Part 4

£. s. d. Rent 8 0 0 Labor in and out 3 0 6 ─────────────────────────────────────────────── £12 12 6

£. s. d. Produce 50 sacks, at 6s. 6d. 16 5 0 Trash, or small pigs 1 0 0 ─────────────────────────────────────────────── £17 5 0

leaving a profit of 4l. 12s. 6d. per acre. The produce will vary greatly at times, and then the price of the article varies too. The returns to the laborer are always ample, when conducted with any thing like discretion, and the emolument to the farmer is also quite sufficient as, beside the rent, he is paid for the manuring his land for a succeeding crop, be it wheat or barley; hence land is always to be obtained by the cotter, upon application. We have a marked instance in the year 1825 how little we can predict what the product of this crop will be, or the change that alteration of weather may effect; for after the drought of the summer, after our apprehensions, our dismay (for the loss of this root is a very serious calamity), the produce of potatoes was generally fair, in places abundant; many acres yielding full eighty sacks, which, at the digging out price of 6s. the sack, gave a clear profit to the laborer of 11l. 7s. 6d. per acre! But at any rate it gives infinite comfort to the poor man, which no other article can equally do, and a plentiful subsistence, when grain would be poverty and want. The injudicious manner in which some farmers have let their land has certainly, under old acts of parliament, brought many families into a parish; but we have very few instances where a potato land renter to any extent is supported by the parish. In this village a very large portion of our peasantry inhabit their own cottages, the greater number of which have been obtained by their industry, and the successful culture of this root. The getting in and out of the crop is solely performed by the cotter and his family: a child drops a set in the dibble-hole or the trench made by the father, the wife with her hoe covering it up; and in harvesting all the family are in action; the baby is wrapped up when asleep in its mother’s cloak, and laid under the shelter of some hedge, and the digging, picking, and conveying to the great store-heap commences; a primitive occupation and community of labor, that I believe no other article admits of or affords.

It has been said that the culture of the potato is injurious to the farm in general, and I know landlords who restrict the growth of it; but perhaps the extent of injury has been greatly overrated. The potato, it is true, makes no return to the land in straw for manure, and a large portion of that which is made in the barton is occasionally required for its cultivation; and thus it is said to consume without any repayment what is equally due to other crops: but the cultivation of this tuber requires that the soil should be moved and turned repeatedly; it is generally twice at least plowed, trenched by the spade for sets, hacked when the plant is above ground, then hoed into ridges, and finally, the whole turned over again when the crop is got out: thus is the soil six times turned and exposed to the sun and air and it is kept perfectly free from weeds of all kinds—both of which circumstances are essentially beneficial to the soil. If the potato must have manure, it does not exhaust all the virtues of it, as the crop which succeeds it, be it wheat or barley, sufficiently manifests: there are, besides, exertions made by the renter to obtain this profitable crop, that greatly improve the farm, and which a less promising one would not always stimulate him to attempt—he will cut up his ditch banks, collect the waste soil of his fields, composting it with lime and other matters as a dressing for the potato crop, and it answers well: the usual returns from corn, and fluctuations in the price, will not often induce him to make such exertions. All this is no robbery of the farm-yard, but solely a profitable reward and premium to industry.

Much has been said and written about the potato; but as some erroneous ideas have been received concerning its early introduction into Europe, perhaps a slight sketch of the history of this extraordinary root may not be uninteresting,—a summary of the perusal of multitudes of volumes, papers, treatises!

