Part 3

It is foreign to my plan to enumerate, and it might be difficult to discover, all the changes and revolutions which have taken place here; and I shall merely mention, that this district formerly constituted a regal forest, and we find Robert Fitzharding holding it by grant in the time of King John. We have a “lodge farm,” it is true, and the adjoining grange, the “conygar,” i. e. coneygard, the rabbit-keeper’s dwelling, may, perhaps, have been the situation of the sylvan warren; but there are no remains, or any other indications, of a forest ever having been in existence. Names and traditional tales are all that remain in most places now to remind us of the ancient state of England, or to make credible the narratives of our old historians, who lived when Britain was a forest. Where shall we look for the remnants of that mighty wood, filled with boars, bulls, and savage beasts, that surrounded London? Even in our own days, heaths, moors, and wilds, have disappeared, so as to leave no indications of their former state but the name. Woods and forests seem to be the original productions of most soils and countries favorable for the abode of mankind, as if inviting a settlement, and offering materials for its use. As colonies increase, wants are augmented; the woods are consumed; the plow is introduced, division of property follows; a total change and obliteration ensues, though the ancient appellation by which the district was known yet continues.

The parish consists in parts of a poor, shattery gray clay, beneath which we find, in some places, a coarse lias; in others a spongy, rough, impure limestone; in other parts a thin stratum of soil is spread over an immense and irregular rock of carbonate of lime, running to an unknown depth: this in many cases protrudes in great blocks through the thin skin of earth. The rock, though usually stratified, has no uniform dip, but trends to different directions; in some places it appears as if immense sheets of semifluid matter had been pushed out of the station it had settled in, by some other or later-formed heavy-moving mass, or met with an impediment, and so rolled up: that these sheets had not fully hardened at the time of being moved is yet made probable by the whole crystallization of the mass being interrupted; so that no part adheres firmly, but separates into small shattery fragments when struck. This substance we burn in very large quantities for building purposes, and for manure, which, by the facility which we have of obtaining small coal, is rendered at the low rate of three-pence a bushel at the kiln. Our farmers, availing themselves of this cheap article, use considerable quantities, composted with earth, for their different crops, at the rate of not less than a hundred bushels to the acre. This is a favorite substance for their potato land. The return in general is not so large as when grown in manure from the yard; but the root is said to be more mealy, and better flavored.

The utility of lime as manure consists in loosening the tenacious nature of some soils; rendering them more friable and receptive of vegetable fibres: it especially facilitates the dissolution and putrefaction of animal and vegetable substances, which are thus more readily received and circulated in the growing plant; and it has the power of acquiring and long retaining moisture; thus rendering a soil cool and nutritive to the plants that vegetate in it. The power that lime has of absorbing moisture will be better understood, when we say, that one hundred weight will, in five or six days, when fresh, absorb five pounds of water, and that it will retain in the shape of powder, when slackened, or loosened, as is commonly said, nearly one-fourth of its weight.

