Now the advantage of having such a view as this of every crop, is immense. By looking over the parti­culars of the expences, he sees which run the heavi­est, and knows, from thence, the proper channel, in the like cases for the future, for his chief expence to flow in.

At the end of every year an account must be taken of all the stock; the implements of all kinds valued, and carried to the new year's account accordingly; and, as the article of wear and tear includes every thing relative to implements, the annual valuation will throw into that account the decrease of value, as well as articles of new expenditure. The same observation is applicable to the accounts of horses and draught oxen, which being valued in that manner, give the expence of horses, &c. declining in worth; an article that is never dreamed of in common; and yet the sinking of a horse's value is as much a part of the expence of tillage, as the reparation of a plough. By these general methods, a gentleman every year knows, to a shilling, the year's profit or loss, and the sum of money he has employed in agriculture.

And these numerous and very beneficial consequences are reaped at so small an expence of time and trouble, that it is amazing we do not oftner see the practice. The bailey's share, which is much the most considera­ble, can never amount to half an hour in a day, if he writes a tolerable hand, and is the least ready at ac­counts; and a bailey that is not these, is nothing; they are as requisite to his office, as the knowing wheat from barley. The master's part of the business comes but once a year, and may be a week's easy employment; but the bailey may also do three-fourths of that, viz. the division of the expences into distinct heads; but it must be under the gentleman's direction. Now can any one raise a doubt of the benefit resulting from this practice not answering far more than such an expence [...] I think it is impossible, and that many do at presen [...] practise it, and that more will hereafter do it.

[Page 93] I shall, in the next place, take the liberty of offer­ing a few remarks on the employment of servants and labourers, as far as it particularly concerns a gentleman farmer: which is a point of very great importance in the general oeconomy of a farm.

If a gentleman keeps a bailey, servants are more profitable for all sorts of team work, (except filling a cart and taking care of cattle) than labourers, because such articles require a constant number of men to be absolutely depended on; but I am in doubt about this point if no bailey is kept to see regularly to the hours and work of these servants: I am confident they will not obey the master even tolerably, unless for a month or two, perhaps, when they first enter into his service. A farmer who lives with his men, and, perhaps, works with them, will always be much better obeyed. This point, I must own, has troubled me more than once; nor could I ever manage to be totally at ease respecting it. There is no part of farming so irksome and provok­ing to a gentleman; he cannot take a walk or a ride without having proofs that every farmer around him has more work for his money than he has; and how to remedy it without a spirited active bailey I know not.

Scolding and threats, and high words, either produce such impudence as no gentleman will bear, a revenge that will much injure him in cattle, crops, or some o­ther point, or a deceitful conduct, that is, pretending to do better in the thing in question, but acting ten times worse in some other respect. For instance; you are troubled to get your fellows to plow as much in a day as they ought; after many words, you think you have gotten the day; but examine how it is plowed, perhaps not better than scratched over.

If, on the contrary, you try what a mild, easy beha­viour will do, and take no notice of trifles, you will infallibly be imposed upon in every particular; and your servants will soon learn to be impudent, and despise your authority: and I have had such experience of numerous dispositions among farming men, that I will venture to [Page 94] assert (miracles excepted) the impossibility of this not being the case.

I have often reflected on the different methods of a gentleman's managing his farming servants when his farm is too small to afford a bailey, and I must own I could never fix on any conduct that was exempt from great objections. One management is to give the head man so much per annum wages above the price of the country and above what he agrees to take, that he may be under some fear of losing his place: while a gentleman pays no more wages than the common farmer, he has not a sufficient tie upon his men. But such extra wages he must not be suffered to consider in the stile of making him any thing verging towards a bailey, in slackening his work; he must, on the contrary, be told, on hiring, that his extra wages are given him for absolute and im­plicit obedience.

Let us suppose a dialogue between the master and man upon this point of hiring. My readers will excuse my dwelling on these minutiae of a gentleman's manage­ment: those who experience them, will either not call them trifles, or allow that trifles are of very great im­portance.

You say you can plow, sow, mow, make a stack, and understand cattle.

Yes: I won't turn my back on any man for that work.

And that ten guineas are the lowest wages you will take.

I can take no less. I can have it any where.

Very well; you shall have ten guineas; but if you consent to obey me in the most exact manner, without ever talking about customs; or what not, you shall have twelve guineas a year.

O, yes, Sir, I'll obey you; certainly will, Sir.

Suppose I order you to plow your land by moon-light?

Can't say, Sir. I ne'er did work of that sort.

[Page 95]

Nor should I choose to have my land plow­ed in that manner; but if I give an order for my men horses, and ploughs to go immediately to work, a [...] twelve o'clock of a night, as dark as pitch, I would be obeyed without the least pause or hesitation. You un­derstand me; all I mean is this; whatever I order must be done without any reply, no talking of customs.—What quantity of land do you generally plow in a day?

An acre.

But my horses oftener plow me five roods. At seed time, always an acre and half. But if I give the order for two acres you must execute it well, and without hesitation.

But how am I to take care of my horses after plowing two acres?

No matter if the horses are not taken care of at all; that is my concern, not yours.—You see the conditions of my services. I would not have you engage with me, unless you are absolutely certain you can submit to unlimited orders.

Not a man, perhaps, in five would venture to en­gage; and of those who do, many would think of the two guineas, more than the equivalent they were to give for it. But I do not mean that the gentleman should ever order double the custom of the country. He should fix his eye on one acre for instance; but frighten the fel­lows, by talking of much more; but they should every now and then receive orders as a test of their obedience: an acre and half a day, an acre and quarter, &c. &c. and a sharp eye kept on the manner in which it is per­formed. Something beneficial I believe might be done upon this principle; but, undoubtedly, the extra wages would be, with some servants, in a good measure was­ted. The loss, however, is too trifling not to be worth some years of trial; for two or three guineas a year is no consideration compared with the difference of five or six horses performing a fair year's work, or but an indifferent one. If plowing, for instance, be calcula­ [...] [Page 96] day is two shillings in two ploughs, or thirty-six pounds a year, besides the profit upon it, and the chances in favour of catching seasons; and although the team is not employed always about plowing, or harrowing, yet in all works the difference is the same, and very great the amount. If forty shillings or three pounds can be spent, so as to gain fifty pounds, it certainly is sufficient in­ducement to try; or even five-and-twenty.

Another method I have thought of, is to employ none but labourers; and have no kind of work but what is done by the piece. In Suffolk there is scarcely a spe­cies of employment that is not reduced to a common price. In this way the gentleman should draw up a list of every kind of work, and the prices he will give for each article; which should be, if any thing, a little above the standard. This paper should be pasted up in the room where the labourers victual, or in some other common place, where it may be at any time seen. These prices should be accurate, and, in case of work not common, well considered, for they should be ne­ver varied on any pretence whatever. All work that employed the teams should have this proviso [...] that the oxen should be fed, and the horses fed and cleaned in­to the bargain.

If any work occurred in which it was found that a price could not be fixed, in proportion to the manner in which it should be performed, the gentleman, if he did not approve the offers of the men, should hire others occasionally to do such work.

This method has many very great advantages, and some disadvantages; of the latter, the principal would be the necessity of watching all their operations with a very strict eye, to see that well doing was never sacri­ficed to quick doing. Among the benefits may be rec­koned the certainty of the teams paying well for the ex­pence of keeping them; and I must remark that this is a principal object in husbandry; for as matters are com­monly managed by servants, the horses of a farm eat up [...] [Page 97] propose, there would be no fear of having them idle; they would be always employed, and every day's work would be a good one; a rood at least, and half an acre many times, they would regularly plow more than any gentleman's horses in the country. But in this manage­ment they should in reason have a greater allowance of oats than common.

In dubious seasons, particularly seed times, the ad­vantages of this conduct would be immense, so every kind of work would be carried on as fast as the master himself could wish, which is never the case, by ma­ny—many degrees in other systems. It is impossible, upon the whole, to determine which method would be most suitable in all places, for in some the first would be preferable, and in others the latter. The greatest difficulty with the labourers would be in places where very few parts of country business are reduced by com­mon practice to a price by the piece.

But whatever method of conducting the labour of a gentleman's farm was pursued, there are several means of smoothing difficulties, and introducing order and re­gularity into employments of all sorts; and these are ap­plicable to both large and small farms, tho' more so to the former.

Among other particulars of this sort, I should advise a gentleman to have all his working hands rung out and home by a bell. A large bell should be fixed on the top of one of the buildings, which should ring up the men of a morning, and out a second time with their horses harnessed, themselves mounted (the sacks of seed, i [...] sowing time, ready) for the call to march forth to work. Whenever a field was finished plowing, all ploughs, harrows, &c. should be brought home; and when [...] new one was began the ploughs, &c. should also be on the sledges ready with the men and horses to fol­low, wherever the bailey leads them. If tillage is not the work, or only part of it, the other teams should al­ways be under the same management; they should be in the waggons, carts, &c. ready to start with the [...] [Page 98] All that were not in order for the call should be repri­manded, and a minute made of it in the bailey's poc­ket-book (one kept for that purpose.)

At a proper time, for instance, after eight or nine hours work, the bell should be regularly rung again, to call them home from the fields; and no team suffered to come home on any pretence whatever till the bell rung, nor for any weather; because if that required them to come home, the bell should be rung accord­ingly. Some works will admit of a variation in this re­spect, in which case a boy should be sent to such teams; but none ever suffered to leave work without a direct order, either by bell or otherwise. In case of any fail­ing in this part of their duty, a minute, as before, to be made of it. About half an hour after the bell should ring again for dinner; and in an exact hour it should ring them out from dinner.

In a considerable business it would much favour the general design of this regularity, if each team had a se­parate set of implements assigned to it. For instance, each stable to hold four or six horses, and each to have a shed adjoining for a waggon, two or three carts, three ploughs, and two pair of harrows. This would occa­sion no extra expence of implements, for they ought undoubtedly to be in such plenty, that all the teams may at any time be thrown to one sort of work; if this is not the case, business will suffer often.

Once every quarter of a year the day's work should be half abridged, to have a general review; but none of the men should know of this day before the ringing of the bell which called them home so much before their time. As soon as arrived, an order should be given to bring forth each set, his implements, their horses harnassed, their oxen yoaked, their spades, sho­vels, forks, &c. all numbered to the number of the team. All of them called for by a catalogue, and ex­amined; deficiencies noted in the black book; the same with every thing out of order, or that carried any marks of carelessness. The cattle attentively examined to see that none were lame; that they were in good health; [Page 99] and that they looked well fed and cleaned; and, in all respects, as they ought. In the whole examination, every thing good and bad should be minuted, and car­ried to each man's account, in the same manner as be­fore mentioned, respecting the work. When the whole was finished, the gentleman should come out on horse­back, with some little parade, (and attended by any company that he might have with him) to make the oc­casion something solemn in the eyes of the people.