The sweet Spanish potato (convolvulus batatus), a native of the East, was very early dispersed throughout the continent of Europe; and all the ancient accounts, in which the name of potato is mentioned, relate exclusively to this plant, a convolvulus: but our inquiry at present regards that root now in such extensive cultivation with us, which is an American plant (solanum tuberosum). Perhaps the first mention that is known concerning the root is that of the great German botanist, Clusius, in 1588, who received a present of two of the tubers in that year from Flanders; and there is a plate of it among his rare plants. The first certain account which I know of by any English writer is in Gerard, who mentions, in his herbal, receiving some roots from Virginia, and planting them in his garden near London as a curiosity, in the year 1597. All the multiform tales which we have of its introduction by Hawkins, shipwrecked vessels, Raleigh, and his boiling the apples instead of the roots, are merely traditional fancies, or modern inventions, with little or no probability for support. There is some possibility that Sir Walter Raleigh might have introduced the potato into Ireland from America, when he returned in 1584, or rather after his last voyage, eleven years later; but if so, it was much confined in its culture, and slowly acquired estimation, even in that island; for Dr. Campbell does not admit that it was known there before the year 1610, fifteen years after Sir Walter’s final return. In England it seems to have been yet more tardy in obtaining notice; for the first mention which I can find, wherein this tuber is regarded as possessing any virtue, is by that great man Sir Francis Bacon, who investigated nature from the “cedar that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowls, and of fishes, and of creeping things,” in his history of “Life and Death,” written, probably, in retirement after his disgrace. He observes, that “if ale was brewed with one-fourth part of some fat root, such as the potado, to three-fourths of grain, it would be more conducive to longevity than with grain alone.” It was thus full twenty-four years after its being planted by Gerard, that the nutritive virtues of this root appear to have been understood: but with us there seems to have been almost an antipathy against this root as an article of food, which can scarcely excite surprise, when we consider what a wretched sort must have been grown, which one writer tells us was very near the nature of Jerusalem artichokes, but not so good or wholesome; and that they were to be roasted and sliced, and eaten with a sauce composed of wine and sugar! Even Philip Miller, who wrote his account not quite seventy years ago, says “they were despised by the rich, and deemed only proper food for the meaner sorts of persons;” and this at a time when that sorry root, the underground or Jerusalem artichoke (helianthus tuberosus) was in great esteem, and extensively cultivated. And we must bear in mind the disinclination, the prejudice I might almost call it, that this root manifests to particular soils. Most of our esculent vegetables thrive better—are better flavored, when growing in certain soils, and under different influences; but the potato becomes actually deteriorated in some land. And every cultivator knows from experience, that the much- admired product of some friend’s domain, or garden, becomes, when introduced into his own, a very inferior, or even an unpalatable root. Potatoes will grow in certain parishes and districts, and even remain unvitiated; but the product will be scanty, as if they tolerated the culture only, and produced by favor; whereas in an adjoining station, possessing some different admixture of soil, some change of aspect, the crop will be highly remunerative. These circumstances in earlier days, when their value, and the necessity of possessing them, were not felt, counteracted any attempt for extensive cultivation, or, probably, influenced the dislike to their use.

However locally this solanum might have been planted, yet it appears, after consulting a variety of agricultural reports, garden books, husbandmen’s directions, &c. down to the statements of Arthur Young, that the potato has not been grown in gardens in England more than one hundred and seventy years; or to any extent in the field above seventy- five. At length, however, as better sorts were introduced, and better modes of dressing found out, it became esteemed; and the value of this most inestimable root was so rapidly manifested, and the demand for it so great, that we find by a survey made about thirty years ago, that the county of Essex alone cultivated about seventeen hundred acres for the London market. I know not the extent of land now required for the supply of our metropolis, but it must be prodigious.

Amidst the numerous remarkable productions ushered into the old continent from the new world, there are two which stand pre-eminently conspicuous from their general adoption; unlike in their natures, both have been received as extensive blessings—the one by its nutritive powers tends to support, the other by its narcotic virtues to soothe and comfort the human frame—the potato and tobacco; but very different was the favor with which these plants were viewed: the one, long rejected, by the slow operation of time, and perhaps of necessity, was at length cherished, and has become the support of millions; but nearly one hundred and twenty years passed away before even a trial of its merits was attempted: whereas the tobacco from Yucatan, in less than seventy years after the discovery, appears to have been extensively cultivated in Portugal, and is, perhaps, the most generally adopted superfluous vegetable product known; for sugar and opium are not in such common use. Luxuries, usually, are expensive pleasures, and hence confined to few: but this sedative herb, from its cheapness, is accessible to almost every one, and is the favorite indulgence of a large portion of mankind. Food and rest are the great requirements of mortal life: the potato, by its starch, satisfies the demands of hunger; the tobacco, by its morphin, calms the turbulence of the mind: the former becomes a necessity required; the latter a gratification sought for.

