Part 2

An equal weight of hay, at the present price, 25 dolls. would cost 139 25 ______

Difference, D.84 25

Thou wilt readily perceive, without my dwelling on it, that the above method would answer equally well for store cattle as for horses. By the present mode the corn stalks are almost wholly lost, and a great proportion of the straw trodden under foot in the barn-yards. One benefit that would result from the change of feeding, and which must be obvious to every one, would be its enabling every farmer to keep a larger stock; and thus _increase his manure_,--the grand secret, after all is said, in farming well, and doing it to advantage.

If it is alleged that my calculation of hay is too high, it may be observed, that the shorts are also estimated at a price higher than they often command in the Philadelphia market. I have known them as low as 20 cents; and 25 cents is a very common price in the fall of the year. They may safely be put in bulk in the 11th mo. and will keep sweet until the ensuing spring.--I have thus hastily thrown my ideas together on this subject. If thou canst glean from them any thing of importance, I shall be glad.

Thy assured friend,

JAMES CANBY.

_Treatise on Agriculture_.

SECT. II.

Of the actual state of Agriculture in Europe.

12. The climate and soil of _Great Britain_ and _Ireland_, are particularly favourable to husbandry; nor is her geographical position less auspicious--placed, as she is, on the longest line, and amidst the most important markets of the continent of Europe. If to these advantages be added the laborious, enlightened, and enterprising character of the nation, we cannot but expect results the most favourable to agriculture: yet is the fact notoriously otherwise. To show that this opinion is neither hasty nor unfounded, we must enter into details, which may not be unprofitable.

The surface of England is estimated at 37,265,853 acres, which are distributed as follows:

In pasturage, 18,796,458

In tillage, 11,350,501

In cities, roads & canals, 3,454,740

Lands fit for pasturage or tillage not cultivated, 3,515,238

Lands unfit for cultivation, 2,148,921

Of the arable land the following annual disposition is made:

Lands unfit for cultivation, 2,148,921

In wheat and rye, 2,000,000

In peas, beans, and buckwheat, 2,000,000

In barley and oats, 4,000,000

In fallow, or in turnips or cabbages, 3,400,000

The lands, in wheat and rye, yield on an average of ten years, _three quarters_ per acre, or 6,000,000 quarters; yet there is an annual deficit in England of 1,820,000 quarters, which must be drawn from foreign markets.[1]

[1] A _quarter_ is equal to six bushels, and the average produce in wheat and rye 18 bushels per acre. For the whole kingdom the deficit is 2,820,000 quarters. See Geographic Mathematic, art. Great Britain.

There is certainly nothing very flattering in this view of English agriculture; but it may be said to be one of statists and politicians, and probably underrated. Let us then see what their own most eminent agriculturists, their Young and Sinclair, and Dickson and Marshall, say on this subject--"_A very small portion of the cultivated parts of Great Britain, is to this day, submitted to a judicious and well conducted system of husbandry; not in fact more than four counties_, (Norfolk, Sussex, Essex, and Kent:) _while many large tracts of excellent soil are managed in a way the most imperfect and disadvantageous_."[2]

[2] See the introduction to Dickson's Practical Agriculture, 2d vol. quarto.

Nor is her management of cattle better. "Considering the domestic animals in a general way, we find each species, and almost every race, capable of great improvement, and, with a few exceptions, the sheep much neglected. In some districts are whole races of cattle incapable of improvement (within a reasonable time) in the three great objects which they are expected to yield, viz. milk, flesh, and labour."[3] We now add _some_ of the causes to which this defective husbandry has been ascribed: "to enumerate all would be impossible, from their number and complication."[4]

[3] Marshal, vol. iv. p. 575.

[4] Dickson's Practical Agriculture.

"1st. The _commons_, or unenclosed grounds, which in many places amount to near one half of the whole arable land, and which are submitted to the most absurd and ruinous system of culture."[5]

[5] Idem.