He should draw up in front of the line of teams, and call on the bailey to read over the account, beginning with Team, No. 1. As soon as every account was finished he should give a little harangue (with much solemnity in accent and manner) of praise or condemna­tion, according to the merits of the case; and, if the former order them a proper reward. For which pur­pose certain things should be ready—suppose a parcel of new clothes of all sorts, to be divided with a small sum of money to each man.

If, on the contrary, a man has been found faulty, he should be reprimanded; and the great difference pointed out between a faithful servant who meets with his master's praise and rewards, and an idi [...] or a care­less one that receives his displeasure.

In case the account of any of them has been very black and that for more reviews than one, he should order him to be discharged on the spot, with marks of disgrace.

To the first man of that number, which upon the last four annual reviews has most merit upon the whole, the most valuable testimony, with his name engraven on it, and the occasion. Some piece of household furniture, or any thing better that could be contrived. And wherever particular merit was found, an advance of wages should commence.

Some may think this a system of trifling; but from observations I have in every respect made on the tem­per of these people, I have reason to be confident the effect would be very great. It would be absurd to prac­tise [Page 100] it in a small business; but when from fifteen and twenty to a hundred servants are kept, it would give such an air of novelty and liveliness to the business, that the fellows (some few excepted) would themselves like it not a little. And the assigning implements to each team, and making the men answerable for their being always in good order, and the harness, &c. &c. the same, would keep all these matters in thorough repair; whereas, in the common course of business, work of importance frequently stands still, that something or other may be mended: a defect not discovered till just the moment the thing is wanted.

With respect to the horses, the benefit of it would be of very great consequence; for the men would have a great inducement to use them well, to be careful of lameing them to keep clean and free from all distem­pers that arise from neglect. A master that thinks such a point not of importance, knows but little of business.

This conduct would have a vastly greater effect than all the hard words and scolding that could be given from one seven years end to another. Country-fellows are so accustomed to this sort of [...]orrection, that they are absolutely hardened to it. To be obeyed some me­thod must always be pursued that is new to them. Even the conduct I propose, would presently grow a matter of custom, and be unheeded, were it not for the re­wards and punishments; the variety and substance of which would ever keep up the attention of the men; for a handsome present, and a rise of wages, are such striking affairs in their eyes, that they would never be brought to disrelish the institution.

Suppose a gentleman, who carries on a very consi­derable business, expended in this manner twenty or thirty pounds a year. A single man costs him above twenty pound [...], and can he suppose that the difference between the ready obedience, the uncommon regularity thrown into every thing the great quantity of extraordi­nary work performed, the unnusual order all his imple­ments, harness, &c. are kept in, the security of his draught [Page 101] cattle from abuse and in being thoroughly taken care of, can he think, that the difference between these and many other articles and common management, are not of more importance than the work of one man? May I not say (in a considerable business) than that of five?

Another oeconomical point in a gentleman's manage­ment, which I take to be of much consequence, is to convert the product of his farm into as few articles of sale as he can, consistent with his profit.

A bailey has a greater opportunity of being a knave in buying and selling than in any other part of the busi­ness, for which reason that part of his employment should be contracted as much as possible. And if no [...] is employed a gentleman will find it a disagree­able part of his business; and▪ consequently, the same reason for reducing it to as small a compass as possible.

Wheat cannot be consumed upon the farm, nor con­verted into any thing else, for this reason it must be sold as other farmers do; not, however, in dribs of twenty sacks at a time; to have twenty or thirty markets to go to, and as many bargains to make; but all laid up in a gr [...]nery, and as soon as the whole crop is threshed, sold by one sample, and in one parcel. Which conduct would reduce the trouble of a gentleman's selling it him­sel [...], whether he had or had not a bailey, to a mere tri [...]le. It would likewise be of some consequence in the price; for wheat sells, in general, better during the summer, than the winter. One cannot move one's length in matters of farming, without finding something [...]or other that requires money in plenty. The conduct n [...]w in question is, undoubtedly, very beneficial; but, [...]f the gentleman did not at first appropriate a sufficient sum of money to the purpose of husbandry, he will find himself too much cramped for the want of it, to be able even to sell his corn when most suitable. Nothing can go on as it ought, if a farmer is ever for a single hour, in want of an hundred pounds.

Of oats no more should be sown than wanted for the horses.

[Page 102] Barley, pease and beans, should all be appropriated to fatting hogs, which (manure considered) will pay, better than selling them at market, all expences of car­riage, &c. &c. &c. taken into the account, besides the circumstances of trouble, and taking the sale out of the bailey's hands.

Potatoes should be applied to the same use.

Carrots may either be given to the hogs, or to any other sort of cattle.

Natural and artificial grasses, green and in hay, cab­bages, turneps, &c. &c. are all convertible into beef and mutton. A dairy is much more complex: but if it proves more profitable than other cattle, conveni­ence must in that, and other circumstances, give way to profit.

There are [...]wo methods of selling cattle: both are at­tended with little trouble, nor is the bailey trusted in either. One is by driving them up to Market for sale by the salesman; the other, by advertising an auction twice a year one about the middle or the latter end of April, for all sorts of beasts that have been fatted in the winter; hogs included. The other in autumn for such as have been summer fatted.

There are many situations in which it is not profitable to drive to Market; and others in which it is peculiarly so. One of these methods will suit every part of the kingdom. In case of the latter, in a few years, many butchers, &c. would depend on the auction, and regu­larly account, on purchasing at it. But, at all events, a gentleman should absolutely reject the low dirty way of making twenty or thirty different bargains with coun­try butchers; an odious work for himself, and the great­est source of villainy, when in the hands of a servant, that can be invented. The advantages of selling by auction are so many, that they will more than balance a lower price than separate bargains would gain; for that leaves no bad debts, the money is all paid at once; there are no expences of driving, nor falling off in flesh by it; and all sorts of commodities are sold, good, bad, and indifferent.

[Page 103] If cows are not kept for a dairy, all the products of a farm may be re [...]uced to, 1. Wheat▪ and 2. Cattle all the first sold in one bargain and the second carried all to two accounts, a salesman for hogs, and another for sheep and beasts, or sold at two auctions; by which me­thod, the gentleman's trouble is reduced almost to no­thing, whether he has or has not a bailey. A simplicity in business is valuable of itself; for when products are of such a great variety that they cannot be united in sale, some trifling matter is for ever calling for that attention which should be employed on matters of importance.

Another point of some consequence in a gentleman's oeconomical management, is house keeping, so far as it concerns the farm. Except in the greatest houses, where different tables are spread for different ranks of servants, all live in the same manner; and no gentle­man should imagine that farming will answer while the people that carry it on are fed in the same manner as family servants This is another of those points which, at first sight, may by some be thought trivial, but is really of importance. When only one or two men are kept the grievance is not worth nothing, (although the loss▪ it should ever be remembered, in most points is proportioned to the farm▪ but when many are employ­ed the case is very different.

In large farms, that employ from four or five ser­vants, and upwards, it is certainly adviseable to have a house kept separately for them; any distinct office, for a kitchen: with chambers or rooms annexed▪ in which they may all be lodged and fed, under the directions of the bailey; with no intercourse of any kind allowed between the family and them; whoever keeps many men, will find something of this management highly re­quisite. There is no slight satisfaction in knowing ex­actly what every thing costs one; and particularly so in farming, in which it is absolutely requisite, for the sake of clear and exact accounts; but such cannot be effec­ted, if a family and farming men are mixed together; for in what manner can their board be calculated with tolerable accuracy?

[Page 104] I shall conclude this sketch with a few remarks on the necessity of gentlemen's conducting their agriculture with spirit, if they would have it profitable; or if they would even have it truly amusing. Let them manage in what manner they please, yet common farmers, who are not above working themselves, will, in numerous cases, have the advantage▪ it should, therefore, be the gentleman's business to balance that advantage by others, which it is not probable the farmer should command.

He ought, above all other points, so to proportion his land to his money, that he may never be disabled from practising, in all cases, what he has reason to think is right.

He should adopt the culture of such profitable vege­tables as are not common in husbandry, if his soil is proper for them, which can scarcely be doubted

Respecting all tillage crops, he ought to lay it down as an universal rule, that none should ever be sown or planted if the soil is not in excellent order to receive them; that he may ensure as far as it is possible, good crops. He ought, at all events, to determine to keep constantly a great stock of cattle in proportion to his farm, as a sure fund of profit both in themselves, and in the article of manuring. He should adopt some par­ticular system of conduct relative to labour and a bai­ley, that may obviate the great evils commonly result­ing from gentlemen's management in that point. He should, on many accounts, reduce the products of his farm to as few articles of sale as possible.

These points, it should be observed are very appli­cable even to gentlemen who farm chiefly for amuse­ment; for if a farm be merely an experimental one, yet it is highly expedient to banish all confusion, for I know of no diversion that arises merely from a want of order. And let a man's fortune be ever so considerable a cer­tain degree of oeconomy is necessary, even in pleasure. If a gentleman, without any attention of this sort, can try an hundred experiments annually, by means of a sum he appropriates to agriculture; with proper ma­nagement, [Page 105] that hundred may be doubled or trebled and no extraordinary expence incurred; and these, [...] think, are matters well worth the attention of those who practise husbandry, whatever be their motive.

ESSAY VI.
Of the cheapest way of manuring land.

THERE are so very few farms situated on soil [...] that are rich enough to need no manuring, that the enquiry what manure is cheapest, is certainly one of consequence. It may be laid down almost as a max­im, that there is no farming without manure, and that in plenty too; for the difference is so very great be­tween the crops from land that is in good heart, and those from a poor exhausted soil, that the comparison is almost beyond calculation. It should never be for­gotten that the expence of cultivation is the same upon the latter as the former. Plowing, harrowing, seed, sowing, rolling, water-furrowing, reaping, harvesting, and carting, when these are the same upon a field that yields two quarters per acre, as upon another that yields five; what prodigiously superior profit must arise from one, over what is received from the other!

But the necessity of thorough manuring may, in part, be gathered from the practice of all good husbandmen, from the earliest account of time. Now, common far­mers are in no circumstance apt to be spirited, unless the profit has nothing equivocal in it▪ and we find them, throughout the kingdom, very anxious in procuring manure; however faulty and short sighted they may be in some respects concerning its management, one can­not object to them a false idea of its importance; but a too great eagerness to gain the benefit of it in a num­ber of successive crops.

[Page 106] The grand dispute, in this matter, is the method of procuring manure, the variations of which are extreme­ly great▪ different almost in every situation. The pre­sent point is not, therefore, to treat of every practice, which would require a volume, but to sketch them in general, with a few remarks on the means of supplying the capital articles, where they are not to be [...]ad.

Marle may be called the prince of manures; both for the degree of fertility which it occasions, the time it lasts, and the lowness of the expence. In those coun­tries where it is most profitably used, a manuring with marle, that lasts good twenty years, costs from fifty shil­lings to four pounds four shillings, which is surprisingly cheap. Supposing the price four pounds, it is just four shillings per acre per annum; which may be called one plowing a year. Now, let the writers on the New Husbandry consider this state of the case, and reflect whether their system of manuring be reasonable or not. Monsieur Duhamel, or Monsieur du Chateauvieux, [...] forget which, advises the countryman, when he is abou [...] to manure his land, to calculate the expence of it and lay out the sum in tillage; assuring him that the latter will pay him much better than the former. Praising one part of good husbandry in exclusion of another, is the absurdity of those only who give into the hypothe­tical rage of system, which is alone sufficient to darke [...] and perplex the clearest minds.

