LAND:
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
LAND:
ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
BY FIFTY-SEVEN WRITERS.
EDITED BY C. F. DOWSETT, F.S.I.
THE "LAND ROLL" OFFICE,
3, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.
1892.
Copyright. Entered at Stationers Hall.
LONDON :
WITHERBY AND CO., PRINTERS,
326, HIGH : HOI/BORN, \V.(.
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
ERRATA
Mr. W. E. Bear writes : " I regret to have to correct an error which crept into
my Table of Imports of Corn on page 418 of ' Land.' In transcribing from a rough
table, in which the quantity of wheat imported in 1870 was correctly stated, I must
have copied an entirely different item, and by so doing I greatly understated the
quantity. In the quantity for 1890 there is a slight alteration, more exact returns for
that year being available now than there were when the chapter was written. I ask
those who possess a copy of ' Land ' to correct the lines of figures opposite 'Wheat'
and ' Total of Corn, Flour, and Meal ' as follows :
1870. 1890. Increase.
Wheat, cwts. 28,883,778 60,000,790 31,117,012
Total Corn, Flour, and Meal .. 71,513,727 154,311,496 82,797,769
" The first sentence following the table should be altered to read as follows :
' These figures show that, since 1870, our net imports of wheat have increased more
than two-fold, and those of wheat flour about three and a-half times, while the total
for all kinds of corn and meal is more than doubled.' "
Mr. Walker writes that at Page 523, Wheat returns should read 7 135. instead
of 8 2s., and total g 135. instead of ^"10 2s.
CLARKE, A. DUDLEY
CURTIS, C. E.
DAW SON, E. H.
DAWSON, H. ...
LXXIX. Local and Imperial Assessments on Landed
Property.
XXXIII. Improving Farms a Safe Investment.
LXIII. Frontages to Oceans and Rivers.
LXIV. Forestry.
XXXVI. Reclamation.
XXX. The Autobiography of a Company Promoter.
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
ALGER, T. L.
ALLAN, FRANCIS J.
ARMSTRONG, E. A.
BEAR, WILLIAM E.
BOND, Principal
BRIGHTWEN, Mrs. ...
BROWN, GEORGE ...
CLARKE, A. DUDLEY
CURTIS, C. E.
DAW SON, E. H.
DAWSON, H. ...
CHAPTER
XVI. The Attractions of a Life in the Country.
IT. Comparison between Town and Country in
reference to Health.
XIX. The Pleasures of a Country Life.
XLII. Tenant Right.
XLIII. The Prospects of Fanning.
XLIV. Foreign Competition and the Price of Land.
XLV. Our Food Supply.
L. Fruit Growing.
XI. Pleasures of a Country Home.
II. Comparison between Town and Country in
reference to Health.
LXXIX. Local and Imperial Assessments on Landed
Property.
XXXIII. Improving Farms a Safe Investment.
LXIII. Frontages to Oceans and Rivers.
LXIV. Forestry.
XXXVI. Reclamation.
XXX. The Autobiography of a Company Promoter.
Vlll.
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
DoWbETT, C. F.
CHAPTER
I.
XVII.
XXVII.
XXXI.
XXXV.
XXXVII.
XXXVIII.
LXII.
LXXVII.
DUN, FINLAY
LIV.
>J
LVII.
EMERTON, WOLSFLEY
LXXI.
P.
EVERSHED, H. ...;
XLYI.
UMM
XLVII.
,,
LXXIV.
GASKELL, T. PENN ...
LVI.
GlBHS, E. J. ...
XXVIII.
XXIX.
HARRIS, W. H.
XXIV.
HARRIS, W. J.
XXXIV.
HECKETHORN, C. W.
XXXII.
HENSLOW, Prof. G. ...
XXV.
HEKHKRT, AUBERON .
LXXI I.
"HERMIT"
XII.
,,
XXL
,,
XXII.
,,
XXIII.
HERRING, The Rev. A.
XVIII.
STYI.EMAN
HOPE, LADY ...
JONES, JOHN
LAKK, The Rev. J. W.
The Object of the Book.
Land as a Luxury.
Losses by Stock Exchange Investments.
Land Buying (from the Argus).
Villa Farms (Town Toilers need Quiet and
Repose).
The Agitation for Rating Ground Rents and
Vacant Building Lands.
Land and House Investments.
Poultry Farming.
Easy Transfer of Land.
How can Farming be made Profitable ?
Cattle.
The History of Rights of Property in Land.
The Early Maturity of Live Stock. .
Improvement of Crops and Stock.
Duties and Responsibilities of Landlords.
The Importance of Combination amongst
Farmers.
Losses by Stock Exchange Investments.
The Pleasures of a Country Life from a
Natural History Point of View.
Small Holdings as an Investment.
Investments.
The Value of Botany to Country Residents.
Land from a Liberty Point of View.
Some Pleasures of a Country Life.
Fishing.
Shooting.
Decoys.
Fresh Air for Poor London Children.
X. Country Pleasures and Interests.
XIII. Country Life.
XV. The Advantages of a Country Life.
IXDEX OF AUTHORS.
IX.
LOBLEV, Prof. J. LOGAN
LONG, Professor
MCCONNELL, Professor
PRIMROSE
MACMILLAN, The Rev.
HUGH
MAYNARD, CONSTANCE
L.
MERRY. LEYSON T. .'.
MEYER, The Rev. F. B. XCII.
MOORE, The Rev. T. LXXVIII.
MOR(;AN, SAMPSON ...
MovLE,TheRev.V.H.
MURRAY, GILBERT ...
NORTON, GEORGE ...
PAXTON, E. H.
PEMBER, G. H.
PENDEREL - BROD-
HURST, J.
RAXVSON, F. L.
CHAPTER
LXXXII. Land and Minerals. .- . . i
LXXXIII. Land and Stone.
LXXXIV. Clays.
LXXXV. Lime.
LXXXVI. Coal.
XLVIII. Dairy Farming.
XXXIX. Agricultural Education.
LXXXI. Agricultural Geology.
VIII. The Fir Forest.
IX. Some of the Poets on the Country.
XXVI. The Dangers attending Limited Liability
Investments.
Land in the Jewish Polity.
A Brief Account of the Origin and Growth of
Tithes.
LIT. The Profitable Utilisation of Hill Slopes and
Waste Lands in England.
LI. Fruit Drying and Evaporation.
LIII. Herbs, etc., and Herb Culture.
LX. Rabbits : their Culture and Uses.
LXI. Bee Products (Honey and Wax and their
Applications).
XL. Thorough Cultivation of the Soil.
XLI. Land Drainage.
LXIX. Water Power Machinery.
VII. The Pleasures arising from the Possession of
Land.
LXXXIX. British Prairies near to England.
XCII I. The Primeval Command and the Prophetic
Promise.
V. The Country Mouse : an Appreciation.
LXXX. Applications of Electricity to Agriculture.
X.
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
CHAPTER
READE, The Rev.
COMPTON
VI.
,,
LXV.
RICH, ROBERT
LXX.
RICHARDSON, Dr. B.
III.
W.
RUSSELL, T. W.
LXXXVII.
SAYCE, Prof. A. H. ...
XCI.
SlLLEM, S. A.
LXXV.
,,
LXXVI.
WALFORD, E.
XIV.
WALKER, JOHN
XX.
,,
LV.
i>
LVIII.
,,
LIX.
??
LXVI.
,, ...
LXVII.
,,
LXVIII.
WALLACE, Prof. R. ...
XC.
WARD, F. W.
LXXXVIII.
WHITE, PERCY
IV.
WRIGHT, JOHN
XLIX.
WOOD, WILLIAM
LXXIII.
The Pleasures of the Country.
Arboriculture.
Land Surveying and Levelling.
Health in Relation to Land.
The Irish Land System.
Ancient Lands.
Registration of Title to Land.
The Settlement and Entail of Land.
Excavations in Cranborne Chase, Wilts, and
Dorset.
Hunting.
What an Acre of Land Can Produce.
Horses.
Sheep.
Cereals.
Legumes, Roots and Vegetables.
Ensilage.
Egyptian Lands.
English Homes in the Far South.
The Pleasures of the Country.
Fruit and Its Cultivation : Fallacies and Facts.
First Principles of a Landlord's Duty.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE OBJECT OF THE BOOK ..... 3
II. COMPARISON BETWEEN TOWN AND COUNTRY IN
REFERENCE TO HEALTH .... 6
III. HEALTH IN RELATION TO LAND . . . -13
IV. THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY ... 29
V. THE COUNTRY MOUSE : AN APPRECIATION . . 38
VI. THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY . . .47
VII. THE PLEASURES ARISING FROM THE POSSESSION
OF LAND . . . . . . . -57
VIII. THE FIR FOREST . . 63
IX. SOME OF THE POETS ON THE COUNTRY . . 73
X. COUNTRY PLEASURES AND INTERESTS . . 101
XL PLEASURES OF A COUNTRY HOME . . . 105
XII. SOME PLEASURES OF A COUNTRY LIFE . . in
XIII. COUNTRY LIFE 119
XIV. EXCAVATIONS IN CRANBORNE CHASE, WILTS, AND
DORSET 122
Xll. CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
XV. THE ADVANTAGES OF A COUNTRY LIFE . .130
XVI. THE ATTRACTIONS OF A LIFE IN THE COUNTRY . 141
XVII. LAND AS A LUXURY 151
XVIII. FRESH AIR FOR POOR LONDON CHILDREN . . 159
XIX. THE PLEASURES OF A COUNTRY LIFE . . .163
XX. HUNTING 172
XXI. FISHING 175
XXII. SHOOTING 184
XXIII. DECOYS .... .... 201
: :
XXIV. THE PLEASURES OF A COUNTRY LIFE FROM A
NATURAL HISTORY POINT OF VIEW . 205
XXV. THE VALUE OF BOTANY TO COUNTRY RESIDENTS 218
XXVI. THE DANGERS ATTENDING LIMITED LIABILITY
INVESTMENTS . . . . . . .229
XXVII. LOSSES BY STOCK EXCHANGE INVESTMENTS, With
Statistics .... .236
XXVIII. LOSSES BY STOCK EXCHANGE INVESTMENTS, With
Statistics (No. i) . . .254
XXIX, LOSSES BY STOCK EXCHANGE INVESTMENTS, With
Statistics (No. 2) 260
XXX. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A COMPANY PROMOTER . 265
XXXI. FORTUNES BY LAND BUYING 275
XXXII. INVESTMENTS ... -279
XXXIII. IMPROVING FARMS A SAFE INVESTMENT . 288
XXXIV. SMALL HOLDINGS AS AN INVESTMENT . 297
XXXV. VILLA FARMS. (Town Toilers need Quiet and
Repose) 3 6
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER ,. A , ;E
. XXXVI. RECLAMATION . . . . . .317
/ XXXVII. THE AGITATION FOR RATING GROUND RENTS
AND VACANT BUILDING LANDS . . -322
XXXVIII. LAND AND HOUSE INVESTMENTS .... 338
XXXIX. AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION ..... 349
XL. THOROUGH CULTIVATION OF THE SOIL. . . 364
XLI. LAND DRAINAGE . . . . . . 372
XLII. TENANT RIGHT ... . 380
XLIII. THE PROSPECTS OF FARMING . . . . 390
XLIV. FOREIGN COMPETITION AND THE PRICE OF LAND 401
XLV. OUR FOOD SUPPLY 407
XLVI. THE EARLY MATURITY OF LIVE STOCK . . 420
XLVII. IMPROVEMENT OF CROPS AND STOCK . . .427
XLVIII. DAIRY FARMING 435
XLIX. FRUIT AND ITS CULTIVATION: FALLACIES AND
FACTS . . . . . . . 442
L. FRUIT GROWING . . . . . . . 474
LI. FRUIT DRYING AND EVAPORATION . . . 485
LII. THE PROFITABLE UTILIZATION OF HILL SLOPES
AND WASTE LANDS IN ENGLAND . . . . 490
LIII. HERBS, ETC., AND HERB CULTURE . . . 499
LIV. How CAN FARMING BE MADE PROFITABLE . . 506
LV. WHAT AN ACRE OF LAND CAN PRODUCE . -520
L, VI. THE IMPORTANCE OF COMBINATION AMONGST
FARMERS . . . . . . . .524
LVII. CATTLE. - -535
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
LVIII. HORSES. . 55 1
LIX. SHEEP .... -555
LX. RABBITS : THEIR CULTURE AND USES . -559
LXI. BEE PRODUCTS (Honey and Wax and their
Applications) ... . .566
LXII. POULTRY FARMING 57 l
LXIII. FRONTAGES TO OCEANS AND RIVERS . . 576
LXIV. FORESTRY 5&4
LXV. ARBORICULTURE ... . 592
LXVI. CEREALS .... .601
LXVII LEGUMES, ROOTS, AND VEGETABLES . . . 605
LXVIII. ENSILAGE . . . . . . .610
LXIX. WATER-POWER MACHINERY 614
LXX. LAND SURVEYING AND LEVELLING . . .619
LXXI. THE HISTORY OF RIGHTS OF PROPERTY IN LAND 631
LXXII. LAND FROM A LIBERTY POINT OF VIEW . . 654
LXXIII. FIRST PRINCIPLES OF A LANDLORD'S DUTY- . .675
LXXIV. DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF .LANDLORDS . 679
LXXV. REGISTRATION OF TITLE TO LAND . . . 686
LXX VI. THE SETTLEMENT AND ENTAIL OF LAND . . 697
LXXVII. EASY TRANSFER OF LAND ..... 737
LXXVIII. A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH
OF TITHES 722
LXXIX. LOCAL AND IMPERIAL ASSESSMENTS ON LANDED
PROPERTY . 734
LXXX. APPLICATIONS OF ELECTRICITY TO AGRICULTURE . 753
CONTENTS. XV.
CHAPTER PAGE
LXXXI. AGRICULTURAL GEOLOGY 759
LXXXII. LAND AND MINERALS 770
LXXXIII. LAND AND STONE 777
LXXXIV. CLAYS . . 784
LXXXV. LIME . .... 791
LXXXVI. COAI .795
LXXXVII. THE IRISH LAND SYSTEM 801
LXXXVIII. ENGLISH HOMES IN THE FAR SOUTH (Australasian) 809
LXXXIX. BRITISH PRAIRIES NEAR TO ENGLAND . . .819
XC. EGYPTIAN LANDS . . . . . . .824
XCI. ANCIENT LANDS (Babylonian, etc.) . . .837
XCII. LAND IN THE JEWISH POLITY .... 850
XCIII. THE PRIMEVAL COMMAND, AND THE PROPHETIC
PROMISE 857
SECTION I
CHAPTER I.
THE OBJECT OF THE BOOK.
FOR some years past the public has been made familiar
with depreciative expressions on the subject of the re-
duced value of our British broad acres. The daily papers,
magazines, books, reports, Parliamentary debates, etc.,
have continued a despondent tone, and those persons
from whom words of hope and encouragement were to be
expected have (with some few exceptions) joined in the
general chorus w r hich has contributed towards a con-
tinuance of depressing influences.
The unfortunate effect of all this pessimism has been
an alienation of capital from the soil, and millions sterling
have been diverted into joint stock investments many
of which have turned out to be unremunerative, and some
total failures, whereby individuals have been wrecked
and the nation injured.
Rural districts have become in a measure impoverished,
farmers have had to desert the old homesteads of their
ancestors, labourers have been reduced to great poverty
and have been compelled to immigrate to towns, trades-
men have had to curtail or close their businesses, and
commerce generally (as well as agriculture) has sustained
widespread and deep-rooted losses.
Yet in the face of all these facts little effort has been
made to win back capital to the soil, and residents to our
empty country mansions, houses, and cottages.
4 LAND :
The Empire is wealthy, and although large sums
have been lost to it in the channels recorded in the
chapter on Stock Exchange losses, yet immense sums
still await investment, and fresh wealth is being con-
tinually created.
The welfare of the country at large demands that our
rural districts should not be allowed to continue to be
starved of that use of capital, and deprived of residential
owners, without some effort being made to influence
public opinion, so that country homes and country invest-
ments should be more sought after.
Capitalists should be invited and encouraged to use
some portion of their wealth in investments connected
with the soil, so that there may be extended developments
of various forms of agricultural improvements and adapta-
tions of modern science contributing to assist the larger
farmers, to re-create a body of yeomen, to increase the
number of the peasantry, and to build up many branches
of rural commerce.
The subjects connected with land are so vast that it
would take a whole library to exhaust them ; but what
I have invited the contributors to this work to write,
embraces repeated chapters on the attractions and
advantages of country life, instructive chapters on the
varied uses of pastural and arable lands, chapters exposing
the losses sustained by those who have left investments
in solid mother earth for airy or bubble ones, chapters on
legal matters affecting land, and chapters on other sub-
jects, some of which do not directly affect our British
broad acres, but which are added as being of themselves
interesting on the subject of land generally.
A wider diffusion of land is greatly to be desired, not
by unjust coercive or confiscatory measures, but by
making transfer more easy and expeditious, and by some
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 5
alteration in the law of settlement whereby an owner may
have the liberty of selling land if he desires to do so.
Labourers at wages with allotments would probably
be more prosperous than if they tried to obtain a living
by cultivating (as peasant proprietors) a few acres of land
without capital, except under some helpful circumstances
as stated in Chapter xxxiv. ; but there are persons in
all districts who, engaged in professions, trades, situations,
etc., would be glad to possess a few acres of freehold land
if it were made more easy for them to acquire it.
By a large increase in small freehold landed proprietors
in rural districts and around every town in the Kingdom,
numbers of persons would be withdrawn from the
combinations of disturbers, a feeling of greater content-
ment engendered, and a strong repressing influence upon
recurrent agitations created.
C. F. DOWSETT.
3, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS,
LONDON, 1892.
NOTE. This Book is divided into seven sections, which
might appropriately have been headed Health, Social, Invest-
ments, Technical, Legal, Scientific, Special. But as this might
have subjected it to the criticism that a few chapters could as
well have been classed in one section as in another, numbers
instead of names have been adopted. C. F. D.
LAND I
CHAPTER II.
COMPARISON BETWEEN TOWN AND COUNTRY
IN REFERENCE TO HEALTH.
BY FRANCIS J. ALLAN, M.D., CM.,
Diplomate in Public Health Univ. Camb. ; Member General Council Univ. Edin.;
Medical Officer of Health St. Leonard's, Shoreditch ; Hon. Sec. Public Health Med.
Society ; Author of " Aids to Sanitary Science" &*c. , 6<r.,
And GEORGE BROWN, M.R.C.S. Eng., L.S.A. Lond.,
Gold Medallist in Medicine and Surgery, Charing Cross Hospital ; President of the
General Practitioners' Alliance-, Editor of "The Hospital Gazette" ; Author of
"Aids to Surgery" rc. , &c.
THE late Sir Edwin Chadwick has pointed it out as a
fact, no less curious than true, that the strongest in-
habitants of our largfe cities are those who have not
o
inhabited them for more than one generation. Were it
not for the continuous immigration from country districts
the population of our large cities would rapidly decrease
in numbers, constitution and health ; indeed, it has been
said that it would entirely die out after three generations.
Evidence of this degeneracy in physical strength was
given by Sir James McGregor, at one time Director-
General of the Army Medical Board ; he had found that
" a corps levied from the agricultural districts in Wales,
or the northern counties of England, lasted longer than
one recruited from the manufacturing towns from Bir-
mingham, Manchester, or near the Metropolis." So
great and permanent is the deterioration which goes on
in town-dwellers, that out of 613 recruits enlisted from
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 7
among them, only 223 were fit to join the service.
Reference to the figures published by the Registrar-
General confirms if confirmation be necessary the
statement that the country is healthier than the town ;
thus the death-rate during the last decade averaged 20
per 1000 inhabitants of large towns, while it was only
17 per 1000 for those living in small towns and in the
country. The very fact of bringing people to live nearer
one another seems to have an important bearing upon
their health, and it has been laid down as a rule by Drs.
Farr and Ogle that so soon as there are more than about
400 persons resident per square mile, the death-rate
increases in a definite ratio.*
Even were not our towns increasing rapidly in size
from the crowding into them of people from the country,
the matter is one which should claim the attention of our
legislators, both parliamentary and parochial. But, un-
fortunately, the recent census showed distinctly that the
rural districts were being drained of their population,
and it is urgently necessary, if a national calamity is to
be averted, that steps should be taken at once to enable
the rural population to remain at home under the health-
ful surroundings of the country.
1 1 is desirable to enquire what the causes are to which
we can attribute the marked difference which obtains
between* the health of the town and country dweller.
Popular opinion in this instance approaches very near
the truth when it ascribes to " fresh-air " a leading
place in the beneficial influences of country life ; for in
the phrase "fresh-air" the physician includes a number
of conditions, each of which plays an important part.
To find air almost perfectly pure, free from impurities
of all kinds, we must either go out to sea or ascend
* The death-rate varies with the twelfth root of the density of population.
8 LAND :
some five or six thousand feet into the mountains. But
between this and the polluted atmosphere of our towns
there are many gradations. The close crowding of houses
and streets, the result of the high value of building
sites, the accumulation of refuse, and the stagnation of
air, to a very large extent prevent the action of those
processes which Nature has provided for the removal of
harmful products of all kinds ; in the country and in
better class suburbs, on the contrary, the detached situa-
tion of the dwellings permits the free circulation of air
and access of sunlight, while the vegetation present
removes the contaminations of both air and soil.
It is found that impurities in the atmosphere increase
as we pass from rural districts to the suburbs, and from
the suburbs to the centre of a town. Dr. Miquel of the
Montsouris Observatory in Paris, has very methodically
examined the air for a series of years, and he reports
that on high mountains and out at sea about one microbe
may be found in a litre of air ; at the summit of the
Pantheon 200 microbes ; in the park at Montsouris an
average during the year of 455 ; in the Rue de Rivoli
an average of 3910, and in the Hotel de Dieu 79,000.
Similar conditions have been shown to exist in this
country by various observers.
The most important agent existing in the atmos-
phere, both for the support of life and for purposes of
purification, is oxygen. In one form or another this gas
takes part in all the important operations of Nature, and
it has this peculiarity that certain conditions, as the
passing of electricity through the air, the fall of rain, and
the dashing of the sea along the shore, condense it into
the extremely active form known as ozone. Another
form equally as active is known technically by the name
of peroxide of hydrogen, or " ant-ozone," and this body
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 9
is more generally distributed than ozone is, as wherever
vegetation is active and sunlight prevails peroxide is
produced.
The part played by vegetation in its relation to
animal life is an extremely important one ; it does not
exist merely to supply food or to please the eye, although
it admirably fulfils both these functions. It is generally
known that plants utilize many waste products, organic
and inorganic, in the soil ; that they absorb from the air
the deadly gas known as carbonic acid, which all animals
expire by their breath, and which is a product of all forms
of combustion, and that they restore oxygen to the air ;
but recently, through the researches of Kingzett and
other chemists, we have learned that a more complex
process also takes place. We are told that the odours
possessed by all vegetable bodies are to a very great
extent, if not entirely, due to the presence of essential
oils. Under the influence of light these bodies have the
power of absorbing oxygen, and of changing it into that
form which we have already mentioned, viz., peroxide of
hydrogen ; thus, continually at a more rapid rate in
summer than in winter, and faster in direct sunlight than
in the shade is produced a body ready to act upon all
animal and vegetable substances in a state of decay or
decomposition, and that in a manner much more vigor-
ously than ordinary air or even pure oxygen itself. It is
indeed Nature's great disinfectant, for it not only purifies
the air from noxious gases, but it is fatal to the great
army of micro-organisms that breed putrefaction and the
various infectious diseases. It is to the presence of the
peroxide in large quantities that must be ascribed the
wonderful improvement which often results to persons
suffering from chest complaints from a sojourn in
districts where pine and fir trees abound, for all the
IO LAND I
members of the coniferous order are specially noted for
the large amount of essential oil which they contain.
Rain is another of the great agents which act upon
the atmosphere, cleansing it in a very effectual way, by
dissolving and carrying down the impurities which it
meets in its fall. In towns, and especially where factories
exist, rain-water, instead of being the delightfully soft
water so much prized in the country, becomes little
better than a more or less dilute solution of sulphuric
acid, black from tarry matter and suspended soot. That
this is no exaggeration, recent enquiries at Manchester
show. For some time a sub-committee of the Field
Naturalists' Society have been looking into the question
of air-pollution. The committee found that in the
Ancoats district the amount of free sulphuric acid which
fell in one inch of rain amounted to 19 cwt. per square
mile, beside 10 cwt. of ammonia. In by no means the
worst part of Manchester there was carried down in three
days nearly 6 cwt. of sulphuric acid per square mile
besides over 13 cwt. of "blacks." Manchester may be
an extreme case, but a similar state of affairs exists also
in other large towns.
The effect of fogs in towns prevents the dissemination
by winds of the carbonic acid gas, and of the soot, etc.,
from fires, but when conditions so change that rain is
produced, these impurities are washed down out of the
air. This acid condition of the rain has a most dele-
terious effect upon vegetation, but not upon vegetation
alone, for dwellers in towns find their clothes and um-
brellas wear out much more quickly from the same cause
than would be the case in the country. Need we wonder
then that the town-dweller, who has to breathe these
impurities into his lungs over and over again, becomes
enfeebled and unhealthy.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. II
No disease shows the influence of breathing impure
air better than consumption of the lungs, and it is of no
infrequent occurrence that a change of occupation from
an indoor, or sedentary life, to an active one out of doors
is the means of checking this complaint. Donaldson has
estimated the tubercular death-rate to be at least 20 per
cent, more in towns than in the country districts.
It is on account of this damage to health that
sanitarians are anxious to prevent overcrowding of houses
together, and to obtain wide streets and open spaces.
But these, after all, are but a makeshift, and cannot take
the place of the country. Compare, for instance, the
amount of relief and freshness to be obtained from a
walk in even the most charmingly laid-out urban park,
with a ramble through the woods or over the hills.
In the country everything tends to induce one to take
exercise, either by walking or riding, for the mere
pleasure of exercise, or in conjunction with hunting,
shooting, fishing, or the numerous other attractions
which the country offers.
In this connection we might mention gardening. A
more healthful or interesting occupation than gardening
it would be difficult to mention, and it has also the
advantage that it may be made a profitable pastime.
But whether commercially a success or not, the owner of
a good garden is amply repaid in being able to have his
table supplied with fresh fruit and vegetables nearly all
the year round, whilst the town householder has to be
content with garden produce often stale through keeping
for lengthy periods in warehouses, cellars and shops.
One reason why we do not care to take much
exercise in towns is that we live at such high pressure
everything around us is so full of rush and hurry that we
are unconsciously carried along at the same rate, and
I 2 LAND :
when work is over we feel that we want to sit down
quietly rather than go off for a stroll, which would really
be more beneficial if it could be taken in purer air; and
this leads us to express regret that greater facilities are
not offered to induce persons engaged in business
pursuits in London and other large towns to live some
few miles out in the country. A frequent service of quick
trains, with large reductions of fares to season-ticket
holders, would go far to induce people of all ranks to live
under the more healthful surroundings of the country.
Large towns might become merely business centres,
instead of being in great part residential, and if proper
care were taken to build good houses under proper sani-
tary precautions, with plenty of free space between each,
the health of the nation would wonderfully improve. It
is too often forgotten that health means wealth alike to
the nation as to the individual.
FRANCIS J. ALLAN.
GEORGE BROWN.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RIG I IKS.
CHAPTER III.
HEALTH IN RELATION TO LAND.
BY BENJAMIN WARD RICHARDSON, M.D., F.R.S.
A GREAT classical authority in medicine, Aurelius Celsus,
who lived in the Augustan era, tells, in the opening
passages of his one great work, that as agriculture pro-
vides aliment for healthy bodies, so medicine provides
health lor the sick. That is true. Agriculture provides
aliment for health. But it does more ; it provides health
for the body ; it is, indeed, the great factor of health.
As agriculture declines, perfect and typical health de-
clines, and a people that had no land in cultivation
would soon be as poor as the land itself. Our great
cities and towns are the markets of the world in respect
to material things and produce ; they are the markets
also of health, no less, no more. We have to send our
produce into the markets, and we have to send our
health there from the country from the land. Health
is a crop good or bad according to its cultivation. It
may be bad although it be bred in the country and on
the land ; but it thrives best when the land thrives
best, as if the two were one and the same.
In the eyes of the sanitarian, land is the test of
health. Good land, rightly cultivated, is the cradle of
health for all crops, animal or vegetable. One of the
earliest facts dwelt upon by my late friend, Sir Edwin
Chadwick, was land drainage in its bearing on health.
1 4 LAND :
He took special pains to point out the severe con-
sequences of the neglect of land drainage in every part
of the country where it is neglected, and the advantages
of an increasing salubrity and productiveness wherever the
drainage has been skilfully and effectually carried out.
The following example of this fact was stated by him in
a report from Mr. John Marshall, the clerk to the Union
in the Isle of Ely :
" The Isle of Ely was at one time in a desolate state,
being frequently inundated by the upland waters, and
destitute of the adequate means of drainage ; the lower
parts became a wilderness of stagnant pools, the exhala-
tions from which loaded the air with pestiferous vapours
and fogs. By the improvements which from time to
time were made, within fifty years an alteration took
place which might appear to have been the effect of
magic. By the labour, spirit, and industry of the in-
habitants a forlorn waste has been converted into pleasant
and fertile pastures, and they, themselves, have been
rewarded by bounteous harvests. Drainage, embank-
ments, engines, and enclosures have given stability to the
soil, which in its nature is as rich as the Delta of Egypt,
as well as salubrity to the air. These very considerable
improvements, although carried out at a great expense,
have at last turned to a double account, both in reclaiming
much ground, in improving the rest, and in contributing
to the healthiness of the inhabitants. Works of modern
refinement have given a totally different face and
character to this once neglected spot ; much has been
performed, much yet remains to be accomplished by the
rising generation. The demand for labour produced by
the drainage is incalculable, but when it is stated that
where the sedge and rushes grew a few years since,
we have now fields of waving corn, oats, and even
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 15
wheat, it must be evident that the improvement is very
i^reat."
O
I shall, in a short time, take one of Mr. Marshall's
observations on drainage, embankments, engines, and
enclosures, in connection with health and land, as a kind
of sanitary text on which to comment ; but before coming
to this point I would notice the evidence .of another
witness. Dr. Edward Harrison, on the subject of health
in the lower animals living on land, and supplying part
of the land produce. Dr. Harrison has pointed out the
connection between unhealthy land and the disease called
" rot " in sheep. He informs us that the connection
between humidity and the rot is universally admitted by'
experienced graziers, and it is a matter of observation that
since the brooks and rivulets in the county of Lincoln
have been better managed, and the system of laying ground
dry by open ditches and under draining has been more
judiciously practised, the rot has become less prevalent.
Sir John Pringle was of opinion that persons have main-
tained themselves in good health during sickly seasons
by inhabiting the upper stories of their houses, and " I
have reason to believe," says Dr. Harrison, " that merely
by confining sheep on high grounds they have escaped
the rot." In illustration, this author communicates the
following fact. A grazier for many years occupied a
large portion of an unenclosed fen, in which was a shallow
piece of water that covered about an acre and a half of
land. To recover the part covered with water, for pas-
turage, he cut in it several open ditches to let off the water,
and obtained an imperfect drainage. His sheep there
immediately became liable to the rot, and in most years he
lost some of them. One year the drains failed so entirely
from the wetness of the season that the ground became an
actual pond, and he sustained in that season no loss of his
1 6 LAND :
flock. For a few succeeding years he was generally visited
by the rot; but having satisfied himself, by experience, that
whenever the field was, from the weather, either completely
dry or completely under water his flock was free from
disorder, he attempted a more perfect drainage, and
succeeded in making the land dry at all times. From
that time he lost no sheep from the rot.
ESSENTIALS FOR HEALTH FROM LAND.
Mr. Marshall has given us, in four words, the key to
the whole question of health, and how to get it from land.
Drainage, Embankments, Engines, Enclosures. These
are indeed the means by which civilized man can -make
the health and wealth of land run side by side ; the
wealth to those who possess the land ; the health to those
who exist on it, as its living working power. I shall
pursue my thesis from these four suggestive heads.
DRAINAGE.
We have seen from what has already been said that
drainage of land is the first essential to good health, of
the land itself and of the animals which feed upon it. A
model cultivator of land, for any purpose, will see that
there is not an acre of dank ground on the whole of an
estate submitted to cultivation ; he will not over-drain, but
he will drain thoroughly. That which he will specially
avoid will be the formation of pools and of swamps on
his land. When they appear spontaneously his land is
not well drained. The evidence of the pool or the
swamp declares that the rain water has no proper chance
of escape, and that from a long distance around the cen-
tral pool, lake, or bog, there is an over-abundance of
water saturating the soil. What the precise amount of
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 1 7
water should be in a soil, in order to make it most pro-
ductive of wholesome grass and good grain, has never
been determined precisely ; but, as a rule, the presence
of water in pools, puddles, dank spots, and bogs, is
sufficient to show that the land is super-saturated. When
the land is duly and properly drained, health appears
around it everywhere and in everything that can be
utilized upon it. This is a simple but faithful reading.
Sedge and rushes mean undrained, good produce means
well drained pasture. In draining it is not necessary to
lose the water that is drained off. To build a reservoir
for the reception of the water that falls on an estate is a
manageable proceeding, and a reservoir with strongly
constructed walls and a proper overflow is, or might be,
one of the most useful and profitable investments con-
nected with an estate. The day will come when, from
an exact knowledge of the composition of a soil, and
the exact proportion of water required to render that
soil fruitful for particular products up to its complete
worth, the agriculturist will conserve the storm water
falling on the soil, and will utilize it at pleasure, sup-
plying dry places from it in cases of drought, and
removing it from the spots in which it is causing
undue saturation after periods of flood. This is all a
matter of engineering with or against nature, whose ways
are now sufficiently known to enable man, surrounded
with good appliances and contrivances, to meet all the
natural strains that may be put on him. I should pre-
dict that for the natural growth of healthy produce so
much water is wanted for one useful product and so
much for another ; mangold wurtzel requires, I presume,
a different hydration of soil from that demanded by
wheat ; wheat from that demanded by oats, and so
on. Soils may vary in this respect according to their
I. .8 LAND :
capacity for absorbing and retaining water. The
practical study of this matter will become to the agri-
culturist of the future the sanitation of soil for growth
and development, and will form a portion of positive
knowledge universally accepted as a necessary part of
education in the agricultural fraternity. Sedge and rushes
will then be unknown on land, except as marks of bad
cultivation of land, or as products that have to be utilised
scientifically, according to the demand for them in the
markets.
For the healthy management of land, the drainage,
the simple removal of water, is not the only require-
ment. For perfect health of land and of those who
work it, it is necessary to remove, by drainage, all the
dead organic material excreta known generally as sewage,
a,nd to restore that to the land as food for the land.
'The sewage to the land, the water to the river," is the
golden rule of good sanitation. The balance of power
between land and life consists, in fact, in giving back
to the land that which the land has lent to life. Food
is organic substance that has passed through land.
Animals living and grazing on land leave their waste
of food on the surface, to be washed into the soil by
the rain, recharge the soil, and renew or feed vegeta-
tion. This is the natural process, and man himself, living
in favourable climes for outdoor existence, like the lower
animals, gives back to the earth the organic debris
which he produces. Hence the old Mosaic direction
for the disposal of human sewage. But when men are
brought to live in communities, and are cooped up in
houses, and when the lower animals are cooped up in
stables, sheds, and other closed places, where all functions
of life are carried on in confined space, then the accu-
mulations of waste passing quickly into putrefaction
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 19
become huge unwholesome masses of unproductiveness,
and sources and causes of constant danger. Here, there-
fore, drainage comes in to remove the waste and give it
over to the soil that is dying for it as for its' natural
food.
Up to the present time there has usually been the
saddest mistake in this task of accommodating civilization
to nature in this task of sewage distribution, for man
even yet is by nature nomadic, and has in him still the old
nomadic constitution, as if aggregation in city and town
were after all but a passing and transitory phase in his
career through the ages. So he suffers. He allows evils
to accumulate until they master him, and until they bring
him into imminent danger of being swept away altogether
by what he sometimes calls pestilence, sometimes famine,
sometimes both combined, by a very easy process of
combination of these disasters.
It is the duty of the scientific agriculturist, of all men,
to correct this evil. He is bound to learn how to give
health through land, by the artificial removal of excreted
material, through properly constructed courses to the soil.
So soon as he settles down to live amongst the crowded
numbers of a community of his fellow men and of the
animals they require for their wants, it should be his
primary thought how he may convey all the sewage that
men and animals produce back to the place where it is
wanted, the soil that is calling for it. This stands
first in the strict order of nature. After this there is a
second essential, namely, the separation of rain or storm
water from the sewage, with limitation of water to the
lowest necessary degree, so that the soil may receive its
requisite food in the same natural way as it receives it from
animals feeding upon it, or as near to that method as human
skill can devise. The removal of sewage should be
2O LAND I
effected quickly, as quickly, in fact, as the substance to
be removed is produced, so that there shall be no
necessity for storage of sewage, nor for retention of it
in any building, street, or town; nor necessity in such
places for plans of ventilation to carry away the emana-
tions from it in the form of exhalations which are meat
to the soil but poison to the animal body.
ROADS AND EMBANKMENTS.
After drainage, roads and embankments hold place in
the conversion of land into healthy land. Embankments
mark out roads through landed property, and the elevation
of roads as embankments, so as to raise the road and allow
proper sloping banks for the flow of water from the sur-
face into properly constructed drains on each side, is one
of the most important advancements the modern agricul-
turist can introduce into the management of his estate.