"2d. The _terms_ (amounting to personal servitude) under which many of the lands are held."

"3d. The _shortness of leases_ given by corporations (civil and religious) and by individuals, and which seldom exceed _three_, _five_, or _seven_ years, excepting in the counties of Norfolk, Sussex, Essex, and Kent, where (with great advantage to both landlord and tenant) they are frequently extended to twenty-one years."

"4th. The _tithes in kind_, paid by the farmers to the church; a tax highly vexatious in its character, and oppressive in its effects: and

"5th. The _poor tax_, which has become enormous, and of which the yeomanry pay three fourths. Of this tax it has been truly said, that it is a powerful instrument of depopulation--a barbarous contrivance for checking all national industry."[6]

[6] Young's Tour through Ireland, vol. ii. p. 302.

To these causes, assigned by British writers, may be added the _increase_ of _population_, common to every nation of Europe, and which in Great Britain is beyond all proportion greater than the progress of agriculture; the _augmentation_ of _cattle_, which occasions that of pasturage, and the diminution of tillage;[7] the _establishment_ of _great farms_ at the expense of _small_ ones, and the _multiplication_ of _parks_ and _pleasure grounds_; and lastly, the _attraction of great cities_, and the _continual drafts_ made upon the agricultural population, for the army and navy, and for commerce and manufactures.

[7] Mr. Hume quotes with approbation an author, who complains of the decay of tillage in the reign of Elizabeth, and who ascribes it to the increase of pasturage, in consequence of the restraints imposed on the exportation of grain, while that of butter, cheese, &c. was free. The history of Europe, if read with an eye to public economy, furnishes an abundant proof, that the greatest obstructions to agriculture have arisen from the interference of government. We have here no sly allusion to our own projects of a state board of agriculture, of a chymico agricultural professorship, nor even of an agricultural college, if the treasury in its wealth, and the legislature in its wisdom, should deem such institutions useful or necessary.

SECT. III.

Theory of Vegetation.

Vegetables may be regarded as the intermediate link in the great chain of creation, between animals and minerals. The latter grow by mere chymical affinity, and by additions, sometimes analogous and sometimes foreign from their own nature; while plants, like animals, have an organization that enables them to receive their food, digest and assimilate it to their own substance, reproduce their species, and maintain an existence of longer or shorter duration. Thus far the learned are agreed, but at the next step they differ.

What is this food that gives to plants their developement, and maturity, and powers of reproduction? Lord Bacon believed that _water_ was the source of vegetable life, and that the earth was merely its home, its habitation, serving to keep plants upright, and to guard them against the extremes of heat and cold. Tull, on the other hand, (and after him Du Hamel) pronounced _pulverized earth_ the only pabulum of plants, and on this opinion built his system of husbandry. Van Helmont and Boyle opposed this doctrine by experiments: the former planted and reared a cutting of willow in a bed of dry earth, carefully weighed and protected against accretion by a tin plate, so perforated as to admit only rain and distilled water, with which it was occasionally moistened. At the end of five years the plant was found to have increased _one hundred and sixty-four pounds_, and the bed of earth to have lost, of its original weight, only _two ounces_. Boyle pursued a similar process with gourds, and with a similar result. Notwithstanding the apparent conclusiveness of these experiments, their authority was shaken, if not subverted, by others made by Margraff, Bergman, Hales, Kirwan, &c. &c. The first of these showed, that the rain water employed by Van Helmont, was itself charged with saline and other earthy matter; Bergman demonstrated this by analysis, while Kirwan and Hales proved that the earth in which the willow cutting was planted, could absorb these matters through the pores of the wooden box which contained it, and that a glass case could alone have prevented such absorption. Hunter, finding that oil and salt entered into the composition of plants, concluded that these formed their principal food, and accordingly recommended, as the great desideratum in agriculture, an _oil compost_. Lord Kaimes attempted to revive the expiring creed of Lord Bacon, but finding from Hales' statics, that one third of the weight of a green pea was made up of carbonic acid, he added _air_ to the watery aliment of the English philosopher--but entirely rejected _oil_ and _earth_, as too gross to enter the mouths of plants, and _salt_ as too acrid to afford them nourishment. Quackery, which at one time or other, has made its way into all arts and sciences, could not easily be excluded from agriculture. Hence it was, that the Abbe de Valemont's _prolific liquor_, and De Hare's and De Vallier's _powders_, &c. &c. were believed to be all that was necessary to vegetation, and found the more advocates, as they promised much and cost little. But before the march of modern chymistry, quackery could not long maintain itself; and from the labours of Bennet, Priestly, Saussure, Ingenhouz, Sennebier, Schæder, Chaptal, Davy, &c. &c. few doubts remain on this important subject.--These will be presented in the course of the following inquiry.