That lime rehardens after being made soft, as in mortar, is owing to the power which it has of acquiring carbonic acid—the fixed air of Dr. Black—from the atmosphere; when the stone is burned, it loses this principle, but re-absorbs it, though slowly, yet in time, and it thus becomes as hard as stone again: we unite it with sand to promote the crystallization and hardening. The utility of lime in various arts, agriculture, manufactories, and medicine, is very extensive, and in many cases indispensable; and the abundance of it spread through the world seems designed as a particular provision of Providence for the various ends of creation. Lime, and siliceous substances, compose a very large portion of the dense matter of our earth; the shells of marine animals contain it abundantly; our bones have eighty parts in one hundred of it; the egg-shells of birds above nine parts in ten—during incubation, it is received by the embryo of the bird, indurating the cartilages, and forming the bones. But the existence and origin of limestone are pre- eminent amongst the wonders of creation; nor should we have been able, rationally, to account for the great diffusion of this substance throughout the globe, however we might have conjectured the formation, without the Mosaical revelation. It may startle, perhaps, the belief of some, who have never considered the subject, to assert what is apparently a fact, that a considerable portion of those prodigious cliffs of chalk and calcareous stone, that in many places control the advance of the ocean, protrude in rocks through its waters, or incrust such large portions of the globe, are of animal origin—the exuviæ of marine substances, or the labors of minute insects, which once inhabited the deep. In this conclusion now chemists and philosophers seem in great measure to coincide. Fourcroy observed, forty years ago, that “it could not be denied, that the strata of calcareous matter, which constitute, as it were, the bark or external covering of our globe, in a great part of its extent, are owing to the remains of the skeletons of sea animals, more or less broken down by the waters; that these beds have been deposited at the bottom of the sea, immense masses of chalk, deposited on its bottom, absorb or fix the waters, or convert into a solid substance part of the liquid which fills its vast basins.”—Supplement to Chemistry, p. 263. Such are the conclusions of philosophical investigation; and the discoveries of all our circumnavigators fully corroborate these decisions as to formation. Revelation in part accounts for the removal of these stupendous masses; though, probably, unrecorded concussions since the great subversion of our planet have, in remote periods, effected many of the removals of these deposits. We find the basement of many of the South Sea Islands, some of which are twenty miles long, formed of this matter. Captain Flinders, in the gulf of Carpentaria, held his course by the sides of limestone reefs, five hundred miles in extent, with a depth irregular and uncertain; and still more recently Captain King, seven hundred miles, almost a continent, of rock, increasing, and visibly forming:—all drawn from the waters of the ocean by a minute creature, that wonderful agent in the hands of Providence, the coral insect. This brief account of the origin of calcareous rocks was, perhaps, necessary before mentioning an extraordinary fact, that, after the lapse of so vast a portion of time since the basement of the mighty deep was heaved on high, existing proofs of this event should remain in our obscure village.

The limestone rocks here are differently composed but are principally of four kinds—a pale gray, hard and compact; a pale cream-colored, fine- grained and sonorous: these form the upper stratum of stone on our down, a recent deposit, or more probably a mass heaved up from its original station. The whole of this mass, running nearly half a mile long, is obviously of animal formation, a coral rock; a compounded body of minute cylindrical columns, the cells of the animals which constructed the material, the mouths of which are all manifest by a magnifier. The stop in the progress of the work is even visible; soft, stony matter having arisen from some of the tubes, and become indurated there in a convex form; in others the creatures have perished, but their forms or moulds remain, though obscure, yet sufficiently perfect to manifest the fact: these tubes, by exposure to the air for any length of time, have the internal or softer parts decomposed, and the stone becomes cellular. This stone burns to a fine white lime, and is very free from impurities, containing in a hundred parts—

Carbonate of lime 88 Magnesia 8 Silex 1 Alumine, colored with iron 3 ——— 100

Another quarry presents, likewise, unquestionable evidence of an animal origin, veins of it being composed of shattered parts of shells, and marine substances, greatly consumed and imperfect, embedded in a coarse, gray, sparry compound; an ocean deposit, not a fabrication, and consequently has more impurities in its substance than that of insect formation: it contains about

Carbonate of lime 73 Magnesia 11 Clay 14 Silex 2 ——— 100

These two specimens so clearly prove that the original materials of their substance were derived from the deep, that no further arguments need be advanced to support this fact as to our limestone. The former is, perhaps, the mountain limestone of Werner; the latter a variety of dolomite. Our other quarries, as well as the lower strata of the above, present no such indications of animal formation, and they are probably sediment arising from a minute division of shelly bodies now indurated by time and superincumbent pressure and become a coarse-grained marble. Our limestone thus appearing not to be contaminated with any great portion of magnesian earth, it may be used for all agricultural purposes with advantage. Many detached blocks of limestone are found about us, having broken shelly remains; and the joints of the encrinite, greatly mutilated, embedded in them. Irregularly wandering near the lime-ridge is a vein of impure sandy soil, covering a coarse-grained siliceous stone; sand agglutinated, and colored by oxide of iron, resisting heat, and used in the construction of our lime-kilns: the laborers call it “fire-stone.”