Tillage and manure are both absolutely necessary, and that, perhaps, in proportion to each other▪ fo [...] manure, from its vegetative power, makes the seeds o [...] weeds to sprout so quickly, that▪ unless excellent tillag [...] be given, the soil can never be clean But to thin [...] that one or two ploughings annually can possibly equa [...] the benefit of marle▪ is an evident absurdity.

Clay is, I apprehend in no respect equal to marle except the duration of the benefit received from it▪ the degree of fertility it confers is not comparable to tha [...] of marle; but a very good clay certainly equals and ha [...] been found to exceed an indifferent marle; the expenc [...] is the same.

[Page 107] Chalk is used in many parts of England with a suc­cess equal to that of any marle under the sun; but it is very observable, that wherever this manure is so ve­ry excellent, it is universally the fat, soft, soapy kind; quere, therefore, whether that sort and marle be not the same thing under different names? The expence of this manure varies like that of marle. It lasts as long.

Lime, I apprehend, is the most common and gene­ral manure of any that is used in England. It is so much valued in many parts of the kingdom, that the farmers think no management will do without it; but it is very observable, that we experimentally know little of its real utility. The few trials that have been pub­lished on it, prove rather against it. It is said to be much of that nature which is requisite for assisting the earth in yielding its fertility, but gives no increase. However, but little is well known concerning it; upon some soils there can be no doubt of its being exceeding­ly beneficial, particularly the black moory, peat-earths, and boggy lands; and this seems to prove the justness of the abovementioned observation, for these soils cer­tainly abound much in vegetative virtue, but are greatly in want of being enabled to exert it. The expence of liming, in various parts, is so extremely different, that it is impossible even to sketch any thing like a medi­um. It rises from ten shillings to ten pounds. Lime no where lasts long; two or three years, and, in many places, only one, are the common duration of the be­nefit.

Dungs of all kinds are much affected, and with great reason, by the farmers. The general method is to fod­der the straw of the crop in a yard adjoining the barns, where all sorts are collected together, forming a com­post, the chief part of which is rotten straw; the benefit every one finds from it is very great; but in the quan­tities commonly used, viz. from ten to thirty loads, the fertillity it occasions does not last long; it is a common notion that land should be manured with it every three years; in some places four. The expence is difficult [Page 108] to calculate, as it costs the farmer nothing but carriage, and perhaps turning over.

In the neighbourhood of many cities and towns, far­mers buy all sorts of stuff they can get; but this is by no means so general as it ought.

It is not my present busines to give a complete cata­logue of manures. I would only sketch a few of the principal by way of a guide to direct in the considera­tion of some that I shall propose. I therefore pass over, without mention, a number that are not material in that light.

There are many situations that either cannot com­mand marle chalk, clay, lime; or they are upon such soils as they do not agree with; in such places, we gene­rally see the farmers confine themselves to their yard dung, or to the folding their sheep, if it is the custom of the country; unless they are near a town that affords much manure, and it is common to purchase it.

Such a situation is unfavourable to husbandry, and a good farmer ought to contrive some method or other for remedying such an evil. The grand one which I shall in this case recommend, is the keeping a great stock of cattle, and the purchasing as much straw and stubble as possible; and this method of raising manure is, I am confident, the cheapest that can in many places be practised. But the general idea is very contrary, [...]nsomuch that nothing is more common (and indeed the [...]ore favourable to such cultivators as have the spirit to act differently) than to see the farmers selling their straw to whoever will buy it. This certainly shews a very false notion, but I do not think it proves against the proposition; for it is to be observed, that few farmers keep half the cattle they ought, and consequently many of them cannot convert their straw into manure with any profit, consequently they are obliged to sell it; and this is so often the case, that I doubt not but the prac­tice is often thought the result of choice, when it is the mere effect of necessity. This is one of the many bles­sed effects of their overstocking themselves with land; [Page 109] until they cannot afford to buy cattle even to convert their own straw into manure. There cannot be a more fatal error, or one that is more likely to end in a far­mer's ruin. It is much like letting their flocks of sheep out for their neighbours to sold at so much per week, which is practised in some places, and I doubt not but in others they sell their yard dung.

A quantity of straw turns with a good many cattle to much more dung t [...]an many would at first imagine. I have found, by experiment, that twenty-seven head of cattle will convert sixty-five loads of straw and hawlm (besides what they eat of it) into about three hundred loads of dung.

Hawlm, or wheat stubble, sold for six shillings or seven shillings a load, and straw, at an average, of all sorts and seasons, at about twelve shillings. Each of the above sixty-five loads made about three and one half of dung. Horses well littered yield from twelve to seventeen loads of dung per horse.

Five loads of straw, and four of stubble, were con­verted by eighty-eight fat hogs into ninety loads of very rotten dung But they had not litter enough; they would have made twelve or fifteen loads more into ma­nure. As it was, the straw made ten loads for one. I have found in these, and other proportions, that the manure is excellent; but that from the hogs much the best.

Let us now calculate the expence of manuring in this manner. We must calculate that the cattle in the yard eat none of the straw, because what they eat should be carried to account of their nourishment, and not that of manure; this matter will be stated plainly, if we cal­culate the dung as five to one. The loads of dung, cart loads of forty bushels; and those of straw, large waggon loads.

One hundred loads of straw will make five hundred of dung; the expences will be as follows:

This is about 2 s. 4 d. per load, spread on the land▪ but it is observable, I have charged the teams at 1 s. per horse, carts, and man, which is what they may be [...]ired for in most countries▪ and much beyond what they cost the farmers. This circumstance will near, if not quite, reduce it to 2 s. per load▪ but whether it is called 2 s.—2 s. 2 d. or 2 s. 4 d. is no great matter, for all are sur­prisingly cheap. Twenty loads per acre of this com­post come but to 2 l. and the benefit may certainly be calculated at four years duration in great heart I should choose to renew at the end of four years; but the land would, beyond a doubt, be perpetually on the increase of fertility. The expence is therefore ten shil­lings per acre per annum.

Marle was found to be 4 s. per acre for twenty years duration. At first sight this may appear to be vastly cheaper than the dung; but nothing is more true than the contrary. For three years after marling, the be­nefit is not so considerable as when the marle is become well mixed with the soil. The first year it is nothing; the second it begins to come into play; the third a be­nefit is found from it, though not equal to the fourth, fifth, &c. and the five last years of the twenty, the ef­fect [Page 111] is nearly worn out. The soil may always be the better for it, but nothing comparable the last five years to the preceding It holds, therefore, in great [...]igour twelve years. This circumstance adds not a little to the 4 s. per acre. But farther:

It is to be much questioned whether marle, in its best state, any where yields an increase of product equal to that which such a manuring of dung▪ as I have menti­oned will occasion. There are soils wherein it would undoubtedly beat the dung, if the latter was tried on the same: for instance, light sands. But that compari­son would be useless▪ the dung is proposed as a succe­daneum to those manures which cannot be had in any plenty; that is, for the use of farmers who have neither marle, chalk, or lime, viz. those in general who occu­py loams and clays.

Upon such soils five manurings of my dung compost, each 20 loads▪ or 100 in the twenty years, will I am confident infinitely exceed the marle on any soil what­ever. With proper management, of not cross-crop­ping, such a manuring will make a loam yield upon an average of the twenty years, from five to six quarters per acre of all sorts of corn▪ which marle will never near equal in the best ten years of its twenty. Land so manured with dung wants no other manuring but the finest marled lands require every now and then a ma­nuring of dung, ashes, oil-cake, &c. &c. which, if it was added to the first expence, would raise it much, but the benefit is calculated on the supposition; indeed I know of no country where the farmers trust solely to their marle. The sheep-fold is another instance of ad­vantage they have, which the dunged soil is not suppo­sed to enjoy, because upon such soils the farms are, in general, too small for a fold.

It is from these considerations, or rather facts that I venture to pronounce the method here proposed to be cheaper than even marle, which has always been rec­koned the cheapest of all manures. But there remains another way to calculate it: I before supposed straw to [Page 112] be bought; but stubble is much cheaper, and to be had, in most places, in much greater quantities.

This does not amount to 1 s. 9 d. a load, notwithstand­ing the teams are charged at a hiring price. A farmer, I am confident, would manage to reduce this to 1 s. 6 d. But whether he did or not it is plain the expence of the manuring is vastly reduced from the preceding cal­culation: and consequently, the remarks made on that, are much stronger with respect to this case.

I shall, in the next place calculate the expence when the manure is made by fatting of hogs.

This is exactly 1 s. 3 d. per load, and the teams charg­ed at the hiring price, as before. It is needless to re­mark, that the expence would, in practice, be much reduced. Twenty loads per acre of this excellent com­post would cost no more than 25 s. I may fairly ven­ture to pronounce it the cheapest of all methods of ma­nuring land.

It is to be remarked, that where young ling, fern, brakes, &c. &c. are to be procured in large quantities, they may be in part substituted in the room of stubble; [Page 113] but the latter deserves more account for its general plen­ty; and particularly as the method of converting it to any use is unknown, I apprehend, in three-fourths of the kingdom; in which parts the farmers would most readily sell it by the acre extremely cheap; an oppor­tunity almost invaluable to those who have the sense and penetration to purchase all they can; and is, be­yond a doubt, the quickest, and cheapest, and best method of improving poor soils, and carrying good ones to the highest point of fertility.

But for executing plans of this sort, great stocks of cattle are requisite, hence the truth of the remark I have so often made▪ that without plenty of cattle there can be no good husbandry. If a man comes to a farm much worn out and damaged by bad management, he ought certainly to convert the chief of it to producing cabbages, turnips, carrots, potatoes, &c. &c. and as fast as he got any part of it by their means into good heart, to lay down large quantities with artificial gra [...]ies▪ by which means he will be able to keep great stocks of cattle; and this again will enable him profitably to pur­chase straw and stubble of his neighbours; a train of management that will inevitably bring all his farm into most excellent order and fertility; and whenever he thinks proper to sow corn, ensure him from one acre, as much as his predecessors gained from ten.

The bringing manures from neighbouring cities and towns, is an excellent custom: but in respect of cheap­ness, is not to be named with that I have just sketched. Two shillings and six-pence a cart l [...]d, or five shillings a waggon load, are common prices of dung, &c. &c. And for foot, ashes, malt-dust, woollen rags, bones, &c. the price is exceedingly high; it is true, the quan­tity of the latter spread on an acre is small; but yet all of them are well known to be dear manures; and, at one mention, plainly more expensive than those which I have sketched. Hog dung, clear of all mixture, may be had for 1 s. 6 d. a load, by buying stubble, and as good as for 2 s. 6 d. bought in a town; besides all the expences of carriage.