Many as the uses are to which this root is applicable—and it will be annually applied to more; if we consider it merely as an article of food, though subject to occasional partial failures, yet exempted from the blights, the mildews, the wire-worms, the germinatings of corn, which have often filled our land with wailings and with death, we will hail the individual, whoever he might be, who brought it to us, as one of the greatest benefactors to the human race, and with grateful hearts thank the bountiful giver of all good things for this most extensive blessing.

It is a well-known fact, that we are perfectly ignorant of the native sites of nearly all those gramineous plants, distinguished by Linnæus as Cerealia, whose seeds have from the earliest periods of time served for the food of man, such as wheat, rye, barley, rice, maize, oats: perhaps we must except the two last, as the oat was discovered by Bruce growing under the culture of nature alone; and he was too good a botanist to have mistaken the identity of Avena sativa—and Indian corn may have been found. That some of them were produced in these regions first inhabited by mankind, we have every reason to believe, and the warrant of something like obscure tradition; but our ignorance of the first habitats of these plants is the less to be wondered at, when we consider that it is more than probable that culture and the arts of man have so infinitely changed the form, improved the nature, and obscured the original species, that it is no longer traceable in any existent state. There appears to be a permission from Nature to effect certain changes in vegetables, yet she retains an inherent propensity in the plant to revert to its original creation, which is very manifest in this particular race, for the sorts which we now make use of will not endure the thraldom of our perversion without the artifices, the restraints of man, but have a constant tendency to return to some other nature, or to run wild, as we call it. Man bears them with him in all his wanderings, by his treatment they remain obedient to his desires, and are identified with colonization, but as soon as he remits his attentions, the seeds perish in the soil, or their offspring dwindle in the earth, and are lost. Or we may say, that Nature, having created these things, permits him, in the sweat of his brow, to effect an improvement, and consigns the custody of them to his care, satisfied that he will preserve them for his own benefit as long as required; when his occasion for them ceases, or when by sloth he neglects them, they return to their original creation: the earth might be cursed to bring forth thorns and thistles, but an attendant blessing and mercy was reserved of permitting them to be cultivated, producing healthful recreation and grateful food. If these are plants of immemorial antiquity, the potato is yet of comparatively modern introduction, but the original species from whence all our endless varieties have emanated cannot probably now be ascertained, man having, as observed above, almost created an essential article of food; and it is not unimportant to note the great difference that subsists in the component parts of these varieties—for though, in common estimation, a potato may be a potato, yet we find them very differently compounded. The influence of different temperatures and years may cause these proportions to vary, but I give them as observed in 1828.

Black or purple, Fibre 9¾ │Fecula 9¾ │Water 80½ = 100 Prince’s beauty do. 15 │Ditto 11¾│Ditto 70¼ do. Horse’s legs do. 13 │Ditto 15 │Ditto 72 do.

The proportion of fecula varies greatly, and as the principle of nutriment is supposed to exist in this matter, the value of each sort, if mere nutriment is required, is indicated by this analysis.

The potato may be considered as the most valuable production that Europe has received from the continent of America, and is now, as Bishop Heber informs us, much esteemed in the East, and regarded as the greatest benefit the country ever received from its European masters. A plant that can so climatize and preserve its valuable properties in such different temperatures as northern Europe and Bengal, where the thermometer ranges up to 90 or 100 degrees of heat, must be particularly endowed, and in time will probably become naturalized to every region, and circulate its benefits round the globe. The strenuous manner in which I have lauded this root may, perhaps, excite a smile in some, who only know it as a table viand; but those who have witnessed the blessings which this tuber confers, by affording a sufficiency of food to man and beast, will not be disposed to regard lightly such comforts obtainable by their poorer neighbors.