We occasionally, though sparingly, find, in a few places on our downs, nodules of lead ore, which induced persons in years past to seek for mineral riches; but the trial being soon abandoned, the result, I suppose, afforded no reasonable ground for success. We likewise find thin veins of carbonate of strontian, but make no use of it; nor is it noted by us different from common rubbish; nor do I know any purpose to which it is peculiarly applicable, but in pyrotechnics. Spirit of wine, in which nitrate of strontian has been mixed, will burn with a beautiful bright red flame; barytes, which approaches near to strontia, affords a fine green; nitrates of both, compounded with other matters, are used in theatrical representations. Strontian exists in many places, and plentifully; some future wants or experiments will probably bring it into notice, and indicate the latent virtues of this mineral.

Perhaps I may here mention an incident, that occurred a few years past at one of our lime-kilns, because it manifests how perfectly insensible the human frame may be to pains and afflictions in peculiar circumstances; and that which would be torture if endured in general, may be experienced at other times without any sense of suffering. A travelling man one winter’s evening laid himself down upon the platform of a lime-kiln, placing his feet, probably numbed with cold, upon the heap of stones, newly put on to burn through the night. Sleep overcame him in this situation; the fire gradually rising and increasing until it ignited the stones upon which his feet were placed. Lulled by the warmth, the man slept on; the fire increased until it burned one foot (which probably was extended over a vent-hole) and part of the leg above the ankle entirely off; consuming that part so effectually, that a cinder-like fragment was alone remaining; and still the wretch slept on! and in this state was found by the kiln-man in the morning. Insensible to any pain, and ignorant of his misfortune, he attempted to rise and pursue his journey, but missing his shoe, requested to have it found; and when he was raised, putting his burnt limb to the ground to support his body, the extremity of his legbone, the tibia, crumbled into fragments, having been calcined into lime. Still he expressed no sense of pain, and probably experienced none, from the gradual operation of the fire, and his own torpidity, during the hours his foot was consuming. This poor drover survived his misfortunes in the hospital about a fortnight; but the fire having extended to other parts of his body, recovery was hopeless.

Residences upon limestone soils have generally been considered as less liable than other situations to infectious and epidemic disorders; and such places being usually more elevated, they become better ventilated, and freed from stagnated and unwholesome airs, and by the absorbing principle of the soil are kept constantly dry. All this seems to favor the supposition that they are healthy; but if exempted from ailments arising from mal-aria, inflammatory complaints do not seem excluded from such situations. When the typhus fever prevailed in the country, we were by no means exempted from its effects; the severe coughs attending the spring of 1826 afflicted grievously most individuals in every house; and the measles, which prevailed so greatly at the same season, visited every cottage, though built upon the very limestone rock.

This village and its neighboring parishes, by reason of the peculiar culture carried on in them, and the natural production of the district, afford the most ample employment for their laboring inhabitants; nor perhaps could any portion of the kingdom, neither possessing mineral riches, manufactories, or mills, nor situate in the immediate vicinity of a great town, be found to afford superior demand for the labor, healthy employment, and reasonable toil of its population. Our lime- kilns engage throughout the year several persons; this is, perhaps, our most laborious employ; though its returns are considered as fair. In our culture, after all the various business of the farms, comes the potato- setting; nor is this finished wholly before haymaking commences. Teaseling succeeds; the corn harvest comes on, followed shortly by the requirements of the potato again, and the digging out and securing this requires the labor of multitudes until the very verge of winter. Then comes our employment for this dark season of the year, the breaking of our limestone for the use of the roads, of which we afford a large supply to less favored districts. This material is not to be sought for in distant places, or of difficult attainment, but to be found almost at the very doors of the cottages; and old men, women, and children can obtain a comfortable maintenance by it without any great exertion of strength, or protraction of labor. The rough material costs nothing: a short pickax to detach the stone, and a hammer to break it, are all the tools required. A man or healthy woman can easily supply about a ton in the day; a child that goes on steadily, about one-third of this quantity; and as we give one shilling for a ton, a man, his wife, and two tolerable-sized children, can obtain from 2s. 8d. to 3s. per day by this employ, the greater part of the winter; and should the weather be bad, they can work at intervals, and various broken hours, and obtain something—and there is a constant demand for the article. The winter accumulation is carted away as the frost occurs, or the spring repair comes on. Our laborers, their children and cottages, I think, present a testimony of their well-doing, by the orderly, decent conduct of the former, and the comforts of the latter. There are years when we have disposed of about 3000 tons of stone, chiefly broken up for use by a few of our village poor; if we say by twenty families, it will have produced perhaps seven pounds to each, a most comfortable addition to their means, when we consider that this has been obtained by the weak and infirm, at intervals of time without more than the cost of labor, when employment elsewhere was in no request.