[Page 114] From the considerations, therefore, which have oc­curred to me, as well as from my own practice, I have the greatest reason to believe that buying straw or stub­ble to litter great stocks of cattle, much the cheapest and most effectual way of manuring land.

ESSAY VII.
Of the comparative profit of cultivating different soils.

A Person that has a sum of money to dispose of, throwing it into farming, has, surely, great rea­son to be very attentive to the soil on which he fixes; unless all soils, with equal management, are equally profitable; which can scarcely be conceived. I shall suppose, in the following enquiry, that the rent of every species of land is strictly fair, on an average value.

The variations of the fair rent of arable land may be limited, I think, between 1 s. per acre, and 30 s. both which are, at least, much in extremes; but in a more common way, the variations rise from 5 s. to 20 s.

Some peculiar spots may let for two, three, four, or five pounds per acre; but to take in such instances, would confound all the general utility of such an enqui­ry as this.

It is necessary, when we speak of the variations of produce, to suppose the husbandry good, in a common way; and equally so on all soils. Let us now state a comparison between land at 5 s. and land at 20 s.

In a general way of speaking, I know of no soils in­clinable to stiffness, that is, loams or clays, but what will yield more than 5 s. per acre rent. Lands that let so low, are sands, or light heathy soils, and old im­proved moor lands. It will not be an unfair suppositi­on, to state the average produce of such, as follows:

[Page 115] Of wheat one quarter and a half; but this grain is very seldom sown on such, unless greatly improved.

Of rye two quarters. Of barley two quarters. Of oats two quarters and a half. Of turnips, crops to the value of 20 s. Of clover and rye-grass, crops to the value of 20 s.

I suppose the management good; at least such as is called so among common farmers; but the soils not im­proved with any lasting expensive manure, as such im­provement is always to be reckoned as rent.

Of wheat three quarters and a half. Of barley five quarters. Of oats six quarters. Of beans five quar­ters. Turnips 3 l. Clover 3 l.

But the difference between the products of these soils will not appear in a clear light, unless we state the ex­pences and produce of each. I shall vary the prices of the operation of tillage, &c. wherever I think the dif­ference of soil requires it.

This superiority of the rich land is very great; and yet I believe▪ upon the whole, the account favours the poor land the most. No seasons effect, in any con­siderable degree, the rich soil; whereas unfavourable ones often reduce the product of the other to nothing. Another circumstance of very great consequence is, that the good land from the best of farmers wants no extra improvement; whereas the poor soil will, by such an one, be improved at a great expence. Farther, the latter cannot, by any human power, be made to equal the former▪ that is, the rich soil will for ever keep a head of the other, whatever equal sums be expended upon them▪ and it is capable of being advanced (even proportionably) much farther than the other.

Thus are-there above 500 l. difference between farm­ing 500 acres of land at 5 s. an acre and 500 at 20 s. So little should we be deceived with the idea of land be­ing cheap, because the rent is low. The farmers have a proverb among them, which seems a very true one; A man cannot pay too much for good land, nor too little for bad

Let us next sketch an account of a middling soil, a loam or wet a clay of 10 s an acre▪ these kinds of land are extremely common in most part of the kingdom; the red brick earth soils, the wet gravels, and chalks, many of the lime-stone soils, all let, upon average at [Page 120] 10 s. an acre, and bear much the same crops in point of value. I should calculate them as follows:

Of wheat two quarters and a half Of barley three (after a fallow). Of oats three quarters and a half (af­ter a crop). Of pease two quarters and a half. Clo­ver 2 l. Turnips 1 l. 15 s. on such as are somewhat dry.

A common method in many tracts of country of ma­naging these soils is, to throw them into thirds: one fal­low, one wheat▪ and one barley, oats, and pease.

Another course is in fifths; one fallow, one wheat, one barley, one clover, and one oats. As the latter is more favourable I think than the former, I shall sup­pose it the medium, and calculate it.

If this calculation in any point fails, it is in the wheat crop. I know not whether it should be two quarters or two quarters and a half; perhaps the former. That [Page 122] would reduce the profit to 2 l. 11 s. 5 d. or per annum 10 s. 3 d. however, to split the difference, which will, I believe, be nearest the mark, I shall call it 12 s.

These proportions shew, that the point in question is an important one, and much deserves the attention of all who have the offer of farms on different soils, and are in doubt about which to accept. There is a com­mon notion current, that it matters not what land a man occupies, provided the rent is fair; but this idea is a mere error, and cannot fail of leading those who give ear to it into a dangerous mistake. We find, by these calculations, that the profit is much the greatest from the best land, notwithstanding the greatness of the rent▪ Soils that are hired, merely with a view to improve­ment, are not taken into the account, because the amount of the improvement must be divided into rent, which would be too complex and uncertain an affair; however. I may in general remark, that scarce any will be found so advantageous as rich land, whatever be the rent; unless it is some waste tracts of land truly rich, which is let very cheap from being waste. But such instances are too particular to found general con­clusions upon.

Having given this slight calculation of the profit o [...] three kinds of land, I shall, instead of extending them to greater varieties, offer a few general remarks on th [...] subject, for it is by no means my intention to sift each part of it to the bottom, and to examine and expla [...] every particular relating to it; such a task, however useful it might be, is too extensive for the bounds o [...] such an essay as this. I would aim at exciting the curi­osity [Page 123] of my readers, and prevent their suffering vulga [...] notions and common maxims being the rule of their conduct, without a strict examination of their truth. In a word, my principal design in these sketches, is to start a few hints, and leave the reader to pursue, and adapt them to his particular use.

I began with explaining the idea I had of rent to be the commonly received fair terms usual in a country. Now there are many soils that carry such a rent, to the amount of from 9 s. to 12 s. per acre, that no one can deny being worth the sum, because they would, at any time, let for it. I mean cold, hungry, flat, wet soils, of whatever they may be composed. The lower sort of farmers fallow them for wheat, and then take a crop of oats, and fallow again; or use them in some such un­profitable course, as all that can, without improvement, be made of them. Such soils I should strenuously ad­vise any man from hiring, however low the rent may be, unless for improvement. It is impossible to calcu­late the produce of such soils; scarce one season in twen­ty suits them; in wet years they are nothing but m [...], and yield nothing but weeds; in dry ones, they [...]ake with the sun after rain so that the corn is bound into the ground▪ it is only middling years peculiarly favoura­ble, that can permit these soils to bear a tolerable crop. Now such lands, notwithstanding the height of the rent, which arises chiefly from the ignorance of the neigh­bouring farmers, are so extremely perplexing to ma­nage, so tedious in every operation, and so particularly late, that a man had better hang himself than have any thing to do with them.

The best soil I stated above, was of 20 s. an acre, but I have known many tracts of country that would yield all the crops I there supposed, and let for 15 s. or 16 s. ye [...] acre; at which rent, I need not remark they are particularly profitable.

It is a common notion, that great sums of money are alone to be made by farming open heathy countries; dry soils that let very low, where a man has a great [Page 124] breadth of ground, as the farmers call it, for a little money. And this opinion arises from seeing generally great farms on such soils, which can only be managed by people that have much money. Now great stocks are in all business attended with large profit, and must be so, or they could not exist. Thus the cause is mis­taken for the effect. A man that is worth ten thousan [...] pounds makes much money by farming a poor soil: bu [...] does any one suppose he would not do the same by farm­ing a rich one? It is the great stocks, not the soil, that occasion such great profit. If the comparison is fairly made by a man worth 500 l. fixing on land truly worth 5 s. per acre, neither more nor less, and another worth the same sum, settling on a rich soil fairly worth 20 s. neither more or less, and both equally good farmers for their respective soils, there cannot be the least shadow of a doubt but the latter in ten years, or at any other period, will be worth treble the money of the former.

Rich soils are commonly worse cultivated than poor ones, and, for this reason, they are oftener divided in­to small farms. A little farmer is every where a bad husbandman; he cannot afford to do well by his land; but a great one, having proportionably more money, we every where see to cultivate his soil better. The one keeps scarce any cattle; the other large stocks. Is it not therefore plain, that the common notion of the soil being good, will generally, among the common people, be the result, from large farmers being on it? We see this very strong in the case of single farms; they get a reputation among common farmers almost entirely in proportion to the money made on them. If a man dies rich on a farm, that circumstance will alone let it at an advanced rate. If two or three men have failed in another, nobody will hire it; but if, accidentally, a good manager takes it at a lower rent, and makes much mo­ney, it quickly comes into reputation.

Farmers do not enough consider management and soil; they look only at the substance of those upon it, which is extremely deceitful; for that is totally the ef­fect [Page 125] of good management. An excellent farmer comes upon a miserable soil, he grows rich; when he leaves his farm, an hundred fools are after it at once; he is succeeded by a sloven that is ruined, who thought to grow rich by merely possessing the same farm that ano­ther had made his fortune upon, without considering the vast distance between their methods of cultivation.

The great object is, that industrious men, who prac­tise a spirited and accurate husbandry, should well know the most profitable soil they can six on. Wherever they live, they will be good farmers, and make money; but surely it should be a great object with them to bestow their attention where they will be best paid for it. And that any one may venture to assure himself is upon the best natural soils; the black, rich, crumbly, dry, found deep stapled clay, or stiff loam, the put [...]e solum.

ESSAY VIII.
Of the management of the borders of arable fields.

THIS subject, like many others, may appear to be a matter of no great consequence at first view; but, upon a nearer examination, it will be found to de­serve more attention than any writer upon agriculture has hitherto given it; for, to my present remembrance, I know not a page that ever was bestowed on it.

There are several ways of managing borders. First, they are, in some countries, reduced, by plowing into the very hedge, to nothing but a mere strip of briars and rubbish. Secondly, they are left of various breadths, from two yards to six, over-run with whatever spontane­ous rubbish happens to arise; with heaps of old ditch earth about them, or holes, and inequalities made by carting the ditch earth away. Thirdly, they are kept in order sufficien [...] for mowing the grass on them, when­ever [Page 126] the field is under corn, or feeding it when fallow. Fourthly, they are plowed up regularly, and kept, when the fields are under corn planted with potatoes. F [...]fth­ly, they are dug away eighteen inches or two feet below the surface of the field, and carted on to the land, ei­ther alone, or mixed with dung.

There may be other methods practised in countries, of whose husbandry I am ignorant; but I believe these are the chief.

The first way, that of plowing into the hedge, is open to many objections. A farmer cannot take a view of his corn for any purpose whatever, without riding or walking through it, which cannot be done without da­maging it; and as there are generally many trees in hedges, the corn sown under, or so near them, never pays for half the seed, or other expences; insomuch, that there is not a more common sight than large par­cels of land around a field where the crop is quite sick­ly, stinted and yellow, while the middle of the same field shall be in perfect health and vigour. That this is a pernicious practice, is evident from the very men­tion of it; nothing, I should apprehend, could induce a farmer to it, but finding his borders in so bad a condi­tion, that they would not pay for mowing, and leaving in grass, and therefore thought it better to plow and sow them with corn; but the scantiness and poverty of the crops, one would apprehend, are sufficient to open his eyes in a very few years. The contrary is, how­ever, the case, for most of them persist in, as well as begin the practice.