It is astonishing what little care is taken at present in
this respect. Roads are made after any fashion that
may for the moment be most convenient. Sometimes
they are mere ruts cut into the grass by the cartwheels,
with a rough central path made by the feet of the horses,
and without any drainage of a proper kind. Such roads
become reservoirs of water along their whole course
(unless the soil be very porous) whenever the rainy season
prevails, while in dry seasons they are merely rugged
uncultivated tracks. Sometimes a better, but yet im-
perfect, system is followed ; that is to say, the space
marked out by the road is covered with rubble of some
sort, such as fragments of brick, loose stones, or even
flints. Again, the roads are paths denuded of grass and
consisting of a surface of bare earth, which in wet
seasons is so soft as to render transit along it very diffi-
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 21
cult, and in dry seasons is nothing more than a dust
path, from which, even when there is no traffic, clouds
of dust arise and charge the air for long distances with
particles of dust most injurious to all animals subjected
to them and made to inhale them.
Perhaps the modern farmer may consider this argu-
ment too fastidious, and may consider it to be of little
importance how his farm is supplied with roads if they
meet his requirements in what he would call a prac-
ticable manner. But there is practice and practice, and
too often under the mis-use of the word practical the
most foolish customs are allowed to go on from year to
year, and even from century to century without regard to
that which is most practical of all, the application of
scientific methods for every detail in the farm that tells
in favour of saving labour and preserving health. Let
me, in illustration, quote another passage from Dr.
Harrison on the subject which is now before us.
Dr. Harrison, in giving evidence on the analogy of
the diseases of animals to those diseases which affect the
human subject, says that after providing drain pastures,
and avoiding "rotting places" in the fields, all care may
be frustrated if the farmer do not avoid, with equal care,
leading his sheep over wet and miry roads with stagnant
ditches, which are as pernicious as places in the fields
designated as " rotting places." He explains clearly
that the rot in sheep has been contracted in ten minutes,
and that sheep can at any time be attainted in a quarter
of an hour on land which retains its moisture when the
weather is hot and sultry. He gives the following
incidents amongst others of the dangers of traversing
badly-drained roads. A gentleman removed ninety sheep
from a considerable distance to his own residence. On
coming near to a bridge which was thrown over the
22 LAND :
"Barling's River," one of the drove fell into a ditch and
fractured its leg. The shepherd immediately took it in
his arms to a neighbour's house, and set the limb.
During this short time the remainder of the flock was
left to graze in the ditches and lanes, and then the whole
flock was taken home. At the end of a month it was
discovered that the whole of the flock, except the one
that had been injured, was affected with the fluke disease
called " rot." That one injured sheep which had not
grazed on the infected land escaped, an escape easily
accounted for when it is remembered that the parasitic
disease of liver called " rot " is due to the presence of the
common liver fhi\K&--fascu>la hepatica the larvae of
which are almost exclusively present in low pastures and
marshy districts, and exist only, as Cobbold informs us,
in the bodies of fresh water snails and small aquatic
animalcules.
If the saving of sheep from rot by the introduction of
good roads into farms were alone considered; it were a
sufficient argument itself in favour of good roads. But
there are other considerations. Good roads save labour
to an extent little appreciated. Sir Edwin Chadwick
ascertained that whilst the wear of a road by the foot of
a horse was as one, that by the wheel of a carriage
was as two. He also found that on an asphalte roadway
the drag required was as 69,765 to 114,628 on a good
macadamised road, and to 259,800 on a newly macadamised
road. This alone shows the labour that would be saved,
in draught, if all our farm roads were so constructed as
to be not only dry on their surface, but so constructed as
to have a specially firm basis for wheel tracks. By this
provision one horse could be made to do the work of
the three often required on badly roaded estates.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
ENGINES.
The use of the steam engine in agriculture admits of
development for health on a very much larger scale than
has ever yet been practised. We see the engine in use
for thrashing, ploughing, and some other purposes; but it
is usually a hired engine, doing work for several farms,
although there might be sufficient work for it on one
farm only. Every farm of one hundred acres, of mixed
arable and pasture land, demands, for health's sake, its
own engine. The engine can be applied to many pur-
poses beyond what it is now used for, but I will allude to
three purposes of a somewhat novel character. First
and foremost, the engine should be employed for the
proper distribution of sewage over the farm. In a
recent essay on "National Main Drainage" I have sug-
gested that along the sides of all our lines of railways
there should be laid a series of tubes to act as conduits
for conveying sewage from central communities into the
country and on to the land from fixed stations connected
with the lines nearest to the spot. Under this arrangement
an engine would be required on every 7 farm for pumping the
sewage from a branch tube into a reservoir raised suffi-
ciently high to allow the land to be irrigated as required
by gravitation. But there is no necessity to wait for so
comprehensive a system as this. Every farm yields, as
it is, a large amount of sewage or manure, now fearfully
wasted by being allowed to accumulate in improper
places, and extremely unhealthy both to men and animals.
No one can go along our country lanes on hot and sultry
days without being rendered conscious of the contamina-
tion of the air from the waste heaps of manure and
rubbish deposited in any hole and corner where it can be
24 LAND :
retained. That odour, from matter poisonous to man,
would be food to land, if properly utilized ; and here a
perfect scheme for such utilization opens to view. The
work of the engine comes once more into play. All
manure thrown into well constructed stone or brick-
lined pits, and mixed with a proper quantity of water by
the work of the engine could be pumped regularly into a
raised reservoir and committed to the land as fast as it
was produced. In most instances the sewage of every
village in the kingdom could be removed by the farms
surrounding the villages and directly applied for the
health and wealth of agriculture. The sewage also of
our great institutions scattered about the country, such
as asylums and workhouses, could be carried away and
fruitfully applied.
A second additional use for the engine would be to
assist in water drainage and in the irrigation of the
land with water, according to requirement. In a farm
thoroughly drained, with good drains by the roadways,
with a proper outfall, and with a reservoir for water,
there need be no such thing as drought, if the owner had
always at command an engine that would pump water
to a sufficient height for distribution to any part of his
land that might require it. In fact, the engine ought to
be what might well be termed the pulsating heart of the
farm ; it should receive all the waste material from the
farm that was utilizable, render such material fit food
for the land, and re-distribute it with the proper amount
of drink water to make the soil productive in fruit,
grass or grain.
The last additional use for the engine, to which I
would refer, relates to its applicability for the making of
proper roads and for construction of embankments. Here
it might most conveniently play the part of rendering
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 25
solid the tracks over which the wheels of vehicles will
afterwards pass.
ENCLOSURES.
The perfection of land enclosures into properly
divided compartments remains yet to be completed in
this country. Those who remember the old open field,
with its encumbrances of land-marks, rough ditches,
and marsh lands, will contrast favourably with that condi-
tion the great improvements which modern enclosure
has introduced. The increased vegetation in the form
of living fences has added not only to the beauty of the
landscape, but, under proper cultivation, to the health
of the land and of the flocks that feed on the land. We
may, indeed, look upon land enclosure as a system of
reclaiming land, and the day ought not to be far off when
this system will be carried out fully in every part. That
vast portions of land still lie unreclaimed is obvious to
all who travel through the counties of England, so that
there is sufficient work for the agriculturist, even in the
way of reclamation. Before passing to the reclaiming
process there is, however, much to be done in the way of
improvement for health of many enclosures nearest to
the homes of the cultivator. The first enclosure demand-
ing attention, almost everywhere, is that enclosure called
the farm-yard. At the Sanitary Congress at Hastings,
in May, 1889, we had this subject brought up under the
heading of farm-yard sanitation, by Dr. G. T. B. Waters.
The facts that came out were most striking and
important. The description of the modern farm-yard
with the liquid sewage yielding ammoniacal odours ; the
imperfect shelter for the animals ; the wooden boxes
containing fodder, and the miserable cattle standing day
after day, and week after week, up to their knees in liquid
26 LAND I ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
sewage, their sides and haunches plastered with the same
in a partially dried condition, formed a picture which
could not be refuted and which is lamentable as belonging
to the present day. The farm-yard is a standing centre
for the production of disease, and, tuberculosis in cattle
extending probably to sixty per cent, of all the cattle sent
to the metropolitan markets, must have a considerable
origin in this central source of evil. I do not hold so
strongly as some do that tuberculous disease in the lower
animals passes, through the consumption of their flesh, to
the members of the human family. There can, however,
be no doubt that cattle suffer directly from the insanitary
farm-yard, and I have seen quite enough to carry convic-
tion that human beings resident near these places are
injured by malarious influences.
In the practical accomplishment of health through
land, sanitation, like charity, should commence at home ;
it should commence in the enclosure called the homestead,
and should radiate from that centre, in the form of good
drainage, good water, and good roads, through the whole
of the estate.
B. W. RICHARDSON.
SECTION II.
LAND : ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 29
CHAPTER IV.
THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY.
BY PERCY WHITE, Editor of Public Opinion.
;< Beatus ille, qui procul negotiis,
Ut prisca gens mortalium,
' Palerna rura bobus exercet suis."
Hor. Epod. 2, i.
IN every healthily constituted human being there are a
number of primitive instincts that turn the desires to the
country whenever the sun shines and the skies are blue.
These are the undeveloped atavisms, inherited, perhaps,
from ancestors who fought for acorns with fists or
bludgeons, when, as Horace describes, in unconscious
anticipation of Darwin, they first crept forth on the
earth a dumb and dirty crowd of unkempt savages. In
the recesses of every mind, worn and obliterated by years
of friction against London life though it may be, there
lies concealed a sentiment that can only find adequate
satisfaction in the sights and the sounds of the country ;
in the wide distances, the soft horizons, the scent of
new-mown hay, or the melancholy odour of decaying
leaves. Man, himself a part of Nature, is connected by
an inexplicable kind of telepathy with the landscape
surrounding him. The message of " the happy autumn
fields " is born to the human soul through the medium of
eyes and psychical senses for which we have no name.
If, as George Eliot says, we were not well wadded with
30 -LAND :
stupidity, the message might, like Pan's pipe, be blinding
sweet, and bring us near that great mysterious heart of
Nature into which Jefferies was ever striving, and not at
all in vain, to gaze.
Certain forces, some of them transitory, others more
permanent, but most of them disagreeable, have com-
pelled men to crowd together in towns, until a rural life
for many of us is a condition of existence to be hopelessly
longed for but rarely to be realised. It would almost
seem that this enforced absence from the natural environ-
ment of the open country has produced the love of
Nature in its conscious self-analyzing modern form. We
are never tired of investigating the impressions excited
by scenery. The Greeks had their love for it, too, but
it was a simpler sentiment than ours, nor were the Latin
poets without it. If you compare Tennyson with Virgil
you will at once perceive the different attitude of the
modern and the ancient mind towards the phenomena of
the sky, the earth, and the sea.
Ever since man first began to dwell in " walled cities,"
it has been a matter of dispute whether life in the
country or in the town were the more enjoyable. But,
argue as you will, there is no logic to prove that the
crowded streets, smoke, din, squalor, and microbe-laden
air of a great city can confer the physical and moral
comfort, health and delight that the country gives
ungrudgingly. We are enabled to live with comparative
impunity in London only by the aid of science. But
science cannot make existence there beautiful, nor
ennobling, nor picturesque. If custom did not blind us,
and we were able to see things in the same light in which
they would appear to some shadowy visitant from Mars,
Saturn, or Jove, our minds would be almost over-
whelmed by the pathos of four millions of people crowded
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 31
into a narrow area, whilst beyond the smoke-stained
horizon lay the lovely rural districts of England the
loveliest, perhaps, in all the world silent, dewy, and
peaceful. The Jovian or Saturnian critic, if he were a
philosopher, would tell the dwellers on his own planet
that our social condition, which dams up the population in
huge centres and empties the rural districts, could not
possibly be a permanent one.
But it is the contemplative and studious man, who,
apart from the question of field-sports, loves the country
most. We all know how Matthew Arnold was obliged
every year to revivify himself by long draughts of it.
Accident has made London the great intellectual centre,
but the best intellects amongst us certainly find solace in
the woods and fields. There are certain moods, and by
no means misanthropic ones, that drive men who think
into the deepest solitude they can find.
Swept along by the human tide in Fleet Street, who
has not longed to be in the wild bosom of Dartmoor,
hearing only the wind sighing over the reeds, or the cry
of the bittern from the rushy pool, with the horizon
broken by the serrated edges of the ragged Druid Tors ?
Nature will rebel against the straight waistcoat we impose
on ourselves and proudly wear. Man is undoubtedly a
gregarious animal, but not to the extent of desiring to be
a unit amongst four millions of his fellows. The amount
of happiness derived from country surroundings, to one
of the right temperament, is out of all proportion to the
feverish diversions of life in a great town. What an
ideal picture at once comes before the mind of that
existence which a healthy man of competent means may
make for himself in rural England ! How steeped he is
in unconscious poetry ! The poetry is obvious and a
constant quantity. If you cannot from sheer familiarity
32 LAND:
find it yourself, turn to the works of Washington Irving
or to Nathaniel Hawthorne's " Our Old Home." There
is the village street, the laburnum trees, perhaps, falling
in showers of gold amongst the green leaves ; above
them, the mossy mellow tiled roof and the red gables,
then the Norman church tower, where the jackdaws are
clamouring and the swallows circling. Beyond are the
green fields green as only English fields know how to
be dotted with cattle browsing in luxurious languor of
placid content. In the air is the scent of roses, of moist
meadows. Beneath these are dimmer odours that have
their existence in the past the fragrance of dead
summers, of forgotten flowers, when the fulness and
beauty of English life first dawned on us, and one found
oneself a child in an ancient English orchard, perhaps
for the first time, and the voice of the cuckoo was
borne on the soft breeze from the top of the distant elms.
I know not how it is, but the exquisite haunting
beauty of some days amidst the simple, homelike beauty
of our scenery is almost akin to pain. When the whole
country-side is steeped in sunshine, and gentle airs rustle
the trees, a spirit of peace seems to descend on the lovely
English landscape that I have felt in no other land. We
know not what it is we dread. Perhaps it is that a
rougher breeze should blow and alter the picture, moving
the distant shadow of cloud, now remote in the south-
western skies, towards our zenith, hiding the genial face
of the sun, marring the fragile loveliness of the day. For
there exists a beauty in our climate, perceptible only in
those districts where the view is extended, found under no
other sky. The fickleness of our skies lends them a
peculiar charm, and when Nature smiles here her face is
very sweet. Hours we have of such exquisite loveliness
which a chillier breeze or a sullen bank of cloud may turn
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICH1>. 33
into other hours, beautiful still, but peevish. These days
may come at any season, and the hours pass in an ab-
sorbing procession of changing delight, for the fields
and trees and softly rolling hills smile beneath the tender
blue of the soft skies, and shiver faintly under the clouds
that move on us from the Gulf Stream into the Channel,
from the Channel over the chalk-seamed summits of the
Downs, and on into the glad heart of rural England. It
is not everyone who feels this spiritual side of our rural
life, but all alike come more or less under the subtle
influence of natural phenomena in the country, whilst in
the towns the vision is limited to the " long, unlovely
street," and we see pass us, under the dazzling sunshine,
dimmed somewhat by smoke, the procession of omnibuses
instead of the procession of the hours. And where is the
laburnum, where the smell of the roses, where the
garnered fragrance of the mind odorous by association ?
The roar of the traffic, the rush of the human tide, has
broken the message the friendly English land bears to
all who love her. Pygmalion fell in love with a statue.
But, alas ! too long a sojourn amid the artificialities of
London life hides the nameless goddess who presides over
rural England whom some of us learnt to love when we
were young. If we had the mythologizing spirit of the
Greeks, by how lovely an Artemis would the rolling,
odorous wooded, dew-sprinkled, flowery land we see in
our fits of rural nostalgia be represented !
The country must always be the great delight of
England. The chief expression of our national life in
the past, in architecture and literature, must be sought
there. We are justly proud of our beautiful land, but we
have little reason to boast of the grandeur of our towns.
The expression that the natural life has taken there
is entirely utilitarian and materialistic. In the vast
34 LAND :
accumulation of brick houses, most of them mean and
depressing to the senses, the deeply spiritual tendencies
of the national character are hardly suspected. The
imagination seems to have had no part in their con-
struction ; aesthetically they are as meaningless as the
burrows of the rabbits. But in our association with the
country we have displayed, perhaps unwittingly, a taste
that is the unconscious proof of our sympathy with the
tender beauties of our landscapes. The old homes of
the land, the low-roofed thatched cottage, the stately
Elizabethan mansion, the gabled rectory of nameless
architecture and doubtful age, seem almost as much a part
of the landscape , as the trees that cluster round them.
Hence is the delighted harmony we see in all our remoter
rural districts. No other race in the world has shown
this peculiar faculty of unconscious aesthetic sympathy
with its environment to so marked a degree as our own.
But it must not be forgotten the very aspect of the
country is the result of our forefathers' work. The varied
beauty in detail, the position of trees, the miles of magni-
ficent hedgerows, the whole friendly aspect of our land
is due to the harmonious blending of humanity and
nature. Man " tills the soil and lies beneath," but every
generation leaves its monument behind it, and behind us are
two thousand years of unwritten history. We can read it
notwithstanding. It is tenderly written in the soft turf
of our gardens, in the waving branches of our oaks and
beech-groves, in the fairy-like loveliness of our deep lanes,
where the glimmering pathway sinks deeper century
after century under the shadow of vegetation as luxuriant
as in a tropical forest.
Children that grow up in towns, and are accustomed
to see more hansom cabs pass than swallows on the wing,
miss an influence of unknown moulding force to the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 35
character. To test its power we need only turn to our
literature. Shakespeare would not have written " A
Midsummer Night's Dream," with all the riot of fairies,
flowers, and rural imaginings, unless his youthful fancy
had been fed on the familiar and lovely scenes surround-
ing every farmstead and lowly cottage near Stratford-on-
Avon. Milton's familiarity with English country life
saturates his poems. Lycictas, L' Allegro, II Penseroso,
Comus, reflect the stored up rural sights, sounds, and
odours accumulated in his meditative walks about his
father's house at Horton, in Buckinghamshire. Where-
ever they lived, and whatever the environment of their
boyhood, Shakespeare and Milton would no doubt have
been inspired poets, only they would have worn their
laurels "with a difference." The " violets sweeter than
the lids of Juno's eyes or Cytherea's breath" might not
have blossomed eternally in the verse of the one, nor the
song of the lark, the smell of the eglantine, the swish of
the scythe, haunted the lighter poems of the other.
Since then, to be a " poet of Nature " has become a
profession ; but the strange haunting faculty dwelling in
so many of the references to the simplest incidents of
rural life exists only when the association of the idea with
its maturer expression has affected the poet at first hand
and in early boyhood. The dullest of us can recall the
face of rural England in Shakespeare's day. Many of
the fields and lanes remain unchanged about his birth-
place. But even Mr. Besant hardly enables us to
imagine Fleet Street when Elizabeth was Queen.
So it is that nearly all our love for the past is borne
along by means of the magic chain of rural things by
which we are connected with it. This influence has
grown into our national life with far greater distinctness
than we find in the case of the French, the Italians, or
36 LAND I
the Germans. For until the exigencies of trade and
manufacture drove, in an evil hour, our population into
the towns, we were a country-bred people. The change
has made us wealthy, has multiplied our numbers by ten,
but has it made us better, wiser, kindlier, or happier ?
Certainly it has not made us merrier. " Merry " is the
last epithet our foreign critics apply to us. But when
we all lived in the country, and could boast of a magni-
ficent peasantry whose descendants now are ruling India,
peopling North America, trying to become millionaires
on the Stock Exchange or in company promoting, we
"did not take our pleasures sadly." The only reason
the epithet can now be applied to us is because of the
smiling and pastoral beauty of the country which
welcomes the stranger by all manner of home-like allure-
ments. All the happiest homes should, indeed, be in
the country. There alone the child can blossom un-
trammelled, and absorb the influences enabling him to
apprehend the meaning of the phrase "I am an English-
man." Mr. Rudyard Kipling, in his very fine poem,
" The Flag of England," speaks of a section of us as
" a street-bred people." The reproach is deserved, if
not exactly in the application he intended. We have
acquired a " street-bred " manner of looking at things.
Our newspaper criticism is most of it "street-bred," and
so is more than half our politics. When the close of
the turmoil and confusion the French revolution had
brought on Europe gave us an opportunity of becoming
the great manufactory and workshop of the world in a
still greater degree than we had been before, we began to
be ashamed of our country breeding. The restless activity
then first set in violent commotion altered the social per-
spective. Country life was dethroned from the place it
had always occupied in the public mind and those forced
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 37
to dwell there looked towards the great towns, particularly
London, with longing eyes. At the beginning of the
century country breeding was a favourite butt for the
clumsy banter of the time. But steam, that has conquered
distance so far as our island is concerned, has brought
town and country into the closest possible relation, and
it has become necessary for a nervous and much worried
generation to revert intermittently and with hesitation to
the manners of their grandfathers. The " change of
air" we are all so fond of talking about, usually means
getting out of London or its provincial equivalent. I
don't think the Elizabethans wanted much "change of
air," or that the medical experts of the day thought of
ordering it to patients suffering from dyspepsia or nervous
debility. But a town-bred people crave it, and children
need it as much as they need good food. The lad
entirely brought up in London grows up with half his
natural faculties undeveloped. He cannot distinguish
between an elm tree and a beech, or recognise the
difference between a linnet and a sparrow. It is not for
him to hear the nightingale sing when his fancy is
freshest, or thrill with inexplicable excitement at the first
glimpse of a speckled-backed trout. He will know the
country only by hearsay or through the medium of books.
Our Peter Bells should surely all be "street-bred." But
under all conditions Nature will assert herself and we are
reverting to our old methods. Those who can live in
the country, and those who cannot, turn to it with a
longing all the smoke of London cannot stifle. Falstaff
is not the only man who " babbles of green fields," only
the wiser man babbles of them before it is too late.
PERCY WHITE.
38 LAND
CHAPTER V.
THE COUNTRY MOUSE : AN APPRECIATION.
BY, JAMES PENDEREL-BRODHURST,
Author of " The Enfranchisement of Leaseholds" (Estates Gazette Office); Part
Author of " The Royal River" and " Abbeys and Churches of England and Wales."
WE need not go back so far as Virgil, nor even Sir
Roger de Coverley, to find abundance of literature in
praise of rural life, its delight and its gentle charm.
English literature indeed, and especially that which
accumulated before the present century, is very largely
what it is now the fashion to call the " appreciation " of
the life which most poets, from Virgil to Crabbe, have
sought to praise. But when the age of great towns set
in, a change, at first gradual, but at last rapid, began to
operate, and there was developed a school of poets and
prosateurs who took as keen a delight in singing the
praises of the pavement as their forerunners (and usually
their betters) had felt in extolling the country life.
There is a touch of clever, if flippant, cynicism in
these eulogies of the flagstones which gives us pause
sometimes, and bids us enquire if all this chanting of the
supreme delights of Piccadilly is quite sincere and quite
convinced. But, indeed, this battle of the town-mouse
and the country-mouse of literature is, in a way> as old as
the Restoration. The little poets sang then, as the little
poets sing to-day of the variety of the street, of the
glare of the play-house, the swirl and scramble of the life
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 39
which makes itself obvious and felt. But a good many
of us, who have, perhaps, too much of the town and its
emotions, may well ask ourselves sometimes if the town-
mouse be not hopelessly in the wrong. We may "live
the life " of which the earnest young man and the still
more earnest damsel for ever prate, without being quite
so morbidly conscious of it. It is of the essence of
happiness that we do not know we are enjoying it, and it
is, perhaps, in some measure due to forgetfulness of this
truism that a notion has arisen among people who are
more or less compelled by stress of circumstance to spend
their lives in towns, that beyond the clatter which re-
minded Lowell, in a phrase which will live as long as
language, of "the roaring loom of time," there is no
enjoyment and no salvation. Town life has become so
full of interests, so crowded with excitements, and with
temptations of the nerves that the notion, mistaken and
mischievous though it be, has perhaps some reason even
if it have no justification. Mr. Rudyard Kipling has
asked in one of his fierce and stormy, if unbalanced,
ballads " what the little street-bred people " know of
England ; and I may use his phrase to ask what all
the hereditary, and most of the accidental " street-bred
people " know of that rurality which is the one enormous
and subtle charm of England ?
This modern revolt against the country, did we not
know the reason for it, would be the more surprising and
disquieting, in that there has never been a land in which
rural life has been more passionately beloved or more
widely enjoyed. The rich Roman endured his villa, but
he loved his Rome. To him a spell of country life was
but an interlude, dictated at least as much by fashion as
by desire, and to this day Latin peoples, in the bulk, have
not acquired that instinctive calenture for the romantic
4O LAND :
side of country life which so long abided with most Eng-
lishmen, and is very far indeed from being extinct even
now.
I have always admired intensely a squire of the old
school, who was once of my acquaintance. He lived in
a midland county which can only be historically called
remote. He reached a green and flourishing old age,
and was buried in the vaults of his ancestors, without
having set foot in London, and without having once, in
his more than seventy years of life, slept from under his
own roof. You may call that old squire narrow and
ignorant, if you will ; you may say, if you please, that he
formed a link in one of those lines of " partridge-breeders
of a thousand years " whom Tennyson dismissed with
superior contempt. But at least his life sufficed for him.
It sufficed, too, for those who loved him, for the heredi-
tary tenantry, for the estate upon which son succeeded
father in the farmhouse, as son succeeded father at the
Hall. And his life was full of interests and of rustic
contents. But his school has vanished into the twilight,
and you shall match him no more. Still, without being
so convinced or so consistent as he, we may still delight
ourselves with the crisp and eager air, unthickened by
the smoke of chimneys ; with the richness and variety of
the sounds of the country, its simple and manly pleasures.
The type of country life which the old squire knew
and enjoyed has largely faded away, and there are no
present signs that it will return. The worst of it is that
a complex and artificial town life tends inevitably to
produce an equally luxurious standard of living in the
country. But despite that tendency, there is always
room to hope for a fresh era of the simple country life.
And as time goes on, and existence becomes more
crowded and more fretful, the chances are that a great
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHIE. 41
many people will turn with delight to rural joys as the
sole way of escape from the overtaxed existence of the
town. In doing that they will be choosing the better
part. That "God made the country," but "man made the
town," is truer now than it has ever been, but not so true
as it will be ; and if many of us now sigh for rural peace,
what will not be the longing for the silence of the open
air a generation hence ? The difference between the two
lives is already sufficiently strongly emphasized. The
real delight of Nature, the true exhilaration of life, we can
find only in the lanes and hedgerows, amid the reposeful
silences of mead and park. The happy wight, who has
the fortune, the courage, or the right temper of mind-
put it as you will to ignore the town at his pleasure,
opens his eyes of a morning upon a different and an en-
chanted world. Instead of being choked and poisoned
with smoke-laden fog, which makes the eyes to smart
and the head to throb, before he is out of his bath,
he breathes the ether that Nature has distilled ; where the
townsman inhales lassitude and depression, he breathes
in health, vigour, and exhilaration. Rising betimes, which
in town is the most disagreeable and irksome of all tasks,
becomes in the perfumed rural atmosphere a pure pleasure,
and indeed a duty which man owes to himself. That
which in other circumstances is the supreme effort of
virtue becomes to our country mouse the easiest and most
natural thing in the world. Nor is it needful, as it is for
the street-dweller, to steal an hour from sleep, since, to
the man of simple tastes, there is no temptation to indulge
the vice of lengthening the night at the expense of the
day. " Early to bed and early to rise " is the way to
healthy enjoyment in the country, and the practioneer of
that elementary rural virtue is well repaid. In this, at
least, "virtue is its own reward." I have often regretted
42 LAND :
that Richard Jefferies never lived to write an essay upon
the sounds of the country. They are so ringing -and
sonorous, and carry so far, that distance seems halved. A
sound, be it the baying of a dog, the sharpening of a
scythe or a sickle in districts where scythes and sickles still
survive, which at noonday would be scarcely perceptible
even amid the meadows, is at early morning sharp and
even musical.
This early morning in the country is certainly not
the least of Nature's delights, which, although many and
exquisite, have in them none of that violence which,
as the father of the Church in "Romeo and Juliet" sagely
pointed out, makes them kill-joys in the end. The
swirling stream, and the foaming cascade, the breeze-
swayed bough, the fleck of sunlight through the branches,
are pure delights in their way, but even the rural life has
nothing better to give us than those best and first
morning hours.
A vast deal of nonsense has been talked about the
dulness, and even the " misery " of life in the country in
the winter; but that kind of language can surely never
have been held by any convinced lover of rural life. A
winter in the country, "with old wood to burn, old books
to read, old wine to drink, old friends to meet," is about
as near an approach to the earthly paradise as mortal
man is ever likely to attain. A walk through the winter
woods is in itself a revelation. The woods are always
full of delight ; but whether they are more lovely in
autumn or in winter is largely a matter of taste and
sentiment. Neither in spring nor in summer are they at
their best, save to those whose passion is foliage. Painters
seem to prefer them in early autumn, when the leaves
are more splendidly variegated, more delicately veined,
more richly tinted than at any other season. The charm
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 43
of the woods in autumn is pensive, almost melancholy
indeed, for the touch of sadness which seems inseparable
from a great collection of trees is then most powerfully
felt, and is acknowledged even by those who are little
given to sentiment.
In mid-winter the delights of the woods are almost
purely pictorial. Whatever the atmosphere or the tem-
perature, there is always something to beguile the eye.
Even when it is seen through a deluge of rain there are
points of picturesqueness about a wood ; but on days of
frost, when the air is resonant, and the voice echoes
through the glades, the lover of trees will find his great
contentment. But the woods are never so completely
lovely, so full of pictures utterly beyond the cunning of
the pencil, as when the trees are heavily laden with snow,
frozen hard, and spangled with crystals. The atmos-
phere, so sharp, clear, and full of echoes, is intensely
exhilarating ; and mayhap the imaginative and brooding
eye may on such a day perceive sweet sights that to the
wayfarer, anxious to be at his walk's end and at the fire-
side, are invisible.
What may be called the individuality of woodland is
seen to best advantage in winter. The foliage has gone,
and corners that in summer are thickly screened by leaves,
and full of birds, now let in glimpses of the January sun,
cold and copper-red, yet cheerful from its very ruddiness.
A tree that was familiar at midsummer looks often gaunt
and strange when it is for the first time seen in winter.
The knots and gnarls in the trunk above the lowest
branches, the tapering of the pole, the thrust of the arms,
their forkings and interlacements, are curiously new and
unexpected.
When the day is bright there is gaiety in the woods,
however hard the frost may be ; the birds twitter blithely
44 LAND :
and cock their heads enquiringly as you swing past.
Perhaps the gaiety is only apparent ; for on such a day
there is many a long flight for food, many a search, much
weariness, and little variety of diet. The birds suffer
more, perhaps, than is supposed ; and the seemingly
joyous twitter may be a cry of distress. In the woods,
as in the gardens, they are much tamer than in summer ;
and although your footsteps echo upon the frozen snow,
hard as a macadamized road, they will do little more than
hop from a low branch to a higher one. On such a day
as this the noises of the country, that in summer hardly
penetrate the heart of the woods, are plainly heard. The
hollow roar of a train as it crosses the long viaduct a
mile off, the barking of the dogs at a distant farmhouse,
the unmusical clang of the clock-bell at the Hall away
beyond many fields, are all heard with a distinctness
which in summer is noticeable in the earliest hours of the
morning, but at no other time. When there is frost, but no
snow, the woods are less picturesque, but not a whit less
enticing. It, is, perhaps when the short winter afternoon
begins to close in, and when the clouds change very gradu-
ally from a thickish grey to a hue more nearly resembling the
tree-trunks themselves, that a woodland path is, scenically,
most effective. The sunset is a solemn opaque red,
glorified sometimes with a tinge of that tawny yellow
which reaches its highest beauty when it is deadened
somewhat by the brumous smoke that rises from a great
city. When the last tinge of crimson has faded from the
horizon the shadows gather rapidly, and in a few minutes
all is gloom a hundred yards ahead. The thin country
mist rises all at once as if to help the darkness. It rolls
in little wreaths around the branches, and wraps the
upper portions of the trunks in suggestions of mystery.
Where a tree-bordered alley crosses the path the double
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 45
line of trunks fades away in the semi-diaphanous mist in
rather an awesome fashion. The wood seems full of
mystery. The swaying of the limbs overhead, and the
little sigh of the wind as it plays about the bare " high-
tops," sound mournful and eerie. The darkness is now com-
plete, and as you cross the stile and leave behind these
glades and coppices, so still and dark, yet soon to be full
of the life of night, the familiar high road, though it be
dark and silent too, seems friendly and companionable.
Even in weather too bad to permit of walking, the
country is (to the proper temper of mind) infinitely more
endurable than the town. You may sit to read or write
without the infinite disturbance of the streets without
the brown and darksome fog which is now becoming
common, not in London alone, but in all great towns.
It is only in the country that the fogs are still white and
harmless. Moated granges and Edwardian manor-
houses are not for all of us, of course ; and, mayhap,
those who could most keenly enjoy such delights come
in for them never. Nor is the country life entirely suit-
able for all of those to whom it is possible. But a life
made up of half country and half town should be
delicious to all save the desperately wicked, or those
persons, so numerous now, and so sadly to be pitied,
to whom existence without daily change and excite-
ment, is unendurable. It is not always easy to under-
stand why people who may live where they list
deliberately choose the town in preference to the country.
They fancy, no doubt, that they could not be happy away
from the streets ; but the fault is in them, not in the way
of life which they despise. And, looked at even from the
money point of view, there is commonly a balance of
economy on the side of the rural life. Land is now so
cheap in most English counties, that a sum which would
46 LAND :
not buy very much in the shape of a London leasehold
will command a sufficient freehold in the country. During
the last ten or a dozen years the rents of fine old country
houses of small or moderate size, no more expensive to
keep up than a rectory or a vicarage, have been largely
reduced first, because of the poverty of the land, and
second, for that most melancholy of reasons, that the
gentleman of moderate means has, like the labourer,
taken to deserting the country. But such depression
cannot last for ever ; and meanwhile all the delights of
country life are " going " at something like half-price.
J. PENDEREL-BRODHURST.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 47
CHAPTER VI.
THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY.
Bv COMPTON READE,
Aiithor of " Take care whom you Trust" etc.
Ax universal fallacy accredits the English mind with
being nothing better than pragmatical. That for the
most part we are men of action is our proudest boast,
and Dr. Pusey rightly complimented the elder university
on producing not books but men, being fully alive to the
all-importance of what old William of Wykeham styled
" man-makyng." But we are not all muscles and motion.
There remains, even in an age of railroads and liners,
that splendid force, the English brain. True, neither
to-day nor to-morrow can reproduce a Shakespeare.
Intellect, as the mediaeval people put it, resembles
Deltas diffusa, whereas in the greatest of poets it might
have been termed Deltas concentrata ; nevertheless, if
weakened by diffusion, the divine quality which crys-
tallised itself in a Shakespeare, remains a common
heritage of the race, and for all our ceaseless locomo-
tion we do think. The Victorian era almost rivals that
of Elizabeth in mental brilliance, and there are still
myriads among us who have not bowed the knee to
the Baal of business so superstitiously as to have lost all
sense of the worship of the beautiful.
At the same time the general gravitation towards
urban life, and particularly towards the Metropolis, tends
48 LAND I
to dwarf the range of English sympathy. We shall get
to be a very one-sided people if altogether we lose touch
with Nature ; for by one of those paradoxes which meet
us at every turn the ideal is evolved less from the quick
intelligence of the city than from the supreme silence of
the country. Titania and Puck emanated from the
lawns and glades of Charlcote. The stage borrowed
the. fairy and the imp. It could not create them, still
less invest such fancies with the credulous belief even
now accorded them by the peasantry of the Welsh
border. And not only shall we miss the charm of
pure ideality, but our very realism also will inevitably
become stereotyped and conventional. Kensington
Gardens and the Bois de Boulogne stand in the same
relation to Nature that a Japanese tea-tray does to art.
Depend upon it, the eye needs the education of associa-
tion as truly as the ear, and if the eye and ear be indeed
the avenues of the soul, upon their culture must largely
depend the texture of man's higher self. To argue thus
is perhaps but to take up the well-worn parable of Mr.
Ruskin ; nevertheless, where can be found a more capable
or honest guide ? No one in his senses desires to foster a
morbid aestheticism, the cant of art, or rather the art of
cant ; but to be in tune with such environment as this
planet affords cannot be otherwise than healthy, and the
sepulture of existence within the narrow area of the very
largest and most overgrown of cities amounts to a heresy
against human liberty.
To one class the word country means nothing more
than the hunting and shooting season ; to another agri-
culture only, or the business of food production. Both
these notions are essentially vulgar, because limited and
inadequate, yet they have prevailed all through. Nimrod
loved field and forest, like many another of our gentle
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 49
barbarians, simply as media for big game. Horace him-
self Horace, the polished cynic, the Anacreon and the
Rochester of the Augustan age, appears to have prized
his Sabine valley solely because of its superlative vines.