1st. Of _earths_, and their relation to vegetation.

Of six or eight substances, which chymists have denominated _earths_, four are widely and abundantly diffused, and form the crust of our globe. These are _silica_, _alumina_, _lime_, and _magnesia_.--The first is the basis of quartz, sand and gravel; the second, of clay; the third, of bones, river and marine shells, alabaster, marble, limestone and chalk; and the fourth, of that medicinal article known by the name of calcined magnesia.--In a pure or isolated state,[8] these earths are wholly unproductive; but when decomposed and mixed,[9] and to this mixture is added the residuum of dead animal or vegetable matter,[10] they become fertile, take the general name of _soils_, and are again specially denominated, after the earth that most abounds in their compositions respectively. If this be silica, they are called _sandy_; if alumina, _argillaceous_; if lime, _calcareous_; and if magnesia, _magnesian_. Their properties are well known: a _sandy_ soil is loose, easily moved, little retentive of moisture, and subject to extreme dryness; an _argillaceous_ soil is hard and compact when dry, tough and paste-like when wet, greedy and tenacious of moisture; turns up, when ploughed, into massive clods, and admits the entrance of roots with great difficulty. A _calcareous_ soil is dry, friable and porous; water enters and leaves it with facility; roots penetrate it without difficulty, and (being already greatly divided) less labour is necessary for it than for clay. _Magnesian_, like calcareous earth, is light, porous and friable; but, like clay when wet, takes the consistency of paste, and is very tenaceous of water. It refuses to combine with oxygen, or with the alkalies; is generally found associated with granite, gneiss, and schiste, and is probably among the causes of their comparative barrenness.[11]

[8] See Gisbert's experiments on _pure earths_ and _their mixtures_. See also Davy's Elements of Agricultural Chemistry, p. 156.

[9] In this respect nature has been neither negligent or niggardly, if (as Fourcroy asserts) the purest sand be a mixture of quartz, alumina, and sometimes of calcareous matter. _Speculative geology_ is romance, and does not merit the name of science; yet is science obliged to borrow her theory of soils. The alternation of heat and cold, moisture and dryness, decomposed the mountains of primitive, secondary and tertiary formation; rains, and the laws of gravity, brought these from places of more, to places of less elevation--where, by mechanical mixture and chymical combination, the present substrata were formed. But these were yet naked and unproductive, when the Cryptogamia family (mopes and lichens) took possession of them, and in _due time_ produced that vegetable matter, which made the earth productive and the globe habitable!

[10] Dead animal and vegetable matter, in the last stage of decomposition, give a black or brown powder, which the French chymists call _terreau_ or _humus_, and which Mr. Davy calls an _extractive matter_; _this_ is the fertilizing principle of soils and manures.

[11] The opinion is general among the chymists of Europe, that magnesian earth is not only barren itself, but the cause of barrenness in other soils in which it may abound, unless saturated with carbonic acid. See Base, Tennant, and Davy.