The second method, or rather confusion, the leav­ing the borders of different breadths, and overrun with whatever rubbish happens to arise, is a most execrable practice; if such farmers were capable of calculating their loss, I think they would avoid so ruinous a custom. It is in part owing to stipulations in leases, which forbid their plowing up borders; so, as they cannot act like the first class of slovens, they are content to remain in a yet worse predicament. Such borders contain, a whole [Page 127] farm taken together, many acres, which are thus left absolutely unprofitable. They cannot, upon a low computation, be reckoned at less than seven acres in one hundred, unless the fields are remarkable large; when they are small, for instance, four, five, six, seven, or eight acred pieces, it amounts to much more. I know several farms where (ditches included) the un­profitable land has amounted to a fifth of the whole. What an immense loss is this▪ and upon soils that let at from 10 s to 20 s. per acre. Suppose it only seven acres in one hundred, it is a most infatuated conduct to pay rent and town charges and tythe, if levied by the acre, for land which yields scarcely sixpence return. Such a deduction from the quantity of profitable land raises the rent of the rest prodigiously. There are many far­mers who would reject a farm upon differing 1 s. per acre in rent, who would immediately take another, wherein they should, in this manner, tax themselves 1 s. 6 d. or 2 s.

Borders left in this slovenly manner, have all the dis­advantages of none at all; that is, of the error I men­tioned first, the plowing close to the hedge; for they are so over-run with hills, and so broken and unequal in the surface, or have so many briars about them, that a man can as well ride or walk on the top of a hedge as through them; so that with all this breadth of waste ground, he has not the power of going round his corn, for whatever purpose he may want it, but must make a path through it as well as the first set I mentioned.

It may be thought that the spontaneous rubbish pays something in firing; but such produce is scarcely suffici­ent to pay the cutting, for it chiefly consists in briars and brambles, and such stuff, and indeed, the com­mon practice of the farmers proves this, for not one in ten ever cuts them at all.

If it be asked why they do not convert them into pro­fitable land, one can only attribute the neglect to po­verty or mistaken oeconomy. Cutting them up will not do, they must be grubbed up, holes must be filled, hills [Page 128] carted on to the land, then the whole well plowed, or, if there are many scattered trees, dug, and perhaps, hay-seeds at last to be sown. What an immense un­dertaking must all this appear to a ma [...] who, for forty years, has never stirred out of a beaten track, but dreams on in the sleep of his forefathers! The work is much too great to be thought of.

The third way of managing borders, that of keeping them in order good enough for mowing when the fields are under corn or feeding, when fallowed, is an ex­treme good one, for, by means of such neat husband­like conduct, no land is lost: the border pays as well as the rest of the field; the farmer can at any time walk about his fields with pleasure, and without any damage, except for about a month before the mowing, and then without doing any mischief comparable to making paths through his corn; besides, the season of full-aged grass is so short, that the time is not of consequence. The beauty of fields (I speak to gentlemen) is much greater; and the whole business receives a convenience and agree­ableness which are very pleasing, at the same time that every point of profit is oeconomically attended to.

The fourth method of planting the borders with po­tatoes, is by no means a despicable one; but the pro­priety of it depends, in a good measure, on the nature of the spot. It is most advantageous in newly grubbed­up borders, that have been for many years over-run with shrubby wood and other rubbish: such land yield­ing very considerable crops, is applied, in this culture, to good profit; but at the same time I must be allowed to remark, that it should only be considered as a pre­paration for laying them down to grass, as a constant practice of it is not so eligible as even grass walks round a field, that admit either feeding or mowing; besides, the trouble of planting, &c. is too great to be executed effectually in any great extent by common farmers. This method is, however, infinitely beyond that of plow­ing every year to the hedge, and sowing corn where none will be produced; or to the execrable practice of [Page 129] leaving the borders in the wild spontaneous state, that of mere unprofitable land.

The fifth way of digging the soil away to some depth, and carting it on to the land, is an excellent one, and of very great utility in many respects. It must be remark­ed by all that concern themselves in husbandry, that the sides of a field, called borders and head-lands, are, where no alteration has been made for many years, vast­ly higher than the level of the field; this is owing to the turning of the plough, which in the course of a num­ber of years, leaves a rising of moulds that occasions this inequality of surface. In fields that are not flat, another reason co-operates, which is, the washings of the higher parts accumulating with bad husbandmen, and, by de­grees, grow into high ridges of soil.

These risings of the border and headlands are very inconvenient, and occasion much useless expence; for in all soils at all inclining to wetness, double water­furrows must be made parallel even with the ditch, and at but a little distance from it; this is totally owing to the artificial height of the land, which renders the ditch unable to perform its office of being the grand water­furrow to every field that has a descent. The use, therefore, of digging away these high lands is manifest, as the fields receive a thorough draining by means of the ditches; and, consequently, no more water-fur­rows requisite than what the general flatness of the land makes necessary. The quantity of earth that arises, and, which, in unlevel fields, may, from its situation, be supposed particularly rich, is also very great; and, either mixed with dung, or carried on alone, proves a source of much rich manuring.

Of these methods, the keeping them smooth and un­der grass, and the digging them away, are the best ma­nagement; but I must propose an union between these two, to form one complete; which is, that the whole border and head-land be dug quite away, and carted on to the land; and to such a depth, that the water may every where (if the land has a descent) run into the ditch [Page 130] without obstruction. After this they should be laid down carefully to grass, and so kept. If in the course of twenty or thirty years they rise again from the couses I before mentioned, the operation should be repeated.

This is a system of managing borders which, I appre­hend, will be found of no trifling use; a very consider­able saving of land will be made, which, in other me­thods, is mere waste. The fields will be much easier drained, and great quantities of excellent manure rai­sed; all points of much importance. If the earth is mixed with dung, it will be so much the better.

A very little observation will, I apprehend, make these remarks sufficiently evident, and shew the prac­tices here recommended to be much superior to the common ones among farmers.

ESSAY IX.
Of the New Husbandry.

THERE is no trifling utility in considering an ob­ject in every light in which it can be placed. The range of experiment, is certainly the grand range of phi­losophy; but in all enquiries something is requisite, even beyond individual experiments. It may be at­tended, perhaps, with some use, to consider the drill husbandry, in the stile of reason, a little independent of particular trials; but I should remark, that I made no slight number of these particular trials; and that I am, in some respects, not the less qualified for offering mere observations.

If any misfortune attends the experiments made by individuals, it is the contraction of their consequences. Suppose a gentleman amuses himself with agriculture, and forms a great number of experiments, it is much to be questioned whether his trials are conducted on [...] [Page 131] more than one kind of soil; perhaps two or three; but they are prosecuted under circumstances, respecting in­genuity, penetration, courage, prudence, wealth, im­plements, sensible servants &c. &c. which are absolute­ly peculiar to the individual; perhaps the overturning one of these particulars destroys the whole set of expe­riments. A man, not possessed of all those advantages, cannot form experiments of equal authority with ano­ther who amply possesses them. No trial can be made that is useless; but what a vast difference in the utility! In a word, the conclusions to be drawn from single ex­periments, admit of infinite variety; and those which are deduced from connected chains of them, with all their authority, prove no more than what concerns one soil, and, perhaps, given modes of culture.

It is very far from my meaning to hint any thing against the propriety, or even the necessity of multi­plying experiments: I am perfectly sensible that nothing can be substituted in their room; all the reasoning [...]pon earth, without them, would be of no avail; and they, in a certain variety, are sufficient to give the force of absolute fact to every point of natural philosophy. All I would venture to insinuate is, that general reasoning and remarks may be of some use in those points, which experiment do not reach, which are numerous.

It is so many years since the first notion of sowing corn, &c. in rows was first started, that writers do not even pretend to decide who was the inventor; but cer­tain it is, that the use of the drill plough never made any progress worth mentioning, till Mr. Tull, perhaps originally (though not very likely in a man of his read­ing) again invented it. He practised it upon an extent of ground far beyond that of any person preceding him. His success, unhappily, is not so clearly to be deter­mined even in the minuteness of a voluminous work. That he was a prejudiced writer, no one can deny; for, from his work, one would be almost led to ima­gine the old husbandry totally inadequate to the wants of mankind; and that the human species, notwithstand­ing [Page 132] all the attention given to cultivating the soil, must be in perpetual danger of starving.

The spirit of drilling died with Mr. Tull, and was not again put in motion till within a few years; perhaps the di­spute between the value of the old and new methods never occasioned half the enquiry it has done within these ten years. Several courses of experiments have been pub­lished, and some of them very ingeniously conducted; but yet the point remains absolutely in dispute. If this mode of sowing be really superior to that in common use, why is it not more spiritedly promoted? What are the circumstances that impede its progress? These ques­tions, though of importance, are not easily decided. Another, which is of equal consequence, is, the effect of the drill culture in general?

A very little attention will discover the causes of the drill husbandry making so slow a progress, even under the supposition of all the merit which the most sanguine of its pursuers assert it to possess. In the first place, the principal reason, of all others, is the insufficiency, real or imaginary, of all the drill ploughs, hitherto in­vented, in performing the complex offices which are requisite in such a machine. For, it is to be observed, the ploughs of this sort which have been offered to the world, how much so ever they may have been cried up by their inventors and particular friends, have been all as much depreciated by others. This, to men of sense, spirit, and general knowledge, may be no matter, be­cause they no sooner meet with difficulties, but they remove them; but to others, who creep on in a more humble stile, and who are necessarily ten times as nu­merous, besides the whole body of common farmers, such difficulties are either in reality or appearance insur­mountable.

The common plough varies prodigiously in different countries; but yet it every where agrees in the great points which farmers expect from it. There is some degree of complexity in the operations which it per­forms; and yet such a simplicity, as to be with great [Page 133] case familiar to the stupidest country clown. It is eve­ry where strong enough to bear the hardest usage, firm and compact in all its parts, and every where to be re­paired without trouble. The variations in the merit of ploughs are found in none of these points; only in de­viations from mathematical principles, in the construc­tion respecting the strength of the draught. If horses or oxen enough are put to them, all ploughs answer their purposes; and hence the grand difference found in them lies in the number of draught cattle used, which varies in almost every county.

Suppose, on the contrary, that the common plough was so complex in its powers, as to render simplicity extremely difficult to be preseved in its construction; that the variety of its parts was so great, and had so little firmness and connection in them, as to render the whole machine unavoidably weak; that the same objec­tions, which rendered it so complex and so weak, made it likewise difficult and expensive to repair; without multiplying these suppositions to a tenth of the extent to which they might be carried, we may venture to de­termine, that husbandry would be at once reduced to infancy, if the common plough remained under these three disadvantages.

Now the drill plough is attended with many other disadvantages, for it is of an high price, very difficult to procure, and, notwithstanding the variety invented, not one of such particular excellency as to be allowed to exceed the rest. In such a situation, is it possible that drilling can flourish? Let us consider the powers which a drill must possess, or the cultivator have more than one.