Not as a sculptor, not as a painter, did this poet of the
golden lyre regard his rural retreat, but rather in the
spirit of a Herefordshire rustic, whose orchard teems
with the old fox-whelp apple, that yields a cyder in value
equal to the vintages of Epernay. To keep the elements
of butchery and business in the background is essential,
if the great face of Nature is to be admired for its own
sake ; and with the spread of education, with a class
rapidly forming in our midst of minds trained to con-
templation, with the revival of the old Elizabethan accom-
plishments, it must surely be possible to view our native
land apart from the delectation of destruction or the
allurements of agriculture. The typical Englishman of
the twentieth century will neither be Tony Lumpkin nor
Farmer George ; the typical English woman something
more spimtuelle than Di Vernon or Mrs. Poyser. We
have developed a fresh type, we of this later age, a type,
moreover, capable of a yet further evolution. Unlike
their grandparents, fine gentlemen have ceased to be
fine, and a cottage, if only it be true to art, satisfies our
nature far more thoroughly than a shoddy palace. The
grandiose has got to be our pet abomination. We ask
for quality, and reject quantity if devoid of positive^ ex-
cellence. Nevertheless, while thus exhibiting the grace
of humility, our standard diverges widely from that of
simple Wordsworth, and even more so from his prede-
cessors of the quasi-pastoral sort, such as Thomson and
Collins. Experience teaches the real worth of that in-
valuable aphorism : Soyez de votre Siecle. This is -not
the epoch of what Sydney Smith termed a vegetable
50 LAND :
existence, nor of the Lake school of pensive verse, but
rather of Algernon Swinburne, and the new democracy,
and the iconoclasm of ancient ideals, and the upheaval of
volcanic forces that have slept for long centuries. Our
gratification in rural scenes proceeds from quite another
source to that which endeared them to Chaucer, or Gray,
or Wordsworth. In a word, we love the country because
it furnishes a mine of artistic wealth, whereas the majority
of cities if we except Rome, Florence, Oxford, Munich
and a few others jar against our sensibilities at every
turn. To conceive a city of sublime beauty may be just
possible, yet one would seem, in any such flight of
imagination, to be trenching on the province of the
Apocalypse. Practically, of the two chief cities of Europe,
London is a perpetual fog ; Paris a perpetual fair. The
hollow roar of the one sounds almost as sad as the hollow
mirth of the other. Each, bien entendii, has its advantages
for man as a gregarious animal. Both, in an equal ratio,
dwindle the imagination and level down almost as fatally
as a series of competitive examinations.
Now, from our standpoint, imagination is the one
banquet which never palls, and imagination without art
may run riot, yet only in the direction of imbecility. A
very cursory analysis of the language, the ideas, the mise
en scene of Shakespeare's plays proves conclusively the
influence of a rural home, with the sublime education of
the forest and the river, the smiling meadow and the
eternal hill. The man's mighty soul was saturated with
old England, the England that in part survives, in spite
of high farming and hideous mansions, and the wanton
destruction of ancestral timber. To understand our
greatest genius it is absolutely necessary to live in his
land not by any means in Stratford, a poor little town-
ship guiltless of inspiration. Rather to roam where he
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 51
did. Through the Cotswolds to Oxford albeit, alas,
beautiful Wychwood thanks to bureaucratic parsimony
is no more. From thence, over the incomparable
Chilterns to Henley, and so to London. Or, striking in
another direction, across the Malvern Hills, through the
orchards of Offa's Land to the Golden Valley, and the
-cradle of English romance, far-famed Caerleon on Usk.
In remote and unfrequented hamlets, whereunto that upas
of art, the modern builder, has never penetrated, you
will find ancient and humble homes of timber strongly
morticed and defying the ravages of old time, or yet
more glorious " courts," once the residence of Elizabethan
or Tudor chivalry, with their overhanging gables, their
grand mullions, or a solitary oriel now, alas, relegated
to the estimable but stolid bucolic, who blasphemes them
as nasty old places, and sighs for a stucco suburban villa.
Here, or amid the oaks of Dinmore, the glades of the
New Forest or the beechwoods of South Oxon, you may
see with the eyes of Shakespeare, but you must linger
long to hear with his ears. To him the music of song
birds, each year becoming for us rarer and yet rarer, was
as a sweet symphony, and he has left us not a few of its
fancies. Only in his own land will you come to assimi-
late with an environment of nature that conduced to so
supreme a result. The city supplied no more than the
supers of his dramas. Ophelia hailed from the Avon,
not from the Fleet Ditch.
It may be urged that all this savours of sentiment.
Let us therefore descend to a more prosaic view of the
country. Assuming that, apart from minor considera-
tions, such as health, economy, society, you should be
tempted to essay the vie de campagne, it certainly can pro-
mise satisfaction of a substantial kind to all endowed
with a genuine love of the beautiful. A very talented
52 LAND I
amateur artist, who had travelled much, remarked
appositely that the atmospheric conditions of the English
climate augment indefinitely the grace of our landscapes.
He might have added, that different districts supply
varying atmospheric effects. Thus, travelling westward
from London you pass through the clear strong lights of
the chalk range, then to the dull Gloucestershire grey,
and this again shades into the most marvellous of all
colouring, the Herefordshire blue a deep indigo, that
falling on the ruddy hillsides empurples them ; or travel-
ling north, you emerge from the yellow smoke of
Middlesex into the pellucid air of Herts, and this again
clouds a little until you reach the fens of Peterborough,
with their weird mist. A burst of brightness as you whirl
through the Ridings, and then dark Durham suggests
the regions of Erebus and Nox. It was the atmosphere,
so mysterious, if so familiar, of the gloomy Thames, that
gave an allegorical touch to Turner's chef-d'oeuvre -, " The
last day of the fighting Temeraire," and in short, the very
air of our native land alike composes and tones a picture.
Now, one need not be a painter to comprehend and
appreciate this, but without the soul of an artist such
scenery as would inspire a Vicat Cole or a Cuyp is
utterly lost. The majority of the people whose occupations
root them to the soil seem destitute of eyes to grasp the
beauties among which they vegetate like bats. But these
dullards are at present endowed with the very slenderest
smattering of an imperfect education, and, paradox though
it may sound, it is the more enlightened denizen of the
towns who discovers, among that which to the native
mind is pure dross, a wealth of glorious gold. The
coming generation seems destined to revel in all the
luxury of the land. In the trees and shrubs, the ferns
and flowers, the polychrome of hill and vale, ever
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 53
changing with the fleeting shadows. In the lowly
cottage, the venerable homestead, or the once delicate
mansion desecrated by the sordid associations of farming;
not to mention our churches aptly styled the history of
England writ in stone. There are corners of old England
more rich in ideality than others, and also wide tracts
blackened by manufactures or mining. Nearly all the
shires, however, preserve some oases of greenery, some
survival of primeval grace, some faint traces of Oberon's
land. Within a strong man's march from London itself
you shall revert farther back than to Shakespeare or
even to Chaucer and Spencer. There are houses in Kent
more ancient than English literature itself, and one in
Herefordshire alas that it should be written "of course"
turned into a homestead as old as Crecy, albeit under
its eaves William Wordsworth dreamed and sang. So
far, as regards the vestiges of art they, are but few,
and nature itself but sparse. For all that the underwoods
that line the "Pilgrim's Way," dotted with such ancestral
yews as once supplied the archers of the Black Prince
with death-warrants for the foe, recall the magic of
the merry greenwood, and on their outskirts, if you have
eyes to see, there may be discovered such treasures as
the fly and bee orchis ; while if you ride across Holmes-
dale, past embowered Westerham, your eyes will be
dazzled by the flush of heather, and perchance you
may pause to remember that in this Garden of Eden
amorous King Hal fell captive to the dark iris of
Mistress Anne Boleyn's eyes.
A little farther from Pall Mall, on the summit of the
Chilterns, lies another romancy spot, a sanctuary amid a
forest of beeches. Here brave Brigadier Mackintosh,
with some seven companions in arms, all of whom had
broken from the Tower to escape the fate of Lord
54 LAND :
Derwentwater, encamped for three weeks on his brother-
in-law's demesne, and the spot still bears in its name of
Scots' Common the record of the hero of Preston ; or, if
you will roam westward almost as far as the historic
Boscobel oak, you will discover the cloistered retreat of
a modern devotee of the beautiful, the late Sir F. A.
G. Ousely. An artist to the core, that great musician
buried himself in an exquisite solitude, in order with a
few like-minded to revel unmolested in tone-poetry.
They tried their best to attract him to London, to Oxford.
They would have bribed him with a bishopric, but he
would have none of it. His own "old wood" by the
rushing Teme sufficed. There, apart from the busy haunts
of men, he could think and feel, and though according
to the popular theory he was utterly out of tune with the
country, never having handled a gun or crossed the back
of a horse, as a man of opulence he was able to indulge
his predilections up to the hilt. Yet in many respects
he proved an exemplar to humbler folk. Art for its own
sake was his motto. Of his own freewill he chose
isolation, peace, beauty ; like Lord Tennyson, like John
Ruskin, like many other of the demi-gods of humanity ;
and to write the words reverently, he had his reward.
"If," quoth the author of " The Cloister and the
Hearth," as the ten bells of his College Tower broke
forth suddenly into a clashing peal" If I had a well-
balanced mind, I should enjoy that shindy." Query ?
The speaker, it is true, was a clubbable and a gregarious
man, and in his modesty blamed a refined ear for
disliking noise. Yet, mntato nomine, what is the differ-
ence between the roar of a belfry and that of eternal
wheels over eternal granite ? Surely, pretty much that
between the voice of a lion and a tiger. Neither, how-
ever grand and terrible, can do otherwise than abrade the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 55
nerves of the ear, whereas the melodies of the field and
fallow, the wood and wold, those melodies of morn the
poet deemed to be untold, surpass them in tender sweet-
ness. It is an education in mental-balance to listen for
the trill of the skylark, perhaps the most sublime music
in nature, or for the notes, now akin to the weird themes
of Chopin, now to the ravishing melodies of Schubert,
that issue in spring from thrush, blackbird, linnet; or
the home-going diapason of the dove, or in their merrier
moods, to the chirp of chaffinch or robin. And these
lovely songsters, if only there be no devilish saltpetre, no
mischievous brat, no other demon of destruction nigh
your dwelling, will soon forget that you are fashioned in
the form of a brute, and join their treble to the chords of
your piano, come to your call, and share your afternoon
tea as though you were another St. Francis. Experto
crede. But you must be far enough away from London
smoke, and the model farmer, who poisons God's creatures
lest he should lose a dozen grains of worthless wheat, and
the stupid gamekeeper, and all the crew of butchers. There
are such riches to be found in nature by diligent searching,
and therein, at all events, inheres an ideal perhaps not the
highest, yet one liberated from that quality of brutality,
i.e., crass selfishness, which has rendered the name of
Briton a bye- word. Of course if you wish to make
money this is the wrong road, for it does not lead to
Capel Court or Wall Street ; or, if you wish to spend
money, this again is the wrong road, for its sign- post
never points to Hyde Park Corner or Monte Carlo.
But if you have an idea of living for the life that is in
you, the life of colour and sound, of fancy and sympathy,
then the solitudes of old England will afford, not indeed
a paradise, but an endless variety of object lessons. The
land from Cornwall and Kent to Cumberland teems with
56 LAND :
undiscovered treasures. H ere you shall encounter labourers'
cottages, built long ago on the lines of truth, and free
from the least taint of vulgarity nests that a cultured
taste might easily convert into things of beauty as
exquisite as, though less artificial than, the Little Trianon
itself ; here desecrated courts, needing but the magic
touch of intelligence to revive the splendour of Eliza-
bethan and Tudor magnificence. England to put it
tersely needs exploring and preserving. We want
some evangelist to preach the sacredness of the beautiful ;
to cry aloud and shout against the reckless axe, and the
defacement and destruction of the relics of a better past ;
to preach the salvation of the goldfinch and the green
woodpecker, not to mention other and rarer species.
Perhaps, when the age of thought succeeds that of
incessant locomotion, when the world will have sickened
of the game of Sisyphus, and people abandon the dream
of being millionaires, then to live with nature and with
art will become the new summum bonum. No doubt
money means much, but it is a means to an end not the
nd itself ; and after all the richest are those whose days
afford them the maximum of wholesome gratification,
whose sun sets in radiance, leaving the reflection of love,
joy, peace.
COMPTON READE.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 57
CHAPTER VII.
THE PLEASURES ARISING FROM THE
POSSESSION OF LAND.
UY GEORGE NORTON, M.A.
AMONG the common desires of mankind there are perhaps
none that more plainly indicate the possession o bodily
activity and healthy mental tastes than the love of field
sports, and the desire for dominion over some part, how-
ever small, of the earth's surface, for the advantages and
pleasures arising from its occupancy and cultivation. By
means principally of the chase the subsistence of the
human race in its earliest ages was obtained. But at the
present day the uses of field sports are recreation and the
means of maintaining vigour and hardihood of body.
With regard, however, to the cultivation of the soil, that
is an occupation of ever increasing importance, and an art
that may be carried to far greater and higher perfection
than it has, at any time or place, yet reached.
It is not intended here to enlarge upon the pleasures
and advantages enjoyed by the owners of large estates
and wide domains, by reason of the importance and
influence attached to such possessions, which can be
enjoyed only by a few ; nor is it intended to dilate upon
the economical or technical aspects of the farmer's or
gardener's art ; but simply to advert to a few of the
advantages and pleasures attendant on the possession of
58 LAND I
farms and gardens, even on a small scale advantages and
pleasures which are within the reach of great numbers.
Among the higher pleasures of farming may be
reckoned the sight and observation of nature in her
lovely and ever-changing moods ; for there is no business
that brings a man into such close touch with the opera-
tions of nature as farming. It is well said in Emerson's
pleasant essay on farming, " The farmer stands close to
nature; he obtains from the earth the bread and the meat;
the food which was not he causestobe." And, "the profession
has in all eyes its ancient charm, as standing nearest to
God, the great first cause." Then there is the satisfaction in
many cases of bringing, by judicious drainage, or other
appropriate means, a piece of wet, heavy, or barren
ground into wholesome fertility and productiveness. The
man who has effected this, or any like improvement, not
only is sure of pleasure from what he has done, but may
also, in a humble way, be considered a benefactor of his
country ; which indeed has been said of every one who
makes two blades of grass to grow where but one grew
before. To watch the progress of one's crops gives an
interest and pleasure continually increasing as experience
and knowledge increase. And to walk round a farm for
that purpose is generally enlivened by observing the
habits of the wild animals that share with us the occu-
pancy of the land ; now a hen partridge pretending to
be hurt in order to draw us away from her tiny brood
running at our feet ; now a hawk swooping down upon
his quarry ; now a stoat or weasel ; and occasionally
some rare bird visitant of our island. Natural history,
busied with technical classification, and derived only from
books, is often a dry and tedious study ; but when to
some degree of scientific knowledge is added the obser-
vation of real animal life in the fields and woods, it
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 59
becomes a charming pursuit, and may be a cause of the
production of books of such delightful character as
I zaac Walton's ''Angler," or Gilbert White's "Selborne."
Judicious planting on land, suitable for the purpose,
gives to the planter, in the care and observation of his
rising woods, continual pleasure ; which may be increased
by the anticipation of certain, if distant, profit, to be
enjoyed probably by a descendant or relative.
And the lover of field sports, possessing only a small
farm, is seldom without some means of gratifying his
tastes. Although his fields may have bred only two or
three coveys of birds, there are generally some rabbits,
and may be fishing. On a farm of about 100 acres, at
one time possessed by the writer, the rabbits were so
abundant that they could be kept under only by continual
shooting and ferreting. And a small brook (in size
little more than a ditch, but always running) was found
to contain small trout up to half-a-pound in weight, of
which a dish could generally be obtained with the line.
The advantages and pleasures of a garden are so
great and manifold as to be generally acknowledged by
nil classes, from the philosopher and statesman to the
mechanic and labourer. The great Bacon, the founder
of modern science, had evidently given much attention
and thought to gardening, and in his well-known essay
"Of Gardens" calls it "the purest of human pleasures,
and the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man."
And Sir William Temple, the wise and sagacious states-
man and skilful gardener, to whom we owe some of our
best peaches, figs and grapes, says, " The most exquisite
delights of sense are pursued in the contrivance and
plantation of gardens, which, with the fruits, flowers,
shades and fountains, and music of birds which frequent
such happy places, seem to furnish all the pleasures of
60 LAND :
the several senses, and with the greatest, or at least the
most natural, perfection." Since his time the art of
gardening has been vastly expanded, both by the greater
number and higher quality of fruits and vegetables, and .
by the immensely increased variety and beauty of the
flowers and shrubs brought in late years from many parts
of the earth, and now cultivated in England. These
useful and beautiful plants are a source of pleasure, not
only in cultivating and watching their progress to
maturity, but in the enjoyment of their usual superior
quality; and thus they give to the grower satisfactions
which cannot be obtained from such as are merely
purchased. A well-kept lawn, too, is a most pleasurable
adjunct to a home, affording, as it does, a place for
exercise and the enjoyment of various games. It is
always an attractive place to the many singing and other
birds with which England is so richly provided. Even
near a large town a garden often gives us a glimpse of
wild nature ; and during the past summer the writer's
garden (which is but a short distance from busy streets)
was visited by squirrels, hedgehogs, moles, and a sparrow-
hawk preying on young thrushes bred there. Bees,
which may be considered semi-domesticated, also give
great interest and amusement to those who observe
them closely ; and a hive or two should always be kept in
a garden, for, if the honey be not wanted, they do much
good in fertilising the fruit blossoms, and the expense of
keeping them is next to nothing.
In fact our space will not admit of mentioning all the
many and varied advantages and pleasures afforded by a
garden for well-nigh the whole year round ; and it may
safely be affirmed that nothing else will give an equal
amount of interest and pleasure for the same moderate or
small outlay.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 6 1
But far more important than all the pleasures above
mentioned is to be reckoned the great advantage of health
improved by life in the country. There cannot be a question
as to the immense benefit to health from continually
breathing pure air, instead of air largely contaminated
by smoke, noxious vapours, and dirt of many sorts.
If to pure air be added country walks and drives, and
space and opportunity for a variety of outdoor exercises,
it is apparent that to live in the country is one of the
best means of strengthening and maintaining the health
of a family, especially of one including young people.
At the present time the over tendency to crowd for
residence into the metropolis as a place of permanent
abode, seems, for various reasons, a thing to be regretted.
By means of the rapid and cheap travelling communica-
tions of to-day, great facilities are given (even to those
who live in what were once remote parts of the country)
to enjoy, at small expense of time and money, such town-
pleasures as scientific meetings, concerts, picture galleries,
etc., without sacrificing the great and permanent advan-
tages of life in the country. Continental nations, as a
rule, have little taste for rural pleasures and a country
life; but these have always been distinguishing charac-
teristics of English life, and doubtless were not without
their effect in the long and successful struggle at the
beginning of the present century against the military
despot, who at one time had almost succeeded in enslaving
the greater part of Europe. The eminent position and
great possessions of England in all quarters of the globe,
which are a source of envy to other nations, have not
been earned without the expenditure by Englishmen of
severe labour, and extraordinary enterprise, vigour,
energy, and tenacity of mind ; and by such qualities only
can they be retained by our successors. But a firm and
62 LAND I
healthy mind usually requires for its support a healthy
and robust body ; and surely it cannot be expected that
the high qualities above mentioned, which have descended
to us from our ancestors, invigorated by country life and
field sports, will be transmitted to our descendants, if,
first their constitutions, and afterwards their minds and
energies, should become enervated by too great fond-
ness for town life, with its numerous and debilitating
allurements.
GEO : NORTON.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 63
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FIR FORESTT.
BY REV. HUGH MACMILLAN, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E.,
Aiithor of " Holdings in High Lands" "-First Forms of Vegetation" " Roman
Mosaics" " The Riviera" etc., etc.
THE Scotch fir has more character than any other tree.
Though belonging to the most formal and symmetrical of
all the orders of plant life, it refuses to conform, except in
its early stages, to the straight-laced rules of construction
of the order. It follows its own wayward mode of
growth, and displays a most striking amount of individu-
ality. A plantation of young Scotch firs is indeed as
formal as that of any species of the pine tribe, and
presents an exceedingly tame and monotonous appear-
ance. But as the tree grows older it throws off the
uninteresting swaddling bands of its youth, and develops
an amount of freedom and eccentricity of shape which no
one would have expected of its staid and proper infancy.
Its trunk loses its smoothness and roundness, and bursts
out into rugged flakes of bark like the scales on the
talons of a bird of prey, or the plates of mail on an
armed knight. Its boughs cease to grow in symmetrical
straight and horizontal lines, but fling themselves out in
all directions, gnarled and contorted as if wrestling with
some inward agony or outward obstacle like a vegetable
Laocoon. Its colour also changes ; the trunk becomes of
the rich tawny red which the level afternoon sun brings
64 LAND :
out with glowing vividness, and the blue-green masses
of irregular foliage contrast wonderfully with this rusty
hue, and attest the strength and freshness of its life.
The fir is the tree par excellence of the mountains,
having its root on the granite rock that is the foundation
stone of the world, or among the gravel and boulders of
the old glacier moraines that have been left behind by
the great ice-sheets that moulded the mountains into
their present shape. The very name of Pinus sylvestris
which it bears is but a form of the old Celtic word for
mountain, as preserved in the words Ben Lomond, Ben
Nevis, Apennines. It is the companion of the storm
that has twisted its boughs into such picturesque irregu-
larities, and whose mutterings are ever heard among its
sybilline leaves. It is seen to best advantage when
struggling out of the writhing mists that have entangled
themselves among its branches. And no grander back-
ground for a sylvan scene, no more picturesque crown
for a rocky height, no finer subject for an artist's pencil
exists in nature. While the rain brings out the fragrance
of the weeping birches, these " slumbering and liquid
trees," as Walt Whitman calls them, that are the em-
bodiments of the female principle of the woods, it needs
the strongest and hottest sunshine to extort the pungent
aromatic scents of the sturdy firs, which form the mascu-
line element of the forest.
The fir is an old-world tree. Its sigh on the stillest
summer day speaks of an immemorial antiquity. Its
form is constructed on a primitive pattern. It is a relic
of the far-off geological ages when pines like it formed
the sole vegetation of the earth. It is the production of
the world's heroic age, when Nature seemed to delight
in the fantastic exercise of power, and to exhibit her
strength in the growth of giants and monsters. It has
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 65
existed through all time, and has maintained its charac-
teristic properties throughout all the changes of the earth's
surface. It forms the evergreen link between the ages
and the zones, growing now as it grew in the remote past,
and preserving the same appearance in bulk and figure.
In the north of Scotland the fir is the only tree that
grows over an area of many miles in extent. Nowhere
are there more magnificent fir forests than those of
Rothiemurchus, on the way to Inverness. They cover
the banks of the Spey, and all the wide plains to the foot
of the Cairngorm mountains, with their dark billowy
masses. The lower heights, crimsoned with heather, and
the higher ranges, storm-scalped and hoary with the
elemental war, and flecked in their crevices with never-
melting snow, emerge out of this vast sea of firs with
most wonderful contrasts of colour. These forests are
the relics of the aboriginal Caledonian forest, which
covered all this region in one unbroken umbrageous mass ;
and there are here and there many of the old giants,
which the hand of man had never planted, still growing
in the loneliest recesses, and giving an idea of what the
whole great forest must have been in its prime, ere the
woodman invaded its solitudes and ruthlessly cut down
its finest trees to be converted into timber. Most of the
trees that now cover the area are little more than forty
or fifty years old, and though well-grown do not display
the rugged picturesqueness for which the fir in its old
age is so remarkable.
It is a novel experience to wander on an autumn
afternoon through these unbroken forests. The Scotch
fir usually looks its best at this time, for the older leaves,
that have a brown, withered hue, have been cast, and the
new ones developed during the summer shine with a
beautiful freshness and greenness peculiar to this season.
66 LAND :
The ground in the open spaces is covered with a dense
undergrowth of heather, into which the foot sinks up to the
knee. Under the shelter of the trees, this heather develops
a variety in the colour of the flowers, from a pale pink to
a deep purple or even scarlet hue, rarely to be seen on
the open moorlands. When the trees crowd together
more closely the heather disappears, and in its place the
ground is carpeted with thick luxuriant bushes of the
bilberry and the mock cranberry, whose vivid greenness
is very refreshing to the eye. In the darkest parts of
the forest there are only here and there patches of green
moss, shining in the occasional glints of sunlight that
struggle through the dense foliage above ; and in the
gloomiest retreats of all, where hardly a ray of light
can penetrate, and a perpetual twilight reigns around,
the floor is littered only with yellow needles and empty
cones that have fallen from the branches overhead, and
form a dry and unchanging covering on which no
brightening tint of herbage ever appears. The aromatic
smell that pervades all the air is most refreshing. It
stimulates the whole system as you fill your lungs with
its invigorating breath. The sanative influence of fir-
forests is most remarkable. Where they prevail there is
no epidemic visitation ; the plague and the pestilence
disappear, the polluted air is deodorized, and with an
effect as magical as that of the tree which sweetened the
bitter Marah of the wilderness, the presence of this tree
purifies the most deadly atmosphere.
For the contemplative and poetic mind there is no
more impressive scene than a fir-forest. It is full of
suggestion. It quickens the mind, while it lays its
solemn spell upon the spirit like the aisles of* a cathedral.
Here time has no existence. It is not marked as elsewhere
by the varying lights and shades, by the opening and
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 67
closing of the flowers, by the changes of the seasons, and
the appearance and disappearance of various objects that
make up the landscape. The fir-forest is independent of
all these influences. Its aspect is perennially the same,
unchangeable amid all the changes that are going on out-
side. Its stillness is awe-inspiring. It is unlike that of
any other scene in nature. It is not solitude, but the
presence of some mystery, some supernatural power.
The silence is expectant, seems to breathe, to become
audible, and to press upon the soul like a weight. Some-
times it is broken by the coo of the dove, which only
emphasizes it, and makes the place where it is heard
the innermost shrine, the very soul of the loneliness.
Occasionally you hear the grand sound of the wind
among the fir-tops, which every poet from the most
ancient down to our own days has noticed with
pleasure, and which is like the distant roar of the
ocean breaking upon a lee-shore. Sometimes a gentle
sigh is heard far off, how originating you cannot tell,
for there is not a breath of wind, and not a leaf is
stirring. It comes nearer and waxes louder, and then
it becomes an all-pervading murmur. It is like the voice
of a god, and you can easily understand how the fir-
forest was peopled with the dim mysterious presences of
the northern mythology. In its gloomy perspectives,
leading to deeper solitudes, there seem to lurk some
weird mysteries and speechless terrors that keep eye and
ear intent, as if waiting for someone. The trunks of the
trees, with their knotted bark covered with hoary lichens,
look like a solemn senate of Druids. How vividly in
the ballad of the Erl King does Goethe describe this
peculiar human or supernatural feeling of the fir-forest !
In the shade of the fir-forest grow many interesting
plants which are not found elsewhere. In the forest of
68 LAND :
Rothiemurchus, the ground, wherever a breach among
the trees occurs, is covered with a most luxuriant growth
of juniper bushes, some of which are of great age and
attain a large size. The grey-green hue of the foliage
contrasts beautifully with the dark blue-green of the
firs ; and the aromatic fragrance which the leaves exhale
blends harmoniously with the resinous odour of the
patriarchal trees overhead, and fills all the air with a
pleasant incense. The berries grow in numerous clusters
over the bushes, and pass as they ripen from a pale
green to a deep blue-black. NOW T and then in the
open glades the different species of Pyrola, or winter
green, closely allied to the lily-of-the-valley, send up
from their round, hard leaves spikes with waxen bells
of delicate whiteness and tender perfume. And it may
chance that in some secret spot the charming little
Linnsea, named after the father of botanical science, may
lurk, reminding one of the immense profusion with which
it adorns the Norwegian forests in July. A great many
plants now found only in Scandinavia used to grow r under
the shadow of the Caledonian forest ; but these have
disappeared with the cutting down of the old trees, and
the consequent change in the conditions of growth.
Only a few survivors, such as the Linnsea, the one-
flowered Pyrola, and the Menziesia heath, are now found
struggling for existence in a few places in the wildest
parts of Scotland.
One of the most distinctive plants of the fir-forest is
the Goodyera repens, with its spike of white flowers. It
is an orchid with a peculiarly pale, etiolated and dried-up
look, suggesting a semi-parasitic mode of growth. But
the plant that perhaps more than all others haunts the shade
of the firs is the Melampyrutn, or cow- wheat, which has
long, narrow grass-like foliage, and a little labiate pale-
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 69
yellow flower. 1 1 seems to find more food suited to its wants
in such a situation than anywhere else ; for it is a semi-
parasite, and attaches itself to the roots of the rigid
bilberry and cranberry bushes, on which it is partially
dependent for its nourishment, although it provides also
for its own wants. Its colour is not the fresh, healthy
green of a self-sustained plant, but the dull green of a
dependent existence, changing when pressed and dried
in the herbarium into a black colour. Its myriads of
pale-yellow flowers, gleaming among the bilberry and
cranberry bushes, is a pretty sight, and helps to soften
and give a touch of beauty to the rigid asperities of the
uncompromisingly stiff-necked and ever-green vegetation.
Tufts of white coral-like reindeer moss and lovely
ostrich-plume feather moss carpet the ground, over which
run long partially concealed wreaths of the prickly-leaved
Lycopodium, and the more common stag's-horn moss,
with their pale spikes of fructification rising up at intervals
into the air and betraying their presence. Fungi of all
colours, shapes, and sizes crowd the pillared aisles, and
give a weird, grotesque appearance to the scenery ; and
nothing can be more striking than clusters of the
poisonous fly-agaric pitching their passing tents here
and there among the moss, with the sunshine streaming
through the dusky branches and illuminating their
gorgeous scarlet caps with the most intense brilliancy, like
flames in the heart of a furnace.
Many rare insects, common to Norway and Sweden,
still linger in the Scottish fir-woods, survivors of the old
population of the Caledonian forests, and the ground is
everywhere marked with the huge conical nests of the
black ant, composed of withered pine-needles; while on
the forest-paths, when the sun is shining, may be seen
myriads of the industrious inhabitants passing to and fro
JO LAND :
on their various avocations. The labour involved in the
construction of these nests must be enormous. Many of
them are old and abandoned ; and over these the bilberry
and cranberry bushes which are ever pushing forward
their roots on new soil spread themselves, so that they
are half or wholly covered with a luxuriant ever-green
vegetation, indicating their origin only by the undulations
they make in the ground. A great deal of the variety of
landscape that breaks up the monotony of the fir-forest
is thus owing to the labours of the ant.
There is no wood more durable than the timber of an
old Scotch fir. It is proof, owing to its aromatic odour,
against insect ravages ; and its texture is so hard and
compact that it resists the decay of the weather. I have
seen pieces of window-framing made of the fir of the
Black Wood of Rannock, taken out of a ruined castle
more than four hundred years old, as firm and solid as it
was when first put in. It would be difficult to press the
point of a knife into its unyielding tissue. So charged
with turpentine are the firs of this celebrated primeval
forest, that splinters of the wood used to be employed as
candles to light up the dark nights when the people
gathered together in some neighbour's cottage to ply their
spinning-wheels and retail their gossip and old stories.
These wood-torches, when set in sconces, would burn
down to the socket with an unwavering- and brilliant
o
flame, and would thus give forth a sufficient amount
of light and heat at the same time. During last summer
at Aviemore, the dark, cold, cheerless days were brightened
for us by splendid fires made of old roots left in the
ground when the patriachal trees had been cut down, and
which contained a vast quantity of resin. I know no
fires so delightful, not even those of the pine-branches
and cones of the Valombrosa forest in Italy, blazing up
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 7 1
at once, and continuing to the end clear and bright,
while emitting a most pleasant fragrance filling all the
room, and creating a most healthy atmosphere, which
counteracts the noxious influence of the continual rain
and damp. Owing to the northern aspect of the Rothie-
murchus forest, and the coldness of the climate caused
by the huge masses of lofty mountains, covered in some
parts with perpetual snow, the firs are unusually full of
turpentine, and are of very superior quality. And as
this forest, unlike almost any other, has the power of
perpetuating itself without being planted, a constant
succession of trees springs up when the old are cut
down. The trees do not grow very rapidly, but they
are good in proportion to the slowness of their growth ;
the part of the wood which is exposed to the sunshine
being little more than sap-wood of small value, while
that part which is turned to the north and grows in cold
situations and takes long to mature, is hard and solid
and very valuable. It is of a fine red colour, and when
cut directly to the centre or right across the grain is
very beautiful ; the little stripes formed by the annual
layers being small and delicate and in perfectly even
lines. The best part is nearest the root. It is
admirably adapted for ornamental furniture, and for the
breasts of violins and the sounding-boards of other musical
instruments.
For the sake of these utilitarian advantages, as well
as for the sake of its own picturesqueness, the Scotch
fir ought to be cultivated more extensively than it is in
this country, its own original home. There are many-
extensive upland and heathy tracts, which can scarcely be
turned to any other purpose, which might be redeemed
and vastly improved in every way by being planted with
this tree ; and there are knolls and rocky heights, at
72 LAND I
present tame and uninteresting-looking, that would add
most romantic features to the landscape were a clump of
firs to crown them with its rugged grandeur. In this
way shelter would be provided to patches of land that
are capable of being cultivated ; the leaves, too, as they
fell off, would destroy the heath and other hard plants,
and pave the way for mosses and grasses, which in turn
could be ploughed into the soil, and make it susceptible
of bearing crops of grain or of green vegetables. The
thinnings of the trees would be well adapted for fuel, for
palings, and many other domestic purposes ; while the
timber at last, after paying all its expenses, by the re-
peated thinnings, would furnish a better rent than could
be obtained by any other means.
HUGH MACMILLAN.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 73
CHAPTER IX.
SOME OF THE POETS ON THE COUNTRY.
BY CONSTANCE L. MAYNARD,
Moral Sciences Tripos, Girton College, Cambridge : Mistress of Westjuld College,
Hampstead.
THERE are among men two kinds of character. The one,
bent on progress and invention, seeks the society of his
fellow men in towns, and there works amid the encour-
agements or the hindrances of a crowd ; while the other,
bent on the expansion, the smoothness, and the inde-
pendence of life that can only come from comparative
solitude, seeks the country. Those who have apparently
most directly influenced mankind, the statesman, the
politician, the journalist, the man who seeks in any
direction after fame or wealth, have belonged to the
first class. Impatient of a life limited in circle of action,
however wide in scope of thought, they have by irre-
sistible attraction been drawn toward the centres of
busy human work, where man reacts on man in quick
succession, and where the co-operation of many minds
holds out a vague though brilliant promise of future
possibilities.
" Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield,
Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field,
And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn,
Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn ;
74 LAND :
And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then,
Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men ;
Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new ;
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do.
Not in vain the distance beacons ! Forward, forward, let us range;
Let the great world spin for ever, down the ringing grooves of change."*
Far different from this is the mind of the poet and
the artist, the mind of the meditative and the devout.
These seek to shut the door on stir and noise and
crowd, on the flutter and change of opinion, on the
inconsequent and superficial remarks of folly and igno-
rance, and on the opposition of envy or prejudice ;
escaping from all these they lead a life of simpler
material, and of freer and more uncriticised range. Such
are the finer and nobler spirits of the world, and in the
long run their influence balances, if it dees not exceed,
their more energetic and restless compeers.
Poets there always have been, as far back as the eye
can see into the mists of ancient days, and poets there
are in civilised, and in semi-civilised, and even in
barbarous races all the world over. In early days and
in savage tribes their chief office was to sing heroic
achievements, but when this primitive stage is past, and
life becomes more complex, they almost one and all
stand on the side of the country rather than the town.
Dramatically they may throw themselves into the race
of life, and sing of toil and endeavour, and hurrying
crowds, but personally we can scarcely find one who
does not love to withdraw and to watch the scenes
from alar in some quiet region where observation is
the keener, and positive action is not needed. The
opinion of a class of men whose self-interest is low,
* Tennyson, " Locksley Hall," Part I.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 75
and whose perceptive and reflective powers are high,
is certainly worth having ; let us endeavour to collect a
verdict.
To begin with early legend. Demeter, or Mother
Earth, was the daughter of Chronos (Time) and the
sister of Zeus, the father of the gods. She wore a
garland of ears of corn, she bore a mystic basket of ripe
fruit, and as the source of all prosperity was worshipped
with great splendour at Athens :
" Demeter, the giver of harvests, the mother of plenty of peace,
Who quickens the life in the seed-corn to ripeness and joyful
increase." *
She was the mother of two children, Plutus (Wealth),
who was born in a thrice-ploughed field at harvest time,
and Persephone, the gladsome spring :
" Persephone, bringer of blossoms, Persephone, lady of light,
Whose beautiful feet on the meadows the flowers from their slumber
awoke,
Till narcissus, and crocus, and iris, like flames 'mid the grasses
outbroke ! " *
Here we have a root idea, simple and comprehensive;
that all Use and all Beauty spring from old Mother
Earth, and are to be found with her, rather than among
our fellow men.
But let us analyse the Power of Nature in the light
of modern thought and feeling, and we shall see first
of all, that it tends to have an ennobling effect on man
himself. The deterioration of the race in large towns
is easily seen, and there is a quiet dignity in agricultural
labour, a good and independence in rural and village
life, a sturdy patriotism about the small landowner, that
has caught the observant eye of the poet in all ages.
* Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Trans. Lady Charlotte Elliot.
76 LAND :
Hear old Horace rejoicing in his snug little farm among
the lovely Sabine hills overlooking the wide campagna,
and gloating in the possession of it :
" Often did I pray that I had a piece of land, not so very large,
with a garden, and near the house a perennial spring of water, and a
little wood besides. Heaven has done more and better for me than
my wishes. It is well ; son of Maia, I ask nothing further, save that
thou wilt continue to me these blessings. I trust that I have not
increased my property by any evil arts, and that I am not going to
diminish it by vice, or negligence." *
Hear him again as, enamoured of every detail, he
minutely describes it to a friend in most musical verse :
"To prevent your asking, my good Quinctius, about my farm,
whether with arable land it supports its master, or enriches him with
the berries of the olive, or with orchards, or meadow lands or the elm
clad with vines, I will describe to you its form and situation in easy,
chatty style. Imagine a line of hills, unbroken save by one shady
valley, whose right side the morning sun illumines ; while, departing
with its swift car, it warms the left. You may well praise the tempera-
ture. Why, as the thorns bear so liberally the cornels and sloes, as the
oak and ilex gladden the herds with plenty of acorns, and their master
with thick shade, you would say Tarentum was transported there, with
all its leafy woods, "f
Turn aside for a moment to a modern parallel, equally
minute and loving, that describes how the charm of
saying, " It is mine ! " sheds a halo on even the most
trifling incidents :
" A little croft we owned, a plot of corn,
A garden stored with peas and mint and thyme,
And flowers for posies, oft on Sunday morn
Plucked while the church-bells rang their earliest chime.