I may perhaps be pardoned in relating here the good conduct of a villager, deserving more approbation than my simple record will bestow; and it affords an eminent example of what may be accomplished by industry and economy, and a manifestation that high wages are not always essential, or solely contributive to the welfare of the laborer.—When I first knew A. B., he was in a state of poverty, possessing, it is true, a cottage of his own, with a very small garden; but his constitution being delicate, and health precarious, so that he was not a profitable laborer, the farmers were unwilling to employ him. In this condition he came into my service: his wife at that time having a young child contributed very little to the general maintenance of the family: his wages were ten shillings per week, dieting himself, and with little besides that could be considered as profitable. We soon perceived that the clothing of the family became more neat and improved; certain gradations of bodily health appeared; the cottage was whitewashed, and inclosed with a rough wall and gate; the rose and the corchorus began to blossom about it; the pig became two; and a few sheep marked A. B. were running about the lanes: then his wife had a little cow, which it was “hoped his honor would let eat some of the rough grass in the upper field;” but this was not entirely given: this cow, in spring, was joined by a better; but finding such cattle difficult to maintain through the winter, they were disposed of, and the sheep augmented. After about six years’ service, my honest, quiet, sober laborer died, leaving his wife and two children surviving: a third had recently died. We found him possessed of some money, though I know not the amount; two fine hogs, and a flock of forty-nine good sheep, many far advanced in lamb; and all this stock was acquired solely with the regular wages of ten shillings a week, in conjunction with the simple aids of rigid sobriety and economy, without a murmur, a complaint, or a grievance!

I report nothing concerning our variously constituted soil, thinking that no correct statement can be given by any detail of a local district under cultivation, beyond generally observing its tendency, as every soil under tillage must be factitious and changeable. As a mere matter of curiosity, I might easily find out the proportions of lime, sand, clay, and vegetable earth, &c., that a given quantity of a certain field contained; but the very next plowing would perhaps move a substratum, and alter the proportions; or a subsequent dressing change the analysis: the adjoining field would be differently treated, and yield a different result. I do not comprehend what general practical benefit can arise from chemical analysis of soils; but as eminent persons maintain the great advantages of it, I suppose they are right, and regret my ignorance. That the component parts of certain lands can easily be detected, and the virtues or deficiencies of them for particular crops be pointed out, I readily admit; but when known, how rarely can the remedy be applied! I have three correspondents, who send me samples of their several farms, and request to know by what means they can meliorate the soil. I find that B. is deficient in lime; but understand in reply, that this earth is distant from his residence, and too costly to be applied. D. wants clay; E. is too retentive and cold, and requires silex or sand; but both are so circumstanced, that they cannot afford to supply the article required. Indeed it is difficult to say what ought to be the component parts of a soil, unless the production of one article or grain is made the standard; for differently constituted soil will produce different crops advantageously: one farm produces fine wheat, another barley; others again the finest oats and beans in the parish. To compound a soil of exact chemical parts, so as to afford permanent fertility, is a mere theory. Nature and circumstances may produce a piece of land, that will yield unremitting crops of grass, and we call it a permanently good soil; but art cannot effect this upon a great scale. A small field in this parish always produces good crops; not in consequence of any treatment it receives, but by its natural composition; consisting principally of finely pulverized clay, stained with red oxide of iron, a considerable portion of sand, and vegetable earth: but though I know the probable cause of this field bearing such good wheat, I cannot bring the surrounding and inferior ones into a like constitution, the expense far exceeding any hope of remuneration. Rudolph Glauber obtained gold from common sand, but it was an expensive article! Temporary food for a crop may be found in animal, vegetable, or earthy manures, but these are exhaustible; and when aliment ceases, the crop proportionably diminishes. In one respect, chemical investigation may importantly aid the agriculturist, by pointing out the proportion of magnesian earth in certain limes used for manure, and thus indicate its beneficial or injurious effects on vegetation. I should not like lime containing 20 per cent. of this earth; but when it contains a much smaller proportion, I should not think it very deleterious. This earth acts as a caustic to vegetation, and, neither being soluble in water, nor possessing the other virtue of lime, diminishes the number of bushels used according to its existence, and thus deprives the crop of that portion of benefit: but after all, as Kirwan says, the secret processes of vegetation take place in the dark, exposed to the various and indeterminable influence of the atmosphere; and hence the difficulty of determining on what peculiar circumstance success or failure depends, for the diversified experience of years alone can afford a rational foundation for solid and specific conclusions.