There is no reason to limit the number of rows sown at a time; the experiments on this point by no means decide that two rows, with intervals, are better than four. I have myself found that three are better than two, in many instances; and, if drilling in equally dis­tant rows, be practised, the more sown at a time, the cheaper and better it is. However, we will suppose [Page 134] the number to be three, and the distances from each to vary from six inches to two feet.

Various seeds require various depths of sowing; tur­nip seed lucerne▪ sainfoin &c. &c. must not be thrown as deep into the earth as beans. Hence the necessity of the drill's shedding the seed to various depths▪ from half an inch to five inches.

The mention of the above seeds reminds us of their size. The apparatus for sowing turnips must be very different from that which drops beans, so that there must be varieties in the parts answerable to such effects.

A coulter to each share is requisite to all drill ploughs; for, however fine the soil may be, yet little obstructi­ons will happen, which should be thrown aside, and not suffered to choak up the shares. It is also neces­sary to have a harrow, or harrows, or teeth, or some contrivance for covering the seeds, which should also act in proportion to the depth at which the seed is to be laid into the ground.

Thus a drill plough must be able to sow any kind of seed, from lucerne and turnips to beans. It must sow one row; two rows at six inches asunder; two rows at one foot asunder; two rows at eighteen inches asunder; two rows at two feet asunder; three rows at six inches; three rows at eighteen inches. It must shed the seed in these varieties from half an inch to five inches deep. And the coulters and harrows must be contrived to va­ry with the distance and depth of the rows.

I will not say such a machine cannot be invented, which is strong enough for the countrymen's use, but I firmly believe the impossibility, without rendering it so heavy as to require several horses to draw it; which, in a hurrying seed-time, is a very great objection. All the drill ploughs I have seen are so weak, that I am confident they would not live a week in constant use, to take the chance of the servant and labourers roughness, like the other machines of a farm. Common ploughs and harrows the fellows tumble about in so violent a manner, that, if they were not strength itself, they [Page 135] would be perpetually dropping in pieces. In draw­ing such instruments into the field the men generally mount their horse, and drag the things after them. In passing gateways, they seldom think of what is behind them: which twenty to one, but they draw against the gate-post. It is, however, of little consequence for the implements are strong enough to bear such usage; but suppose a drill plough treated in the same manner! where is one to be found, with half the powers that I have described, that would not be shattered in pieces?

In a word if a drill be not strong enough to [...]ear all such rough handling it may at once be pronounced good for nothing. Whenever one is offered for exam­ination the first trial I should make of it, would be to whirl it against the ground with all the force I was master of. If it did not stand this, perfectly found▪ I should at once pronounce it not worth a groat Next, I would order my man to bring out a pair of [...]orses, and lead it through the farm, and, if chance did not wrench it against a gate-post, it should receive the blow with design. Such a conduct might be thought at first to be the effect of prejudice▪ and a mistaken idea but I am confident that those who have practised drilling upon any scale not very small, and ever let their drill ploughs be used out of their fight, must have experi­enced the necessity of such an examination. It is equal­ly necessary with the performance of any operation that is required it may as well shed a bushel of [...] where it should drop but a pe [...]k, as not to be strong enough to bear such treatment.

All the powers I above described are absolutely re­quisite to be possessed, in some machine or other▪ by those who would practise drilling on an extensive scale. If they cannot be comprised in one, they must be divid­ed, and no more given to one plough than is consistent with a degree of strength equal to that of the common plough; but this renders a set of drilling machines very expensive, equal, at least, to the sum with which a la­bourer would stock a little farm. With such expensive [Page 136] implements, it would be no wonder that drilling should not flourish.

I have not seen a drill plough that possesses the pow­ers here described, without being weak to a degree of ridicule. The others I have viewed have been wanting in many material points; and all so weak, that with the common usage of farming implements, they would pre­sently be shattered pieces.

It is much to be regretted, that the Society for the Encouragement of Arts. &c. have given over their pre­miums for a drill plough; it is a publick misfortune, if they think such as are hitherto invented, answerable to the wished-for end.

The drill ploughs yet discovered, are either much wanting in some necessary powers, or so weak and com­plex, as to be totally useless in a countryman's hands; and besides, these objections are not only very expen­sive, but, what is worse, difficult to be procured. In such a predicament, who can wonder that this mode of culture should be yet very confined! It is much to be questioned, whether there are annually fifty acres of drilled corn in the whole island of Great-Britain. While the implements with which it is performed remain so ex­tremely imperfect, it is impossible this husbandry should spread; and let me remark, that no gentleman of small fortune, who applies to agriculture as a trade, can with any tolerable prudence, enter into a practice (on a large scale) the execution of which is so full of difficulties, and the profit so very equivocal. Small trials are equally useful to the publick, and much safer to the individual. But it is not the want of a good drill plough alone that prevents the progress of this mode of sowing, other rea­sons yet remain to be mentioned.

A method of culture, that will not do for a large ex­tent of ground, is undoubtedly good for nothing, re­specting general utility. Now there appears to be a dif­ficulty in drilling, which, though I never practised it to near such an extent, I think is an objection of no trif­ling consequence. Suppose a man sows annually two or [Page 137] three hundred acres of barley and oats, and that he is situated either in a clay soil, or a stiff or moist loam. Now those who are the least acquainted with the nature of such soils, must know that the best common husband­ry, hitherto discovered for them, is to sow the spring corn upon a summer fallow on one earth; by which means they are able to take the advantage of the first dry season in the spring to get their seed into the ground; this ensures an early spring sowing, which is almost suf­ficient to counterbalance every other advantage. The success met with in this conduct, proves the justness of the practice; for, in many countries where this method is pursued, they gain, at an average, six, and even se­ven, quarters per acre of barley and oats.

Now let us consider the application of the drill cul­ture to such a point. The soil, notwithstanding the preceding summer fallow, is by no means in a state for drilling upon one earth, it must be stirred three times, consequently three dry seasons are requisite instead of one. As far as reason can carry a man in matters of agriculture, this alone condemns the practice, without one further consideration. He who gives his barley land three spring ploughings, must low late: and, upon wet soils, very late; which is the most pernicious of all evils. But farther:

The land, notwithstanding the ploughings, most be well harrowed to prepare it for the drill; so that the mere sowing requires a horse, or, perhaps, two or three extraordinary; that is, it stops a plough when a good farmer would not let a pair of horses at a gui [...]a a day▪ and this only with one drill plough; but how many are requisite for sowing one or two hundred acres? The land must first receive its tillage, and then be drilled. Now, in many millions of acres, a very heavy shower of rain between those operations, would render another ploughing and harrowing necessary, with time to dry. By midsummer the seed would be in the ground.

With any nice calculation, the delay occasioned by the use of the drill plough might be reduced, on any [Page 138] given number of acres, to some exactness; but that is by no means requisite, for accuracy in such a point is useless, because it depends on seasons, not the minute­ness of calculation. The great object in a spring sow­ing, on such soils, is to catch every dry time, and make the utmost use of it; a method that, at such a critical moment, requires extraordinary ploughings, and har­rowings, or delay in sowing, is far inferior to every other, more compendious in its principles.

This criticalness of season is a new proof of the ne­cessity of excellent machines; if a drill plough was to fail or break in the midst of a dry barley sowing, what delay and vexation!

I apprehend these ideas will appear improper only to those who have no experience of the nature of wet soils. Such are absolutely improper for drilling those vegetables that require an early spring sowing. How­ever well such land may have been summer fallowed, however dry it may have been laid up during the win­ter, yet in the spring it is found sodden, and beaten down with winter rains; when plowed up unless after a long and dry season that has mellowed it as deep as the plough goes) it rises in such an unpulverised state, that however fit it may be for harrowing in broadcast corn, it either is not in a condition for a drill to work, or all the authors who have wrote on the New Husbandry, require a much greater fineness of soil than is really ne­cessary. I could never, in the little experience I have had of drilling, find these unkindly soils fit for the drill plough with only one stirring. I have often fallowed land for barley during a year and half, and yet found that three spring ploughings were necessary to gain any degree of fineness; even a sufficiency to make common farmers allow the soil was in order for clover seed. Nor could I ever get three earths given, and proper harrowings, &c. and sow in April, unless some other part of the business was neglected. It will always be May before the barley is sown. But I here speak only of these cold, flat, wet soils. All this may appear very [Page 139] strange to those who have only farmed light, dry, [...]ound soils, that will admit ploughing all winter.

The utter impropriety of drilling such wet soils in the spring, brings on the necessity of never drilling them with any thing but wheat, as they are too stiff and wet for the midsummer crop, turnips. And this necessity is open to many objections. In the first place, many of the later writers on the New Husbandry assert, that this constant drilling with wheat is not so profitable as a change of crops; but whether it is or not, we certain­ly may pronounce it bad husbandry to have all the corn of a farm to sow at one season; for although the autumn sowing is by no means so ticklish as that of spring, yet it would be extremely dangerous to have a great breadth of ground to drill at once; and the number of draught cattle must be extravagantly great, as nine-tenths of their year's work would be to execute in a month's time. It does not require much reasoning to prove that such a system cannot possibly be equal to a variety of broad­cast crops.

Another circumstance not to be overlooked, respec­ting the practice of the New Husbandry, is the constant attention it requires: a farmer that sows one hundred acres of broad-cast wheat, as soon as the land is water­furrowed, lo [...]ks up the fields, and has nothing more [...] do with them till harvest; his attention is then employ­ed about something else, without being called back per­petually to crops which are never done with. The ope­rations of sowing and covering the seed in the broad­cast method, are very compendious, much land is finish­ed in a little time, and no unusual attention required; whereas, in the drill method, the farmer should attend particularly to the drill plough, to [...] that nothing is out of order, (I am supposing an excellent plough in­vented); that no more or less seed be shed than is re­quisite, and that the plough does not move on after it is empty. Whatever perfection the drill plough is car­ried to, he is an imprudent farmer that does not himself attend it constantly.

[Page 140] When the sowing is finished, the drilled fields, like the rest, require to be well water-furrowed; but in this circumstance, as in many others, a disadvantage lies on the side of the corn in rows. Some writers recommend a horse hoeing to be given before the depth of the win­ter; others assert it to be better to delay it till the first dry season in spring. Every horse-hoeing almost fills up all the water-furrows, consequently they must all be opened afresh, which is an expence; and, what is worse, an attention must be given to it, whatever other business requires the men. Now I have not, in any book of husbandry that treats of the drill culture, met with this remark, or any hint concerning such an operation in the register of experiments published, which looks as if the flat, wet soil had never been tried; for whatever way the seed is sown on [...] land, the crop will depend almost as much on [...] number, depth, and goodness of the water-furrows, as on the seed or soil itself; and in this point the expence of drilling is near double that of the broad-cast crop, and in some instances nearly treble.