Can I forget our freaks at shearing-time ?
My hen's rich nest through long grass scarce espied ;
The cowslip-gathering in June's dewy prime ;
The swans that with white chests upreared in pride
Rushing and racing came to meet me at the water-side !
* Horace, Satires, Book II. 6. f Horace, Epistles, Book I. 16.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 77
The staff I well remember which upbore
The bending body of my active sire ;
His seat beneath the honied sycamore
Where the bees hummed, and chair by winter fire ;
When market-morning came, the neat attire
With which, though bent on haste, myself I decked ;
Our watchful house-dog, that would tease and tire
The stranger, till its barking fit I checked ;
The redbreast, known for years, which at my casement pecked."*
But to return to Horace and his farm.
He is not selfish in his pleasure, for he can enter into
the joys of possession as felt by another, as well as
gladly confide in his own fate, which has allotted him
so goodly a heritage.
" Around you a hundred flocks bleat, and cows of Sicily low ; for
you the mare trained for the chariot raises its neighing, you fleeces
clothe, twice dipped in the purple dye of Africa : to me the Fate who
cannot be false has granted a small domain, and the delicate spirit of
the Grecian Muse, and power to scorn the envious crowd." f
And yet once more, even when he wishes to point a
moral, and a very good moral it is, too, and drawn from
Nature, he must put in a word about the solid satisfac-
tion he feels in the personal possession of land and
homestead :
" Bailiff of my woods and of my farm, which makes me my own
master again, but which you despise, though five households live
on it, let us have a friendly contest whether you will root the thorns
more vigorously from my land, or I from my soul, and whether
Horace himself or his farm shall be in a better state." J
To come to our own country, we find Chaucer, the
father of English poetry, giving advice such as has been
given hundreds of times since his day on the insecurity of
* Wordsworth, " Guilt and Sorrow." f Horace, "Odes," Book II. 16.
Horace, " Epistles," Book I. 14.
78 LAND :
competition, and the peace and solidity of a country
life :-
" Fie fro the pres, and dwelle with sothfastnesse,
Suffice thee thy good, though hit be smal,
For hord hath hate, and clymbing tickelnesse (insecurity),
Pres hath envye, and wele blent over al " (wealth everywhere
blinds people). *
The simple dignity of rural labour early attracted the
notice of English thinkers, and many are the disparage-
ments of more showy and less useful work. Gascoigne,
in his comment on Piers Plowman, is very plain-spoken
on the subject :
" Behold him, priests !
Such climb to heaven before the shaven crowns :
But how ? Forsooth, with true humility ;
. . They feed with fruits of their great pains
Both king and knight and priest in cloister pent.
Therefore I say that sooner some of them
Shall scale the walls that lead us up to God,
Than corn-fed beasts, whose belly is their god,
Although they preach of more perfection." f
Shakespeare dwells rather on the fickleness and
ingratitude and base subservience engendered by life in
courts and camps, and descants again and again on the
noble simplicity of life unhampered by these con-
siderations :
" Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court ?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The season's difference : as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
This is no flattery : these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.
Sweet are the uses of adversity ;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
\Vears yet a precious jewel in his head ;
* Chaucer, born 1340. t Gascoigne, born 1536.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 79
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it." *
And hear him again :
" Did you but know the city's usuries
And felt them knowingly : the art o' the court,
As hard to leave as keep ; whose top to climb
Is certain falling, or so slippery that
The fear 's as bad as falling : the toil o' the war,
A pain that only seems to seek out danger
I' the name of fame and honour : which dies i' the search,
And hath as oft a slanderous epitaph
As record of fair act ; nay, many times
Doth ill deserve by doing well ; what's worse,
Must court'sy at the censure." f
Fixing our attention on the life of the city, we cannot
fail to notice that in practical matters, such as the forma-
tion of juries or committees, we assume that a number of
men acting together will secure the combined wisdom of
all those separate minds, but this supposition, faulty even
where they act in unison, becomes an error where the
combination is of individuals, each acting on independent
self-interest. Then the lower parts of human nature rise
and begin to absorb the higher, and the whole mass tends
to lie at a low average level, pulling down each eminence
of truth or beauty that rises above it, as a quicksand might
absorb the adjacent rocks and banks of earth. Tennyson
touches on this with a light hand :
" . . . . The busy town,
He loved to rail against it still,
For, ' Ground in yonder social mill,
We rub each other's angles down,
And merge,' he said, ' in form and gloss,
The picturesque in man and man.' " J
* "As you Like It," Act II., Scene i. f " Cymbeline," Act III., Scene 3.
^ Tennyson, " In Memoriam." 1889.
8o LAND :
But it is Cowper that feels the full significance of the
fact, and enlarges on it again and again, in clear and
trenchant words, that once heard cannot readily be for-
gotten. Even physically this inevitable deterioration is
to be seen and felt :
" God made the country, and man made the town ;
What wonder then that health and virtue, gifts
That can alone make sweet the bitter draught
That life holds out to all, should most abound
And least be threatened in the fields and groves ? " *
And even more plainly is it felt morally and spiritually :
" Hence burghers, men immaculate perhaps
In all their private functions, once combined
Become a loathsome body, only fit
For dissolution, hurtful to the main.
Hence merchants, unimpeachable of sin
Against the charities of domestic life,
Incorporated, seem at once to lose
Their nature, and disclaiming all regard
For mercy and the common rights of man,
. Build factories with blood, conducting trade
At the sword's point, and dyeing the white robe
Of innocent commercial justice red." f
And the conclusion he draws is wise, and closely to the
" Oh blest seclusion from a jarring world,
Which he, thus occupied, enjoys ! Retreat
Cannot indeed to guilty man restore
Lost innocence, or cancel follies past ;
But it has peace, and much secures the mind
From all assaults of evil ; proving still
A faithful barrier not o'erleaped with ease
By vicious custom, raging uncontrolled
Abroad, and desolating public life." J
* Cowper, " The Task,'' Book I. t Cowper, " The Task," Book IV.
J Cowper, " The Task," Book III.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 8 1
The poetry of Wordsworth is so impregnated with
this thought, that it is almost difficult to quote from it,
but here are a few lines pourtraying the sturdy innocence
of the men who live under the power of Nature :
" As man in his primeval dower arrayed,
The image of his glorious Sire displayed,
Even so, by faithful Nature guarded, here
The traces of primeval man appear ;
The simple dignity no forms debase,
The eye sublime, and surly lion-grace ;
The slave of none, of beasts alone the lord,
The book he prizes, nor neglects the sword,
Well taught by that to feel his rights, prepared
With this the blessings he enjoys to guard." *
And further yet ; this apparent separation of interests
by the isolation of a country life leads to that noblest
of all unions patriotism. The sense of individual
independence being strongly fostered in one direction,
the sense of community of interest comes out the more
vividly in another, and the bond is drawn close not the
bond of party-feeling, but of the whole nation.
Long, long ago, as long ago as B.C. 137, a patriot,
Tiberius Gracchus, saw and lamented the congregation
of men on land that was not their own as being a sure
cause of future weakness. He was on his march 10 Spain,
and in passing through Etruria he observed, with grief
and indignation, the deserted state of that fertile country ;
thousands of foreign slaves in chains were cultivating the
land, and tending the flocks upon the vast estates of the
wealthy, while the peasant classes of Roman citizens,
thus thrown out of employment, had scarcely their daily
bread or a clod of earth to call their own, and gradually-
sunk into mischievous idleness. Roused by this sight,
* Wordsworth, " Tour among the Alps."
82 LAND :
he made it one of his first objects to endeavour to remedy
this evil, and ever since his day true patriots have
laboured in the same direction.
In the English language ie The Deserted Village" is
our most pathetic lament. Like the tolling of a bell, it
reiterates in sad monotone the decay of the nation equally
through the wealth of the wealthy and through the
poverty of the poor. Hear it thus :
" 111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay :
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade,
A breath can make them, as a breath has made ;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroy'd, can never be supplied." *
And hear it again :
" A time there was, ere England's griefs began,
When every rod of ground maintain'd its man ;
For him light labour spread her wholesome store,
Just gave what life required, but gave no more :
His best companions, innocence and health,
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth." *
And then see how it is no idle dream of sorrow that
fills the poet's soul, but with what stirring words he
rouses those who have the control of the state to put
forth their hands and stop, if yet it may be done, this
downward lapse :
" Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who survey
The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay,
'Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand
Between a splendid and a happy land.
Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore,
And shouting folly hails them from the shore ;
Hoards e'en beyond the miser's wish abound,
And rich men flock from all the world around.
* Goldsmith, "The Deserted Village."
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 83
Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name,
That leaves our useful products still the same.
Not so the loss. The man of wealth and pride
Takes up a space that many poor supplied ;
Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds,
Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds :
The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth,
Has robb'd the neighbouring fields of half their growth ;
His seat, where solitary sports are seen,
Indignant spurns the cottage from the green ;
Around the world each needful product flies,
For all the luxuries the world supplies.
While thus the land, adorn' d for pleasure all,
In barren splendour feebly waits the fall." :
Seeing such misuse of our natural provision, no
wonder that another weary man exclaims :
" Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit
Of unsuccessful or successful war
Might never reach me more ! My ear is pain'd,
My soul is sick with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled." f
Not only stillness does he gain by this choice, but, as
the solitary peak is a watch-tower over all the plain, so
does the retreat of the thoughtful man give a wider scope
of observation, a more impartial and accurate judgment.
Self-interest is silent, and reason speaks.
" Tis pleasant through the loop-holes of retreat
To peep at such a world ; to see the stir
Of the great Babel and not feel the crowd ;
To hear the roar she sends through all her gates
At a safe distance, where the dying sound
Falls a soft murmur on the uninjured ear.
Thus sitting and surveying thus at ease
Goldsmith, " The Deserted Village/' t Cowper, " The Task," Book II.
84 LAND I
The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced
To some secure and more than mortal height
That liberates and exempts me from them all.
It turns submitted to my view ; turns round
With all its generations ; I behold its tumult
And am still." *
But whence comes this elevating power of Nature ?
Clearly enough we see the ennobling result, but what is
it in itself what is the force at work to produce this
result ? If we analyse it, we find the components are
simple, yet put together with beautiful skill to attain the
desired end ; we have delight in beauty, yet not such as
leads to self-indulgence ; we have simplicity and con-
tentment conjoined with endless variety; we have the
deepest calm of peace along with the necessity for active
exertion ; we have the unselfishness of joys that can be
shared by all alike ; the silence and retirement suitable to
devotion ; and the general sympathy expressed toward
us in the varying moods of Nature. Never was feast
more bountifully spread, yet always with a graceful
moderation and restraint, a guiding hand over all, a sense
of modesty and purity that holds back any tendency to
luxury and excess. How the nobler souls in the ancient
Pagan days rejoiced in this rich and yet chastened happi-
ness, though they knew not its source ! Listen to Virgil
of old ; how he runs through the sources of country joy
and its effect on man in a mingled and pleasant tale :
" Blest is he who knows the rural gods, Pan and Silvanus old, and
sister nymphs ! Not him the fasces of the Roman people, nor the
monarch's purple can sway, and the discord that drives brethren to
mutual treachery. Those fruits that the boughs afford, the fruits that
of itself, of its own free will, the country bears, he gathers ; and has
* Cowper, "The Task," Book IV.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 85
never seen laws carved on steel, and the maddening forum, or the
archives of the Roman people. Other men vex with oars the perilous
seas, and rush to take the sword ; they press their way into courts and
through kingly portals ; one assails with ruin a city, and its hapless
household gods, that he may drink from a jewelled cup, and sleep on
Tyrian purple. Another hoards up wealth, and broods over the gold
he has buried in the earth ; one is amazed and dazzled at the eloquence
of the Rostra ; one the applause of commons and patricians, redoubled
as it is along the rows of the theatre, sets agape with the shock of joy.
The husbandman, with his crooked plough, furrows the soil ; from this
comes the work for the year ; by this he maintains his country and
little grandsons, by this his herds of oxen, and his bullocks that have
served him well. And there is never a time of rest; for either in fruits
the season richly abounds, or in the offspring of cattle, or in the sheaf
of Ceres' stalk, and loads the furrows with increase, and overflows the
barns. Then winter comes ; in the olive-mill is bruised the berry of
Sicyon, the swine come home, well satisfied with mast, the forest gives-
the fruit of the arbutus, and autumn drops his various produce, and on
the sunny cliffs the mellowing vintage basks. Meanwhile his dear
children hang about his lips, his stainless house preserves its
purity.
" This life of yore the antique Sabines lived, and Remus too, and
his brother. So, I ween, brave Etruria grew, and Rome became the
beauty of the world ; and, one within herself, encompassed with her
bulwarks seven heights." *
Listen also to our old friend Horace glorying in the
frugality of his lodging and his fare, which makes his
honour and his wit but shine the brighter :
" Within my dwelling ivory does not gleam, nor roof of fretted
gold ; beams from Hymettus rest not upon columns hewn in the utter-
most parts of Africa. Nor have I, a stranger heir, taken possession of
the palace of an Attalus ; nor do client maids of gentle birth spin for
me textures of Laconian purple, but honour is mine, and a generous
vein of wit : and poor though I be, the rich man courts me ; for nought
beyond do I solicit Heaven, or crave a powerful friend for ampler gifts,
blessed enough in my one Sabine farm." f
* Virgil, Georgics II., 485. t Horace, Odes, Book. I., 18.
86 LAND :
The same spirit of contentment, when animated by
Christian faith, shines even more beautifully :
" Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content
The quiet mind is richer than a crown
The homely house that harbours quiet rest,
The cottage that affords no pride nor care,
The mean that 'grees with country music best,
The sweet consort of mirth and music's fare.
Obscured life sets down a type of bliss ;
A mind content both crown and kingdom is." *
But the best singer of ' k plain living and high thinking"
is Robert Herrick, that prince among lyrists and pastoral
poets, and this is his poem called " A Thanksgiving."
A THANKSGIVING.
" Lord, Thou hast given me a cell,
Wherein to dwell ;
A little house, whose humble roof
Is weather-proof;
Under the spars of which I lie
Both soft and dry ;
Where Thou, my chamber for to ward,
Hast set a guard
Of harmless thoughts, to watch and keep
Me, while I sleep.
Low is my porch, as is my fate ;
Both void of state ;
And yet the threshold of my door
Is worn by th' poor,
Who thither come, and freely get
Good words, or meat.
Like as my parlour, so my hall
And kitchen's small ;
A little buttery, and therein
A little bin,
Which keeps my little loaf of bread
Unchipt, unflead ;
Robert Greene, born 1560.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 87
Some brittle sticks of thorn or briar
Make me a fire,
Close by whose living coal I sit,
And glow like it." *
The Elizabethan poets dwell much on this simplicity
and content, and they celebrate the return of spring in
such rapturous strains, that to quote one seems like
neglecting the others. But here is one as a specimen :
" Now the glories of the year
May be viewed at the best,
And the earth doth now appear
In her fairest garments dress'd :
Sweetly smelling plants and flowers
Do perfume the garden bowers ;
Hill and valley, wood and field,
Mixed with pleasure profits yield.
Much is found where nothing was,
Herds on every mountain go,
In the meadows flowery grass
Makes both milk and honey flow ;
Now each orchard banquets giveth,
Every hedge with fruit relieveth ;
And on every shrub and tree
Useful fruits or berries be.
Other blessings, many more,
At this time enjoyed may be,
And in this my song therefore
Praise I give, O Lord ! to Thee :
Grant that this my free oblation
May have gracious acceptation,
And that I may well employ
Everything which I enjoy." f
And listen now to the delighted music of Drummond
of Hawthornden, living in retirement in his beautiful
* Robert Herrick, born 1594. t George Wither, born 1588.
88 LAND !
home on the Esk, perhaps our first specimen of a manjof
letters pure and simple :
" Phoebus, arise ! and paint the sable skies
With azure, white and red,
Rouse Memnon's Mother from her Tithon's bed
That she thy career may with roses spread ;
The nightingales thy coming each-where sing
Make an eternal spring,
Give life to this dark world which lieth dead ;
Spread forth thy golden hair .
In larger locks than thou wast wont before,
And, emperor-like, decore
With diadem of pearl thy temples fair." *
In those fresh old days every song they sang was of
sunrise and spring and roses, and all that is freshest and
fairest ; but life in the country has another side well
represented, a side of bare branches and nipping frosts
and roaring winds, and we of later days have learned to
love these too. The Elizabethan poets summarily dis-
missed the late autumn and the winter as "frowning"
and " gloomy," and waited for jocund spring to return;
they loved Nature as they thought she ought to be, not
as she actually is from day to day, and it was William
Cowper all honour to his gentle name! who taught us to
love her the whole year round, and under every guise.
The whole of his two " Winter Walks " is instinct with
love in every line, a love that embraces Nature exactly
as she is ; and we should read the whole to understand
him aright.
Then, the eyes of men once opened to the delights of
winter, the theme was eagerly taken up, and perhaps the
finest of all poems on the subject is that of Wordsworth,
when, as a lad, he skated on the frozen lake, the solemn
mountains standing around :
* Drummond of Hawthornden, born 1585.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 89
" Happy time
It was indeed for all of us ; for me
It was a time of rapture ! Clear and loud
The village clock tolled six. I wheeled about,
Proud and exulting like an untired horse
That cares not for his home. All shod with steel,
We hissed along the polished ice in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase
And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn,
The pack loud-chiming, and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle ; with the din
Smitten, the precipices rang aloud ;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron ; while far distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound
Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars
Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away." *
Less genial subjects too, mist and storm and barren
moorland and wide sandy wastes, shall not want their
singers, and even that one of the few genuinely uncom-
fortable things that Nature provides for us the bitter
north-east wind shall have his ode
" ODE TO THE NORTH-EAST WIND.
" Welcome, wild north-easter !
Shame it is to see
Odes to every zephyr ;
Ne'er a verse to thee.
Welcome, black north-easter !
O'er the German foam,
O'er the Danish moorlands,
From thy frozen home.
Sweep the golden reed beds,
Crisp the lazy dike,
Hunger into madness
Every plunging pike.
* Wordsworth, "Influence of Natural Objects."
go LAND :
Fill the lake with wild-fowl,
Fill the marsh with snipe,
While on dreary moorlands
Lonely curlew pipe.
Through the black fir forest
Thunder harsh and dry,
Shattering down the snow-flakes
Off the curdled sky.
Let the luscious south wind
Breathe in lovers' sighs,
While the lazy gallants
Bask in ladies' eyes.
What does he but softer-
Heart alike and pen ?
'Tis the hard grey weather
Breeds hard English men.
What's the soft south-wester ?
'Tis the ladies' breeze,
Bringing home their true loves
Out of all the seas.
But the black north-easter,
Through the snowstorm hurled,
Drive our English hearts of oak
Seaward round the world.
Come, as came our fathers,
Heralded by thee,
Conquering from the eastward,
Lords by land and sea.
Come, and strong within us
Stir the Vikings' blood ;
Bracing brain and sinew ;
Blow, thou wind of God ! " *
Such a tonic, from being a necessary medicine,
becomes an enjoyment to him who has the stout heart to
take it gladly, and every change provided can be called
good, all good :
* Charles Kingsley, "Ode to the North-East Wind."
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 9!
" So manifold, all pleasing in their kind,
All healthful, are the employs of rural life,
Reiterated as the wheel of time
Runs round, still ending and beginning still." *
But perhaps the main instrument that Nature wields for
the good of man is the force of beauty, pure, ever-fresh,
heart-rejoicing beauty, whether displayed in deepest,
softest calm, or in radiant, sparkling force. Read these
three short verses, mirrors of profoundest peace. First
the fervid summer noontide :
" In this retreat,
Immantled in ambrosial dark
To drink the cooler air, and mark
The landscape winking through the heat." f
Next the still evening :
" An English home grey twilight poured
On dewy pastures, dewy trees,
Softer than sleep ; all things in order stored,
A haunt of ancient Peace."
And lastly, the chill freshness of very early morning:
" Methought that I had wandered far .
In an old wood ; fresh washed in coolest dew,
The maiden splendours of the morning star,
Shook in the stedfast blue/'
Images such as these, once received consciously,
remain in the mind with steadying, soothing power. And
see this more detailed picture ; what a wilderness of
dreamy thought and longing, and wandering through the
* Cowper, " The Task," Book I. f Tennyson, " In Memoriam," 89.
J Tennyson, " The Palace of Art." Tennyson, " Dream of Fair Women/'
92 LAND I
vastness of creation, is expressed in its lines ; it is the
dividing line between the forest and the prairie, seen by
moonlight :
" Beautiful was the night. Behind the black wall of the forest,
Tipping its summit with silver, arose the moon. On the river
Fell here and there through the branches a tremulous gleam of the
moonlight.
Nearer and round about her the manifold flowers of the garden
Poured out their souls in odours.
Fuller of fragrance than they, and as heavy with shadows and night-
dews
Hung the heart of the maiden. The calm and the magical moonlight
Seemed to inundate her soul with indefinable longings
As through the garden gate beneath the brown shade of the oak trees
Passed she along the path, to the edge of the measureless prairie.
Silent it lay, with a silvery haze upon it, and fire-flies
Gleaming and floating away in mingled and infinite numbers.
Over her head the stars, the thoughts of God in the heavens,
Shone on the eyes of man, who has ceased to wonder and worship,
Save when a blazing comet is seen on the walls of the temple,
As if a hand had appeared, and written upon them ' Upharsin.'
And the soul of the maiden, between the stars and the fire-flies,
Wandered alone." *
And in the following quotation, see the exquisite
refinement of perception which observes the tinkle of the
little flake of ice dislodged by the gently flitting robin :
" No noise is here, or none that hinders thought,
The redbreast warbles still, but is content
With slender notes and more than half suppressed.
Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light
From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes
From many a twig the pendant drops of ice
That tinkle in the withered leaves below.
Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft,
Charms more than silence." f
* Longfellow, " Evangeline." t Cowper, " The Task," Book VI.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 93
And then in contrast to these, if we want something
radiant, rejoicing, overpoweringly brilliant and strong, read
the following lines on a sunrise :
" Day !
Faster and more fast
O'er night's brim, day boils at last ;
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim
Where spurting and suppressed it lay
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away ;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew old, then overflowed the world."*
Nature is, when all is said, our chief storehouse of
beauty and of delight. Even when the poet would fain
describe the girl he loves, he goes not to satin and gold
and pearls, but to the simplest and freshest and sweetest
things Nature freely provides. Here is a lovely
sample :
" Have you seen but a bright lily grow
Before rude hands have touched it ?
Have you marked but the fall o' the snow
Before the soil hath smutched it ?
Have you felt the wool of beaver ?
Or swan's down ever ?
Or have smelt o' the bud o' the briar ?
Or the nard in the fire ?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee ?
O, so white, O, so soft, O, so sweet is she!"f
Of many good things it is sadly true that the more
one man has, the less is left for his neighbour, but there
is no stinting here. All is infinite, and all may share
without measure and without waste. Indeed, he who
* Browning, ^ ( Pippa Passes." f " Rare Ben Jonson," born 1573.
94 LAND :
has the clearer eyes to see, and the wider heart to grasp
his share, increases the general stock rather than
diminishes it, for his appreciation will be caught by those
around him, and more happiness given. The unselfish-
ness of the pleasure makes it attractive to the noblest.
" My charmer is not mine alone ; my sweets
And she that sweetens ail my bitters too,
Nature, enchanting Nature, in whose form
And lineaments divine I trace a hand
That errs not, and find raptures still renew'd,
Is free to all men universal prize.
Strange that so fair a creature yet should want
Admirers, and be destined to divide
With meaner objects even the few she finds !" *
Listen to this other poem, which takes the same truth
from the other end, and that is that everyone may take
the laws and the beauties and the glories of Nature, and
say, " This is for me, all for me ! " The piece is called
" Honours " and the writer, a man lately successful at the
University, is writing to his friend who has failed. After
pointing out to him that book-learning is not the whole,
nor even perhaps the best part of human knowledge, he
bids him in the following beautiful stanzas, appropriate and
enjoy his share of Nature, to delight in which the education
of his young days had peculiarly fitted him.
" Go, when the shadow of your house is long
Upon the garden, when some new-waked bird,
Pecking and fluttering, chirps a sudden song,
And not a leaf is stirred.
Go there, I say ; stand at the water's brink,
And shoals of spotted grayling you shall see
Basking between the shadows look, and think
This beauty is for me !
* Cowper, "The Ta^k," Book III.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 95
For me this freshness in the morning hours,
For me the water's clear tranquility,
For me the soft descent of chesnut flowers :
The cushat's cry for me.
The lovely laughter of the wind-swayed wheat ;
The easy slope of yonder pastoral hill ;
The sedgy brook whereby the red kine meet
And wade and drink their fill.
Then saunter down that terrace whence the sea,
All fair with wing-like sails, you may discern ;
Be glad, and say * This beauty is for me,
A thing to love and learn.
For me the bounding in of tides ; for me
The laying bare of sands when they retreat ;
The purple flush of calms, the sparkling glee
When waves and sunshine meet.'
Honours ! O friend, I pray you bear with me :
The grass hath time to grow in meadow lands,
And leisurely the opal murmuring sea
Breaks on her yellow sands.
And leisurely the ring-dove, on her nest,
Broods till her tender chick will peck the shell ;
And leisurely down fall from ferny crest
The dew-drops on the well.
And leisurely your life and spirit grew,
With yet the time to grow and ripen free :
No judgment past withdraws that boon from you,
Nor granteth it to me.
Still must I plod, and still in cities moil,
From precious leisure, learned leisure far,
Dull my best self with handling common soil ;
Yet mine those Honours are !" *
The unconscious sympathy of Nature with the sorrows
and with the joys of mankind, may be a delusion, but it
* Jean Ingelow, "Honours."
96 LAND :
is a very old and a very widespread delusion. Old, as
when Isaiah, projecting the joy and triumph of his soul
on to his surroundings, sang in inspired strains :
"Sing, O ye heavens, for the Lord hath done it ! Shout, ye lower
parts of the earth ! Break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest,
and every tree therein ; for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and
glorified himself in Israel." *
Widespread too, being found in the writings of poets
of every kind. Listen to these two aspects of sorrow, each
sympathetically reflected by Nature. First, the calm of
silently borne loss :
" Calm is the morn, without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
And only through the faded leaf
The chestnut pattering to the ground.
Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
And on these dews that drench the fure,
And all the silvery gossamers
That twinkle into green and gold." f
And then the blinding storm of a bitter, irrevocable
grief that has altered all the aspects of life, and left us
P " Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
And howlest, issuing out of night
With blasts that blow the poplar white,
And lash with storm the streaming pane ?
Day when my crowned estate begun
To pine in that reverse of doom,
Which sickened every living bloom,
And blurred the splendour of the sun.
Who usherest in the dolorous hour
With thy quick tears, that make the rose
Pull sideways, and the daisy close
Her crimson fringes to the shower." J
* Isaiah xliv., 23. t Tennyson, "In Memoriarn," II.
Tennyson, " In Memoriam," 72.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 97
Further even than this ; though Nature has no first-
hand revelation of God to give to man, she is full of
hints and foreshadowing and half-told guesses. The
following description of a breathlessly still night in full
summer, ending in a fresh, bright dawn, gives just such
a hint of the deep mystery of death and of life :
" And now the doubtful dusk revealed
The knolls once more, where couched at ease
The white kine glimmered, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field.
And sucked from out the distant gloom,
A breeze began to tremble o'er
The large leaves of the sycamore,
And fluctuate all the still perfume.
And gathering freshlier overhead,
Rocked the full-foliaged elms, and swung
The heavy-folded rose, and flung
The lilies to and fro, and said
1 The dawn, the dawn ! ' and died away.
And East and West without a breath
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death,
To broaden into boundless day." *
And if Nature has a message to the perplexed, she
has a more certain voice for those whom the truth has set
free, and who are glad in the light of heaven. Hear a
repetition of the shout of Isaiah :
" Joy . . . possesses and o'erwhelms the soul
Of him whom hope has with a touch made whole ;
'Tis heaven, all heaven, descending on the wings
Of the glad legions of the King of kings ;
'Tis more 'tis God diffused through every part,
'Tis God Himself triumphant in the heart !
Oh, welcome now, the sun's once hated light,
His noonday beams were never half so bright,
Unconscious Nature, all that he surveys,
Rocks, groves, and streams must join him in his praise ! " f
* Tennyson, " In Memoriam," 94. t^Cowper, "Hope."
98 LAND :
There are many motives that draw men away from
the crowd and into the simple and retired country, and,
except misanthropy (which is, after all, rare), not one of
these motives is ignoble. In the complex nature of man
conscience stands highest ; desire is like water and falls;
the desires of man perpetually listened to and gratified,
sink him lower and lower, till he ends in a slough of
mud from which there is no retrieving. But conscience is
like a flame and rises ; the conscience, faithfully listened
to and obeyed, leads a man higher and higher till he lives
where God would have him live with Himself. See
how some of the most elementary and primary warnings
of conscience lead in the direction of solitude and retire-
ment :
" Thus conscience pleads her cause within the breast,
Though long rebelled against, yet not suppress'd,
And calls a creature formed for God alone,
For heaven's high purposes and not his own,
Calls him away from selfish ends and aims,
From what debilitates and what inflames,
From cities humming with a restless crowd,
Sordid as active, ignorant as loud,
Whose highest praise is that they live in vain,
The dupes of pleasure, or the slaves of gain,
Where works of man are clustered close around,
And works of God are hardly to be found,
To regions where, in spite of sin and woe,
Traces of Eden still are seen below,
Where mountain, forest, river, field and grove,
Remind him of his Maker's power and love." *
Or as another poet says :
" Were there below a spot of holy ground,
Where from distress a refuge might be found,
And solitude prepare the soul for heaven :
Sure Nature's God that spot to man had given,
* Cowper, " Retirement."
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 99
Where falls the purple morning far and wide
In flakes of light upon the mountain side
Where with loud voice the power of water shakes
The leafy woods, or sleeps in quiet lakes."*
The earth is still large enough to afford her children
room for these high delights, even in her plainer grounds,
for the main elements she affords earth and trees, water
and sky and wind, and the beautiful course of the seasons
are the same everywhere. Alone with these, the soul
has leisure, and grows. The spiritual life is an exotic in
this world, and needs all the help we can give it, even
though in itself absolutely independent of circumstances.
It has been wisely said :
" Truth is not local, God alike pervades
And fills the world of traffic and the shades ;
He may be feared amid the busiest scenes,
Or scorned where business never intervenes.
But 'tis not easy with a mind like ours,
Conscious of weakness in its noblest powers,
And in a world where (other ills apart)
The roving eye misleads the careless heart,
To limit thought, by nature prone to stray
Wherever freakish fancy points the way,
To bid the pleadings of self-love be still,
Resign our own and seek our Maker's will ;
To spread the page of Scripture and compare
Our conduct with the laws engraven there,
To measure all that passes in the breast
Faithfully, fairly, by that sacred test ;
But leisure, silence, and a mind released
From anxious thoughts how wealth may be increased,
How to secure in some propitious hour
The point of interest, or the post of power ;
A soul serene, and equally retired
From objects too much dreaded or desired,
Safe from the clamours of perverse dispute,
At least are friendly to the great pursuit." f
* Wordsworth, " Tour in the Alps." f Cowper, " Retirement."
TOO LAND I
Followed out, the result of these directions is noble :
" He is the happy man whose life even now
Shows somewhat of that happier life to come.
The world o'erlooks him in her busy search
Of objects more illustrious in her view ;
And occupied as earnestly as she,
Though more sublimely, he o'erlooks the world.
She scorns his pleasures, for she knows them not ;
He seeks not hers, for he has proved them vain." *
And now we must draw to an end. Such is the
verdict of most of the poets, the men of thought and
culture, the men of sensitiveness and reflection ; and does
not that verdict almost justify the old Greek legend that
the Earth- Mother is the source of all Use and all Beauty ?
From the honest endeavour to win a living from the soil,
up to that which concerns eternal life, she leads us in
the right direction. Love without excitement, Beauty
without a snare, Patriotism without rancour, Simplicity
without monotony, a Feast without indulgence; these are
some of the treasures in her keeping. The young lad
needs sharp discipline, and the instinct so strong within
him, " yearning for the large excitement," is a true one,
and should be wisely gratified ; the philanthropist in his
busiest years goes .where men are thickest and most
suffering ; but for the ordinary family life, for the child as
well as for the mature mind, and for quiet old age, there
is no guardian or companion so skilful, so kind, and so
peaceful as our Mother-Earth.
CONSTANCE L. MAYNARD.
* Cowper, "The -ask," Book vi.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICIII-S. ioi :
CHAPTER X.
COUNTRY PLEASURES AND INTERESTS.
BY LADY HOPE, the daughter of General Sir Arthur Cotton, K. C.S.I., and
widow of Admiral Sir James Hope, G.C.B.
Has written "Our Coffee Room," " Wild Hyacinths" "Sunrise and Sunset ," " A-
Red Brick Cottage" and many other books, chiefly bearing on the social, domestic and
spiritual welfare of the working classes ; also many tracts for circulation amongst
themselves ; as well as articles and stories in periodicals.
COUNTRY life possesses its own charms for the pleasure-
seeker as well as for the agriculturist. The lady, with her
horticultural as well as artistic pursuits, her botany and
her love of bird and animal life, finds ample employ-
ment for her finest tastes in the country, whether the
Weald of Sussex, the undulating and park-like demesnes
of Surrey, the broad flats of Norfolk, or the wolds of
Yorkshire. Each county has its own charms ; and
mournfully veiled must be the eye that fails to find these
delectable enjoyments, these interests that abound for
every earnest mind. They are scattered at our feet,
above, around us, on every side.
In spring we see the early tints clothing the near and
distant woods ; we hear the first songs of the wild birds,
as they fill the land with their orchestra of harmonies, so
varied, so sweet, and always the most cheering of country
sounds. The farmers are busy at their work, each field
in preparation for summer supplies ; the garden beds
are blooming with hyacinths and tulips ; the river is gay
with a myriad boats.
IO2 LAND I
When summer approaches we have our foliage in
rich masses, sunshine streaming through our wooded
dells, and over the long sweeps of hill and down. We
ride and drive, and walk, exploring each pretty nook,
flower studded, and each mossy bank, until we are
obliged to exclaim, "The lines are fallen unto me in
pleasant places ! I have a goodly heritage." We see the
tiny cottages, with their gabled roofs tiled and thatched, and
old-fashioned gardens brimful of the sweetest things
thyme and honeysuckle, sweet-briar and mignonette,
roses and wallflower. I know some lovely villages where
each cottage stands in its own gay surroundings, a very
picture of country brightness ; the bees from the hives
beside the porch revel in the wealth of honey-yielding
flowers, and the children play in never-ending delight
close to the open window, or shady tree, beside which
M mother" sits. How different from the close, hot streets
where the crowds of London children spend their strangely
unnatural lives ! Nothing is their own. Jostled here
and there, crippled for want of space, compelled to use
the gutter as their playground, and to forego the health-
giving ozone of country air, who can wonder that they
suffer for the want of a happy, childlike life ?
" I was born in the country," poor women in London
have said to me ; and they have wept as they said it.
Some poor people from the slums of Westminster
were enjoying a ramble upon the slopes of Box Hill
one delicious afternoon in June, when a young woman
was overheard to say to another :
" I wonder whether this is what they call scenery? I
have read about it in books, but I never saw it before.
It is wonderful ! It is just Paradise!"
She refused to believe that there could be more beautiful
scenery in other parts of the world ; whilst another added-
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 1 03
" Well ! I am glad I have seen a mountain at last ! "
The seaside has its charms of rock and coast, the
stretch of shingle on the shore, the high, uprising cliff,
where we may wander with unlimited space of ocean
before us, reaching to its own distant horizon, decked
with tiny sails, and little puffs of smoke like clouds, just
here and there.
Autumn, with its glowing tints on every woodland
scene, and the golden richness of its corn-fields, tells a
tale of passing beauty which to many minds brings a
peculiar sadness, but to me a singular joy. For it seems
to tell of a love and thoughtful care which can gild for us
so strangely the blessings that are here, before we part
with them, in preparation for still better things above.
The winter, too, has its own delights, though here a
minor chord sounds in our ears. To the rich there are
pleasures without end : hunting, riding, skating, walking,
and now the famous tobaganning an unknown delight
in England until of late, but now a very popular amuse-
ment with old and young. There is the cosy fireside,
the blazing log, and bright coal flame all inviting us to
the pleasures of our home.
But the poor suffer proportionately. They have not
our remedies against cold, and they shiver in the bitter
wind. Might not some of our leisure hours be spent in
making garments for them, or in using our talents for deft
handiwork by earning some comforts for our neighbours
in the great cities who are poor?
My father, Sir Arthur Cotton, has given much atten-
tion to the subject of Land Cultivation,* and has proved,
by his annual and most practical experiments, that we
have as yet scarcely touched the wealth of England ;
* "Thorough Cultivation," by Sir Arthur Cotton, K.C.S.I. Publisher: Clark,
Dorking.
IO4 LAND I
that by digging deeper, more thoroughly aerating the
soil, and in some cases enriching it by adding some
deficient material, as chalk for instance, we should reap
SEVEN TIMES the crops we reap at present.