The real goodness of a soil consists principally, perhaps, in the power it possesses of maintaining a certain degree of moisture; for without this, the plant could have no power of deriving nutriment from any aliment: it might be planted on a dung-hill; but if this had no moisture in it, no nutriment would be yielded; but as long as the soil preserves a moisture, either by its own constituent parts, or by means of a retentive substratum, vegetation goes on. Continue the moisture, and increase the aliment, and the plant will flourish in proportion; but let the moisture be denied by soil, substratum, or manure, and vegetation ceases; for, though certain plants will long subsist by moisture obtained from the air, yet, generally speaking, without a supply by the root, they will languish and fade.

Our dairy processes, I believe, present nothing deserving of particular notice. From our milk, after being skimmed for butter, we make a thin, poor cheese, rendered at a low price, but for which there is a constant demand. Some of our cold lands, too, yield a kind greatly esteemed for toasting; and we likewise manufacture a thicker and better sort, though we do not contend in the market with the productions of north Wilts, or the deeper pastures of Cheshire or Huntingdon.

The agriculture of a small district like ours affords no great scope to expatiate upon: great deviations from general practice we do not aim at; experimental husbandry is beyond our means, perhaps our faculties. Local habits, though often the subject of censure, are frequently such as the “genius of the soil” and situation render necessary, and the experience of years has proved most advantageous.

Our grass in the pastures of the clay-lands, in the mowing season, which, from late feeding in the spring and coldness in the soil, is always late, presents a curious appearance; and I should apprehend, that a truss of our hay from these districts, brought into the London market, or exhibited as a new article of provender at a Smithfield cattle-show, would occasion conversation and comment. The crop consists almost entirely of the common field scabious (scabiosa succisa), loggerheads (centauria nigra), and the great ox-eye daisy (chrysanthemum lucanthemum.) There is a scattering of bent (agrostis vulgaris), and here and there a specimen of the better grasses; but the predominant portion, the staple of the crop, is scabious—it is emphatically a promiscuous herbage; yet on this rubbish do the cattle thrive, and from their milk is produced a cheese greatly esteemed for toasting—melting, fat, and good flavored, and, perhaps, inferior to none used for this purpose. The best grasses, indeed, with the exception of the dogstail (cynosurus cristatus), do not delight in our soil: the meadow poa (p. pratensis), and the rough stalked poa (p. trivialis), when found, are dwarfish; and having once occasion for a few specimens of the foxtail (alopecurus pratensis), I found it a scarce and a local plant: but I am convinced, from much observation, that certain species of plants, and grasses in particular, are indigenous to some soils, and that they will vegetate and ultimately predominate over others that may be introduced. In my own very small practice, a field of exceedingly indifferent herbage was broken up, underwent many plowings, was exposed to the roastings of successive suns, and alternations of the year under various crops; amongst others that of potatoes; the requisite hackings, hoeings, and diggings of which alone were sufficient to eradicate any original fibrous, rooted herbage. This field was laid down with clean ray grass (lolium perenne), white trefoil, and hop clover, and did tolerably well for one year: and then the original soft-grass, (holcus lanatus) appeared, overpowered the crop, and repossessed the field; and yet the seed of this holcus could not have lain inert in the soil all this time, as it is a grass that rarely or never perfects its seed, but propagates by its root. The only grass that is purposely sown—trefoils are not grasses—is, I believe, the ray, or rye, no others being obtainable from the seedsman: this we consider as perennial; yet, let us lay down two pieces of land with seeds, from the same sack, the one a low, moist, deep soil, the other a dry upland, and in three or four years we shall find the natural herbage of the country spring up, dispute and acquire in part possession of the soil, in despite of the ray grass sown: in the deep soil, the predominant crop will probably consist of poæ, cockfoot, meadow-fescue, holcus, phleum, foxtail, &c.; in the dry soil it will be dogstail, quaking grass, agrostis, &c., not one species of which was ever sown by us. It appears that the herbage of our poor thin clay-lands is the natural produce of the soil, for every fixed soil will produce something, and would without care always exclude better herbage. Attention and manures, a kind of armed force, would certainly support other vegetation, alien introductions, for a time, but the profit would not always be adequate. In a piece of land of this nature I have suppressed the natural produce, by altering the soil with draining, sheep-feeding, stocking up, and composting: and scabious, carnation grass, mat grass, and their companions, no longer thrive; but if I should remit this treatment, they would again predominate, and constitute the crop.