When the field is drilled and water-furrowed, then comes a succession of labour, attention, and expence, until harvest, in horse-hoeings, hand-hoeings, and weed­ings, and this throughout the busiest time of the year, in hay-time and the turnip-hoeing season. Now I rea­dily grant that a crop may easily repay all labour of this sort, and with good advantage, but yet the farmer must give uncommon attention to all these operations, which is a burden perhaps as great as the expence, for the number of hands requisite is very considerable, and they must be procured at all events; which is but ano­ther word for saying, that the trouble and expence of getting them are immense.

Turnips are very commonly cultivated, and univer­sally hoed in several counties, by people who make it their particular business, holding to it even through har­vest time; and yet many a farmer that happens to sow twenty acres more than usual, finds the trouble of get­ting [Page 141] them well hoed in time, very great. And is this uni­versal with all articles of labour that employ the men only at particular seasons, and not the year through; which circumstance I take to be another objection to drilling ever becoming common.

That mode of conducting a farm, requires, during summer, a most disproportioned number of hands to those employed in winter, infinitely beyond the dispro­portion of the old husbandry, which is but trifling. The vulgar complaints of a want of people in different parts of the kingdom, I take to be of no account, ex­cept for particular seasons. Let a man's demand for hands be ever so great, provided it be for regular em­ployment the year round, he will, I am confident, find no difficulty in satisfying it; but when, as with the drill culture, five times as many are requisite in summer (the general time of a hurry in business) as are wanting in winter, the inevitable consequence must be either the work's going undone, or the expence extravagant. The evil may not have been felt in the drilled crops that a gentlemen amuses himself with in his experiment field; but when they are multiplied to some hundreds of acres, the case is very different; both the inconve­nience and the expence would then be extremely great.

There is one principle, real or imaginary, of the New Husbandry, which appears to me to be particu­larly pernicious, and that is the idea of the inutility of manures; corresponding with it, is the practice of dril­ling the land every year with wheat, a practice that has been warmly asserted to be superior to all other me­thods of culture. I have endeavoured, in the preced­ing essays, to raise other ideas of the consequence of manures, and to sh [...]w that the very foundation of all good husbandry, is the keeping great stocks of cattle, for the sake of raising a vast quantity of dung. Now the rejection of all this in drilling, I must consider as a very absurd phantasy, rather than the clear effect of un­prejudiced experience; a maxim of pernicious tenden­cy, that can lead to nothing but error. However, it [Page 142] seems to have been coupled with the practice of succes­sive crops of wheat, with much art; for if a farm is so cultivated, from whence can manure arise? The quan­tity of straw is a mere trifle from drilled corn and straw is a matter of great consequence in the raising manure. I have more than once recommended the purchasing a quantity of straw or stubble, and to convert it into ma­nure by large stocks of cattle fed on vegetables raised on porpose; but this system of drilling wheat, banishes every thing of this sort; and, I will venture to assert, will never be found, in any soil under heaven, equal to twenty spirited and judicious variations in the common husbandry.

The capital crops of corn that in one year pay the expences of many, are only to be gained by means of rich manuring; and the peculiar benefit of such hus­bandry, is the vast profit attending the crops that yield nothing but the food of cattle, which pay the farmer equally well, and, in many cases, vastly better than the richest ones of corn; and in this husbandry, every part of the farm being under crops of various sorts, that re­quire very different treatment, much fewer horses or oxen are necessary for its culture, than if it was all un­der one grain; and, at the same time, the labour of such a farm is so equally divided, that no more is want­ing at one time of the year than another; consequently there is always a certainty of labour, and at a fair price. I know not how to strain my imagination so far, as to conceive greater benefits flowing from the contraries of these practices.

There appears, upon the whole, many reasons for thinking that the New Husbandry can never make any great progress; and also for supposing that there is no very great reason to wish it should, especially upon the system of successive crops of the same grain.

If, however, we reverse the medal, and confine the drill culture to certain plants peculiarly adapted to it, we shall find much to commend; and in such articles of cultivation may be included all crops in rows, al­though transplanted—to instance the following.

[Page 143] Beans succeed admirably in it, and excel the crops in the broad-cast way prodigiously; and this I think is quite consistent with reason, for the stalks are so strong, that they are never beat down, nor even bent much, so that the horse-hoeing is performed without any ob­struction, and with great effect. This vegetable is like­wise of a ravenous nature, the roots very strong and penetrat [...]g, so that banking them up, by plowing be­tween the rows, increases the quantity of their food with a much greater effect than with tenderer and weak­er vegetables, whose roots have not the like power of searching for and seizing their nourishment.

Turnips are likewise cultivated with much profit in the drill method; but we should remark not with such superiority over the broad cast mode, as with beans. There is reason to believe the broad cast will equal, and sometimes even exceed the drills: but numerous experiments have not yet been laid before the public, sufficiently to decide this point in a clear manner. In grounds inclinable to moisture, wherein it is an advan­tage to have the turnips in rows on the crowns of ridges, the drill method must far exceed the broad-cast. The observations on the luxuriance of beans are applicable to this root, which renders it profitable to cultivate in rows.

Cabbages cannot be compared in promiscuous cul­ture, either to that of being drilled where they are to remain, or to being transplanted in rows. This is a much more ravenous and luxuriant feeder than either beans or turnips; it will grow to a size proportioned to the richness of the soil, and will succeed even in a dung­hill; the vast strength of the roots is admirably adapted to penetrate all around, and feed upon the fresh moulds thrown to them in horse hoeing. I have no conception that hand hoeing can ever equal, to such a vegetable, the power of horse-hoeing.

I do not include carrots and parsnips in this list, be­cause there are no experiments extant of sufficient au­thority to decide their being better in the drill method, than in the broad-cast.

[Page 144] Lucerne, though cultivated in numerous methods to uncommon profit. I apprehend will never be found (duration included) to answer in the broad cast mode, near so well as in drilling and transplanting. The ac­curate attention which is given to crops in rows, in clearing them most perfectly from weeds, and keeping the soil in a fine state of pulverization, cannot fail of having great effects upon a vegetable so tender, and yet so luxuriant, as lucerne. No plant is more injured by weeds, and bad management in general; nor any that feeds with greater luxuriance, when managed with care and spirit.

Sainfoin, there is reason to believe, would repay as much attention as is given to lucerne; but it being a much hardier vegetable, it succeeds extremely well un­der common management, which has prevented its cul­ture upon a more expensive plan.

These vegetables, and perhaps a few others of which I have not had experience, there is little doubt will suc­ceed better under the New Husbandry than the Old▪ whereas wheat, barley, oats, and pease, are in their nature contrary, and have many circumstances attend­ing them which render drilling and horse-hoeing incon­venient, and not of much use. And this should mo­derate the fiery exclusive advocates for both, and induce them to allow, that because drilling is in many cases an admirable practice, that therefore it ought totally to be received, in exclusion of every thing common. Cul­tivating perennials in rows, and making drilled annuals, fallow crops, or a preparation for broad-cast corn, seems to be much the most adviseable conduct, as it an­swers most of the objections which lie against the drill, upon a very large scale. Not, however, that I pre­sumed to offer reasoning upon a point that experiment can alone determine, without one circumstance to de­fend me▪—such a train of experiments as can be taken for a guide in considering the New Husbandry at large, and supposed to be extended over a whole country, is not likely to be made soon; and as to those which a gen­tleman [Page 145] may make for his amusement, viz. ten or twenty acres, it is much easier to multiply the result upon pa­per to one thousand acres, than to extend it in reality. Perhaps he drills ten acres of wheat, and finds it to yield such a profit. Does it, therefore, follow that five hun­dred should do the same? Nothing farther. In ten acres no inconveniences of labour may be met with, nor any extra horses kept; but these circumstances, in five hundred acres, would alone overturn, perhaps, half the profit. It is therefore in default of experiment, that I venture to offer reasoning. And as I profess particu­larly to treat in this sketch of oeconomical matters, the idea I have ventured to explain, may, in that respect, be of no trifling utility to a young practitioner. Such a one will find the New Husbandry restrained to the cul­ture of some vegetables, of excellent profit? but enlarg­ed, to include the total management of a farm, he would probably find it, if not his ruin, at least extremely un­profitable.

ESSAY X.
Of Experimental Agriculture.

FORMING experiments in husbandry is so much the taste of the present age, that perhaps it may not be amiss to offer a few remarks on the manner of conducting trials of this sort: and to enquire how far they are consistent with the oeconomical management of a farm.

I shall in the first place venture to affirm, that not one comparative experiment in fifty is of pure, literal▪ and genuine authority; and yet comparative trials are▪ perhaps, the most useful of all Suppose it be demand­ed which mode of sowing barley, the drill, or the broad­cast, be must beneficial▪ For this purpose, two spots of [Page 146] land of equal size, and of a most perfect quality in goodness, must be fixed on; the exposure, neighbour­hood of ditches, trees, &c. &c. must be the same in both; the preceding crop, the preparatory culture, and every other circumstance. Now if the field be a large one, in all probability every one of these points will be unobserved, and the articles of culture, ploughing, har­rowing, mowing, &c. &c. be peformed at different times, and, consequently, the comparison unfair: for a farmer must have a vast number of men and horses in­deed to carry on such an experiment in large. For these, and a thousand other reasons, two roods of land would, in many soils, be a much better comparison, than two pieces each of twenty acres. And this cir­cumstance is extremely favourable to experimental hus­bandry, as it greatly lessens the trouble and expence.

If the degree of attention requisite for the conduct o [...] experiments be considered. I apprehend it will be found that no man, however large his fortune, can be suppo­sed willing to bestow the trouble and expence requisite for carrying on numerous experiments at large. I could easily make it appear, from uncontrovertible calculati­ons, that ten thousand pounds a year might be expend­ed, and with oeconomy too, upon a space of ground small, beyond all common ideas, if totally thrown into experiments. It is therefore surely of consequence, that a gentleman of small fortune, who farms either for amusement or profit, does not unthinkingly draw him­self into much greater expences than he can afford. I [...] such an one conducts his agriculture with a prudent cir­cumspection, he will confine his experiments to one field; and let his trials be all in small; especially upon such matters as are either expensive or of dubious result [...] this will guard him from being drawn into more costly trials then he means to afford: and the satisfaction of ha­ving them very correct and spirited, will make ample amends for the smallness of the number. But he must not expect that any thing of this sort, although upon [...] trifling scale of a few acres, can be conducted withou [...] [Page 147] a certain sum, and that not an inconsiderable one, an­nually appropriated to it. For if the experiment field is to take the leavings of all regular expences, it is easy to guess in what manner the trials will be carried on.

If the experiments are numerous, and some of them of the expensive sort, an hundred pounds a year will not more than conduct those of six or eight acres of land▪ in some circumstances of number and kind, those of ten acres, and, perhaps, of twelve; from which it is evident that experimenting is no trifling expences; and as no employment or business in the country is so truly amusing, there certainly may be danger of a person, whose fortune is not considerable, running into a greater expence than he can afford; and there are no two things that abhor each other so much, as good husbandry and bad oeconomy.