His pamphlets on this subject are well worth con-
sidering, and only an enterprising cultivator is needed,
with a small amount of capital and land, who will carry
out in practical experiment, and on an efficient scale,
these definite suggestions, with the aid of calculations
given.
Surely it would be worth the time and thought of
some young man of education and energy to work out
these theories which have already been very fairly
tested, though not so fully as might be possible on a
small farm, and by a man who possesses, and is willing
to expend, both time and acreage to a small extent on
the experiments.
If we study rightly the use of our Creator's best
gifts, we shall value indeed the delights of country life !
ELIZABETH REID HOPE.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 1 05
CHAPTER XI.
PLEASURES OF A COUNTRY HOME,
BY MRS. BRIGHTWEN, Vice- President of the Selborne Society.
Author of " Wild Nature won by Kindness," "More about Wild Nature," "Home
Work? " Practical Thoughts on Bible Study? etc.
THOSE who already possess a home out of town, and
who have possibly lived all their lives in the midst of the
beauties of Nature, will know from their own experience
the endless sources of pleasure which such a life affords.
I would therefore presuppose that my readers will be
those who but rarely have the opportunity of seeing
trees and fields and enjoying the restfulness of a country
life. It will be a pleasant task to try to show them a
few of the advantages which may be derived from
contact with the things pure, bright and beautiful
which cluster round one's country dwelling.
Parents who live in towns little know how much
their children lose by being deprived of the teaching of
the oldest Testament of all i.e., the book of Nature.
Deep down in the heart of every child there is, I
believe, an innate love of animals, birds and flowers.
Witness the joy of town children when they are first
permitted the opportunity of gathering flowers for them-
selves ; how eagerly a frog is secured as a wondrous
prize ; how wide open are the young eyes to the new
page of life which has been suddenly opened to them.
io6 LAND :
It is for parents to guide the minds of their children
into life-long friendship with God's works, and to lead
them in their early days to cultivate the habit of observa-
tion. To be assured that father and mother will meet
the little students with ready sympathy and interest as
they relate the discoveries they have made, of where a
wild bee makes its nest, or a dormouse its tiny home,
will do much to lay the foundation of such habits as may
be of essential use in after-life.
In an admirable chapter on education, in the " Life of
Mrs. Sewell," occurs the following passage : " It was
through the beauty of Nature that God first spoke to my
own heart when I was a child of not more than four years
old, and I believe if parents can reverently and lovingly
turn over the pages of God's book before the charmed
eyes of their little ones, they will find a natural and
happy response When children have once got
hold of Nature, and their mother will animate and help
them, they want no toys. It is such a delightful task
that I really almost envy a mother who has it for her
work and duty."
It may be urged that it is not all parents who are
themselves well enough acquainted with natural history
to be able to guide and instruct their children, but even
if that be the case, there are so many helpful books
published, giving ample information on every branch of
science, that for those living in the country there can be
no difficulty in learning the life-histories of the creatures
that are met with in our daily walks.
I suppose no one would question the superior health-
fulness of country life. We have only to contrast the
pale face and puny limbs of a little town-bred child, taken
from some ill-favoured London slum, with a rosy-cheeked
little rustic from a cottage door, to see at once the effect
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
of town and country air in its most marked aspect. Of
course in higher life there are mitigations, and the effect
would not be quite so apparent, for the children of well-
to-do parents are taken from town to the seaside or else-
where several times in the year, and thus the lack of
pure air and light is in a measure supplied ; but still there
remains the artificial routine of daily life, walking in
crowded streets instead of joyous rambles in country
lanes, growing up in the midst of society pleasures which
may eventually lead to dissipated habits, instead of
drinking in the pure delights which the Creator has
designed to be our recreation.
It is a touching thing that poor town children, as a
rule, scarcely know how to play. This speaks volumes
about the dreariness of their young lives. There are,
doubtless, thousands of people who would live in the
country but are tied in town by their daily avocations,
and there are thousands more who might live out of
the noise and smoke of cities, but who simply know
nothing of the exquisite delights of rural life. Walk
through a leafy wood towards the end of May or early in
June ; listen to the happy chorus of birds up in the
branches ; see on all sides the marvellous variety of tints,
the glow of sunlight resting on beds of anemones and blue-
bells, and feel the fresh, pure breezes which seem to bring
health and vigour, in this way through all the senses we are
drinking in the purest enjoyment ; can a walk in a dusty
street compare with such a ramble ? Autumn, with its
rich corn-fields and mellow beauty of colouring ; winter,
with its fairy frost work and sparkling ice ; each and all
the seasons bring their pleasures to those hearts that are
attuned to the sweet harmonies of Nature.
It is of great advantage to children to be taught the
habit of close, careful observation, for it leads to accu-
JO8 LAND
racy of statement and clear description of anything seen,
and surely those qualities are frequently lacking even in
grown-up people and need to be enforced in early life.
When children are staying with me I am often charmed
to see their eager delight in listening to stories of birds
and insects, and amused, too, to watch their instant car-
rying out of suggestions for study ; and various are the
things brought for my inspection dead birds or moles,
fungi, worms, frogs, etc. I had explained to one clever
little naturalist that all raptorial birds threw up pellets of
the fur and bones of the creatures they fed upon, as they
were indigestible, and showed him the tree where an
owl roosted, and beneath which he might possibly find
the little dry pellets of mouse's fur. Next morning he
ran into my room with sparkling eyes, saying, "The
old owl was sick last night, and here are the pellets ! "
One could excuse the graphic way of stating the case, as
it showed the zeal of the young collector. I have heard
parents, whose sons had a taste for collecting birds,
insects or fossils, rejoice greatly that such tastes were
of real value when the lads were pursuing their life-work
abroad, for leisure time, instead of being spent in dissi-
pation, was devoted to the special fad which had been
taken up, and surely that was no small gain as a result of
living in the country in childhood. Intelligent young
people will never rest content with merely obtaining
specimens in any branch of natural history, they will
crave for books which will teach them more about the
things they have collected, and in the wide field of
Nature they will find life-long interest, for in every place
they may happen to visit, something fresh may be
discovered.
The wise words of Sir James Paget, in an address
given at the Egyptian Hall in 1888, may well be borne
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 1 09
in mind. He says : 44 Long ago, when I studied botany,
there was a piece of ground scarcely bigger than this
hall near my father's house in Yarmouth, and there I
found more than fifty species of plants. The origin of
such plants, whether from seeds in the ground or from
those in the air, how far one can exclude another, the
influence of London atmosphere, their attraction of in-
sects, and many other things would be worth observing.
At least, in these and the like things, you may learn to
observe, and then you will love to observe, and then
some good will come of it."
One might say much about the facilities the country
affords for animal and bird study, and the happiness our
children may derive from keeping their various pets, the
ponies, dogs, rabbits, etc., which are sure to find favour
with young people, and which give excellent oppor-
tunities for developing habits of patient care-taking and
thoughtfulness.
I would suggest that there should be some supervision
of the said pets from time to time, for children, however
well-intentioned, are often unable to keep animals and
birds in health and happiness from lack of knowledge of
their requirements, and thus real cruelty is the result,
which might easily be avoided by a few wise hints about
suitable food and management.
Children living in a country home are almost sure to
develop an interest in the natural objects around them,
and thus they are provided with sources of life-long
pleasure. Their experience will be akin to that of the
Reverend Charles Kingsley, when he wrote :
" I have so long enjoyed the wonders of Nature; never
I can honestly say alone, because when man was not with
me I had companions in every bee and flower and
pebble ; and never idle, because I could not pass a
I IO LAND I
swamp or a tuft of heather without finding in it a fail
tale of which I could but decipher here and there a line
or two, and yet found them more interesting than all the
books, save one, which were ever written upon earth."
ELIZA BRIGHTWEN.
[NOTE. I would recommend all young people who indulge in
Pets to read Mrs. Brightwen's two books, "Wild Nature won by
Kindness," and "More about Wild Nature," published by Mr. T.
Fisher Unwin.] C. F. D.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. I I I
CHAPTER XII.
SOME PLEASURES OF A COUNTRY LIFE.
BY "HERMIT," Contributor to The Field, etc.
THE difference between the town and the country has
been said to be that man makes the town, God made the
country. If this be a somewhat arbitrary distinction, yet at
least it may be granted that in the town we see man's
artifices in perfection, whereas in the country we see
" Nature unadorned." And so it might be argued, and with
something of logical truth, that life in the town is, to
a great extent, artificial, whilst life in the country is, or
ought to be, natural. It is to be feared, however, that
the artificiality of town life is too often transferred to the
country, and this much to the detraction of country life.
For what can be more absurd than to see your out-and-
out town dweller producing himself, with the aid of
several attendants, in all the precision and beauty and
polish of his town "get up," to dawdle away the weary
hours of a visit to the country, abusing the weather, the
mud, the awkward stiles and ditches, and the all-round
discomfort he naturally feels in so unnatural a position.
For to enjoy the country and its life it should be an
axiom that man must put off artifice and study Nature.
It is very well for the superior metropolitan to speak
disparagingly of his country cousins as country clowns,
but when these clowns get him down into the country he
probably soon finds out what a fool they can make of
ii2 LAND:
him. Let the axiom above alluded to be accepted, and
much of the nonsense and artifice of modern luxury,
which is being too frequently transferred from town to
country, will be renounced, and visitors to or dwellers in
the country will determine to be in the country what
countrymen ought to be natural. Nay, probably many
visitors would become dwellers were they once to throw
off the slavery under which they serve in town life.
Not the least of this tyranny arises from the multipli-
cation of servants. It is true that in the town servants
are required for a host of purposes, and that their
masters and mistresses cannot well be expected to super-
vise, or take any great interest in, most of their work.
In the country it is different. And here perhaps would
come the first revolt against the artificial life of the town
for anyone going to live really live in the country.
There must be servants in the country too, but many of
their duties are such that their masters or mistresses
can take, and would be the better for taking, an interest
in them. There is the farmyard, the poultry yard, the
garden, the stables, the kennels, the apiary, the farm
all full of interest, and most of them requiring the utmost
intelligence to work well and satisfactorily. Breeding,
feeding and fatting are matters quite worthy the attention
of the most superior dweller in Belgravia, whose risi-
bility, so far as that vulgar affection is allowed to assert
itself, would become almost uncontrollable were he to
see his country cousin, bespattered with mud, prodding
and poking his well-favoured beasts. Hatching, feeding
and rearing geese, fowls, ducks, pigeons, turkeys is a
scientific matter, and one in which we are behind-hand
in this country probably from leaving these things en-
tirely to those who have not the intelligence to rightly
perform them. ''The garden for the gardener " is a
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 113
theory that many a younger member, at least, of the
country-dwelling families has resented, and it is one
indeed that brings an unbearable tyranny. But how
comes it to exist ? Because the gardener, too often,
is the only person who knows what should be known
about a garden, its fruits and vegetables and seeds, its
flowers and frames, hot and cold, its forcing houses with
their delicate crops of melons, pines, peaches and so
forth. There is indeed some pity for the gardener whose
efforts are only appreciated in the results he produces, in
the fine flowers and the well-flavoured fruits he can bring
to table, and yet whose efforts are sometimes frustrated
by "young Miss," whose nimble fingers act the part of
procurer to her longing eyes. But if young and old
i alike had some intelligent interest in the raising of
flowers or fruit from seed, the pruning of fruit trees, the
management of plants, and all the thousand other matters
that make a garden interesting, there would be less
\ tension between gardeners and their employers, and
there would be a source of pleasure perennially open to
dwellers in the country. The stable there is less need to
speak of, for most of the interest of country houses may-
be said to centre around the horses. But the dogs,
though often spoilt and petted,- are not so generally
understood and made to supply that interest without
which country life must be dull. There are, indeed, dogs
and dogs some for show, some for fancy, some for
tricks, and some for use. The latter, including setters,
pointers, spaniels and retrievers, supply much pleasure to
their owners, if they will study them and break them to
work themselves. Few things are more beautiful than
to see a well-broken field-dog working. And to know
that you hold control over him, and that much that he
does is your own teaching, is greatly to enhance the
H4 LAND:
pleasure of having and using these intelligent creatures.
The study of bees is becoming more general every year.
Sir John Lubbock has drawn attention to these busy and
interesting insects. Their use in the garden is now
becoming so generally understood that few fruit growers
are without them. And not only are their ways full of
interest to the observer, but their work is very profitable
also, and bee farms are likely to be heard of more
extensively than heretofore.
When we leave the immediate neighbourhood of the
country house, with its garden and farmyard, and go out
into the woods, or over the land, or upon the water, we
find our microcosm teeming with life and with many
things beside which are worthy our attention. The work
of the agricultural labourer is not without interest, and
it would probably improve in many respects if more
notice were taken of it by those who employ this labour.
Thatching forms a very important part of such labour,
and the way in which it is done is of considerable value,
or loss, to the farmer be he amateur or otherwise.
Where thatched cottages survive the march of improve-
ment there is further need for the perfecting of the
thatcher's art. And probably nothing improves his work
more than the appreciative interest shown in it by those
whose opinion he values. Then there is the hedging
and ditching which are so necessary, but often so badly
done. Much skill may be shown in laying a good hedge,
but too often Hodge cares not for the look nor for the
well-being of the hedgerow, but hacks away, cutting out
what ought to be turned down, and filling up gaps with
useless branches. It would hardly be so if more notice
weif|taken of his work, and a word of praise, or for that
matte^L small reward, were bestowed on him for excel-
lency in Ixj^rt. The old days are gone when " Squire "
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 115
used to work the hedgerows in autumn and winter with
his spaniels on the look-out for pheasant or rabbit or
hare. Then the fencing was seen and it was worth doing
well. Now no one takes much note of it and so too
often it is done anyhow.
But let us get away from men and their doings and
occupations, from the farm and the labourers. Country
life is not made up of these interests wholly. There is
the realm of Nature around us, and we may go and hold
sweet though silent intercourse with it, learning some
of its secrets and making friends with its countless in-
habitants. Someone has said, someone who evidently
had seen too much of the arts and artifices of town
life, that you find no adulteration, nor any flimsily-made
things in Nature. No shoddy-dressed birds can be
discovered. No painted flower discloses its sham on
nearest approach. Everything is perfect and beautiful.
Take a ramble in the wood in spring-time. Watch the
rabbits at their play, running round and round, and
crossing and re-crossing, and skipping, as though they
were dancing a quadrille to the songs of the birds above.
And look at those nimble little squirrels as they run
round and up the trunk of that tree, dodging each other,
as it seems, at a game of touch- who-touch-can. There!
they see you, and are off along the boughs and spring-
ing from tip to tip of the branches as though the trees
were their highway, as indeed they are. And look at
those beautiful but mischievous jays, as they gleam in
the sunlight, their shaded backs and blue-touched wings
glistening like gems. What a hoarse and unpleasant
cry from such well-favoured birds. Ah, that cry means
something in the way of news or delight. See ! they
have found a wood pigeon's nest and are helping them-
selves to the two white eggs. No doubt they are
I I 6 LAND :
preserving the balance of Nature, though their ways
seem out of harmony with the song and murmur of life
around us. There is Philomel trilling a tiny lay in the
sunlight. We shall not hear more than a few notes of
her rippling song at this hour ; but you may encourage
a repetition by imitating that first plaintive note. 'Tis
as though she were practising some difficult passages for
performance to-night, when all other voices are silent.
Just above our heads bursts out a flood of song little
short of the nightingale's in beauty. It is the blackcap,
and as we stand to listen, we are suddenly aware that
within three yards of our feet two soft dark eyes are
peering at us with wistful glance, as who should say,
" Please go away." It is a pheasant upon her nest, and
we would not disturb or frighten her on any account.
What is that tap, tap, tap, like someone hammering nails
into wood? There it is, somewhere in yonder oak tree.
It is a little bird with an elongated bill and the shape of
a kingfisher a nuthatch, busily at work culling out the
insects that lie hidden in the crevices of the bark. And
here is the nest of the blue tit so exquisitely fashioned in
the midst of a thorn bush. Beneath our feet is a carpet
of bright and varied hue, the delicate primrose and wild
hyacinth set-off by the background of varied green.
Let us step down to the banks of the river or burn,
and spend a time watching its inhabitants and attendants.
The water as it flows along, now calm and peaceful, now
tumbling over rock and rapid, now tossed down the fall
and throwing its bright spray like diamonds over the
mossy fern-covered banks of the pool below, is full of
movement and life. The ousel, the kingfisher, the
dipper make sport amongst the boulders, or under the
waterfall,. or in the crevices of the banks. The cautious
heron rises from his patient fishing at man's approach,
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. I I/
and slowly cleaves the air as he soars on high to seek a
safer spot. The water rat, more bold, runs along the
bank and lets you watch his movements without concern.
Here is an overhanging tree whose branches spread out
above the stream. Let us take a quiet seat amongst the
leaves and watch the fish beneath. Quick of sight
beyond measure the trout will see the smallest move, but
up here amongst the branches, motionless, we may
observe him. No sign of him at first, for he is disturbed
by our movement. Presently a fine fellow comes into
sight, swimming very leisurely up the stream, with nose
near the surface. He is on the feed and watches every
tiny speck that the stream carries down. If he likes the
look of it he will rise, open his mouth and suck it in. If
it turn out a delusion, such as the empty case of some fly
or moth, he will disp;orore at once. All this is done in a
o o
listless, lazy way, with scarce a movement of the fins or
tail. But here comes floating down a may fly, not long
set free from its case, with wings erect, gauze-like, and
shimmering in the sun. He sees it. The listlessness is
gone, and with a dart and a plunge he secures the
delicate morsel. Presently a damaged bee floats by. He
hurries up to it, looks it over, swims round it, looks at it
again, seems irresolute for a moment, then springs out of
the water and strikes the insect with his tail as he
descends, thus making sure of his death by drowning
before he will mouth him. Thus does our trout feed
by the hour at certain times in the day, always working
up a short piece of water and turning at a certain point
and coming down to his starting place again ; and should
a smaller fish venture upon this hunting ground he is
quickly driven off and put to flight.
Perhaps few things strike the town-dweller when first
going into the country so much as the absolute stillness
n8 LAND:
and hush of country life. In these days of steam tram-
ways, underground railways, express trains, and noisy
pavements, added to the ordinary turmoil of a town, the
urban inhabitant lives in the midst of a din to which he
becomes indeed accustomed, but which, it may well be
surmised, works a heavy wear and tear on his nerves.
Nor is it until he goes into the country that he perceives
what it is he lives in the turmoil, the din, the continual
roar of city life. He exclaims " How peaceful, how rest-
ful is the country !" And when in the warm summer months
this peacefulness may be enjoyed in quiet ease amongst
the green fields and ripening corn, the flowery hedgerows
and beautiful gardens, the leafy woods and shaded water-
courses, who would then exchange the country for the
town?
Many a man who has fancied himself entirely devoted
to town life, but has been forced into the country, has
found out what a mistake he had been making, and how
infinitely preferable the country is to the town to live in ;
how full of interests it is, and how those interests in-
crease and grow, making what, after all, is the great
desideratum of humanity a little world of our own, from
which we may go forth at will, and mix with others and
sharpen mind with mind, and to which we may return,
bringing our experiences and our knowledge, be they for
better or for worse a microcosm into which we may
retire and be at rest when weary of the turmoil and strife
of the world around us a circle of interests which are
not dependent upon excitement, nor upon the goodwill of
others, nor upon fashion, but which spring from Nature,
and may be enjoyed naturally.
HERMIT.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 1 IQ
CHAPTER XIII.
COUNTRY LIFE.
Bv JOHN JONES, F.R.G.S.,
Author of various articles on " India " ; Vice- President of the Horological Society of
Great Britain : Past Master of the Turners' Company ; Member of the Society of
Arts ; formerly Member of the Honourable East India Company ; and a well-known
speaker at the Bank of England and other City Meetings.
THE pleasure of a country home is that of a home with
Nature, her seasons in their varied moods of kindness
and unkindness come before you with full simplicity and
grandeur. The great concave of the hemispherical sky,
bounded by the horizon, whether of the water of the sea t
or the hills of the land, is a home that belongs to a king,
and daily presents phenomena that expand and exalt the
thoughts. Why is the visible sky thus arched ? is it not
the result of our own ocular configuration, the photo-
graphic plate of our own retina ? yet how needful it is to
form the modes of measurement, which determine time
and place.
The aspect of the clouds is a continual charm, now in
dark battalions sailing along one knows not where, now
resting idly suspended in light fleecy vapours beneath
the all-spreading blue. The earth responds to every
changing influence of the sky ; clay fields become solid
as concrete beneath the sun, but broken into multiform
segments. Sandy land loses its cohesion, and would
almost attempt the enterprise of migration.
i2o LAND:
What exhibition can compare for beauty with the
rainbow arch spreading in complete proportions from one
side of the landscape to the other ? What magazine of
jewels can but faintly suggest the glory of a full starry
night in the dry frosty air ?
A needful part of the full engagement of the country is
to be an intelligent spectator of the great laboratory pro-
cess whereby the earth provides her vegetarian annual
banquet for the maintenance of organic life. The peeping
of the leaflet through the sod, or the breaking of the bud
on the bush are the preparatory steps to the copious
prodigality of the summer.
The wild grasses in the ditches by the road side, and
the solid compact of tubular fibres which build up the
timber trunks, yield surprises to the observer ; the one
from the fairy-like beauty of the plumage, the other from
the massive grandeur of the boughs and foliage ; fruits
and flowers give perfume, colour, and flavour in profu-
sion, and grain and legumina invoke the prudence which
safeguards the security of life when the harvest is cleared
from the earth.
But -what are the drawbacks to the panorama of
beauty and grace ? its temporary duration. Art in stone,
metal, and painting endeavours, with more or less of
success, to perpetuate the choicest of the views which
Nature lavishes around us, but little opportunities for art
belong to the retired ruralist. The successive unfolding
of the hidden principles of Nature, forms at the hands of
her noble students one of the pleasurable occupations of
the town. The resident in the country must be content
to receive his knowledge thereof through the agency of
the Press.
In the frequent communication with his fellow men
the Londoner finds the time pass with unconscious swift-
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 121
ness, imposing no exercise however languid his attention.
All is busy around him, and the mind yields to the
exciting influence without the need of self-exertion.
The engagement of the country is, that every object and
every day appeals to one's latent intelligence, and that in
such abundance that life is passed before a fragment is
fully known.
The chief delight of the country is, that the weary
struggle for position, which money is the easiest method
of possessing, and which the influence of example imposes
on the resident in town, is relaxed, and the sense of living
with thankfulness for its privileges is a grateful substitute
for the race of expectancy which suits the energy of
youth but galls the feebleness of age.
JOHN JONES.
122 LAND:
CHAPTER XIV.
EXCAVATIONS IN CRANBORNE CHASE, WILTS
AND DORSET.*
Bv E. WALFORD, M.A., ETC.,
Formerly Scholar oj Ball hi College, Oxford ; Editor of " The County Families^
" The Windsor Peerage" etc.
As it may be reasonably presumed that nothing which
relates to the surface of any district of these Islands can
be void of interest in the eyes of our readers, it is
probable that they will be glad to be introduced to the
two magnificent quarto volumes in which General Pitt-
Rivers has placed on permanent record we wish that
we could write the word "published "the results of a
variety of surface excavations which he has conducted in
his own neighbourhood during the past ten years.
The General, in whom many readers of these pages
will identify the Colonel Lane-Fox who has so long been
known as an anthropologist, and of late years as the
chief Government Inspector of ancient monuments in
this country, was forced to assume his new name in 1880,
on inheriting the estates of Rushmore, on the borders of
Dorsetshire and Wiltshire, upon the death of the last
Lord Rivers.
He had not long entered into possession of his new
property before he found out, in the course of his first
* This article is based on two (4to) privately printed volumes by Lieut. -Gen.
Pitt-Rivers, D.C.L., F.R.S., etc.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 123
surveys, that he was the owner of a property which
might be developed with sundry results of a scientific
rather than of a mere pecuniary nature, and illustrative of
a period in the history of Great Britain about which but
little is known. No one can travel through South
Wiltshire, or even cross Salisbury Plain, especially in the
neighbourhood of Stonehenge, without seeing that its
broad expanse of turf is dotted over with grave mounds
more or less distinct, and this to an extent quite unknown
in other parts of England. Accordingly General Pitt-
Rivers, who in early life had been devoted to military
surveying, resolved to employ his leisure time in
endeavouring to throw additional light on the work of
excavating some of those mounds and barrows which lay
round about him, and even in his own park, in such
plentiful abundance. He soon found out that there were
tumuli of Romano- British date and character, most of
which were untouched, having been fortunately preserved
through the accident of the surface not having been
broken apparently for very many centuries, in conse-
quence of the poorness of the soil for agricultural
purposes. And this w r as true not only of his own estate of
Rushmore, but of a large district closely adjoining it and
"marching with" it, namely, that long known as
Cranborne Chase. Of this district he tells us that it
included between 700,000 and 800,000 acres, and
pastured about 12,000 head of fallow deer, which were
protected by a variety of rights by ancient customs which
had the force of law. In spite of, or possibly in conse-
quence of, this very fact, it was a very lawless district ;
poaching was a trade and almost a profession, and the
enforcement of the game-laws led to such frequent collisions
between the keepers and the poaching fraternity that the
second Lord Rivers thought fit to abandon his rights
124 LAND:
and to head a local movement for the abolition of the
Chase, which was therefore broken up and " disfranchised "
just sixty years ago. " Since then," writes General Pitt-
Rivers, " many of the parts marked on the old Ordnance
Survey as ' forest ' have been converted into pasture, and
in more prosperous times for agriculture into arable, to
be laid down again into grass in consequence of the
depression ot the agricultural interest at the present
time."
Much of the land around his own mansion, however,
retained its forest scenery, so that the mounds which
dotted its surface were uninjured, though here and there the
roots of the monarchs of" the forest primeval " had found
their way among them, damaging not only the sides of the
graves, but even the fragile urns and the skulls contained
in them. He was, therefore, not long in commencing
action, and found himself for once, as few men in this
world do find themselves, "the right man in the right
place." At once he began to organize a staff of assistants
who had a taste for such work, and whom he trained to
the task of a scientific investigation of the entire surface
lands with that thoroughness which is necessary in all
archaeological investigations. That this was necessary and
not superfluous is proved by the fact that only a few years
previously a village in his own immediate neighbourhood
had been visited, inspected, and reported on by the
members of the Royal Archaeological Institute, in one
of its summer congresses, when they found not a single
pit or skeleton, whilst he himself had, or rather has, dis-
covered no less than 95 pits and 15 skeletons, in a more
or less perfect state. He adds : " One circumstance
which makes the relics found in these villages so valuable
for reference is the fact of their being entirely of one
continuous period. The ground having never been
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 125
cultivated since the time of the Roman occupation of this
island, and the spot having always been, as it is at
present, remote from crowded human habitations, there
is but little probability of their having become mixed up
with the relics of a later date."
What then was the date of these interments ? And
who were the people here interred ? It would seem that
they were heathens ; at all events in all his excavations
the General appears to have found no distinctively
Christian symbol whatever, not even a cross, though he
mentions knives, axes, arrowheads, bowls, coins, pottery,
and even pins and bracelets in abundance, most of which
are figured in his illustrations. It is clear from the coins
found amongst them that the graves are of the date of
the Roman occupation of Britain ; and the small size of
the bones of the males and of the females alike negatives
the idea of their having been Saxons. Such being the
case, the General suggests that in all likelihood the
skeletons are those of some early weak tribe, which was
forced to retreat westward under pressure from the Celts,
or else that they belong to a race of Britons deteriorated
in their physique by slavery, and by all their largest men
being drafted into the legions of Imperial Rome ; and he
evidently leans to the latter of these two hypotheses.
Whoever and whatever they may have been, a care-
ful observation of their graves and former habitations
has brought to light one or two curious facts. It so
happens that their abodes exhibit one singular feature,
namely, that whatever defensive boundaries can be traced
in their cincture are stronger on the eastern and northern
sides than on the west and south ; and from this the
General infers, most reasonably as it would seem, that
they occupied a border district, having their chief foes
on the east and north rather than on their other sides.
126 LAND :
Here too etymology comes in to his help, for it appears
that many of the place-names round about end in " mere,"
which denotes a border-ground. Rushmore itself in old
maps and plans is spelt Rushmere, and Larmer is clearly
Lavermere, and the chief neighbouring town is Mere ;
Bridmore, or Bridmer, or Bridmere, he can scarcely be
wrong in supposing to be in its root Brit-mere, or the
boundary of the Britons. And this harmonizes with
another fact observed by himself and by other ethnolo-
gists and anthropologists, namely that the district even to
the present day is " the frontier of a changed ethnological
area," and that on travelling further westward we meet
the first traces of a different race, and see a people re-
markable, in comparison with those of Salisbury Plain and
its vicinity, for their shortness of stature, their dark hair
and dark complexions. It must be owned that the com-
bined force of these three points of observation goes a
long way towards confirming the truth of the theory
which he so modestly advances.
The accounts given by General Pitt- Rivers of his
excavations, both in Rushmore Park and on the adjacent
downs, are given with a minuteness of detail which will
astonish even the most scientifically-minded readers.
The slightest undulations seen on the surface-soil by his
keen and practised eye were at once selected as the
spots which were to be subjected to experiment, and
in scarcely any instance was his judgment found to be
at fault. The mounds and depressions were found to be
not accidental, but designed structurally, and the dis-
covery of tools, coins, and articles of personal ornament
in various spots, all in close relation to each other,
proved that these little men and women lived a social
existence, in some sort of village communities, whilst the
pits of oyster-shells outside their little camps as clearly
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 127
pointed to the presence of Roman epicures. Nay,
further, it will almost raise a smile on the lips of our
readers to learn, from this slight outline of the contents
of these volumes, that even in such primitive communities
there would seem to have been, generally, a fashionable
and an unfashionable district, marked off from each other
by the nature of the "finds " brought to the light of day:
the- coarser tools being generally discovered at one end,
and the personal ornaments and articles de luxe at the
other. And this being so, it is a further matter of
interest to know that the tools were mostly found in the
eastern and the ornaments in the western portion, each
village apparently having the same arrangement as is
still so noticeable in London, in Brighton, and in other
modern cities, where the fashionable quarter is almost
always found to be the nearest to the setting sun. Our
lady readers may feel an additional interest, when we
quote the following from General Pitt- Rivers' collection
of ornamental articles : fibulae, or brooches, of bronze
and mosaic, hair-pins, tweezers, ear-picks, finger and
other rings of bronze, silver, and glass, studs some
with enamel still on their faces cups, saucers, mugs,
vases, plates, and other pottery for table use, too
numerous to mention.
All the tumuli and villages, after having been
excavated and subjected to a close examination of their
contents, have been restored to their former condition and
turfed over, a small medal, or as the General styles it, a
"medalet," being left in each excavation, in order to
place the work thus far achieved on permanent record
against future ages. As for the contents of the mounds,
very many of them have been placed in a museum which
the General has built, a mile or two from his own house,
near the village of Farnham, just across the Dorsetshire
128 LAND:
border, where they have been classified and duly labelled,
while accurate models of the villages themselves have
been drawn and constructed to scale, so as to form an
educational comment on the work of excavation. The
museum includes also other objects of husbandry and of
peasant handicraft ; and that it attracts and interests the
rustics of the neighbourhood may be inferred from the
fact that on Sunday afternoons and other holidays it is
often visited by over 200 villagers. The museum stands
about a mile and a half from a certain old wych elm,
which has served as a boundary for some five or six
centuries at the least, and which was traditionally a "meet"
for the royal hunters as far back as the reign of King
John. Here, it is pleasant to learn that the Squire of
Rushmore has established a pleasure ground and built a
temple in the woods, with a private band of music, and
that the village population, with their wives and families,
often flock to it, many hundreds at a time, to listen to
good music between the hours of divine service on Sun-
days. The educational value of such institutions,
especially in rural districts, can hardly be estimated too
highly.
The second volume, which is more recent in date
than the first, gives an account of a second series of
similar investigations, carried out with the same minute
care and on the same plan at Rotherley, Windlebury,
and at Woodcuts, all in the immediate neighbourhood of
Rushmore, the chief addition being careful measurements
of all the bones of domesticated animals that were found,
and comparisons of them with those of animals recently
killed. General Pitt-Rivers, however, in his preface to
this volume, observes most justly that it will not be one
of the least useful results of his labours if they should
be the means of inducing other country squires to direct
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 1 29
their attention to a new field of activity, for which "the
owners of land are beyond all others favourably situated."
He adds, "It is hardly necessary to insist on the large
amount of evidence of early times that lies buried in the
soil on nearly every large property which is constantly
being destroyed through the operations of agriculture,
and which scientific anthropologists have seldom the
opportunity or the means of examining." It is not our
fault if this admirable word of caution is not widely
circulated by being quoted in these pages,
E. WALFORD.
LAND:
CHAPTER XV.
THE ADVANTAGES OF A COUNTRY LIFE.
BY REV. J. W. LAKE, L. S.A., sometime Editor of the Land Union Journal.
THE tremendous overgrowth of our town population,
and the serious diminution of the population of our rural
districts, are facts that are just now forcing upon the
minds of statesmen of all political parties the pressing
necessity which exists for providing some legislative
remedy which may tend to equalize the distorted balance.
In our large towns unskilled labour, owing to this
influx from rural districts, has considerable difficulty in
finding remunerative employ, and as a consequence a
large amount of distress prevails. For many of these
men employment could be found in our country districts,
if only a system of allotments and " small holdings"
should prevail. The former, already in partial though
increasing operation, would supplement the labourer's
wage, and would furnish employment when the farmer's
work was slack ; the latter, a holding of say four to ten
acres, would, if cultivated wholly or in part as a market
garden, raise the labourer a step higher in the social
scale, and would give him a sense of independence that
would sweeten his employ by the knowledge that he was
working, not for others, but for himself, and that he now
possessed a stake in the country.
In his recent speech at Birmingham, Lord Salisbury,
after alluding to the injury which the commerce of this
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 131
country sustains from the protective tariffs of other
countries, said, " We have our own troubles in our own
rural districts, and from the same causes. Throughout
large territories in this country there is now no longer
the same employment for labour that there was, and the
result is the constant diminution of employment in the
country districts, and a constant drain of labourers to the
towns, through grass and pasture being substituted for
arable lands, and this change means that in every small
farm where such an operation takes place, three or four
families are let loose upon the world without employment,
and have to seek such a desperate remedy as may be
found by crowding still further the already overcrowded
towns."
A great deal of truth attaches to the well-known
saying of Cowper, "God made the country, but man
made the town " ; for we find that while it is mainly
necessity that drives the multitudes who forsake the
peaceful quietude of our rural districts to dwell amid the
stir and bustle and turmoil of our large towns, it is
pleasure and choice that attracts successful and well-to-do
families, the moment they are able to do so, to exchange
town life for a dwelling amid rural scenes. The suburbs
o
of our great cities, with their rows of palatial residences
and spacious grounds, the tens of thousands of the
middle and comfortable classes who tenant the rows of
modest villas with greenhouse and garden, show how
many seek to combine the advantages which either has
to offer to dwell amid scenes of rural quietude and
beauty, and yet within easy distance of the attractions
and advantages of town life.
Wealth is most readily made and accumulated in our
populous cities ; and those who have to live by labour
to earn their daily bread, and who struggle by economy
132 LAND :
and self-denial to make provision for their old age these
cannot choose their dwelling-place, these must flock
where employment is plentiful, must live in towns amid
a dense population, and often in narrow and unwholesome
streets. And here, where great wealth is made, poverty
of the direst description often abounds. It is possible,
however, that by a process of home colonization remunera-
tive employment may in our own country be provided
for all. If cities are overcrowded, the fields are ready to
give rich response to the labourers' toil.
It was well said by Charles Kingsley, speaking of
those who had been successful in their business pursuits,
"that whatever wealth they drew from the city, they took
care not to live in it. As soon as a man gets wealthy
now-a-days, his first act is to take to himself a villa in
the country. Do I blame him? Certainly not ! It is
an act of common sense. He finds that the harder he
works the more he needs of fresh air, free country life,
innocent recreation ; and he takes it and does his city
business all the better for it, lives all the longer for it, is
the cheerfuller, more genial man for it."
But what of the necessitous poor of the thousands
who vainly beg for leave to toil ? or those hundreds of
thousands whose weary tasks and scanty wages bind
them in iron chains to the workshop and the slum ?
Well, the large and philanthropic heart of Kingsley had
a thought for these. He tells us that when he sees
employers enjoying these advantages, leaving the crowded
city for the quietude and enjoyment of rural scenes, the
feeling arises within him, " Oh ! that the good man could
have taken his workmen with him." " Taken his workmen
with him ?" I assure you that after years of thought I
see no other remedy for the worst evils of city life. "If,"
says the old proverb, "the mountain will not come to
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 133
Mohamed, then Mohamed must go to the mountain"; and
if you cannot bring the country into the city, the city
must go into the country.
The rural labourers who migrated from our villages
did so attracted by the higher wages and the exciting
pleasures to be obtained in towns. They found, however,
an overstocked labour market, and employment conse-
quently scarce. And then commenced the difficulties
and miseries of town life. The narrow and dingy courts
leading out of some equally wretched street in the slum
quarter, where the heavens are shut out from sight, and
where the bright sunshine seldom penetrates ; the single
room whose rent more than doubles the rent of a country
cottage ; the coarse and brutal language and the sickening
sights and sounds of intemperance, immorality and crime
from which it is scarcely possible to escape, constitute
surroundings amid which it is almost a hopeless task to
preserve honesty of life, nobility of character, or the
charm of domestic purity and joy.
In these large towns we have plain and palpable
evidence of a huge surplus population for whom no seat
is found, not merely at Nature's feast, but even at
Nature's simplest repast, who are destitute alike of food
or home, because no employment can be found whereby
a living could be earned.