Our second crop to which I alluded, and which some years we grow largely, is the teasel (dipsacus fullonum), a plant which is probably no native of this country, but, like woad, canary-grass, &c., originally introduced by some of the numerous foreign artisans, who have at various times sought refuge here, or been encouraged to settle in England. Our woollen manufactory could hardly have made any progress without this plant: the constant continental wars in the earlier part of our monarchy, and the rival jealousies of foreign nations, would have impeded, or prohibited, the necessary supply of teasels, and thus rendered the domestic cultivation of this indispensable plant a primary object. The manufactory of cloth was certainly carried on in England during the reign of Richard I., perhaps in his father’s reign; but it was probably not until after the tenth of Edward III., that the teasel was cultivated to any extent with us; for about that time the exportation of English wool was prohibited, and the wearing of foreign cloth opposed by government. Flemish artisans were encouraged to settle in this country, and carry on their trade, with every liberty and protection; a regular mart was established; and the tuckers, or woollen weavers, became an incorporated body; particular towns began to furnish peculiar colors—Kendal, its green, Coventry, its blue, Bristol, its red, &c.; and from this period, I think, we may date the cultivation of the teasel in England.

Hudson, in considering this species as indigenous, directs us to hedges for our specimens; but, though the teasel is certainly found a wilding in some places astray from cultivation, yet it is singular that with us it does not wander from culture: though the seeds are scattered about and swept from the barns where the heads are dried into the yard, and vegetate in profusion on the dung-heaps and the by-ways where dropped, yet I have never observed it growing in the surrounding hedges.

Teasels are cultivated in some of the strong clay-lands of Wilts, Essex, Gloucester, and Somerset. The latter county is supposed to have grown them earliest. The manufacturers rather give the preference to those of Gloucester, as lands repeatedly cropped are thought not to produce them so good in some respects. Strong land, thrown up as for wheat, and kept dry, affords the best teasels. Weeding, draining, and other requisites, demand a constant labor through great part of the year; and hence a certain expense is incurred: but remuneration, loss, or great profit, circumstances must determine; nor, perhaps, is there any article grown more precarious or mutable in its returns.

The teasel throws up its heads in July and August; and these are cut from the plant by hand, with a knife particularly formed, and then fastened to poles for drying: the terminating heads are ready first, and called “kings:” they are larger and coarser than the others, and fitted only for the strongest kinds of cloth, and are about half the value of the best. The collateral heads then succeed, and receive the name of “middlings,” and are the prime teasels. Should the season prove moist, great injury ensues; but exposure to wet for any length of time ruins the head, which, by its peculiar construction, retains the moisture, and it decays. We cannot stack them like corn, as pressure destroys the spines, and a free circulation of air is required to dry them thoroughly; and we seek for barns, sheds, and shelter of any kind, crowd the very bed-rooms of our cottages with them in dripping seasons, and bask them in every sunny gleam that breaks out: this is attended with infinite trouble; and as few farmers, who have so many other concerns on their hands, like to encounter it, they become the speculation of the most opulent class of cottagers. When dry, they are picked and sorted into bundles for sale, ten thousand best and small middlings making a pack; nine thousand constitute the pack of kings. If there be a stock on hand, and the season favorable, there is a sufficiency for the demand, and the price low: if adverse weather ensue, the price becomes greatly advanced, and we have known them in the course of a few months vary from 4l. to 22l. the pack! but from 5l. to 7l. is perhaps the average price of this article. This variation in value affords the growers a subject for constant speculation—a source of rapid wealth to some, and injury to others—and we most emphatically call teasels a “casualty crop.” Our manufacturers occasionally import teasels from Holland and France, when the price is high in England: this they can do when the home price exceeds 8l.