In these qualities are found the _mechanical relations_ between earths and vegetables. To the divisibility of the former it is owing, that the latter are enabled to push their roots into the earth; to their _density_, that plants maintain themselves in an erect posture, rise into the air, and resist the action of the winds and rains; and to their _power_ of _absorbing_ and _holding_ water, the advantage of a prolonged application of moisture, necessary or useful to vegetable life. But besides performing these important offices, there is reason to believe that they contribute to the _food_ of vegetables. This opinion rests on the following considerations and experiments:

1. If earths do not contribute directly to the food of plants, then would be all soils alike productive; or in other words, if air and water _exclusively_ supply this food, then would a soil of pure sand be as productive as one of the richest alluvion.

2. Though plants may be made to grow in pounded glass, or in metallic oxides, yet is the growth, in these, neither healthy nor vigorous; and,

3. All plants, on analysis, yield an earthy product;[12] and this product is found to partake most of the earth that predominates in the soil producing the analyzed plant; if _silica_ be the dominant earth, then is the product obtained from the plant _silicious_; if _lime_ prevail, then is the product _calcareous_, &c. &c. This important fact is proved by De Saussure.

[12] Davy says this never exceeds one fiftieth of the whole product.

_1st Experiment._

Two plants (the pinus abies) were selected, the one from a calcareous, the other from a granitic soil, the ashes of which gave the following products;

Granitic Calcareous soil. soil.

Potash 3 60 15

Alk. and mu. sul 4 24 15

Carbonate of lime 46 34 63

Carbonate of magnesia 6 77 00

Silica 13 49 00

Alumina 14 86 16

Metallic oxides 10 52 00

_2d Experiment._

Two Rhododendrons were taken, one from the calcareous soil of Mount de la Salle, the other from the granitic soils of Mount Bevern. Of a _hundred_ parts, the former gave fifty-seven of carbonate of lime and five of silica; the latter, thirty of carbonate of lime, and fourteen of silica.

_3d Experiment._

This was made to determine whether vegetables, the product of a soil having in it no silica, would, notwithstanding, partake of that earth.--Plants were accordingly taken from Reculey de Thoiry, (a soil altogether calcareous) and the result was a very small portion of silica.

These experiments, says Chaptal, leave little if any doubt, but that vegetables derive the earthy matter they contain from the soil in which they grow.[13]

[13] Shæder maintains the doctrine, that the earths found in plants are created there by the process of vegetation. His essay on this subject was crowned by the academy of Berlin, in 1801. His experiments were the first to determine the different quantities of silica found in different kinds of grain.

2. Of _water_, as an agent in vegetation.

Seeds placed in the earth, and in a temperature above the freezing point, and _watered_, will develope; that is, their lobes[14] will swell, their roots descend into the earth, and their stems rise into the air. But without humidity, they will not germinate; or deprived of humidity after germinating, they will perish. When germination is complete, and the plant formed, its roots and leaves are so organized as to _absorb water_. The experiments of Hales prove, that the weight of plants is increased in wet and diminished in dry weather; and that in the latter, they draw from the atmosphere (by means of their leaves)[15] the moisture necessary to their well being.--Du Hamel (and after him Sennebier) has shown, that the filaments that surround the roots of plants, and which has been called their hair, perform for them in the _earth_, the office that leaves perform in the atmosphere, and that if deprived of these filaments the plants die.

[14] Moisten a bean in warm water, and detach the skin that covers it, and it readily divides into two parts; these are called _lobes_.

[15] Bonnet's experiments show, that it is the under surface of the leaf that performs this function, The upper surface has a different office.