The first and natural provision which Providence has
made for those whose lot it is to live by labour is the
tillage of the soil, causing the earth to give its increase
and to enrich the world by giving forth its abundant
fruits. As it is, however, in rural districts the eye
wanders over a vast expanse of country, where often
scarce a human being can be seen, and, save here and
there a village home, no sign of human habitation can be
found. Here the thought at once strikes us of the full
1 34 LAND :
meaning of those memorable words, " The harvest is
plenteous, but the labourers are few." Where then lies
the remedy that will effectually relieve the congested
condition of our overcrowded and pauper-laden cities ?
Sir J. Gorst, M.P., addressing a political meeting at
Manchester on this subject, observed that people who
once went from the country into the large towns seldom
returned again; and he asked, *' Could not the obstacles
to that re-migration be removed ? Why could not certain
inducements be held out to a man to return to the place
of his birth, such as the acquisition of a piece of land
if he wished to acquire it ? What was now wanted was
the development of the Allotments Acts, and that class of
recent legislation, so that those who wished to put their
labour into the land should have land into which to
put it."
Public opinion at the present time is running very
strongly in this direction, and there is every reason to
believe that the life of the rural labourer will soon be
brightened by the realization of his dearest wish, viz.,
the possession of a piece of land which is virtually his
own to till, the tenancy of which is legally secured to his
possession so long as he fulfils its conditions.
And here the labourers will be enabled by their
industry and thrift to win for themselves, not riches,
perhaps, but the modest competence that will not only
supply the bare , necessaries of existence, but that will
gladden their lives and brighten their homes with not a
few of the comforts and luxuries that our modern civiliza-
tion so richly supplies.
Our statesmen are now bending their energies to
devise a plan of home colonization ; to provide land for
the labourer's tillage, and to assist him with funds, so
that, by a system of gradual purchase, his farm may
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 135
eventually become his own. The Government, however,
that accomplishes this happy transformation will ask from
the labourers it seeks to uplift evidence and guarantees
of industry, thrift and character.
If town life has its undoubted attractions, it also has
a darker side of misery and privation, and the evils too
often outweigh the good. But country life has its varied
advantages, not less real because they are often over-
looked.
It is said sometimes that the country is dull.
tl Dulness, however, is the disease of the unoccupied.
We hear a good deal just now of the dulness of village
life. That is a sheer invention of politicians who want
a humanitarian cry, and of town folk with nothing to do.
Honest villagers are much too busy sowing, reaping,
thatching, hedging and ditching, carting manure and
driving cows a-field, to be dull. Dishonest and lazy
villagers would be dull anywhere." Standard, Dec. 10.
First and foremost of the advantages of country life,
we may place that inestimable blessing, good health, and,
as a natural consequence of good health, a longer life.
At a very low estimate, life in the country is lengthened
by ten years above the average of life in towns. Some
few years since the writer, visiting a village in Wiltshire
(where the smallness of wage gave the peasantry good
cause for discontent) for the purpose of dividing a field
of forty acres into allotments, found that the vicar had
given offence by saying that "the labourers ought not
to grumble at their lot, seeing that they were living in
a village so healthy and salubrious in its character that
it was a difficult thing for anyone to die in it." Without
doubt the salubrity of country air, the beauty of country
surroundings, and the quiet serenity that marks country
life are blessings which should be gratefully appreciated
136 LAND:
by those whose lot is cast among them. But as riches,
which enable us to participate in all the luxuries and
delights of life, lose nearly all their value to the sufferer
from a painful and incurable malady, so in like manner
the privilege of long life would be very lightly esteemed
by labourers doomed to a ceaseless round of weary toil
upon wages that scarcely kept starvation from their
door.
Happily the days of agricultural depression are, let us
hope, drawing rapidly to their close. The need of to-day is
to re-populate the villages ; to enliven the rural land-
scape with the picturesque tenements of a contented
peasantry, dwellings suggestive of comfort, convenience,
ease and plenty for those who dwell in them. These
men will be the small farmers of the future, and the
spread of education will henceforth dispel much, if not
all, of the ignorance that marked the past. To the
enlightened tillage of industry and intelligence the earth
will soon double her usual increase, and in such circum-
stances happiness will cease to be a rare attainment, and
contentment will become an easy virtue.
But life in the country has still other and deeper
advantages ; it tends to quicken and elevate the moral
character by the insight which it gives into the marvellous
order and beauty and purpose of surrounding Nature.
The heavens, which are all but hidden in our towns, are
here unveiled before us in rich and gorgeous magnificence,
and thus it is not only possible but easy for those who
dwell amid the quietude of rural scenes, who are privileged
to gaze on the glory of the setting or the rising sun, or
to look on the vault of night made resplendent with
myriads of brilliant stars, to adore as well as to wonder,
and so to rise through the contemplation of Nature to the
thought of the wondrous wisdom and power by which
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 137
this Nature has been fashioned and is still sustained.
Men see here the mechanism of the Universe, and the
thoughtful and reflective mind will feel all the nearer, for
' the vision it beholds, to the God who rules it. And thus
an American poet, William Cullen Bryant, writes :
" The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems ; in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence he knelt down,
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And heartfelt supplication."
Again, to dwellers in the country what thoughts
are suggested by the changing seasons of the year. Who
can close his mind as he witnesses the ever-operating
miracle, by which the sterility of winter gives place to the
bright promise of the fertile spring, and this to the
beauteous flowers of summer, and to the golden fruits of
autumn ; who does not feel as the bounteous produce of
the earth comes to him, as it were, direct from the open
hand of God, that he could find it in his heart to say with
the Psalmist :
" O come, let us worship and bow down, and kneel before the Lord
our Maker.
" For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and
the sheep of His hand."
And who also does not feel, in greater or in lesser
degree, an impulse that would bid us
" To the beautiful order of His works
Learn to conform the order of our lives."
"The serenity," says a beautiful writer, Leo Grindon,
"which we find in the fields and the woods, and by clear
138 LAND:
streams, we imbibe into our own hearts, and thus derive
from Nature itself the very condition of spirit which is
needful for the enjoyment of it. In towns we may find
diversion, but we cannot find repose. Calmness, in which '
alone the soul can put forth its leaves and blossoms, is
for rural solitudes alone to give. Cheerfulness, which
arises only from the peaceful enlightenment of the spirit,
finds in the same quietude its sincerest and warmest
friend."
" I wondered," said Rousseau, describing his first
experience of the power of country scenes to quell a
perturbed spirit, " I wondered to find that inanimate
beings should have power to overrule our most violent
passions, and I despised the impotence of Philosophy
for having less power over the soul than a succession of
lifeless objects."
If anyone would like to prove this power on his own
person, let him go where he can hear the sound of the
rustling leaves, and the singing of the birds ; where he
can view without effort the smooth green grass, stretch-
ing far away, interrupted only by masses of foliage, water
in the distance, its ripples lighted by the sun ; let him
go alone amid these things and live with them for half
an hour, and then say seriously, if he can, that he has
not felt his spirit breathed upon by an unseen power and
ascend under that breath into a serener and holier life.
" When the vexations of the world have broken in upon
me," says Waterton, "I go away for an hour or two
amid the birds of the valley, and I seldom fail to return
with better feelings than when I set out.' The spiritual
is ever near us, but it is in the solitudes of Nature,
where we are face to face with the unmarred works
of God, that our hearts are most accessible to His
inspirations.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 139
Although the country may lack some of the question-
able excitements that are so plentiful in our large towns,
and not a few of which are of a palpably demoralizing
character, yet it has simpler and safer pleasures of its own
hunting, shooting, fishing, often boating, and to these we
may add the delight of country walks, the bracing
influences of country games ; the studies of the botanist
and the entomologist, the delights of gardening where
flowers put on their freshest beauty and where fruits
acquire their most luscious flavour. These things will
assure us that country life, in this age in which telegraphs
and railways, daily papers and serial literature keep us,
mentally as well as physically, in touch with all that the
towns can furnish ; the life which puts the bloom of
health upon our cheeks, which brightens our spirits,
strengthens our muscles, and which adds years to the span
of our existence, is a desirable life for all classes and will
prove a veritable paradise to the starving and pauper
population of our towns, and that in home colonization,
under wise and careful administration, the social salvation
of these classes will be most surely found.
"Dirt," said Lord Palmerston, "is but matter in the
wrong place." So in like manner our congested towns
and cities are but masses of men in the wrong place, are
men wrongly situated, crowding our dockyard gates
clamouring for employment whereby to live, but too often
clamouring in vain. Numbers of these men are country
born, and have left their village homes because their toil
was long and their wages were small. Let us hope that
the day is drawing near that will see many of these
men attracted back to the land that needs their tillage ;
for when that day comes, and its advent is very near,
the scanty wages will be replaced by a virtual ownership
in the soil they till ; and the men themselves, no longer
I4O LAND I
crushed by poverty, will feel the thrill of a noble manhood
when they take their places in the rank of citizens, and
help, as a yeoman band, to swell the strength of that
loyalty to law and order on which the peace and
prosperity of the nation find their surest foundation.
J. W. LAKE.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 14!
CHAPTER XVI.
THE ATTRACTIONS OF A LIFE IN THE COUNTRY.
BY T. L. ALGER, LL.D., F.R. Hist. Soc.
FEW fully know, or if they know do not rightly consider,
the necessity that presses upon all of us to find out, each
for himself or herself, the fundamental functions of the
health-giving and health-preserving localities which lie in
many instances either close to our view or within a short
distance of our places of business ; if we did, we should
not be so fond of fixing ourselves where little else than
bricks and mortar are to be seen.
In a word, the attractions of country life are so irre-
vocably mixed up with our very existence, that not to seek
them, be led by them, or have them daily at our own
doors, is to draw a large draft upon the main sources of
health, and foster the seeds of unhappiness, sickness and
disease.
If we ask how this is possible, how it can be brought
about, to see, feel, and perchance to taste the country
pleasures that are constantly at our command, do we
only know where to find them I answer that in these
days of cheap locomotion the thing is not only quite
practicable, but comparatively easy, and that thousands
already avail themselves of these advantages, and go
daily from their places of business to rural homes at
distances varying from five to thirty miles from the
metropolis.
142 LAND :
It is, however, not to these relatively few that these
lines are directed, but to a part of the majority who still
hover in and about the large towns, and who seldom
leave them, except for a day or so, and then hurry back
as if their lives depended upon the exertion. The other
part of the majority are the rich, able to keep both town
and country houses, and whose ample means enable them
to follow their own inclinations.
In the country near to London, in the counties of
Surrey, Kent, Middlesex, Hertford, Bedford and Buck-
ingham, or to go farther afield, Hampshire, Sussex,
Suffolk, or as far north as Lincoln, there are hundreds
and hundreds of houses suited not only to wealthy
families, but to those of modest annual income.
In looking closely at the pleasures to be derived from
living in the country, three standpoints appear promi-
nently to our view economy, wealth, health all how-
ever, gradually merging into the one which is the basis of
all human happiness health.
On the score of economy there is a vast fund of
information to be drawn from the book of Nature, in
addition to the advantages of fresh fruit and vegetables,
the farming of land, the rearing of flowers, the keeping
of mammals, birds, and insects either for use or con-
sumption.
There is no doubt, however, that country life is more
fully appreciated by those who, having a taste for
scientific or natural pursuits, find the material ready at
hand wherewith to carry forward their experiments and
researches. And is this not to be found in the country ?
Is there not material for the biologist, the geologist, the
chemist and the artist ? Look at our lovely hedgerows !
where does the botanist find such charming collections of
natural beauty ? Among the wild flowers he can
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 143
examine the nature of the bracken, the black spleenwort,
the larger veronicas, the anagallis arvensis commonly
called the weather glass, the cardamine pralensis, or the
cuckoo flower, the more scarce grasses, and our ever
familiar holly, the latter nowhere so plentiful as in our
home county of Surrey. Indeed, the biologist generally
has thousands of instances immediately to his view for
observing the ways and studying the functions of living
organisms, and the geologist in the majestic rocky cliffs,
and the more approachable subsoil, can find evidences of
worlds that existed in cycles of years gone by.
The ozone-laden fragrance of early morning can
furnish the chemist with abundance of material for further
investigating what was until comparatively lately, an
unknown form of the most known of all elements oxygen.
The artist can revel in the majestic glory of foliage and
the beautiful forms and soft pearly greys of the clouds,
and can at all seasons of the year pitch upon some scenes
suitable for reproduction as a picture or a model for his
composition, and if he be also of a poetic turn of mind
as every true artist is he can find joys everywhere.
The poet also sees soul in almost every blade of grass,
and is urged onward by the fire of his nature to pourtray
in verse what the artist can put upon his canvas.
Hence we see why so many of scientific and artistic
bent have been led countryward.
Among indoor attractions in this connection also, we
must not forget our domestic pets. To study the ways
and endeavour to understand the language of those
animals that generally form part of the house, not to
speak of the acute gifts they possess in being able to
acknowledge most pointedly any little kindness or atten-
tion shown to them when suffering, is in itself sufficient
happiness to many minds. The writer of these lines had
144 LAND :
an opportunity not long ago of verifying this beautiful
sentiment in a favourite female kitten just emerging into
cathood. The poor animal evidently had the tooth-ache,
or neuralgia, and to see how the little intelligent creature
would come and ask to have the warm air fomentations
re-applied to its face, after having had them once and
received relief, would have been quite sufficient to silence
for ever those who say, "What is the use of knowing all
about these miserable animals ? What bearing has it on
human life?" And in the country there are not only
cats and dogs, but to ascend the scale, cows and horses,
or to descend again, hares, rabbits, moles, butterflies,
beetles, and the like, in each of which the biologist can
find plenty of scope for his most engrossing pastime or
study. Indeed there is no limit to his store for acquiring
knowledge. Who has not entered into the apparent
mysteries of our migratory birds those charming little
visitors, who seem to come and twit "good morning,"
and then, as it were, suddenly disappear? To note
thoroughly when they arrive and depart, and chronicle
their doings in this respect takes years of study. The
cuckoo, the martin, the nightingale, the swallow, not to
forget the typical woodcock, have drawn volumes of well-
written prose, and space will not permit me to enlarge
upon any of them.
I will, however, just mention one feature in this bird-
economy that appears to be the most striking it is that
the birds arrive just at the time that their insect-food first
appears; this, to say the least of it, shows not only one
of " Nature's charms," but her wonderful economy. And
is it not true that she teaches more science than all the
universities put together ?
Now that there is such a thirst for scientific know-
ledge and justly so, when such teachers as Tyndall,
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 145
Huxley, Darwin, and others of like calibre, have proved
that some of our greatest brain-power was fostered from
the book of Nature is it not well that we Englishmen
should look at our own broad acres, our stores of
Nature's goods, live amongst them, and utilize them
for our own and our country's immediate and future
welfare ?
On the score of wealth, when broad-acres were first
given to man had he any accessories whatever ? Had he
not to gain his bread by the sweat of his brow, to work
early and late, to hunt and fish for his food before he
could eat it, and then when overcome by Nature
requiring "Nature's balmy sleep" repose under her
canopy, to open his eyes as the surely recurring periods
went by, to still greater and greater exertion, all tending
to the one end, the furtherance of his sole existence ?
This was man's pleasure, this was his life until his help-
mate altered all. Thence, onward, through cycles of
years has he gone on working and toiling, anon being
assisted by the springs of civilization, until now in this
the decade of the nineteenth century we find him being
fed by others, his own bodily powers having been
carried by the forces of his life-long history to other
kinds of motion, all, however, making up that mysterious
phase that we call life. This, we say, is the result of
our civilization, our intercourse with other countries, our
interchange of ideas. Well, be it so ! But does it follow
that we are bound to let others feed us with the produce
of their lands, while our own broad acres are lying
wasted and wasting ?
Speaking plainly, the English cultivator of his own
grounds has from many causes (which are not my
province to enlarge upon) deteriorated in power and
energy, and this lovely and fertile island of ours become
146 LAND :
a large and increasing- conglomeration of bricks and
mortar, the business home principally of the ready-
money reckoner, and the princely millionaire.
Let us, as it were, go back say forty years, and what
do we find in and near this great metropolis ? Moderate-
sized farms and homesteads, with or without farm lands,
beautifying the landscape, the members of these happy
homes, each having his or her work to do, and doing it
cheerfully and well ; the sons not being ashamed to hold
the plough or grind the corn ; the daughters, equally fit
to milk a cow or play the harpsichord, going regularly
to the nearest market and disposing of the produce of
the farm, and bringing back for the family's use articles
of dress and the last bit of innocent gossip. These, alas,
it is to be feared, are times entirely gone by. Nobody
in those days heard of such ideas as free love coy
maidens found their mates, and lived with them till death
did them part divorce courts scarcely heard of, or
actions for separating what was then deemed the most
sacred and binding of all ties matrimony.
If this was the home-life when the Englishman owned
English soil, and worked it and lived upon it, is it too
much to expect that history would repeat itself if we
could revert to these times, that is, if we could, as it were
for a few years retrograde ? As in a time not far back
it was thought necessary to alter the calendar, should it
not now be considered expedient to stop going ahead in
the manner we are doing, and take up the thread of
existence of several years' retrospect. Should we become
less self-dependent ? Should we eventually lose ?
Assuredly not. Everything requires rest ; both the
animate and inanimate world are all the better able to
overcome the forces that are constantly working against
them by taking Nature's rest.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 147
Not long since it was generally known that Her
Most Gracious Majesty, our beloved Queen, issued her
Royal command, and those who are nearest and dearest
to her readily obeyed, and were followed by many of the
noble and leading families of our land that they would
use no wool or garment of wool that was not manu-
factured at home. This was glorious news. Would it
be possible for a similar edict to go forth with reference
to our food the grain supply especially ? Were that to
be the case, the still slumbering embers of capitalized
labour which struggle hard for existence and are eagerly
caught up by any wind of faction or fancied advancement,
to fan them into a blaze, would in reality burn, and we
should see similar homesteads to those of the beginning
of the eighteenth century rearing their picturesque chim-
neys and battlements all over the country, and the plea-
sures of country life thereby enhanced a hundred-fold.
But my particular province was to deal with the
pleasures to be found now in this highly-favoured land.
I say highly-favoured. Let us look a little into this.
As a matter of security from the encroachments of the
denizens of the forest, the pests of insects, continuous
natural irrigation, pestilential atmospheres what are our
advantages ? We have no wild beasts, we have com-
paratively few insects that cause such ravages to our
crops as the phyxollera did in France a few years ago,
and if we look well to carry out fully the urban system
of drainage, we shall have little or no cause for complaint
in that respect. The latter will have to be done sys-
tematically in the country as well as in town, when the
rule to live in the country shall be made absolute by all
the laws of our being.
Looking at the pleasures to be derived from living in
the country from the health standpoint, we at once see
148 LAND I
the broad river of life into which all others fall, and to
which they all irrevocably lead. Let us take what is
often before us at this season of the year the fogs.
The cause of fog in London is its too proximate
situation to the east and south coasts. It lies, we might
say, midway, and the sea-fog rises, and is driven by the
wind over the city, thus preventing the proper diffusion
of the smoke. What is called London fog is literally
sea-mist mixed with smoke, the former prevailing. This
is why it is so pernicious, especially in cases of tubercular
disease. Also in towns, notably in London, there are
constantly, during the prevalence of strong east winds,
and especially in the early months of spring, desiccated
particles of horse-excretion and other noxious matter
blown about, which gets not only into our houses but
into our very noses as we walk along even the fashion-
able thoroughfares. Who that has passed down Bond
Street or Regent Street during the prevalence of a
strong east wind has not experienced this, especially
when crossing the thoroughfares of such open parts as
Brook Street or Conduit Street ? Small wonder then
that not only the younger and more delicate of the
members of our families, but, indeed, those who are
physically strong and free from pulmonary complaints
should even suffer.
All this is entirely avoided by taking up our abode in
the country, where the tonic ozone can almost be brought
to our tangible sense, and where we have the double
advantage of living free from the effects of noxious
vapours and pulverized fcetid matter.
Again, with regard to the presence of micro-organisms
in the air, * Dr. Percy Frankland says that " the greater
the distance from human habitation the purer," as regards
* " Nineteenth Century," August, 1887.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 149
these, ''is the atmosphere," and it is abundantly proved
that the presence of these microbes suspended in the air
is the fruitful source of many diseases. The same author
says again, when speaking of the presence of microbes in
the comparatively healthy parts of London those close
to the parks in the wide streets in the Exhibition Road
"on a dry and dusty day," that the result of his investi-
gations showed 554 of these ultra-minute organisms in
two gallons of air; while, on another occasion, on the chalk
clowns in Surrey, he found only two.
Then, again, what pleasures there are to be found in
solitude and retirement. Away from c 'the busy haunts
of men," if grief should overtake us, what solace can be
found in observing silent Nature ! A blade of grass, an
ear of corn, a feather dropped during flight from some
small bird even, has power, if we will, to draw us to
think that what we are suffering is only a fragment of
what the whole world suffers at that particular time, and
leads us to exercise our self-abnegation and so obtain relief.
This is impossible in the towns the wayfarer is
simply the ghost of a unit in the mighty seething masses,
and has no thought or even look for them, or they for him.
With regard to physical development, so well matured
in the games of cricket, football and tennis, now so
popular, it is not necessary perhaps that we should all
seek to be a certain number of inches across the chest,
or become above six feet in height, as most of our fore-
fathers who fought at Cressy and Agincourt in all
probability were, or that we should have the strength of
the bowmen of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ; but
nevertheless, if we look back we must come to the
conclusion that the fine expansiveness of chest and those
stalwart frames, to say nothing of height, were not fostered
by living in towns ? certainly not in the large ones, but
150 LAND:
in the broad expanse of Nature, free to roam, using their
limbs, not shutting themselves up in railway carriages
and cars, but using the best and most healthy means of
locomotion walking-.
o
Sir James Paget says that "good food, clothing and
fresh air and exercise are necessary to the healthy
development of the human frame." Mens sana in corporc
sano is a motto all must observe.
How important, also, that we should be jealous of the
encroachments of desire to draw upon our stock of
reserve energy ! The latter is better kept up by breath-
ing " ozonated " air than by resorting to the artificial
recuperations of alcohol or chloral, which excite for a
time and then in the reaction leave the subject in a worse
state than before.
We can get this stock of reserve energy preserved or
added to fully, only by opening our country casements
in the early morning after a good night's repose
" Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet
With charms of earliest birds."
On the score of recreations also, the same author,
when referring to the fundamental factor in the economy
of health " recreation " says that it includes one or more
of these "three things, namely, uncertainties, wonders,
and opportunities for the exercise of skill in something
different from the regular work," and though they usually
take the form of pleasure, and we have our food prepared
for us and brought ready to our tables to be taken into
our bodies, there to be used to repair our wasted tissues,
yet we have other work to do, and Nature is constantly
reminding us, perhaps sternly, but with evenhanded
justice, Ye shall obey my laws, or ye shall not live.
T. L. ALGER.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 151
CHAPTER XVII.
LAND AS A LUXURY.
BY C. F. DOWSETT, F.S.I.
Author of various Articles on Land and House Properties ; "Striking Events in
Irish History" ; &c.
ONE of the definitions of Luxury given by Webster, is
"' anything delightful to the senses" and whether it be
a delight in tasting, touching, smelling, hearing or seeing,
it is a luxury.
A purchaser of land has an object in his purchase-
it may be income, or occupation, or speculation, or
luxury.
If he buys for income, he must not be too particular
to insist on beauty ; if he buys for occupation he must
make the basis of value a correspondence between the
advantages the property possesses, and his requirements.
If he buys for speculation he must consider the prospec-
tive results by development whether it be in minerals, or
ground rents, or anything else ; but if he buys for luxury
he must regard it then from an aesthetic standpoint and
by aesthetic, I mean " The theory or philosophy of taste ;
the science of the beautiful in nature and art."
In a small country especially like the British Islands,
the principle of aesthetics should obtain as much in
nature as in art. If an owner of a beautiful art landscape
is content to pay hundreds of pounds sterling per foot of
canvas, why should he object to pay tens of pounds
152 LAND:
sterling per acre for the more magnificent (because real)
landscape in Nature which lies before him ? He sits in
his chair, and on one side he sees the beautiful painted
landscape hanging on his wall, and on the other side he
sees through his window the beautiful natural landscape
of his broad acres. Some may say that the picture
requires no " keeping up," but I reply that even if the
land is not profitable, the ce keeping up " of the worst
has some compensation of value, equivalent at least to
the "keeping up."
Is there any comparison from an aesthetic point of
view between a low lying, heavy clay flat in Essex and a
high lying, light soil, well timbered undulation of the
Surrey Hills ? The first may yield more gold, but the
second will yield more beauty, and a purchaser must
determine in choosing land what his object is in its
possession.
When at the Syston Library sale (in December, 1884,)
,3000 was paid for a Mazarin Bible, not so useful as one
which could have been bought for three shillings, and
enormous prices were paid for other books, the pur-
chasers gratified their desire for luxury.
When Meissonier's picture (twelve inches by nine) of
" Napoleon the First in the Campaign of Paris," was
sold (in June, 1882,) at Christie's rooms for 5800 guineas
(.6080), i. e. 56 per square inch, the purchaser gratified
his desire for luxury.
When in 1890 Meissonier's picture " 1814," sold for
,34,000 sterling, the purchaser gratified his desire for
luxury.
When a purchaser paid ,22,120 for the picture
Millett's "Angelus"; when ,23,440 was paid for
Murillo's " Conception of the Virgin " ; when ,7350
was paid for Turner's " Grand Canal"; when 10,605
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 153
was paid for Gainsborough's " Duchess of Devonshire " ;
when 7200 was paid for Ruben's " Venus and Adonis " ;
when ^9975 was paid for Gainsborough's "The Sisters";
when ,10,395 was paid for Boucher's " Madame de
Pompadour " (and such instances could be extended in-
definitely), these purchasers all gratified their desire for
luxury.
When in 1890 one of the Rothschilds purchased an
historic clock in Paris for 840,000 francs (about ,33,600
sterling), he gratified his desire for luxury.
When some time ago a client of mine sold a park
hack for noo guineas because of its perfect symmetry,
the price was paid to gratify a desire for luxury.
When in December, 1891, at the sale of Admiral
Spratt's old coins by Messrs, Sotheby and Co., a Richard
II. farthing was sold for 4 guineas; an Edward V.
groat sold for $ 75. 6d. ; a Richard III. half -groat
sold for j 173. 6d., etc.; the purchasers all gratified
their desire for luxuries.
So we might extend the list in examples of old china,
and various articles of vertu ; but the facts mentioned
will suffice to enable me to enforce my point that articles
of luxury must be paid for at their proper value ; whether
it be choice food, or choice drink, or choice pictures, or
choice land, the value of luxury must be considered, and
assessed, and paid for.
The broad acres of the British Islands are not so
broad as to be indefinite ; the limit to them is very real
a few hundred miles in any direction determines their
boundary ; and when we consider that the richest people
of the earth are located upon them, and the richest
metropolis the world has ever seen is its centre of life,
we recognise at once the reason why in the past such
high prices have been paid for its choicest parts, and
154 LAND:
regarding the last ten years of depressed values as a
parenthesis of exception which only the more fully
proves the rule of permanent value, I submit that as
regards the future in proportion to the commercial
prosperity of our country, and in proportion to the rich
colonial, continental, and other persons who come to it to
settle, so will aesthetic acres be valued at aesthetic prices.
To give an illustration of aesthetic acres from my
personal experience I will refer to an estate in * ' Wild
Wales," which I now have for sale, and ask who, with
any taste for the majestically picturesque, would not in
estimating its value take into account its beauty as well
as its usefulness ?
The estate comprises the magnificent Moel (mountain)
Hebog, a portion of the very summit of which forms a part
of it. This majestic mass of country rises up by the side
of Beddgelert. Near by is the celebrated Pass of Aber-
glaslyn, one of the most romantic bits of scenery in the
British Islands. At one part the stream runs through
two precipices which rise to some 700 feet. The entire
district is an unbroken succession of mountains and
valleys, of magnificent contour and dependencies. I
regret my inability to give that graphic touch of repre-
sentation which would make a reflective mind picture
faithfully its claims to that profound admiration which
none who can really value natural beauty and who visited
the original, could fail to yield. Lakes, tarns, pools, rivers,
rivulets, streams, rills, cataracts, waterfalls, cascades,
mountains, hills, peaks, passes, plains, precipices, tors,
slopes, declivities, crests, coombes, dingles, exposed
bluffs, secluded dells, ridges, knolls, gullets, islets, nooks,
caves, craggy pastures, plantations, wild tracts, cultivated
enclosures, fertile valleys, and almost every form of
change into which the earth's surface is phenomenally or
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 155
commonly disposed are perceptible in the views obtained
in this exceptionally favoured part of the remnant of
ancient Britain. Every portion commands views of
great variety according to the aspect of vision chosen.
The views range from the sublimity and severity of
grandeur, embracing a continuity of mountains, down to
the picturesque simplicity of the details of some pretty
waterfall and its surroundings. I will describe one view
as it presented itself to me piece by piece in my ascent
of another part of the estate adjoining Snowdon, and this
will represent something of an average of the whole,
although the view from the Moel Hebog is in some
respects even grander, as it rises to an altitude of
2566 feet, whereas this portion only rises to 2032 feet.
From the very base it is exquisite. It embraces
ponderous masses of indistinct interminable mountain in
all directions, but discloses the details of the near bases,
and the beauties of the valley, which from the summits
are not apparent. The lovely Gwynant Lake is
sufficient of itself to give a charm to any domain ; it is
well known, and as well appreciated for its great boating
and fishing attractions. The valley has some rich
pastures, offering a marked contrast in their emerald
green to the darker colours of the uplands. Opposite is
a bold, distinct hill, covered with pine trees (referred to
below as a ' black lump.') Along the valley courses the
well-known salmon and trout river Glaslyn, which forms
a boundary. Along the base of the Pine Hill and its
adjuncts are residences and grounds, well-kept cottages,
and the village school. The lower portion contains
some extensive plantations, amidst which are beautifully
blended some very bold rocks, extending over a wide
area, and jumping through them are mountain streams,
the silver heads of which are now and again demonstrated.
156 LAND:
The ascent of the mountain is somewhat tiring, but the
views which it reveals of itself, as well as of the whole
circumference of vision, well repay the effort of the climb.
The land is well watered by mountain streams, taking
their rise in some mysterious hidden fissure, whence they
trickle out, and growing in volume they develop
into cascades, waterfalls, cataracts, and rivers. The
little rill flows out, meandering on, reaching a rock,
over which it falls, dashing itself to drops in silver
spray. Again it gathers together and is lost to sight,
whence, emerging, it finds a cleft, through which
it tumbles in cascade, and pursues its downward course,
reaching a level plateau, where it describes a tortuous
form, and by its pent-up strength forces a passage up
hill, returning in gentler force, until by a headlong dash
it acquires a momentum which produces a grand display
of power over a broad expanse of rocks, tearing on, ever
and anon exposing a silver crest as it comes into contact
with some obstruction, against which it shatters itself
into foam and hastes away. Reaching some narrow
defile it drops as a cataract into the pool below, and
thence emerges wide and broken, repeating all the forms
of water eccentricity, with its perpetual chants on its
course down a steep mountain side, until it is lost in the
Glaslyn River. From all parts of the ascent the view is
remarkable. Standing out against a clear sky, the
mountains beyond the valley stretching away as far as
human vision can depict, are objects of exceptional
beauty. Hills rise out of hills, hills around hills, hills
upon hills, hills of every form and size, making in the
aggregate a mass of mountains, not having a tame, gradual
slope, but the whole interpenetrated by such irregu-
larities of hill, ravine, precipice, and declivity, as with
the varied clothing of fir or larch, heather or grass, inter-
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 157
mingled with rocks, varied with different hues, arid acted
upon by the diversities of shade and brightness by the
passing clouds, presents a picture the effect of which
can never be accurately painted in words, but which
when once fully gazed upon may ever after be under-
stood. A ray of sunshine will illumine one peak with a
golden coronet, while all around is dark. The play of
light and shade upon the physical features of such a
country affords a combination and alternation of the
rarest beauty. The views from some part of this estate
would possibly rank amongst the grandest in the British
Islands. But views must be. viewed. I can easily
imagine a pretending purchaser driving up to the
land and looking up the mountain side, and return
denouncing my description as invention ; but if he
will don some hob-nail boots and walk over it for
several hours, as I did, he will admit its accuracy.
The mountains seem to interlace one another, one
peeping behind another, then again a higher peering
over its head, and so on and on to the right hand and
the left, stretching away into the vague distance. The
summit is reached at last, it rises to a sharp rock, beyond
which is seen the gigantic monarch Snowdon, with its
breast appropriately draped in streaks of ermine (snow).
Between the breast of Snowdon and our peak other
summits form a kind of semicircle, revealing one ex-
tended precipice, at the foot of which the land shelves
down to a lake in the depression. The view reaches on
the south-west side to the mighty Atlantic, where vision
is lost, except when arrested by shipping bound to the
distant regions of the earth. The shore is marked by the
town of Portmadoc. Then inland, stretching away along
the eastern horizon, is the great gathering of mountains,
not in a chain of continuity, but in all the grand diversity
158 LAND:
of an aggregation of independent sovereigns. Nearer
to us, at the base, shines out the Gwynant Lake, like a
well-set jewel, and above on the right what appears to
be a "black lump," which with a dazzling sun is inde-
finable. On the north-east beyond Llanberis Pass, arise
the Glyders. Snowdon keeps the north, while towards
the west Moel Hebog stands. Then, completing the
compass, the eye looks down upon another part where
the house is, though two miles off or more, as the bird
flies, and in the line of sight is the pretty village of
Beddgelert.
Who can say that this estate with its 3738 acres, its
snug residence, its world-famed fishing rivers and lakes,
its mountains and its hundred natural charms is not
worth the five-and-twenty thousand golden sovereigns
at which I am prepared to sell it ? and worth it too,
although the farms and sheep walks (apart from the
embedded minerals) would only pay about two per cent. !
Who would not estimate these magnificent acres of land
and water as a something worth securing by those who
can appreciate the grandeur of the Great Artificer of
Nature ?
Luxury applies to land-owning as much as to any
other owning. The beauties of Nature should be esti-
mated at their fair and reasonable value, and the growing
appreciation of the sesthetical will influence the prices to
be paid for the beautiful in nature as well as for the
beautiful in art.
C. F. DOWSETT.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 159
CHAPTER XVIII.
FRESH AIR FOR POOR LONDON CHILDREN.
BY THE REV. A. STYLEMAN HERRING,
Vicar of St. PauFs, Clerkenwell.
THIS is quite a recent institution. It sprung up a few
years ago by reason of the poor pale-faced and pent-up
London children appearing so jaded and spiritless at
Sunday-school. Like all successful efforts it began very
slowly, but steadily advanced, and now forms a part and
parcel of parish work. The testimony of a medical man
himself a sanitary officer affirms that " children after
they have had two or three weeks by the seaside, or in
the delicious country, are much better able to resist the
winter or an illness, and even if they do get ill they
recover much sooner than those who remain perpetually
in London." Her Royal Highness the Princess of
Wales was one of the first to patronise our Society, and
now gives her patronage to the grand central society,
"The Children's Holiday Fund." There are various
modes adopted to assist the children to accept the
invitation to be boarded out. It would indeed be most
amusing to relate the really fearful mistakes of the town-
bred children about rustic affairs. Their knowledge
seldom reaches much beyond the street, place or alley
they have herded during their existences.
A young lady from the country was staying with her
clerical brother in town, and went to teach in his Sunday-
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school. She asked her class what bird went out of
Noah's Ark. The answer was lC Please, miss, it must
have been a sparrow." They could not comprehend
that any other bird but the smutty sparrow could be
found.
In many ways our London children are the sharpest
of all classes of children. The friction that they have
with other children, and contact with the immense masses
exercises their mind and faculties very much above the
ordinary, especially the rustic ideas. It has been truly
said that "' None are so sharp as a London girl or boy,
and none so dull as an elderly London man or woman."
We established most successfully lk A Fresh Air
Club." It commences each February. All pay an admis-
sion fee of 3d., and weekly they have the opportunity of
paying in something. When half the required amount
(25. 6d.) is paid up, then they can go into the country.
There is also a free list for children of widows, orphans,
and such like. The children's holiday fund allot to
districts certain numbers to go away. Care is taken to
have superintendents in the country, and wherever
children are sent.
It requires some little capital to " rigg out" the pale-
facers. A mother kindly said "It is all very well to
charge only five shillings for two or three weeks, and
does the children a might of good, but they must have
extra things which cost me twenty shillings for my three
children."
I have assisted out 3200 in seven seasons, and it
surprises me to see the very few extras they do seem
to carry a small brown paper parcel, etc. but on
examining some I found extra gowns, trousers, etc.,
were put on the children so that they might not lose
them on the journey. The general cost for those under
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. l6l
fourteen is five shillings a week, and with three or four
in a cottage or small farm house, they say it answers
their purpose.
The season of 1891 began in May, and ended in the
middle of September. Since our London children are
accustomed to the great glare of gas, etc., they get a
little frightened at the dark lanes of the country, and the
long evenings. It is considered that two weeks by the
seaside are equal to three in the country. I give all
their choice and it's curious how fastidious and particular
these youngsters are. One is much struck with the
universality of this most excellent movement. All
patronise it, and many a subscription comes from those
who are travelling on the Continent, or enjoying them-
selves by the seaside, and they desire to express their
sympathy with their poorer brethren.