In letting teasel land, various agreements are made, not necessary to mention in a note like this; but it is usually taken for two years, it requiring much of this time from sowing the seed to cutting the heads for sale. In rating the expenses, we will say—

£. s. d. One acre at 2l. per ann. (for two years) 4 0 0 Expense of culture, 3l. per ann per acre 6 0 0 Tithe 0 8 0 Cutting the heads, per acre 0 6 0 Sorting and packing at 6s. for seven packs, average crop 2 2 0 Miscellaneous expenses, polls, sticks, &c. 1 0 0 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 13 16 0 Average crop brought to market, seven packs, at 6l. 42 0 0 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Leaving a profit for the 2 years, upon an acre, of £28 4 3

As the teasel man seldom rents less than four or six acres, which he can very well attend to, it may produce at the two years’ end a return upon the six acres of 169l., if all circumstances should be favorable—a tempting inducement to speculation, when a laborer, by regular daily pay, cannot earn above 32l. per annum. But it requires some ready money to support the family during this period of expectation—and if a bad season occur, all the labor is lost, the profit destroyed, the anxiety of months ends in disappointment, and debt only remains. This is most truly a casualty crop; and the manufacturers are so sensible of the risk and trouble attending the cultivation of this plant, that they prefer purchasing to growing it for their own use; and I know one who has declared his loss in the attempt to exceed 500l.

It has been thought that the cultivation of teasels exhausted the land, and some landlords in consequence have forbidden the growth of them in their agreements; perhaps I can be no sufficient judge of the accuracy of this idea, from our limited growth, but speaking locally, such land as we make use of for their culture is of so inferior a nature, that little deterioration can ensue from any crop. The teasel, having a tap root, does not exhaust the superficial soil as a fibrous-rooted plant would do; the ground on which they grow is hoed, and turned by the spade repeatedly, and up to a certain period kept free from weeds; but as the plant is forming heads, little attention seems given to the eradication of intrusive rubbish, and, consequently, after gathering the crop the soil is frequently in a very foul state, and from hence the chief injury to the land may arise, rather than from the teasel plant. Though this crop requires no manure, nor affords any to the soil, yet the removal of the earth so repeatedly by the hoe and spade becomes equivalent to a fallow: with us a wheat crop often succeeds the teasel, and I have observed in this case as good a return of that grain as is produced by the adjoining fields where teasels had not been grown.

This plant seems to be known in many countries by a name expressive of its use. Old Gerard has recorded several of these names. Its old English name was the carding teasel; the Latin name, carduus veneris; the French call it chardon de foullon; the Danes and Swedes, karde tidsel; the Flemings, karden distel; the Hollanders, kaarden; Italy and Portugal, cardo; the Spaniards, cardencha, &c.

I believe that the teasel affords a solitary instance of a natural production being applied to mechanical purposes in the state in which it is produced. It appears, from many attempts, that the object designed to be effected by the teasel cannot be supplied by any contrivance—successive inventions having been abandoned as defective or injurious. The use of the teasel is to draw out the ends of the wool from the manufactured cloth, so as to bring a regular pile or nap upon the surface, free from twistings and knottings, and to comb off the coarse and loose parts of the wool. The head of the true teasel is composed of incorporated flowers, each separated by a long, rigid, chaffy substance, the terminating point of which is furnished with a fine hook. Many of these heads are fixed in a frame; and with this the surface of the cloth is teased, or brushed, until all the ends are drawn out, the loose parts combed off, and the cloth ceases to yield impediments to the free passage of the wheel, or frame, of teasels. Should the hook of the chaff, when in use, become fixed in a knot, or find sufficient resistance, it breaks without injuring or contending with the cloth, and care is taken by successive applications to draw the impediment out: but all mechanical inventions hitherto made use of offer resistance to the knot; and, instead of yielding and breaking as the teasel does, resist and tear it out, making a hole, or injuring the surface. The dressing of a piece of cloth consumes a great multitude of teasels—it requiring from 1500 to 2000 heads to accomplish the work properly. They are used repeatedly in the different stages of the process; but a piece of fine cloth generally breaks this number before it is finished, or we may say that there is a consumption answering to the proposed fineness—pieces of the best kinds requiring one hundred and fifty or two hundred runnings up, according to circumstances.