Experiments, in any number, can scarcely prove of much satisfaction, unless a number of hands proportioned to such employment be kept merely for it, and also horses and ploughs▪ &c. for in catching seasons, the experiments ought to have as much attention, as the rest of the farm; but most people who are used to husbandry, especially such as make it their, business, will not spare from their grand crops, teams and men, when much wanted. A field of fifty or a hundred acres of [...], that is sowing in a dubious season, will be attended [...] much more than a parcel of experiments, by practical farmers; I mean who have an eye to profit: but, at the same time, the experiments on barley require as quick an attention to the season, as a field ever so large, o [...] else the trials will not be of that authority they ought▪ for this reason, it is much adviseable to keep a plough sacred to the experiment field, and a man or two, or as many as the exten [...] of ground requires; by this means the expence of such a field may be easily calculated, and the business of it carried on with due regularity and fairness. But whatever method is pursued, it is highly requisite to persons, whose fortunes are not considerable, to know their expences of this sort, with some [...] ▪ [Page 148] for the nature of them will otherwise occasion a greater increase than may be designed.

As far as a man's fortune will allow him to go, no amusement in the world equals the forming and con­ducting experiments in agriculture; to those, I mean▪ who have a taste for rural matters; nor can any business, however important, exceed, in real utility, this amuse­ment. Experiments that are made with spirit and ac­curacy, are of incomparable value in every branch o [...] natural philosophy: those of agriculture, wich is the most useful of those branches, must be particularly va­luable. The variety that is to be thrown into trials o [...] this sort, is amazing; of such extent, that many lives might be spent in no other employment, and yet leave millions of trials unthought of.

The most valuable discoveries that have been made in philosophy and mechanics, have been the effect o [...] chance; a lesson, by the by, not a little humiliating to the human mind. It should, however, be a spur to incite one to trials of every kind that fancy can imagine as in the vast range of variations, some noble discoveries might possibly be made, that would prove of uncommon utility to the human species.

The mediocrity of the common product of wheat, for instance, is very surprising; for it has been found, by experiment, that crops, vast in comparison of the gene­ral ones, may be raised. Mr Yelverton's famous one of wheat, amounting to above twelve quartars per acre, shews what the surface of an acre is capable of yielding and supporting. Now it is surprising that such a fact has not excited various endeavours to extend the pro­duct of wheat, and other grain, by numerous trials, that in a great number some few might lead to discoveries of real importance.

To a man of true spirit, a thing's never having been▪ is no argument that it never should be. No man breathing could conceive before the discovery of the mariner's compass, the existence of such a phenomenon▪ Sand and ashes, &c. were in the world many thousand [Page 149] years before the discovery of glass. Could Caesar form an idea of a powder potent enough to reduce him and all his conquering legions, in an instant, to no­thing, when he accidentally cast his eye on some nitre and charcoal? Who will be so hardy as to assert, that yet greater wonders than any of these, are not exist­ing unknown in every part of matter? We may daily tread on substance, which in certain mixtures might rise up in new worlds of wonder? Things surpassing the ut­most extent of our capacity to conceive, may wait only for the hand of accident to be discovered to mankind. Who knows but there may, in the walk of agriculture, be compound manures powerful enough to give a fer­tility to the earth vastly greater than any thing we at pre­sent know of?

But without recurring to such supposed discoveries, the common practice in many points much wants to be known experimentally, that any man may be able to de­clare precisely in what degree it is valuable, and in what deficient? also the comparative value of different practices, rising from the worst of common manage­ment, to the highest perfection of modern improve­ments. The following subjects in agriculture are either totally unknown, or so incompletely, as to satisfy no inquisitive search.

1. The comparative merit of the Old and New Husbandry, in the culture of many plants, in separate crops; and also in continued courses of crops. This comparison to be further divided into two methods practised in the utmost perfection; the Old Husbandry, as commonly managed, and the New, without manure, but a change of crops,—The Old, as commonly ma­naged, and the New without manure, and no crop but wheat.

2. The broad-cast husbandry to be compared, in all its different stages of good and bad management, in single crops, and also in continued courses. The for­mer in this, as well as in No. 1. should rise to a degree of perfection far beyond any thing commonly practised, [Page 150] both in trench ploughing, and hand-hoeing, constantly repeated.

3. In what degree of merit are beans, pease, tur­nips, carrots, cabbages, and clover, to be ranked as fallow or preparatory crops? They should all be com­pared, in every variation, and for every sort of fallow­ing crop, with a direct summer fallow.

4. In what proportion and degree is manuring pro­fitable? and how many crops does the profit last? This of every sort of manure.

5. What is the proper quantity of corn, of all sorts, to be sown both in the old and new methods?

6. The comparative culture, in every mode, of the artificial grasses, and their application to feeding and fattening all sorts of cattle.

7. The invention of machines more useful than those already employed in agriculture.

These subjects might be infinitely multiplied, but the few here mentioned are sufficient to shew, in a moment, that the most important objects of experimental agricul­ture, are yet unknown or disputed.

Most of these, and many hundreds of others. I in­quired into with as much diligence as I was able, in a course of five years trial in Suffolk? where, in the com­pass of less than three hundred acres of land▪ I made some thousands of experiments, immediately minuting most of them, and registering above nineteen hundred. I have selected such as are most useful, and shall lay them before the publick. But of what avail are the en­deavours of one person, or indeed of several?—Va­riety of [...], and views, require that all gentlemen who make agriculture their business or amusement, should register their trials, and either publish them themselves, or communicate them to others who will take that trouble.

It is inconceivable how much the world would be benefited by such a conduct; matters relative to rural oeconomics, would receive a new face; every day would bring forth some valuable discovery, and every year [Page 151] that passed yield such an increase of knowledge, as to point, and smooth the way to discoveries now un­thought of.

ESSAY XI.
Of periodical Publications concerning Rural O Economi [...]s.

I HAVE more than once ventured to mention, in these sheets, the importance of publishing experi­ments and observations in husbandry: a remark which will scarcely be denied. If the practice of all the bran­ches of rural oeconomy is of so much consequence as I have stated, surely it is likewise of consequence that every one may have the opportunity of knowing in what manner others have acted, whose situations have been similar to our own. It is with much earnestness that I have recommended to all gentlemen to register and publish, or allow the publication of their experiments and remarks in agriculture; but many difficulties occur which prevent such a conduct. The chief of these is the want of a periodicial receptale of such intelligence.

Thousands may have made trials and observations, which would figure well in a letter, or a slight essay, but which would require too much amplication to form a book, or even a pamphlet▪ besides, supposing the mat­ter ever so voluminous, many gentlemen would readi­ly give the recital in a letter, without further trouble, that would never hear of a regular publication. Thus numerous experiments, and valuable remarks, may be perpetually lost, for want of a proper vehicle to convey them to the public.

It may, perhaps, be replied, that such a vehicle did exist, under the title of Museum Rusticum, and that others now exist of the same kind. But a very few re­marks will be sufficient to prove, that none of them [Page 152] could or can supply the want, being upon a plan very different from what would be requisite for such a recep­tacle as I here mention.

The Museum Rusticum was set on foot and published by no body knows who; that is, it was a bookseller's job; nine parts in ten of the communications were from A. B. C. and D. now this circumstance would be alone sufficient to destroy a much better work. The re­lation of experiments, without the addition of the au­thor's names and place of abode, is not worth a groat: nor would many gentlemen appear among a parcel of fictitious letters, whose authority added nothing to the publication, and gained insertion merely to make up the stipulated quantity. Contrary to all which, a work of this nature should be published by an editor, who sets his name to it, who appears answerable for all in­sertions, and who can produce all the original letters he receives as his authorities; and this editor should be perfectly well skilled in practical husbandry.

If ever [...] [...]etters were inserted without a name, it should be merely such as pretended to nothing but ge­neral reasonings, without any recitals of experience; and of these, the editor should admit none but what were excellent. It would however be better still to reject all anonymous ones.

To this it is objected, that the quantity of communi­cations might not be sufficient for the stated pamphlet; but in answer to that, no stated quantity or price should, on any account, be fixed; for that is a sure guide to vamping up a pamphlet for profit, not utility.

It should be published monthly, and regularly; as all irregular publications are disagreeable in many re­spects, and difficult to be well supplied with. The price should vary, according to the quantity; from three­pence, suppose to a shilling; or, accidentally more. It need not stop for want of matter, because the whole would be good for but little, if the editor could not, upon occasion, supply an experimental essay, in quan­tity sufficient for a three-penny number.

[Page 153] Another circumstance observable in the Museum Rus­ticum is, its discontinuance; by which those gentlemen, who afforded it their correspondence, have the honour of being the authors of what is little better than old al­manacks. One great utility of such a work, is the be­ing able to trace the progress of improvement, both in agriculture at large, and in certain practices in parti­cular, which would be extremely important and curi­ous, in a long course of years: the volumes, however old, of a work that continues, are always at hand, and consulted; but universal experience evinces, that peri­odical works, however good, when discontinued, sink into absolute oblivion.

For these reasons, one requisite of such a work, is the certainty of its continuance; and that whether the publication is attended with loss or profit; for as to works, the continuance of which depends on the profit of the bookseller, it is an insult to common sense to ask, or think of gentlemen's becoming correspondents. The publication should be by subscription, and the profits arising from it if any be applied to raising a fund for carrying it on, in case of the purchasers being too few to pay the expences: but if, as would be much the most probable, the sale continued so long considerable, as to leave no danger of this sort; in such case, the profit should be applied in giving medals and premiums for decisions on points of agriculture, founded on experi­ments, to be published in the work. In a word, pri­vate profit should, in such a work, be struck entirely out of the question; it should totally give way to publick good.

It is very plain the Museum Rusticum and other perfor­mances of that sort, by no mean comes under this de­scription.

The rise of such a periodical publication as here described, could be disputed. I apprehend, by none. It would be a ready and certain method of spread­ing husbandry knowledge; and not only the con­tinued series of experiments on an extended scale, but [Page 154] every slighter effort of reason and experience would there find a way to the publick, and become of utility to those who wanted information of any kind. Every part of rural oeconomy would, by degrees, be canvassed by men, whom the world would know to practise what they wrote. No subject could be handled in such a manner, without being the better for it. Whoever was in any difficulty, or wanted any information or advice, might state his case in such a work one month, and ex­pect a reply from some other correspondent the next, who had either experienced the same situation or had considered it with more than common attention. All remarkable events or occurrences in the practice of husbandry would be communicated and duly registered, escaping thereby the oblivion into which a News-paper falls, and the imputation of falshood and romance, which naturally lies against all anonymous information. In a word, such a work would be a regular receptacle of useful knowledge in husbandry; from which any young beginner might, in a few years, learn more than from all the volumes written on the subject since the world began: for no article would be contained in it that had not the stamp of experience, nor that was not of suffi­cient merit to be accompanied by the writer's name. It is amazing that a society of gentlemen known to each other and the world, have never attempted any thing of this sort. The difficulties at first, it is true, would be great; but time, perseverance, a [...]d perfect disinterestedness, would certainly overcome them all.

Some works have pretended to this utility; but they have embraced other and more extensive designs: some are anonymous, others are trifling, and all the jobs of booksellers, who decide their fate and their duration. What can be expected from such?