This year our little friends have been peculiarly
unlucky : the earlier part of their season was cold, wet
and stormy sometimes out of fourteen days, twelve
were wet yet they most completely enjoyed their
outing, and on arrival home seemed thoroughly joyous
and happy. Our country friends take a real delight in
these London children. The gentry generally invite
each fresh party to a most bountiful and acceptable feast,
and on their return farmers and others load them
with fruit, flowers, rhubarb, etc. I lately met a return
party at Paddington, and could not make out why a boy
should have a string of starlings slung round him. I
found out that the farmer where he boarded had killed
one, which the lad plucked and ate, saying " how good it
was." The good-natured farmer directly killed a dozen
and gave them to the stunted London boy.
The movement is rolling on steadily, and soon each
school or gathering of children will have its " fresh air
M
I 62 LAND :
club." It is a most-needed institution for London; and
though last year many thousands were sent away, still,
there is every reason to believe that it will soon number
its tens of thousands, who will be all greatly benefited
by these summer outings.
I am pleased to say that what has proved so beneficial
to the rosy-faced children has extended to their parents,
elder brothers and sisters. A camp by the seaside was
established for lads over sixteen ; and last season 2000
were accommodated who vastly enjoyed their semi-military
outing, and "A Lads' Brigade" is being formed this
winter to carry on the good work done during the
summer among these lads. All have the greatest
sympathy for girls at business ; long hours, close
atmosphere, and sometimes unnecessary fault-finding
by forewomen, make a fortnight of complete rest and
quiet enjoyment at Southend or Eastbourne a most
delicious relish. The fee for all over fifteen is generally
i os. 6d. a week, except at the camp, which was only
2s. 6d.
Thus on every side we see the extreme benefit
derived from " Fresh Air," and we having so often
witnessed its good effects can but most conscientiously
urge the extension of this new and most beneficial
movement.
A. STYLEMAN HERRING.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 163
CHAPTER XIX.
THE PLEASURES OF A COUNTRY LIFE.
BY E. A. ARMSTRONG, M.A., Cantab., Barrister-at-Law.
SINCE the days when Horace put an exquisite ode in
praise of country life into the mouth of a Roman Usurer,
hundreds of generations of money getters have toiled in
cities vaster than Rome, and infinitely noisier, dirtier, and
more unhealthy, to find, like the worthy Alphius, that
having reaped their harvest of wealth they have robbed
themselves to a large extent of the power, though not of
the desire, to enjoy it amidst more tranquil surroundings.
They can appreciate the country after a fashion ; they
pine for it when fogs are thick, or when the sun is hot,
and they think of green fields and trees and rivers ; but
the ability to fully taste all its delights has gone from
them ; their training has been in another direction, and
they find that as the twig was bent so has the tree
inclined. They are however of the old school, and they
can and do recognize the fact that the force of circum-
stances which kept them morning, noon, and night
breathing the same air among the same sounds and
associations has weakened and passed away, while the
younger generation benefits by the change. There are
to-day hundreds and thousands of young men working
for their daily bread, or its more savoury equivalents, in
London and other big cities, who are as keen sportsmen
and ardent lovers of country life as any who know no
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other existence. Railway enterprise has widened the
bounds of our suburbs, and those who work by day
can rest by night and rise invigorated by country air,
while the same air refreshes them when a holiday
gives them opportunity for exercise, and the exercise
they take is genuine country exercise, which will keep
them in athletic trim, and enable them to enjoy a longer
holiday to the full when they have time to take it, with-
out fear of the ill-effects of a sudden course of violent
exertion. There may be some who, when they have
time to leave their work behind them, rush abroad to
seek in foreign cities the relaxation which they think
they cannot find nearer home. Among those, however,
who yearly travel to crowded foreign hotels and un-
savoury continental watering places, the idea is gaining
ground, and will continue to do so, that if health and
pleasure are really their objects, they can find them more
surely near home than by wandering in climates to
which they are unaccustomed, where the most fashion-
able spots are thronged with faces they daily see, and
perhaps avoid, at home, while those further afield are
beyond the reach of the most elementary principles of
sanitation. Under such circumstances it not unnaturally
strikes a man that after all his own country is the best,
and if at the same time he has come to the conclusion
that to live in other people's houses during his holiday is
to forego the pleasures of a home at the very time when
he has leisure to enjoy home life, he begins to consider
the matter from a practical point of view.
Having duly done so, the chances are that he visits
one or two or more properties that are in the market,
and ends by buying one. He may be influenced by the
fact that nowadays he is buying cheaply a commodity
which is steadily rising in value from the low point to
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 165
which it has fallen. And no doubt he will buy according
to his means ; but once the price is paid and the con-
veyance executed, the pleasures of country life are his
during the time he can partake of them, as fully as if he
spent the whole of his time among them. He is in the
same position during his holiday at least as those whose
good fortune he envies, in that they pass their lives far
from the metropolis to which he has to return like a boy
to school.
To him as to them there now belongs a "home."
Number 1000, Cromwell Road, or Number 22, Blank
Street, May Fair, is all very well in its way comfortable,
well-appointed, and convenient, but it is his " house, "not
his home. It may be his as far as purchase-money can make
it, or the terms of a long lease will permit, but his " place
in the country " stands upon quite a different footing,
whether its extent is limited to the now historic three
acres of pasture, and the stock upon it the proverbial
cow, or whether it constitutes him <l Squire " of the
parish, with hundreds of acres to shoot over and a
stretch of water in which to fish. The man who in a
great city is no one, a mere cypher among thousands
such as himself, hardly known by name to his next door
neighbour, in the country has a position to fill, and it is
one which he cannot fail to feel pleasurable pride in
filling.
Those who occupy a humbler position than his own,
look up to him with respect, and some are directly
dependent on him for their livelihood, cultivating his
garden and land, working for him and helping him with
their experience, while he takes a friendly interest in
their joys and sorrows, and the interest which he
takes cements the goodwill which springs up between
them.
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Those whose station makes them his equals, welcome
the new-comer as an acquisition to the neighbourhood,
where, perhaps, the house he occupies has stood for some
time empty. It will not take him long to get to
know them, and among them he must find some whose
tastes and pursuits are congenial to himself and his family.
Pursuits a dweller in the country must have, and though
many own to a ruling passion in the way of amusement,
most persons, though keenly looking forward to the
season when they can indulge it, and keenly regretting
when that time is past, can also appreciate the sports and
pastimes which the year brings in rotation to all whose
home is among woods and fields, and to no one else.
Does he hunt ? then when winter sets in and the early
frost thins the leaves, he will occasionally enjoy a good
cross-country gallop.
Hunting and shooting are contemporaneous sports ;
they are sports for princes, but also sports out of which
men of more moderate incomes can obtain as much, or
as many of them think infinitely more enjoyment.
Lord X. entertains a party of noble friends, and their
bag of a thousand odd head is chronicled in the fashion-
able and the sporting papers. Mr. Y. kills a fifth of
what they do with the same number of guns to help him ;
he has himself superintended the rearing of the pheasants,
helped to keep down the vermin, and kept an eye upon
everything ; he posts the guns himself, or over-looks the
operation, he has helped break the retriever who brings
back the game, it is the companion of his daily walks.
Does he not enjoy his day when all goes well and he is
congratulated on the success of it? He has himself
invited his guests, independently of any social obligation ;
some of them have shooting of their own and will ask
him back, some of them he has asked because they are
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. l6j
sportsmen and good shots, some simply because they are
his friends. It must not be forgotten that any man who
is a "good fellow" and a good shot can get as much
shooting as he need want if he lives in the country,
though he owns not an acre of covert, and has no means
of returning in kind the hospitality he so heartily
appreciates ; and it is also worth remembering that
shooting for a true sportsman is not confined to big
days, nor game limited to partridges, pheasants and
ground game.
There are many parts of the United Kingdom where
a good tramp may be enjoyed when snow is on the hills,
and the ground hard frozen except where there is running
water, and a bag of snipe and plover, and of wild duck
if any get up within shot, is jnot to be despised either
from the point of view of a gourmand or a sportsman.
Fishing follows shooting and hunting, and even those
who are not keen enough to try for pike, when frost
numbs the fingers and renders a wet line rather uninviting
to handle and difficult to disentangle, will confess that the
enjoyment of fishing on a soft spring afternoon is not to
be measured only by the weight of the basket.
Fishermen are pre-eminently lovers of Nature and of
the country, otherwise they would never excel in their
craft or take the time and exercise the patience necessary
for its practice.
Some, however, may not care for " sport," and there
are quieter pursuits which they can follow, which are
perhaps better adapted to their physical development.
To them such exercise will in the country bring health,
which taken in less pure air would only enervate and
exhaust them. If walking does not satisfy them by
itself, the delight of watching Nature in her development
will afford them endless interest. Animals and trees,
1 68 LAND:
insects and plants, may delight a studious mind, though
the owner of it feels no desire to capture or to cultivate,
but if cultivation does happen to be his hobby so much
the better. For man, woman or child there is admittedly
no healthier occupation than gardening, and though in
summer the results are more patent, and there is more to
attract in the work, there is hardly a day even in mid-
winter when some work cannot be done, the reward of
which will come in due season. It has the merit of being
a study full of varied interest, which need not be inborn,
need not be cultivated early, but which grows from day to
day upon those who follow it. But all cultivation, whether
of farm or garden, is doubly interesting doubly, more
than doubly a delight when it is spent on the worker's
own land, when he or she is beautifying the home, which
has been inherited or chosen, and making it more lovable
than before. There is a prosaic side to the most imagina-
tive picture ; in the country only can one contemplate it
with satisfaction. The table and its pleasures may be
sneered at by the intellectual, censured by the ascetic,
and deprecated by the doctor, but the fact that they are
pleasures remains ; and who will blame a man for feeling
satisfaction as he carves the delicate flesh of a woodcock,
and for letting his mind dwell for a moment on the
brilliant snap-shot which brought it down, as it flashed
through the branches forty yards from him, after being
missed by the neighbouring gun ? Not only does he pro-
vide his table with game and fish in their season ; day
by day the farm, the garden, the poultry yard, the
pigstye, are represented, and day by day his healthy
life provides him with appetite, which to towns-folk is
as unknown as is the true flavours of the delicacies which
he consumes.
No one can deny that the products of garden and
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 169
poultry yard cannot be bought for money in a town in
that condition of absolute freshness which is so essential
to their perfection, and which in the country is a matter
of course. And if his own health and enjoyment are
matters of no consideration to a man, he has others to
think of as well as of himself. A family of children may
become an anxiety, almost a burden, when it is found
that the smoky atmosphere of a great city, confined
space, and want of exercise, are impairing their health and
handicapping them at an early age for the race of life.
Speaking of quite young children it may safely be said
that country air is essential to their well-being ; speaking
of older ones it is grossly understating the case to say
that it is highly beneficial. If it is a pleasure to a man
to see his wife and children well and happy, then it must
be reckoned one of the pleasures of country life for him
to see them growing up in the health and strength and
the keen enjoyment of all the games and pastimes which
the country supplies, in which games and pastimes he
will probably join with them, and find in cricket or lawn-
tennis, and the like, the same healthy pleasure that they
do. There is golf too, a game but lately become popular
in England, but with a popularity now advancing by
leaps and bounds till it threatens to be universal ; a game
which makes those who take to it give up all other
pursuits for it, so extraordinary are its fascinations, which
can strain and injure no one, which can be played by
ladies, and which a man who takes to it need not drop
when he gives up other iictive pursuits, but can continue
till he is well advanced in years. It requires a wide
stretch of country in which to play it, and it cannot be
played elsewhere, though any man who has a garden can
practice many of his strokes therein.
It has been shown that it is not physical and active
1 7O LAND :
pleasures only that the country is adapted; apart from
the obvious fact that study in fresh air and tranquility
can be actually enjoyed by persons to whom under other
circumstances it would be distasteful and a burden, there
are intellectual and semi-intellectual pursuits, which
though possible elsewhere, can be best carried on in
the immediate neighbourhood of a country home. Besides
botany, geology, and natural science generally, to which
allusion has been made, there is that fittest study of
mankind, man himself. Whether it is the country gentle-
man who seeks to raise the intellectual standard of his
humble brethren, or a " Lady Bountiful" who wins love
for herself and for those whom she is bringing up to
follow in her footsteps, it is among the poor in country
districts that they find most abundant scope for their
energies ; it is there they can expend them on a simpler
and more lovable population, and on one less shifting
than that to be found in the slums of our cities. There
may be some to whom the vastness of such work in the
metropolis may be a recommendation. There must be
more, however, who prefer dealing with numbers that
they can grasp and appreciate, and with those whose
attachment to them becomes personal, and who look up
in gratitude to benefactors who live among them.
But to conclude. Young men without domestic ties,
and with occupations in which they are obliged to
continue, for the sake of earning their living, are not
likely to become landowners in the country ; they, how-
ever, whenever a holiday comes are the first to enjoy its
pleasures, while young men independent of others, and in
wealthy circumstances, certainly do not live in cities ;
they visit them, and spend in the country the greater
part of their time in those pursuits to which their
inclinations lead them. For others, whether their cir-
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. IJI
cumstances permit them to do so for the whole or for
part only of the year, whether they are of the stronger
or the weaker sex, it has been abundantly proved that
country life in a country home has pleasures, physical,
moral, and intellectual, such as no other life possesses
or can possess.
E. A. ARMSTRONG.
CHAPTER XX.
HUNTING.
BY JOHN WALKER,
Author of ** The Cow and Calf" " The Sheep and the Lamb," " Farming to-
Pro/it in Modern Times" " Cattle: Their Management in Dairy ^ Field, and
Stall" " The Botfly of the Ox, Its Destruction" d-Y.
FOX-HUNTING is the oldest sport enjoyed in England at
the present time. My views upon it differ from many,
still I write as an agriculturist, and one who has followed
the chase over the most celebrated of all hunting grounds
the shires. Fox-hunting is becoming less popular in
many parts year by year. Why? Because too many
hunting men look upon it as a selfish way of enjoying
themselves. Indeed, there are those who ride regardless
of doing damage to crops, stock and fences. Possibly
one-half of the horsemen are not aware that they ride
over fields on sufferance, hence upon a word of reproof
from farmers are as likely as not to return angry words.
This must not be if hunting is still to go on. Regard
must be paid to rights of property, and kind words should
ever be on the lips of those who follow hounds at the
expense of owners and occupiers of land.
Hunting conducted as follows would shortly again
become a popular sport : Firstly, all damage done
should be paid for, and that without a murmur, for
surely those who can afford to keep from a half-dozen
to a dozen horses at Melton, Market Harborough, or
Rugby, can pay farmers for losses sustained. If
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 173
every hunting man would keep one horse less in his stud
he could save sufficient money to pay twice over for all
damage done. A polite note should be sent to those
whose land is likely to be ridden over at the beginning of
each season, to ask permission for hounds to cross the
fields, and at the end of each, a call from the master of
hounds, or a substitute, to thank farmers or land-owners
for allowing sport over the district. Secondly, hunting
should be made useful in improving breeds of horses, for
it is quite certain that the horse which can carry fourteen
stone across Leicestershire would be most valuable for any
work where spirit, activity and endurance were required.
Thirdly, as owners and occupiers of land find the ground
for hounds to run over, it is only right that whatever food
hunters require should be got from neighbouring agricul-
turists. English oats are much more wholesome than
foreign ones. Wheat straw will keep a horse's coat in
far nicer condition than moss litter ; then why not
encourage home trade, and discard foreign articles of
diet? Hunting in England leads to millions of pounds
being spent yearly among servants and different classes
of traders. It would not be wise to stop a sport which
causes all this outlay in the country, for it is certain that
those who can afford sport will have it somewhere, and
if it is not to be got at home why, it will be sought
abroad, and money will be spent among tribes in other
lands.
I write upon hunting with a very impartial spirit. I
have hunted largely and farmed widely, so that I am
justified in giving an opinion upon the merits and
demerits of the sport. There is no rural attraction better
calculated to induce capitalists to invest money in land
than hunting. It makes farming popular in spite of hard
times. If the sport is in high repute, hundreds of the
1 74 LAND :
wealthy will invest in estates farm a portion themselves
perhaps and enjoy a country life and its sports, and
prove good men to their country.
What can be more enjoyable than keeping a good
stud of hunters, breeding high-class nags, rearing herds
of short-horned cattle or whatever breed might be
fancied, and establishing flocks of Shropshire sheep or
other celebrated kinds ? Indeed, the cultivation of soil
and hunting should go together, and thus a race of men
would grow up who would soon turn up the furrow in
parts of the country now uncultivated, and thus find work
for peasantry who at present are clamouring for what
they will never get and what they never would have
thought about had it not been for agitators, who should
and do know better than stir up strife among employers
and employed. Finally, England would appear like an
alien land, if the sound of horn, the cry of hounds, and
the merry cheers of those who follow the chase were no
longer heard o'er hill and dale in autumn and winter
seasons, when a little sport is so welcome.
JOHN WALKER.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 175
CHAPTER XXI.
FISHING.
BY "HERMIT," Contributor to The Field, etc.
AMONGST the many and sometimes fanciful divisions into
which mankind is sorted out by wise men and philo-
sophers, someone must ere this have discovered that all
men are fishermen or not fishermen. Some cynic has
remarked that the difference between the sane and the
insane is that the former are in the majority. The not-
fishermen are also in the same division and they not
infrequently speak of the fishermen as though they
belong, or ought to belong to that minority above
alluded to. It is one of the funny things of this sombre
life to hear these spoken of by those. " I cannot imagine
what you find in fishing to amuse you. Sitting on a bank
or in a punt or standing in the middle of the water waiting
for a bite. ! " This point is seldom passed. Your friend
who does not fish, but thinks he understands what it
means, is arrested by the utter absurdity of the thought.
" Waiting for a bite, you know ! " This bite is a sort of
mythical thing, heard of, but well, they don't go beyond
that. Perhaps it is well they do not, looked at from
a selfish point of view, for fishermen are already a very
numerous class, and fishing becomes harder to obtain
for the majority year by year, and undoubtedly
had they ever travelled beyond that bite, passed the
I 76 LAND :
meridian of the " glorious nibble " and reached the zenith
of a real catch, they would have become, one and all,
ardent fishermen. For what is more fascinating than
the art of angling? It tests the skill of the cleverest, it
arouses the energy of the most phlegmatic, it entices
into the open air, and often into the water, the most
hypochondriacal, it charms the most used-up man of
the world, and it so occupies the attention and engrosses
the mind that the hours slip by unnoticed and a real
re-creation is produced in the worn-out frame. It
is well known how the late Right Honourable John
Bright was recommended to try salmon fishing, when
every other remedy for an overwrought mind was ex-
hausted and without effect. He tried it and was quickly
restored to health and vigour. I remember taking a very
tired and worn-out man fishing with me. He was no
angler and had, indeed, never attempted it before, except
on one occasion. We fished on a well-known lake for
trout, and, as is usually the case the neophyte came in for
the "best of the luck. His first fish was a game pound-
and-a-halfer, and he went on in the same way. We began
to fish about half-past ten in the morning and at half-past
six I remarked that we must begin to think of packing
up for we had a long way to go. "What!" exclaimed
he " do you mean to say the day is over and it is time to
go home ! We don't seem to have been here an hour,
and I have never had one thought of that bill for the
regulation of the manufacture of dynamite which has
never been out of my head these three months." The
gentle craft is a heaven-sent boon to weary mortals.
And there is another thing to be noticed about angling.
In many sports and pastimes as the youthful energy of body
and mind wear out, a change comes on and what used to
charm charms no more. It is not so with fishing. The
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 177
keenest fisherman is as often as not the oldest, and
though he has learnt restraint, and many a crafty dodge
to boot, yet is he as ardent at heart as the wildest youth
who has just grassed his first salmon. And to hear the
tales of these old hands, and to pick up all their wrinkles
what a legacy of traditions do they bequeath to the
good listener, and how they stir the spirit to fresh
effort.
There are as many, and more, kinds of fishing as
there are months in the year. From the bleak, the
gudgeon, the roach, the dace, and the chub, to the barbel
and the pike ; there is a vast variety of ways and devices
by which the fisherman, from early boyhood to grey old
age, seeks to ensnare his prey. But probably few anglers
who have once addicted themselves to trout and salmon
fishing will very much care to turn to the coarser fish.
Amongst those who make salmon and trout their quarry,
there is a great variety of opinion as to which shall rank
first. Some put trout fishing at the head of the list,
others salmon. Perhaps the best, if the most cynical,
answer to the question " which do you prefer, salmon or
trout fishing ? " is that made to the analogous query
'' which do you like best, shooting or fishing ? " " Both."
For the perfection of fishing is when the angler has both
trout and salmon within reach of him, and he can turn
his attention to either. Speaking generally, salmon
fishing requires more patience, but has a greater reward
to offer when that patience is crowned by the hooking of
a king of the waters, a mighty fish of twenty, thirty, forty
pounds. Phew ! how he rushes away with the first yards
of line, and what a holding on to him, and what leaps and
dashings as he vainly tries to snap the line with his powerful
tail ; and his frantic endeavours to get up to the rapids
and show you what he can do amongst the boulders and
I 78 LAND I
moss-covered rocks ; and then his sullen mood as he gets
down into deep water or sulks under the bank of the
stream, and at last his giving way slowly, and not with-
out one or two final and dangerous struggles, and his
being deftly gaffed and laid on the bank, a picture
never to be forgotten. Nor is the smaller fish of eight,
ten, twelve pounds weight a whit less lively if he is
angled for with fitting tackle. Many a lively hour has
been spent with a fifteen foot rod amongst the peel.
Salmon, it is well known, are curious fish as to their
feeding and taking the fly. They may be seen in ranks,
lining the bed of the river thickly, and yet not one
will notice any bait yet invented unless the spirit moves
them, so to speak. And anon when they are moved they
will take anything almost that can be offered them. I
remember once fishing from dewy morn, for I was very
keen, until the post-prandial hour, without any luck. I
handed the rod to my gillie who tried another hour in
vain. We sat down and waited a bit. Presently I
began to let out the cast again, and when only about six
or seven yards were loose and I was just throwing oft
more line, close in under the bank of the stream there
rose a fish of twelve pounds and made friends with my
tail fly to his grief and sorrow, but, as Samuel Pepys
would say, to our mighty contentment. What is it
salmon take the so-called flies with which they are lured
to be ? Who can tell ? Few things are more exciting
than to have the luck to see the salmon rising when one
is in pursuit of them. Only make sure of the right
colours to put over him and you are tolerably sure of a
rising fish. But waste no time, for the rise may be off in
a few minutes, and then the water is flogged in vain.
On the other hand few things are more tantalizing than
to see the fish jumping. A pool will suddenly, from the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 179
appearance of having no life in it, assume the aspect of a
salmon hotel fish leaping and jumping all over its sur-
face. In vain the hope that we can lure even one of
them to the bait. It is not their day on.
Trout fishing with the fly is perhaps the most skilful
of all angling. Whether it be pursued with the dry fly,
or up stream with the cast of three, it equally requires
great dexterity in the use of the rod. In the Derbyshire
streams the dry fly is the only lure, it is asserted, that
will attract the fish. The precision with which this must
be placed just over the rising fish is such that the
slightest mistake, a trifle of slack line or an inch too far
or too near, will mar the result. There is something in
the skill required for this and other kinds of fly fishing,
that makes the pastime pleasantly exciting apart even
from the capture of fish.
One of the most enjoyable modes of trout fishing is
to be found in wading up stream with a ten foot stiffish
rod, dropping the flies here and. there into likely spots,
and acquiring a basket of pretty trout which may weigh
from ten to twenty pounds. Here, too, the skill as well
as the knowledge of the fisherman is taxed. In under
o
those overhanging boughs is a likely hole for a good
fish. Can the cast be brought in and the flies be dropped
over the fish without entanglement in the briars ? a
predicament not conducive to equanimity. There ! a
pretty cast, just at the head of the hole, and the flies
floating round over the likeliest spot. A ripple on the
eddying water, a tightening of the line, a gentle strike,
and Mr. Trout is hooked and comes quickly into the net,
a nice half-pound fish. Again the reel flies round and the
cast is dropped at the edge of a mossy stone, the tail fly
resting for a moment upon the very edge of the moss
until drawn away by the movement of the stream, and
i8o LAND:
again that pleasant sensation of a something tugging to
be free, and splashing and dashing about as well as
it can. And now we come to a deep dip in the
banks and a waterfall, with a dark deep pool into
which the water tumbles and foams, making eddies and
tiny whirlpools ere it escapes below. Here is a place
where more than one speckled beauty ought to come
to grass. And sure enough the first cast brings up
a couple of hungry youngsters who have been on the
feed and are looking out for any unwary fly that
touches the surface. Both come on at once and both are
hooked. Shall we get them in ? The tailer first if you
can. There ! that one is in the net, now for the other.
Carefully, or you may lose both. A judicious dip of the
net and there he is too ! a brace of " herring size." So
the basket becomes heavier and the hours glide by
unnoticed, and the angler returns to his haunt, happy in
fishing chat and tales of yore. In this kind of fishing it
is needless to say the tackle has much to do with the
sport. The lightest possible is the best. On some
waters the cast is of single horsehair and this at times
does wonders. I was once fishing on a lake where trout
were very abundant. It was June and fine weather.
Before we had been afloat long a calm set in and no ripple
broke the mirror surface of the water. Around our boat
and all over the lake trout were rising in quantities. It
was utterly hopeless to try to capture them with the
ordinary lake flies or indeed it might seem with any
artificial lure. However, I had a cast of single horsehair
with some very fine hackle flies on it, and I determined to
try these, dry, over a fish or two. The result was
pleasing. They came at the flies by twos and threes, and I
had a basket of trout filled to overflowing, on a day when
one would have deemed it wiser to have gone home.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. l8l
Trout fishing from a boat is by some anglers despised,
but a breezy day spent round the edges of the reeds in a
large lake is often productive of good sport. There is
not needed the accuracy and delicacy in casting required
in fishing the stream, nor is there any difficulty in
landing the fish, provided the weed beds are avoided.
But, nevertheless it is pleasant to be out on the water,
and rocked by the gentle zephyrs that ripple the surface
of the lake and at the same time bring the fish to the
rise.
Perhaps the most sport-yielding of all the salmonidse
is the white trout, or sea trout as he is commonly called.
These fish may be caught from half-a-pound in weight up
to seven or eight and even twelve and fifteen pounds.
The two to four pound fish give excellent play when taken
on light but good tackle. Having very delicate mouths
they need careful handling, and when hooked they show
great activity, flashing their silvery scales in the air, as
they jump three or four times in quick succession from
their watery domain, as if to look round and discover the
cause of this unpleasant pricking in the lips. When the
river comes down bankfull the white trout may be
expected to ascend, and as the water fines down good
baskets may be made. On lakes they will take best in
the roughest weather and when the flies would seem to a
beginner to be imperceptible in the trough and on the
crests of the wavelets. Another method of angling for
these fish, but one I have never tried, is trolling with the
tail of a silver eel, in the salt water at the mouth of a
fresh water stream. In this way, I am assured, some
very fine fish are secured, and although the fly fisherman
will hardly care for the tamer sport of trolling, yet some-
thing is made up for by the size of the fish captured in
this way.
1 82 LAND:
For those who are within reach of a suitable coast,
sea fishing will afford a pleasant diversion at times,
when fresh water fishing, at least for trout and salmon,
is impossible. Besides the ordinary deep line and
long line fishing, there are various modes of capturing
the denizens of ''the briny" which are less common-
place. In flat tidal estuaries, where at low tide shallow
pools and channels alone contain any water, the art of
skate spearing may be practised. The skate and often
plaice are seen lying on the sandy bottom, and a
barbed spear attached to a long pole is deftly driven at
them by the marksman as he stands upon the gunwale
at the bow of the boat, prepared for " either of three
courses " a hit, a miss, or a ducking should he lose his
balance and find himself precipitated into the sea. This
pastime can only be pursued in the brightest and
warmest weather, when the fish appear to be basking in
the heat.
Another and decidedly an exciting pursuit is netting
grey mullet. This, too, must be pursued in fine warm
weather, when the fish will be seen showing their dorsal
fins as they float on the top of the water, sometimes in
large numbers, at the land end of some little bay at low
water. These fish are very timid and easily frightened,
and their movements in the water are swift as lightning.
Should they catch the slightest glimpse of boat or man
they are off into deep water and safety. In approaching
them, therefore, the greatest caution is necessary, and
it requires no slight skill to spread the net at the
end of the bay in which the fish are seen, to discolour
the water so that they shall not in their flight detect
the meshes of the net, and to quickly disturb them when
all is ready. If luck attends the fisherman he has a
lively time for a few minutes, as the mullet lash the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 183
water or, if they escape the mesh, leap high over its
spreading folds and seek safety in the deep.
Yet one other kind of sea-fishing, trolling for pollock
finds much favour with fishermen. Here, as for white
trout, the silver eel is used as a bait ; or, and this
lasts longer and requires therefore less renewing, the
common fresh water eel of small size, skinned up to an
inch from his nose, and with the hook, a large one, put
through his mouth and out where the skin ends. With
this bait, on a roughish evening as the sun sinks to rest,
many pollock may at times be captured round the rocks
and rocky islands of our coasts. Some of these fish
reach a great weight, but six or seven pounders will give
plenty of " pull " to the man at the rod.
So by sea and on land the pursuer of the gentle craft
may find abundance of pastime in many varying ways ;
and if, as often happens, he is interested in the habits of
the fish he captures and is an observer of Nature, with
which he spends as many hours alone and undisturbed,
he will be furnishing his mind and memory with endless
pleasing matters which escape the observations of the
superior beings who consider fishing a sort of craze.
HERMIT.
184 LAND:
CHAPTER XII.
SHOOTING.
BY " HERMIT," Contributor to The Field, etc.
WHAT country amusement is more enjoyable than
shooting, with all its accessories of dogs and guns, and
gillies and keepers, and jovial friends and health-giving
exercise and breathless excitement, and good and bad
. luck, and big and small bags, and all that goes to make
up the gunner's joy. For the title of shooting is not to
be confined to the mere going out for a few hours on the
moor or to the well-stocked covert, lazily to let off a pair
of guns, and languidly to return home again. He who
only shoots thus, misses the greater part of the delights
of the pastime. For these delights may be said to
extend almost through the year for anyone who lives in
the country and loves the sport. Are there not the dogs
to work, and the younger ones to break ; the nesting
season to supply amusement in the spring ; the rearing
to inspect as summer draws on ; the young rabbits to
keep down as the green crops advance ; the working of
the dogs over the newly-mown fields to find out the lie
of the coveys and their number ? These matters are too
often left to keepers and their assistants who attend to
them or not as they see fit. The days of hunting for
birds with dogs are not altogether, though largely, gone,
and it may be hoped they will revive. What is a prettier
sight than the working of a pair of pointers or setters ?
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 185
To the enthusiast this is even more delightful than the
shooting itself. And to have broken the dogs oneself is
to add greatly to the charm of seeing them work. To
watch, too, their different ways and temperaments, and to
see how these come out in their way of going about their
work is full of interest. Old Ponto is still the jealous
doggie he ever was, and never will he quietly back
young Pluto's set, but will show signs of wanting to have
his nose, if it be only half an inch, ahead of the younger
dog, while Pluto, better in this respect, looks reproach-
fully out of the corners of his eyes at the veteran he has
learned to venerate, as much as to say, " Do let me have
this find all to myself, old man." And then their wisdom
and skill in finding birds, in quartering the ground and
dividing the work, in diving into remote corners, and
now and then standing immovable with noses turned
towards the thick hedgerow who does not love to see it
that has ever seen it ? A nd then there are the spaniels,
fussy, busy, bustling little creatures, yap-yapping as they
come on the much-desired scent of scuttling rabbit, or
more soberly fetching a bird out of the turnips or the
thicker cover. What fun there is with the young pups
as they pick up their parents' ways, and begin to enter
con amore into the joys of hunting and carrying. Depend
upon it, there is a great mistake in handing all this over
to keepers, and never seeing your dogs except when in
use on shooting days.
And then there is the nesting season. It carries one
back to boyhood and school days, and makes one young
again, to join with our walks the business of looking out
for partridge and pheasants' nests. Not only the keepers,
but all the parish, are on the qui vtve, for is there not a
reward for every nest found, watched over, and hatched
out ? Yet with so many eyes peering into the hedges
I 86 LAND I
and ditches, there are many birds too clever for us, who
have found quiet little corners, or chosen more open
places, where no one would think of looking.
The breeding season, too, has its charms. The
keepers here have supreme control. The birds know
them and own them, and no other. But it is delightful
to get quietly into the covert, and on the edge of the
copse to see the young birds running hither and thither,
or basking in the sun, or in full pursuit after the butter-
flies they love to catch and make a meal of. And why
not have a clutch or two at the House, and know them
and they you, as the others do the keepers ? What is
prettier than a brood of young partridges accustomed to
come when whistled to ? How they will run when they
see an ants' nest being brought to them ! And how, in
their eagerness after the eggs, they will allow you even
to pick them up !
But all this is in the close time. We must come to
the opening of the shooting season. Passing over the
high art of deer-stalking, and the pursuit of the black-
game, and the sport of flapper shooting, let us get ready
for the moor and the i2th of August. Lucky the man
\vho owns or rents a moor. So thinks the man who
does not. If it takes, now-a-days, a big income to
handle a moor there is much in return for it. If there
were no other recompense, the very ozone would be a
large return. W'here can such delicious air be found,
where such charming scenery in wild ruggedness and
bold sweep, and lovely colouring, as on the moor ? To
the jaded dweller in the town the first taste of moorland
air is like a draught of champagne. He feels inspirited,
exhilarated, roused to action. He feels what it is to live.
But this is not the only delight of having a moor.
There is something perhaps in grouse-shooting being
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. l8/
the first shooting to become general that gives to it a
peculiar amount of excitement. There is, too, the
journeying to the shooting lodge, and the finding oneself
in the bracing air of the north. There is the preparation
for the expected guests, and their arrival, and their high
spirits, and the jovial gathering, and the ladies lending
their charm to the scene and greatly excited about the
weather and luncheon on the moor. And there is the
delight for the legislator, the man of law, the man of
business, of at least a few days away from anxieties and
distractions that have already used up too much vital
force. Away on the moor all is free and unfettered, and
careless, and jolly.
The order is " we shoot six days with the dogs, and
then we drive." Muddlem and Browner are glad their
visit ends at the sixth day. They "don't care for grouse
driving." They say it is like thunderbolts coming at you.
It maybe sport but they don't think so. "Well, no,"
they "don't find it easy to hit a driven grouse " at
least Browner doesn't. Muddlem thinks it dangerous.
Somehow or other he did send a pellet into a neighbour
once, but never could make out how it happened.
But come, let us get to the Twelfth, and as, on this
occasion only, we can arrange the weather to our own
liking, we will have an ideal day. Light flying clouds, a
gentle breeze tempering the August sun, shadows chasing
one another across the wide billows of purple heather,
giving us every shade and variation of the wondrous
colouring. The start is made at 10.30, but long before
that hour there has been bustle and movement amongst
the little knot of men in the yard. Guns are put together
and '' run through," cartridge bags are filled, coats and
waterproofs are put out to be taken with the lunch, the
little ponies are saddled with their panniers, dogs run to
158 LAND:
and fro joining in and adding to the excitement, and the
guests, as they enjoy the morning pipe, handle one
another's guns, talk to the dogs and throw out feelers to
Donald as to the state of the birds and their number.
And now we are off a mixed crowd of gillies, helpers,
shooters, ponies, and dogs. Six guns, to be divided into
two companies, each having two brace of dogs and their
own pony and men. " We meet at lunch by the loch at
the foot of Glenvich," cries the host, as the parties divide,
and each side determines to keep a steady nerve and a
clear head and have the bigger bag when they meet
again.
" Hie on ! Don and Carlow, hold up!" and off go
the setters in quest of the first birds of the season. They
have not far to go. Up goes Don's head ; he has struck
scent, and in a moment is standing " in a straight line "
from nose to tail, while Carlow espying him follows suit
and backs him up. It is an exciting time, and yet cool-
ness is everything. The dogs are so steady the birds
must be very close, but no sign of them appears, until
with a flutter, and perhaps a crow from the old cock,
they rise and are off! A little start and then crack,
crack, crack, crack, crack, crack. How many are down,
keeper ? Keepers are wise and do not always reply to
such questions. The dogs will settle the matter. There,
they have found one, two, three and no more ! Hold
up again, dogs, and away over the hill-side. For some-
time they range without coming to a decided set, but at
last they are steadied again a short way off, and the
shooters draw towards them. But this time there is a
wary old cock amongst the young brood and he has
taught them tricks already. Enough for them to see the
dogs so near, they will not wait for any further warning,
but are up and off fifty yards ahead of the guns. Such
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 189
birds will be best secured by driving ; and on some
moors this has to be resorted to very early in the season
on account of the wildness of the grouse.
The day passes on, hit and miss, lose and find,
varying luck until lunch-time when the bag is counted
and it is found that twenty, thirty, forty brace have been
brought down. And what an hour of enjoyment is that
one amidst the heather at the luncheon. No gilded
banqueting hall, no floral decoration could ever approach
the wide canopy of blue sky and the delicate table-cloth
of exquisite purple and emerald green set off by tall
bracken and the water reeds that fringe the loch.
The afternoon passes all too soon. The dogs are
changed and a new pair turned out. The birds lie
closer in the heat of the afternoon sun. The sets are
more frequent, for Donald has kept the best ground until
now, like a wise old hand as he is, and it is the fault of
the shooters if the bag does not increase rapidly. Even-
ing finds the sportsmen enjoying a healthy tiredness and
a well-earned dinner, enlivened, it may be, with many
references to the events of the day.
There are many moors upon which the system of
driving is always used. Indeed, it is said, that when
grouse have been driven during one season they will not
lie to dogs again except after a year's rest. Be this as it
may, it is certain that on moors where there is any con-
siderable right of way and where therefore a good many
people pass to and fro, the birds get wild before the
twelfth and can be only got at satisfactorily by driving.