Our small farmers here have a vile practice of picking from their turf, in the spring of the year, all the droppings of their autumn and winter fed cattle to carry on their arable land for the potato, or some grain crop: this affords no great supply to plowed land, and is very injurious to their grazing grounds; but the answer generally is, “that the corn must have manure, and the beast can take care of itself;” and in many cases, I fear, from the starved appearance of the young cattle, that their best endeavors have afforded a very inadequate supply.

This picking of the field was formerly very generally resorted to in the midland counties; but the farmers at that time had a sufficient excuse in the scarcity of common fuel. The droppings of the cows were collected in heaps, and beaten into a mass with water; then pressed by the feet into moulds like bricks, by regular professional persons, called clatters (clodders); then dried in the sun, and stacked like peat, and a dry March for the clat-harvest was considered as very desirable. These answered very well for heating water for the dairy and uses of the farm back-kitchen, giving a steady, dull heat, without flame; but navigable canals, and other conveniences of a similar nature, have rendered the practice now unnecessary. With us this bad custom is declining, and probably in time will cease altogether.

* * * * *

It is rather a subject of surprise, that in our general associations and commixtures in life, in times so highly enlightened as the present, when many ancient prejudices are gradually flitting away, as reason and science dawn on mankind, we should meet with so few, comparatively speaking, who have any knowledge of, or take the least interest in natural history; or if the subject obtain a moment’s consideration, it has no abiding place in the mind, being dismissed as the fitting employ of children and inferior capacities. But the natural historian is required to attend to something more than the vagaries of butterflies, and the spinnings of caterpillars; his study, considered abstractedly from the various branches of science which it embraces, is one of the most delightful occupations that can employ the attention of reasoning beings: a beautiful landscape, grateful objects, pleasures received by the eye or the senses, become the common property of all who can enjoy them, being in some measure obvious to every one; but the naturalist must reflect upon hidden things, investigate by comparison, and testify by experience, and living amidst the wonders of creation, it becomes his occupation to note and proclaim such manifestations of wisdom or goodness as may be perceived by him. And perhaps none of the amusements of human life are more satisfactory and dignified, than the investigation and survey of the workings and ways of Providence in this created world of wonders, filled with his never-absent power: it occupies and elevates the mind, is inexhaustible in supply, and, while it furnishes meditation for the closet of the studious, gives to the reflections of the moralizing rambler admiration and delight, and is an engaging companion, that will communicate an interest to every rural walk. We need not live with the humble denizens of the air, the tenants of the woods and hedges, or the grasses of the field; but to pass them by in utter disregard, is to neglect a large portion of rational pleasure open to our view, which may edify and employ many a passing hour, and by easy gradations will often become the source whence flow contemplations of the highest orders. Young minds cannot, I should conceive, be too strongly impressed with the simple wonders of creation by which they are surrounded: in the race of life they may be passed by, the occupation of existence may not admit attention to them, or the unceasing cares of the world may smother early attainments—but they can never be injurious—will give a bias to a reasoning mind, and tend, in some after-thoughtful, sobered hour, to comfort and to soothe. The little insights that we have obtained into nature’s works are many of them the offspring of scientific research; and partial and uncertain as our labors are, yet a brief gleam will occasionally lighten the darksome path of the humble inquirer, and give him a momentary glimpse of hidden truths: let not then the idle and the ignorant scoff at him who devotes an unemployed hour,—

“No calling left, no duty broke,”