Most counties seem to have some individual or species of wild plants predominating in their soil, which may be scarce, or only locally found in another; this is chiefly manifested in the corn-lands—for aquatic or alpine districts, and some other peculiarities, must form exceptions. This may be in some measure occasioned by treatment or manure, but commonly must be attributed to the chemical composition of the soil, as most plants have organs particularly adapted for imbibing certain substances from the earth, which may be rejected or not sought after by the fibrous or penetrating roots of another. Festuca sylvatica abounds in every soil without an apparent predilection for any one: F. uniglumis, only where it can imbibe marine salt: F. pinnata, is found vegetating upon calcareous soils alone, and I have known it appear immediately as the limestone inclined to the surface, as if all other soils were deficient in the requisite nutriment. Many of the maidenhairs and ferns, pellitory, cotyledon, &c. are attached in the crevices of old walls, seeking as it were for the calcareous nitrate found there, this saltpetre appearing essential to their vigor and health. The predominating plants in some corn-fields are the red-poppy, cherlock (sinapis arvensis), mustard (sin. nigra.), wild oat, cornflower (cyanus); but in some adjoining parish we shall only sparingly find them. With us in our cold clay-lands we find the slender foxtail grass (alopecurus agr.) abounding like a cultivated plant: when growing in clover, or the ray grass, the whole are cut together, and though not a desirable addition, is not essentially injurious; but vegetating in the corn, it is a very pernicious weed, drawing nutriment from the crop, and overpowering it by its more early growth, at times so impoverishing the barley or the oats, as to render them comparatively of little value. The upright brome grass (bromus erectus) is a pest in our grass lands, giving the semblance of a crop in a most unproductive soil; hard and wiry, it possesses no virtue as food, and is useless as a grass: this bromus inclines to the limestone, the lias, or clay-stone, as if alumine was required, to effect some essential purpose in its nature; but this is a plant not found universally.