It would be easy, but useless, to multiply facts of this kind tending to establish a doctrine not contested, but which after all does not assert, that water makes part of the food of plants. On this point two opinions exist--the one, that this liquid is a solvent and conductor of alimentary juices: the other, that is itself an aliment and purveyor of vegetable food at the same time. The first opinion is abundantly established. Water when charged with oxygen, supplies to germinating seeds the want of atmospheric air, and saturated with animal or vegetable matter in a state of decomposition, or slightly impregnated with carbonic acid, very perceptibly quickens and invigorates vegetation. The second opinion is favoured by some of De Saussure's experiments. On these, Chaptal makes the following remark, which expresses very distinctly an approbation of the doctrine they suggest:--"The enormous quantity of hydrogen (which makes so large a part of vegetable matter) cannot be accounted for but by admitting (in the process of vegetation) the _decomposition_ of _water_, of which hydrogen is the principal constituent; and that though there is nothing in the present state of our experience that directly establishes this doctrine, yet that its truth ought to be presumed, from the analysis of plants and the necessary and well-known action of water on vegetation.

(To be continued.)

_Correction._--In copying the second section, page 55, an error escaped in relation to the _Tuscan_ plough; the passage should have read thus--"The plough of the north of Europe, like that of this country, has the power of a wedge, and acts horizontally--that that of Tuscany has the same direction, but very different form. With the outline of a shovel, it consists of two inclined planes, sloping from the centre, and forms a gutter and two ridges.

Review for the Rural Magazine.

_An Expose of the Causes of Intemperate Drinking, and the means by which it may be obviated. By Thomas Herttell of the city of New York. Published by order of the New York society for the promotion of internal improvement_.--New York, 1819.--pp. 56.

This is an ingenious and interesting pamphlet. It is written with much force and originality; and we think we shall do the public a service by laying before our readers some of the author's remarks. There is no vice which steals upon us in so many attractive and deceitful shapes as that of intemperate drinking. In this country it is a national sin and infects every class of society. We meet its temptations in our social intercourse, at our public festivals--in the resorts of business; we see it indulged in by men of eminent character; spirituous liquors are kept in every sideboard, and brought forth upon almost every occasion. One class of society imitates the practice of another, and habitual drunkenness has become the stigma and disgrace of our country.

The pamphlet before us, remarks (page 6) that "the existence of this vice is now generally acknowledged, its progress marked, and its effects deplored. It is traced to the grog-shop where many of its most degrading _effects_ are discovered, and _mis_taken for _causes_, and the remedy attempted to be applied."

"Though I am not disposed to become the advocate of grog-shops, or to avert from them any portion of merited animadversion--or inclined to become the apologist of those who, under colour of keeping a tavern, follow the business of dram-selling; I am not willing that these places should be considered either as the _primary_ or _principal cause_ of the evil under review. The current opinion that such is the case, is incorrect, as I shall endeavour to shew. And I am induced to do this, from the conviction that the mistake is calculated to stop investigation short of the true source, and thus prevent the remedies from reaching the fountain-head of the evil. It happens in this, as in too many other instances, that the little sinners become the subjects of censure, while those whose crimes differ from them only in magnitude, are overlooked, or treated with complaisance. Is it _wrong_ to sell liquor by the _glass_, to those who drink it--and is it _not wrong to sell it by the hogshead_, for the purpose of being so disposed of? Are both these culpable, and shall those who import and sell it by the cargo, escape obloquy? And does the distiller differ from all those, in any other respect, than that he makes while they sell the poison for the purpose of its being drank? It is not my intention to censure the latter any more than the former class of dealers in ardent drink; and justice forbids that blame should attach itself exclusively to either. They are all _particepes criminis_, inasmuch as they all contribute facilities to the practice of intemperate drinking, and thus aid the continuance and increase of the evil. But its most prolific sources are not to be found among those classes of our fellow-citizens, considered in the _business character_. They only conform to the _customs_ and _habits_ of the community in which they live. They find their neighbours in the practice of using ardent drink, and profit by their folly. No one would be so weak as to invest his money in ardent liquor with the expectation of _learning_ people to drink. It is the _already acquired habit_, which constitutes the basis of his calculations of profit. So far, therefore, from grog-shops being the _primary_ or _principal cause_ of intemperate habits, the reverse of the position approaches nearer the truth. The habit of _intemperance is the cause of grog-shops_.