We have in use generally here a very prudential method of saving our crops in bad and catching seasons, by securing the hay in windcocks, and wheat in pooks. As soon as a portion of our grass becomes sufficiently dry, we do not wait for the whole crop being in the same state, but, collecting together about a good wagon load of it, we make a large cock in the field, and as soon as a like quantity is ready we stack that likewise, until the whole field is successively finished, and on the first fine day unite the whole in a mow. Some farmers, in very precarious seasons, only cut enough to make one of these cocks, and having secured this, cut again for another. Should we be necessitated, from the state of the weather, to let these parcels remain long on the ground, or be a little dilatory, which I believe we sometimes are, before they are carried, or, as we say, hawled (haled,) the cocks are apt to get a little warm, and only partially heat in the mow, the hay cutting out streaky, and not perhaps so bright or fragrant as when uniformly heated in body: but I am acquainted with no other disadvantage from this practice, and it is assuredly the least expensive, and most ready way of saving a crop in a moist and uncertain season. For wheat it is a very efficacious plan, as these stacks or pooks, (a corruption perhaps of packs,) when properly made, resist long and heavy rains, the sheaves not being simply piled together, but the heads gradually elevated to a certain degree in the centre, and the but-end then shoots off the water, the summit being lightly thatched. An objection has been raised to this custom, from the idea that the mice in the field take refuge in the pooks, and are thus carried home; but mice will resort to the sheaves as well when drying, and be conveyed in like manner to the barn: we have certainly no equally efficacious or speedy plan for securing a crop of wheat, and thousands of loads are thus commonly saved, which would otherwise be endangered, or lost by vegetating in the sheaf.

We will admit that grain, hardened by exposure to the sun and air in the sheaf, is sooner ready for the miller, and is generally a brighter article than that which has been hastily heaped up in the pook; but when the season does not allow of this exposure, but obliges us to prevent the germinating of the grain by any means, I know no practice, as an expedient, rather than a recommendation in all cases, more prompt and efficacious than this.

Two of our crops not being of universal culture are entitled to a brief mention. We grow the potato extensively in our fields, a root which must be considered, after bread corn and rice, the kindest vegetable gift of Providence to mankind. This root forms the chief support of our population as their food, and affords them a healthful employment for three months in the year, during the various stages of planting, hacking, hoeing, harvesting. Every laborer rents of the farmer some portion of his land, to the amount of a rood or more, for this culture, the profits of which enable him frequently to build a cottage, and, with the aid of a little bread, furnishes a regular, plentiful, nutritious food for himself, his wife, and children within, and his pig without doors; and they all grow fat and healthy upon this diet, and use has rendered it essential to their being. The population of England, Europe perhaps, would never have been numerous as it is, without this vegetable; and if the human race continue increasing, the cultivation of it may be extended to meet every demand, which no other earthly product could scarcely be found to admit of. The increase of mankind throughout Europe, within the last forty years, has been most remarkable, as every census informs us, notwithstanding the havoc and waste of continual warfare, and most extensive emigration; and as it seems to be an established maxim, that population will increase according to the means of supply, so, if a northern hive should swarm again, or

“Blue-eyed myriads from the Baltic shore”

once more arise, future historians will probably attribute this excess of population, and the revolutions it may effect, to the introduction of vaccination on the one part, and the cultivation of the potato on the other.

The varieties of this tuber, like apples, seem annually extending, and every village has its own approved sorts and names, different soils being found preferable for particular kinds, and local treatment advantageous. We plant both by the dibble and the spade: our chief sorts are pink eyes, prince’s beauty, magpies, and china oranges, for our first crop; blacks, roughs, and reds, for the latter crop; and horses’ legs, for cattle. We have a new sort under trial, with rather an extraordinary name, which I must here call “femora dominarum!” But we find here, as is usual with other vegetable varieties, that after a few years’ cultivation the sorts lose their original characters, or, as the men say, “the land gets sick of them,” and they cease to produce as at first, and new sets are resorted to. We have no vegetable under cultivation more probably remunerative than this, or more certain of being in demand sooner or later; it consequently becomes an article of speculation, but not to such an injurious extent as some others are: it gives a sufficient profit to the farmer and his sub renter. Our land is variously rented for this culture; but perhaps eight pounds per acre are a general standard: the farmer gives it two plowings, finds manure, and pays the tithe; the seed is found, and all the labor in and out is performed by the renter; or the farmer, in lieu of any rent, receives half the crop. The farmer’s expenses may be rated at—

£. s. d. Rent to his landlord 1 10 0 Two plowings 1 6 0 Twelve loads of manure 1 16 0 Tithe 0 10 0 Rates 0 3 0 ─────────────────────────────────────────────── £5 5 0

leaving him a clear profit of 2l. 15s. per acre. The sub renter’s expenditure and profit will be—