The great drawback to this plan is the loss of the dogs,
and their working, which so delights the true sportsman.
Not that dogs can be dispensed with in driving, for they
are wanted after each drive to find the dead birds, and to
trace any winged ones that may have made tracks across
IQO LAND :
the moor. But if driving takes away the charm of the
setter's and pointer's pretty work, it certainly has its
attractions both in bigger bags and in the excitement of
making them.
Let us start once more for the moor, and this time
on driving intent. The party will be much more
numerous. There will be eight, nine, ten or even a
dozen guns ; and each shooter will probably have an
attendant loader. Then there is a vast array of beaters,
most of them bearing small flags on short sticks, whilst
half-a-dozen or more are armed with flags of a larger
kind. This small army is skilfully worked by their chief
to raise and turn the birds and keep them in their flight
as nearly over the butts as possible. The birds must
not wheel back over the drivers' heads, nor must they get
off to the neighbouring moor, nor must they go wide of
the shooters, but come straight over them. The butts,
behind which the shooters are concealed, are built of the
peat of the moor, and are just high enough to allow of
shooting over them at the approaching grouse. On some
moors the plan is adopted, for safety, of building up the
left side of each butt, so that no shot can be fired directly
at the adjoining butt, some seventy or eighty yards off
a plan which is only too often necessary. The butts are
all numbered, and each shooter possesses himself of that
particular one which he has drawn by lot ; " going up
one" at each drive. It being inevitable that some butts
must be better placed than others, this plan assures to
each shooter a change at each drive, with the accom-
panying luck.
Having taken their places the shooters see that their
guns, one, two, or three, are ready at hand, their
cartridge bags well within their loaders' reach, that the
top of the butt is not too high, nor too low (defects easily
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
remedied by taking off or putting on a few pieces of
peat) and that all things are prepared for the advance of
the birds. A rude seat is provided in each butt, and
seated upon this the shooter can peer out over the top of
his butt and watch for the approach of the birds. He
can. do this, that is, where the butts are so placed that he
can see out over the part of the moor that is being driven.
But on some moors the rule is to place the butts under
the slope of the hills so that nothing is seen of the birds
until they are within fifty or sixty yards. The former
plan is much the pleasanter and gives more excitement,
as the birds are seen advancing from the other end of
the drive and warning of their approach can be
telegraphed, if necessary, from butt to butt. And that
approach of the birds is the supreme moment. It will
not last long, but while it does, two, four, six barrels
must be brought to bear with deadly accuracy, or there
will be no account to render when the drive is over.
A smart gunner will get in five barrels with two guns
and bring down his five birds to boot. This is done by
firing one barrel of the first gun, then the two of the
second, and the loader hands back the first re-loaded for
another two shots. Great is the satisfaction of bringing
down birds under these exciting circumstances, and
certainly equally great is the chagrin of looking into the
bottom of the butt when the drive is over, and seeing it
strewn with empty cartridge cases, whilst outside there is
not one bird to be added to the bag. A tale is told of
an old northern sportsman, more keen than polite, who
could not stand shooters who did not hit. He made it a
rule to count the number of shots fired at each drive.
When the drive was over and the gunners got together,
he would say, " Three hundred and twenty shots, there
ought to be some birds down." Then did the men who
LAND :
had missed look uncomfortable and feel as if grouse-
driving was not their line in life.
The drive being over, each shooter seeks the birds
he has brought down. The help of a spaniel or a
retriever is invaluable in this. In places where the
heather is not cleared round the butts it is astonishing
how hard it is to find dead or wounded birds, however
carefully marked. Having at length found all that were
counted "down," we move on to the next line of butts,
the drivers taking, probably, a long round, which gives
us plenty of time to get to our places and renew our
preparations. In this way as many as five, six, or seven
drives are made in the day, and grouse to the number
of one, two, three up to six or seven hundred brace are
bagged.
We bid adieu to our host and to the beautiful moor
with reluctance, and envy the lot of the happy man who
is going to put in his three months in that wild spot,
varying his shooting with salmon and white trout fishing.
But the partridges await us, and the First will be here in
a few days, and we have our own work to do in welcom-
ing guests and seeing that all is ready for the Feast of
the Little Brown Birds. It may be noted, however, in
passing, that no amount of careful arrangement can
ensure a certainty of good sport with the partridges. In
a favourable season good bags may be made throughout
September. But a favourable season implies an early
harvest and few, if any, corn crops left standing ; a good
breeding season for the birds, so that by the First they
are both numerous and well-grown ; and that the coveys
are not too well grown, as sometimes happens, and have
learnt how to take care of themselves and defy the dis-
appointed gunner. Add to these the necessity for fine
weather in order to insure good sport, and it becomes
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 1 93
clear that the birds have some chances in their favour.
But these chances, leading to disappointment too often
on the part of the shooter, so far from lessening the
charms of partridge-shooting, enhance them greatly. In
pheasant-shooting you rear your birds by the hundred or
the thousand, and know that they are there, and can be
shot when you are ready. Not so partridges, and hence
the gratification of knowing there is a good season. In
some districts the disappointments of the early season are
made up for, to some extent, by driving. But this
method cannot be successfully resorted to in many places,
owing to the lie of the country.
But we have left our guests awaiting us and had
better return to them and the season they have come to
open with us. Let us have a season to order. Corn all
cut and mostly carried. Only a few fields of barley here
and there, and one or two of these our own, with a bean
field left on purpose to offer the shelter so tempting to
partridges. Roots well grown and affording plenty of
cover. Potatoes edging the roots here and there. A pretty
second growth of clover, and much aftermath in many
quiet fields undisturbed as yet by cattle. The weather
bright but breezy, not overpoweringly hot, but without
rain. How eager are the sportsmen ; not that they would
own it ; but their conversation and their little anxieties
reveal it. Queries as to which beat is to be taken first
are oft repeated. Any scrap of information as to the
nesting and the aftergrowth of the birds is eagerly seized
and repeated. The knowing one of the party communi-
cates to the others that he has seen Jenkins, the keeper,
and has had a talk with him, and he reports well though
a great many birds were lost in that thunderstorm in
J une. Was there ever a keeper who had not a catastrophe
in reserve, up his sleeve as it were, in case of disappoint-
194 LAND:
ment ? Then the guns are handled for the first time
perhaps since they were laid aside in February, and the
host, a wise man, requests the shooters to get their
cartridges ready overnight, so that there may be no delay
in the morning. This raises the question, a most
interesting question, and one that, no one liked quite
to put before, as to how many cartridges it may be
supposed will be wanted. And Jenkins, deep dog, is
equal to the occasion, " You had better have a
hundred, sir, and another fifty or so to come on at
lunch. There will be a few hares and rabbits to
get." " Ah," thinks Mr. Verdant Smith, " this means a
rattling good day." And so let us hope it does. The
too common custom nowadays is, as has been noticed
above, to shoot without dogs that is, without pointers
or setters. Where this is so, a long line of men is drawn
up, and a gunner is put between every two or three
beaters. Then a slow advance is made over the fields,
and as the coveys get up each shooter takes his chance
and shoots at whatever comes in his way. With dogs it
is otherwise. Fewer men are required, and the gunners
are divided into two or more parties. The dogs quarter
the ground, if well broken, with a regularity that is
beautiful to watch. It is seen at once, when they come
on scent, whether the birds are there, or have run on, or
flown. And as a set or point is made, the shooters draw
up to the dogs and prepare their nerves for that
wonderful whizz which proves too much, so often, for
their aim. Then after the surrounding fields have been
gone over and the birds have been put into the clover or
beans or barley, the shooters make a closer line, and
leaving the dogs in charge of the keeper, walk through
the thick cover putting up the birds singly or by twos
and threes. And so, the morning through, is (( heard the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 1 95
frequent gun." Luncheon and the ladies make a pleasant
interlude, and the sport is continued until discretion bids
us remember we have more days like this to put in, and
that our strength must not be over-taxed at the outset.
Those who have plenty of partridges do well to follow
them on throughout September, and make what they can
of them before they become strong on the wing and wild,
giving little chance to the shooter who tries to get at
them in the ordinary ways.
September ended we reach the open season for
Pheasants, and although no one thinks of entering the
coverts during this month, yet there is some sport to be had,
here and there, on most shootings. A few birds will be
found in the roots, and, if full grown, will be bagged. Then
there are the outside coverts which afford a day or two.
But the big days are reserved for November and Decem-
ber, when the trees are bare of leaf and the undergrowth
is somewhat cleared, so that rabbits can be seen and shot.
Pheasant shooting in some respects differs from other
shooting. It is, it must be owned, a somewhat artificial
sport. The birds are generally hatched from eggs either
purchased, or gathered from the woods and from pheasant
aviaries. The young birds are fed by hand carefully, and
watched over and tended until the shooting days come
round. In this way the coverts may be stocked accord-
ing to taste, and, where expense is not a consideration,
the long tails may be counted by their thousands. There
will generally be a certain number of wild birds amongst
them, but it is usual to expect to bag only the number
turned down. Thus it is that pheasant shooting is re-
duced to an artificial condition ; by which is meant that
there is hardly any element of uncertainty in the pursuit.
The birds are there, and with a certain number of beaters
to put them up, and enough gunners with straight
196 LAND I
powder to bring them down, the tally should be pretty
certainly predicted. No doubt it takes a good shot to
bring down real rocketers in quick succession, but the
chance of a miss is about the only chance the pheasant
has. With the long tails there is generally found a
sprinkling of hares and rabbits, and these help to swell
the immense bags made at large battues.
But to see the active bunny in his most attractive state
he must be met in the bracken or amongst the thickets of
gorse, or lying out in the reeds and long rushy grass. In
such places he offers a tempting shot to the quick gunner
as he glides along amongst the stones and cover, or pops
across the twenty foot rides, giving just a momentary
chance at his scuttling form. A rabbit shoot in such
places as these, % with active and tuneful spaniels fussing
about and stirring the " varmin " up, is considered by
many superior to the big day with the pheasants. And
if, as often happens, there is a cry of " Mark woodcock"
every now and then, the charm of the sport is greatly
enhanced. For is there not something about that
dreamy bird that arouses the cupidity of every shooter ?
It would be hard to say what it is that makes every
one wish to shoot the woodcock. In some places it
may be his scarceness. In others, where more often
met, it is perhaps his subtle way of skimming around
trees and through bushes when flushed, making a shot
at him very difficult if not impossible. Or perhaps
he visits the spot for but a short time, just dropping in
for a few days on his arrival at and departure from these
shores, and leaving again abruptly. Or possibly the
company of gunners has a sweepstake on the first cock.
Whether these or other reasons are to account for the
eagerness to slay the woodcock let someone else decide
the fact remains.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 1 97
And little short of the pleasure woodcock affords the
sportsman, is that of his kindred longbill, the snipe.
Here, as many think, we begin to touch the borders
of genuine old-fashioned sport. Snipe shooting in the
United Kingdom is limited, and perhaps this is the
first element in the excitement attending it. But then
where snipe do love to foregather there is no certainty
that they will oblige the eager sportsman by putting in
an appearance at any given time, or indeed throughout
the season. There are localities in Ireland where snipe
are always to be found, whether in the nesting or
the shooting season. But in these districts there is a
remarkable difference from season to season in their
numbers. Moreover it requires a smart shot to make
sure of a good bag of snipe, even when numbers of them
are at hand. And when they are most numerous who does
not know the vexation of spirit produced by their being
" wild " and rising in wisps with piercing cries that disturb
all their friends for acres round. It has been the fashion to
ament the decrease in the number of snipe that visit our
shores, and to hold the opinion that they are, for some
cause unknown, really growing fewer. No doubt with
extended draining operations the places they love to
haunt are growing fewer, but it is questionable whether
the snipe are less plentiful. As a solace to those who
would wish to think this is not the case, and that there is
still hope of seeing snipe in plenty in suitable places, it
may here be stated that after the floods of 1891, on a
small shooting of about five or six hundred acres, seventy-
five couple of snipe were shot within three weeks, and
while the birds were extremely wild, getting up in wisps
of fifteen and twenty. A day's snipe shooting, with its
incidents of pleasure and disappointment, affords to some
sportsmen the keenest satisfaction. Now and then, from
198 LAND :
some pit or bed of rushes, rise a couple of wild duck or
half-a-dozen teal, and the bag is varied and enlarged.
Or there is seen wheeling round in narrowing circles a
large flight of golden plover, and by a dexterous imitation
of their whistle the keeper lures them to a flight within
gunshot and down drop a dozen or more to six barrels
well aimed into the middle of them. Nor does the
shooter himself always find that the fun is on his side.
Some unwary step may throw him, gun and all, into an
adjacent puddle, or worse still, find him shoulder deep in
a "boghole," where he must perforce remain until his
companions have so far recovered from the ludicrous
spectacle as to be able to help him out.
The acme of sport with the gun is reached, so he will
tell you, by the wild-fowler. So much has been written
upon this subject and by such experienced hands, that it
is unnecessary to enter largely upon its discussion here.
For the strong, the active, the healthy it is beyond doubt
a most infatuating pursuit. Whether it be followed in
the moorlands, or the hill country, or amongst the lakes
and swamps ; or, more seriously, with punt and punt gun
along the shores and in the estuaries of our coasts it is
full of incident and excitement. Speaking generally, the
chances are much in favour of the birds, and therefore
the ardent wild-fowler is all the more eager and deter-
mined to circumvent them. When a puntsman " sleeps
in his boots" for a week, waiting for that critical con-
dition of wind, wave, and moonlight, without which he
cannot get near the countless flocks of mallard, teal,
wigeon, and wild fowl of all sorts which he has been
looking at by day during this s'ennight, his joy and
delight may well be understood to exceed all bounds
when faithful Jemmie calls him up at midnight to come
on to the attack, and after a careful and exciting " setting
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 1 99
up " he gets in his two-and-a-half pounds of shot with a
good aim. Nor are the sensations aroused by " sport "
less lively when, stowed away in the deep shadow of
some rock or tuft of heather or rushes, the fowler awaits
at dusk the flight of the wild fowl to their evening haunt.
The sound of the mallard's pinion wheeling round just
above, or the shadowy forms of the birds [as they come
within shot make the blood tingle with excitement. Or
to visit some rush-fringed lake, in the first dawn of a
winter's morning, and, in silence, to be punted through
the rustling reeds with a good breeze to help conceal the
approach, and to bring r down, with steady right and left,
the wild duck and her mate, as they rise by twos and
threes, or to " let it into " the teal as they skim over the
tops of the rushes, and to gather the spoils, without
sound of voice, into the boat who that has ever
tried and succeeded at such shooting will forget it, or
give it a lower place than amongst the first of sporting
pursuits ?
Shooting, as a part of the spirit of the chase and the
hunting of wild things, which is inherent in man, is a
healthy and pleasant way of spending what spare hours
may fall to the lot of the men of this busy age. Men
who are always going at express speed and they are
many may prefer to meet the same kind of thing in
their recreations ; and such will probably incline to the
battue, with its thousands slaughtered in one day.
Others, able to take life more easily, will prefer the less
certain, but to them more pleasant, methods by which
smaller bags result, with more of the element of chance
in pursuit of their game. Others, again, with much time
upon their hands, may find that nothing comes up to the
excitement of wild-fowling, in which man's knowledge
and skill are put to their utmost test by the instinct of
200 LAND :
their quarry, aided, as the fowl are, by the elements and
by Nature herself in many ways. But one and all alike
will maintain that, speaking generally, as much, if not
more, health and recreation is derived from shooting as
from any other form of amusement, to which is to be
added that those who hold large shootings are in a
position to give pleasure to numbers of others who,
whether as fortunate as themselves, or not, are equally
delighted to partake of their hospitality and share in
their sport.
HERMIT.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 2OI
CHAPTER XXIII.
DECOYS.
BY " HERMIT," Contributor to The Field, etc.
FOR sportsman and naturalist few things supply more
amusement and interest than the Decoy. Here twice
daily, in favourable weather, the pipes may be worked,
and captures of wild fowl may be made, varying from
one or two birds to one hundred. And here may be
watched the mallard, the teal, the wigeon, and the other
stray visitants without disturbance. For anyone who
delights to observe the ways of such wild birds, here is
an opportunity to be met with hardly anywhere else.
Himself unseen, the observer may spend what time he
likes peering through the peepholes of the screens with-
out fear of being discovered by the timid wildfowl.
It seems strange, considering the amusement and
profit that may be had from decoys that they are so little
in use, and that so many have been allowed to fall into
decay. In former years we read of fowl to the number
of 5000 being taken in one decoy in one season, and
though there seems to be some decrease in the number
of duck, teal and wigeon that visit our shores, yet
large quantities might even now be captured in well-
worked decoys. In the winter of 1888, in one decoy
with which the writer is familiar, more than 2000 teal
and mallards were taken.
2O2 LAND I
Probably very few people know much about decoys
and how they are worked. The following is the plan and
method of working them, put into a few words. Anyone
desiring more information and full instructions will find
them in Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey's valuable work entitled
" The Book of Duck Decoys."
The decoy is a pond from one to two acres in extent.
Around it are planted trees and bushes, and it has from
one to half-a-dozen channels running from the pond
into the shrubs around. It is best placed in a quiet and
secluded spot within reach of the sea or some estuary of
a tidal river. The outside of the decoy is protected by a
fence or a wide ditch. The channels that run from the
decoy into the surrounding bushes are curved and grow
narrower as they recede from the main water, so that
looking from the decoy, the ends cannot be seen. Over
these channels are placed iron hoops upon which are
spread nets. The hoops are from 12 to 15 feet high at
the wide part of the channels, and decrease in size as
they near the narrow end. At the end is a net, called the
tunnel, which is detachable from the last iron hoop, and
into which the fowl are finally driven. The whole decoy
and its channels are protected from sight by overlapping
screens of reed placed echelon-wise, so that the decoy
man can pass behind them without being seen from the
decoy, whilst he can look down the channels towards their
narrow end and be seen by any birds in the channel-
called the decoy pipe. Between the openings of the reed
screens and joining them, on the water side, is a low
reed screen of some 12 to 18 inches, called the dog jump.
In the decoy are kept some tame ducks, which attract the
wild fowl to the water, and often help to lead them up
the pipes.
Several essential points about a decoy and its working
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 203
are these. First and chiefest the wild fowl must never
see a human being as they rest upon the waters of the
decoy. Nor must they smell him. And they must never
be disturbed by the sound of gun or in any other way.
If they are it is probable they will not return to the
decoy for the season. In approaching the decoy care
must first be taken that there is some wind stirring, and
that it is kept in the right quarter. For this purpose
there are several entrances to the decoy, and the different
pipes are worked with reference to the wind. On enter-
ing the decoy it is usual first to peep through the nearest
screen and see if there are any ducks already up the
channel or pipe that it is proposed to work. Should
there be any the decoyman quickly gets behind them,
i.e., on the decoy side of them, shows himself between
the screens, and so drives them up the narrowing pipe
until they fly helter-skelter into the tunnel net. This is
not, however, a frequent piece of luck, nor the usual way
of making a capture.
What may perhaps be called the secret of decoying
wild fowl lies in their being attracted by the movements
of a dog. So much interest do they show in his antics
that they are tempted to follow him up the channel or
pipe until they reach the point at which the decoyman
can frighten them into the tunnel net.
The dog is worked in the following way. He has
been trained to run round the screens and jump over the
dog-jump in sight of the wildfowl. He is first taken to
the screen nearest the open water and sent round that.
The wildfowl raise their heads and gaze. He goes
round again. Some of the ducks move towards him.
He is sent round the second screen, i.e., the one nearer
the narrow part of the pipe. The fowl follow. And so
on, he is sent round screen after screen, each time nearer
204 LAND I
the narrow end of the pipe until the duck, teal or wigeon
have reached the place at which the decoyman can frighten
them into the tunnel net by showing himself behind them.
Some decoy men prefer a dog as nearly like a fox as
possible, believing that the wildfowl are more attracted
by a fox than by anything else. Others use a terrier, and
prefer a white one ; whilst some dress up their dog in
mats and skins, varying his appearance as the birds get
"stale," i.e., have been some time in the pool and have
become too well acquainted with the dog used by the
decoyman ordinarily. Whether the ducks follow the dog
from curiosity or out of bravado because they think he is
running away from them is difficult to say. Sir Ralph
Payne-Gall wey thinks the latter is the reason. It may
be questioned, however, whether inquisitiveness has not
a good deal to do with it, for wildfowl in a lake or open
water will swim to shore and within gunshot if a dog can
be made to run back and forward along the shore.
When the wildfowl are in the tunnel net great care
must be used not to let any sound of wings be heard.
For this reason as the birds are taken out of the net their
wings are twisted together and their necks are broken
by the decoy man. Thus their pains are short, and there
is no fluttering, which would inevitably frighten the birds
left in the pool, who are entirely ignorant of their fellow's
fate.
It is usual to work the decoy morning and afternoon,
and the season varies in different places, beginning in
some in August and in others not until November, and
ending about the end of February.
HERMIT.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 2O5
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE PLEASURES OF A COUNTRY LIFE FROM
A NATURAL HISTORY POINT OF VIEW.
BY W. H. HARRIS, B.A., B.Sc. (London University),
Author of " The Honey Bee : Its Nature, Homes, and Products " ; Writer of various
Natural History Articles in the "Boys* Own Paper" the "Girls' Own Paper,"
"A i," and " Nature Notes" ; Member of the Committee of the British Bee- Keepers*
Association; Member of the Council of the College of Preceptors ; &"c.
No account of the enjoyment of living in the country
would be complete without some mention of the pleasures
derivable from natural history. As a matter of fact, it is
astonishing how very little is known on this subject by
those who have spent all their lives in rural scenes.
Many of them may have kept poultry, and rabbits, and
bees, but have next to no information as to the structure,
the habits, instincts and intelligence of even these
domesticated creatures. Yet there are large numbers
of most interesting observations to be made, and facts to
be learned about them. But when we come to non-
domesticated animals, vertebrate and invertebrate, the
ignorance of people living in the country can only be
accounted for by their having never been taught what
there is to be known, and by their attention never having
been directed to observation of and reflection on the
wonders they might find all around them.
It may be well to give a few simple illustrations of
these remarks. Let us take such an every-day matter
as the recognition of common birds. We do not hesitate
2O6 LAND :
to say that comparatively few people, who are not
farmers, can distinguish one bird from another by its
flight, its motion on the ground, or even by its general
appearance and plumage. Swifts, swallows, and martins
seem to many persons quite alike. Carrion-crows, rooks,
ravens and jackdaws are included under the general term
"crows," and great would be the surprise of many ladies,
.at all events, to be told that probably they have never
seen a real live crow. Then missel-thrushes, song-
thrushes, redwings and fieldfares, are to most people not
individually recognizable. Which of these are migrants,
.and under what circumstances, is quite unknown to many
country people. Starlings and blackbirds are confounded
with one another, notwithstanding marked differences.
The song of the lark may be familiar, but the hedge-
sparrow, the wren, the black-cap, the garden warbler,
would be undistinguishable by their notes. Then to go
to other divisions of living creatures, "butterfly" and
"moth" seem interchangeable terms; black-beetles and
cockroaches are constantly considered to be the same
things ; dragon-flies and horse-stingers (so-called) are
dreaded as more or less noxious, if not terrible insects.
It is supposed that all spiders spin webs, that all bees,
and wasps, and ants have, as their one object in life, to
sting human beings. And so we might continue our illus-
trations. But enough has been said to show that. people,
who might be expected to have acquaintance with the
most common creatures, are ignorant of them to a
wonderful degree. We are, however, concerned rather
to show not simply what is and ought to be known, but
how much enjoyment of a highly intellectual kind is
derivable from natural history knowledge.
Reverting now to poultry, rabbits, and bees, we
could suggest dozens of observations to be made, full of
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 2O/
interest and pleasure. The rearing of chicken, the
variety of their breeds, the changes of plumage, the
general development of characteristic features, will occupy
agreeably many a spare half-hour. The raising of ducks
their rapid growth, their mad gambols in the water at
one time, their sedate waddle in single file at another ;
the grazing of geese, and how they manage it ; the
wanderings and flights of guinea-fowl, are all worthy of
attention. Pigeons, again, with their great beauties of
plumage, their differences in size and shape, in form of
the head, length of beak, and development of what we
might term vagaries of feathering, added to their swift-
ness in flight, their homing faculty, their ready tameness,
the nesting of both old birds and their united care for
the young, present ever fresh subjects for mental diver-
sion and thought.
Then, again, when it is once learnt that bees are not
perpetually seeking to sting, and that most people may,
with quiet movement, approach hives and watch the
busy workers with impunity, there is constant oppor-
tunity for noting many extraordinary facts relating to
these insects. How few persons, for instance, know the
mistakes in the old nursery-hymn beginning :
" How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower ! "
the errors being first, that neither do bees in general
visit all blossoms of trees and plants ; and secondly, that
an individual bee does not wander from one kind of
flower to another kind in honey -gathering, but confines
itself during each particular journey to flowers of the
same species. Again, how constantly one hears the
exclamation from people who are watching the workers
208 LAND :
enter the hive, with thighs laden with pollen, " What a
quantity of wax they are carrying in ! " and so on, to
much further extent, persons display their ignorance.
But when, by dint of observation and reading, people
have mastered the elementary facts of bee-keeping, they
find true what a French writer has said of these insects,
" On ri aime pas les abeilles ; on se passionne d'eux"
But it may be said that residence in the country is
unnecessary for gaining acquaintance with natural history
facts. To a limited extent, of course, this is true.
Books of so-called popular science abound, and museums
of greater or less excellence are to be met with in many
places ; but these can never supply either the accurate
information, or yield half the pleasure to be derived from
seeing for ourselves what others have described. Know-
ledge gained at first-hand has perennial and untold
sweetness, and the humanising and elevating effect of
such acquirement adds vastly to its value.
Again, it may be objected that people must have
definite training and instruction to make progress worthy
the name in natural history pursuits. This again is a
statement partly true. It has, indeed, been well re-
marked that "The eye sees only what it has been trained
to see"; but the training may be by our own initiative.
The only condition for our getting this sort of knowledge
is that we look and observe for ourselves, instead of
depending on what other people have discovered or seen.
The old school-boy story of "Eyes and no eyes" well
deserves to be read and taken to heart by thousands, not
only of our young people, but of "grown-ups" also. It
is indeed wonderful how many persons "seeing, see not,
and hearing, do not understand" a hundredth part of the
wonders and glories of God's works spread round them
with royal and even lavish hand.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHK-. 2 09
And now by way of fuller illustration of the points
we have been urging, we will refer in some detail to a
few members of the animal kingdom to be met with in
any rural district, and without making pretensions to any
sort of treatise on the natural history of the specimens
taken, we will sketch, as mere samples, facts of interest
connected with them.
Let us mention first the beautiful butterfly or as
we may render it 'in u portmanteau " English " flutter-
by'' tribe of insects. Is it their loveliness, their inviting
style of flight, their hovering near the ground, or all com-
bined, which seems irresistibly to impel us, when children,
to run after them, to try to catch them. Shakespeare
pictures Coriolanus's little boy behaving just like a nine-
teenth century youngster. " I saw him run after a gilded
butterfly ; and when he caught it, he let it go again ; and
after it again; and over and over he comes, and up again;
catched it again ; or whether his fall enraged him, or how
t'was, he did so set his teeth and tear it." Do we not all,
at least those who have been boys, remember how we,
too, did it ? But when we grew a little older our chase
and capture was only for the sake of securing specimens
for our cabinet, and possibly many of us may have
advanced to the much higher stage of contenting our-
selves with simple observation of the habits, the haunts,
and the beauties of these glorious creatures. The homely
maid-like whites, the noble peacocks, the gorgeous
admirals, the sombre meadow-browns, the active tortoise-
shells, the speckled fritillaries, the azure blues, the early
sulphurs, and occasionally the rare prize of a " Camber-
well beauty," with a score of others, afford ceaseless
pleasure on a summer-day, wherever the thyme, the
marjoram, the lavender, and the balm abound in gardens.
or the wild species of our labiatae grow freely in the
2IO LAND :
meadows or by the roadside. Their pride in form and
colouring, their intense enjoyment of the sunshine, their
happy dances in the air, their graceful poising on nectar-
bearing flowers, their frequent settling on stones or sticks,
as if merely to display their glories, are, or should be full
of interest for all who care for the wonderful works of
God. Then, again, the when and where of the laying of
their eggs ; the distinguishing characters of their
caterpillars ; the leaves on whicfi ' these feed ; the
spinning of their cocoons ; the shapes of their crysalids ;
the curious places in which they are often found, and the
mimicry of inanimate objects which they frequently
display, afford fresh subjects for observation and inquiry.
A few words may well be devoted also to moths. It is
by no means a matter of common knowledge that these
are distinguished from butterflies chiefly by the antennae
or " feelers," butterflies having these very wonderful
organs club-shaped, while those of moths are pointed,
and not seldom also fringed, feathery, or pectinated.
Then, too, the butterfly's wings fold vertically, while
those of moths at rest are horizontal in position. We
might speak of the splendid caterpillars of some, the
grotesque forms of the larvae of others, such as those of
the Puss and Kitten (moths), the remarkable pupae of
others, as for instance, that of the Lobster moth, but
space forbids. The fully-developed insects, however,
will give occasion for many a pleasant hour of outdoor
occupation, and will well repay attentive observation.
The noble Hawk moths, the Humming-bird moths, which
dart with lightning speed from flower to flower, and
then poising themselves apparently motionless, before
some corolla, insert, while on the wing, their long
proboscis in search of nectar ; the Tiger moth, the
Death's-head, and much commoner kinds, such as the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 211
Magpie or Currant moth, the yellow under-wing, the
crimson under-wing, and the white plume, possess
individual characteristics full of interest.
Again, if a microscope be at hand, the coloured dust
with which all the Lepidoptera, or scale-winged insects
(butterflies and moths) have their bodies clothed, furnish
wonderful objects which will repay the closest scrutiny.
But these are not the only organs which need to be seen
with a good lens. The antennae marvellous structures,
combining several kinds of sensory apparatus the eyes,
the tongues, the legs of these insects reveal unexpected
marvels of structural beauty and utility.
We have mentioned dragon-flies, some genera of
which are popularly called " horse-stingers," though they
in no sense whatever merit such a name. These
creatures in their larval state and as pupae live in the
water of ponds or ditches or brooks, and it is most curious
to watch the emergence of the perfect insect, as it crawls
up some stick or reed, and first opens to the air and sun
its gauzy wings. But the splendid colours of the fly-
quite different in the two sexes the large opaline eyes,
the strong but delicate organs of flight, the marvellous
rapidity of their movements, their capture of their prey
small insects of various kinds as they fly, may be
watched with pleasure on many a summer day. Then
there are the may-flies, whose happy dancing in the air is
" the dance of death," for they live but a single day, the
sportive gnats, the brilliantly coloured wasps with their
skilfully made " nests" of paper-like material, the wild
bees of many species, and the highly intellectual ants,
deserve a paragraph apiece. These last creatures in
particular, though often considered a nuisance in the
house or garden, offer a splendid field for observation.
Their keeping of aphides or green-blight, as we do cows,
212 .x, LAND :
their slave-hunting expeditions, their love of the un-
developed young, of whom they are merely the foster-
nurses, their martial array and furious battles, their
wonderfully constructed abodes, their winged males and
females, who when settling in life gnaw off their own
wings, and thus effectually prevent the growth of wander-
ing habits, reveal to the seeing eye and the understanding
brain charming avenues of fact and thought.
Even the domestic black-beetle, commonly so-called
though, by the way, it is neither black nor a beetle may
be watched with amusement, when once it is known that
it is an absolutely harmless insect. The kindly, gossipy
naturalist Jesse relates of cockroaches, for so these
creatures are more properly named, that when disturbed
at night in a kitchen, for instance, they will hurriedly
race to their holes and crevices. After awhile, however,
they will again emerge, but limping as if injured, though
directly actual or supposed danger threatens, they sham
no longer, but hurry off at full speed to hide away.
Again, the true beetles are often insects of much
beauty, of great strength, large intelligence, and possessed
of curious instincts. Their food, their places of conceal-
ment, their powers of flight, to say nothing of their
structure, are too often neglected through foolish pre-
judices or unfounded dislike. Those who have really
studied the coleoptera are loud in their praise of the
interest they afford.
If we were to set forth in our catalggue of attractive
creatures snails, slugs and spiders, our readers might,
perhaps, think we were making a joke of country life and
its accompaniments ; and yet we are bold to say that the
shells of the first, the riband-like, rasping tongue of the
second, and the webs and habits of the third of these
animals, if carefully examined, would lead to further
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 213
inquiry about their natural history, and to much gratifica-
tion in getting at facts concerning them. With regard
to the last especially, how few people are aware of the
amazing skill shown in the construction of a spider's
web : its strength and tenacity ; its main-stays and
cross-spars ; its thread so delicate and yet really a cable
composed of an immense number some five thousand
of filaments issuing from separate apertures of their four
" spinnerets." Then, too, he may note the different kinds
of webs, some almost felt-like in the closeness of their
fibres, others open and net-like, with certain of their
threads beset with minute sticky balls to prevent the
escape of any wandering or venturesome insect which flies
against them. Again, the hunting-spider, which makes
no snare, but darts upon its prey ; the gossamer-spider,
whose slender cordage, laden with dew or hoar frost,
meets our faces when we walk out on cold autumn morn-
ings, and many another of the arachnid family present
us with facts and problems of wondrous interest.
If now, for a time, abandoning our observations of
animals on land, we direct our attention to those
dwelling in the water, we shall find no lack of phenomena
worthy of our notice. Passing over the myriad marvels
which the microscope will reveal in drops from any water-
butt, or pond or ditch, the finny tribes of our streams and
rivers, supply abundant stores of curious facts. Take, for
instance, the common little stickleback, the male of which
genus builds a neat and capacious nest with two openings.
In this he persuades the females to deposit some eggs.
These he watches and protects from enemies, and when
they are hatched, he tends them with even greater
solicitude, leading the fry, it is said, out for restricted
swims, and then driving them back to the security of the
nest. Again, the ways of the ordinary minnow are not
214 LAND:
unamusing, while the bleak, and dace, and roach,
especially, if fed with such food as they like, will supply
us with new illustrations of graceful form and movement.
The active trout taking its meal of various winged
insects, the beautifully barred perch with his blood-red
fins, the lazy barbel grovelling at the bottom of the
stream, and idly upturning a portion of his white
abdomen ; the voracious jack, or pike as he is called
when of large size, lying almost motionless among the
weeds, ready to dart on frog or fish crossing his outlook,
all lend a charm to a stroll along the river-side at most
times of the year. And what stroll is in itself so delightful
as that along the river-side ? The gentle motion of the
water, the whispering of the leaves as they rustle in the
breeze, the wild flowers adorning the banks, the hum of
happy insects rejoicing in the sunshine, the sheen of
brilliant butterfly or still more gorgeous kingfisher, the
darting of the swallows as they catch their winged prey,
or make pretence of bathing, the sleek cattle grazing in
the bordering meadows, or standing knee-deep in the
cool water to protect themselves from bites of annoying and
bloodthirsty flies, the general calm of Nature all around,
combine to produce such soothing influences as are most
restful and calming to the human spirit.
Rising yet higher in the scale of animal life, we may
notice, as a suitable emblem of our return from water to
land, the well-known amphibian, which in our boyhood
days we were wont to call by the familiar name of
" Charley," but usually termed the frog. Various super-
stitions have gathered around his near relative, the toad,
which has been harshly dealt with, even by Shakespeare,
in such terms as " ugly and venomous," " heavy gaited,"
" never hung poison on a fouler toad," " poisonous,
hunch-backed toad," " as loathsome as a toad," etc., so
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 215
that it will, perhaps, be safer not to enlarge on this
creature's attractions, though it is absolutely harmless,
and we have known a little girl keep toads and feed
them as special pets. But the u swimming frog," as the
Bard of Avon calls him, has nothing repulsive about him,
should prove an excellent " maitre de natation" may
amuse us with his solemn bird-like croak, and, above all,
may give us a wonderful object-lesson in natural history
metamorphoses, if we will be at the pains to note all the
stages through which he passes, from the egg and the
tadpole to the four-footed amphibian. The changes are
as wonderful as the transition of those of the moth or
butterfly as it progresses from the egg to the larva, then
to the pupa, and at last to the imago, or perfect insect.
The shrinking of the external gills as the internal lungs
develop, the sprouting of first the hind legs and then
of the anterior pair, while the tail seems used up in
their growth, till at length the perfect animal results, are
phenomena which will well repay the trouble of tracing
them from the beginning to the end.
Then the eft or newt, or erroneously named water-
lizard, has its own beauties and features worthy of
remark, while the active, sprightly, quick-eyed true
lizards present to lovers of animals noticeable traits as
they bask in the sunshine or dart after their insect prey
the unwary fly, or pre-occupied moth, or tempting
beetle.
But among the greatest natural history charms of a
country-life must be reckoned the birds. We hardly
know where to begin in calling attention to their attrac-
tions. The beautiful plumage of the finches, wood-
peckers, and kingfishers, the graceful flight of the swallow,
the wagtail, and the yellow-hammer, the exquisite song of
thrush and blackbird (this last reminding us of an old-
2 I 6 LAND :
fashioned Tory squire of portly dimensions and mellow-
toned voice) ; the still more enchanting notes of nightingale
and black-cap and garden warbler ; the marvellously con-
structed nests of the tits and chaffinches ; the softly tinted
eggs of hedge-sparrow, starling, and robin; the saucy
pertness of the thrush, and the all-in-earnest run of the
starling as they search our lawns for food ; the impudent
chatter of the magpie and plebeian utterance of the
jackdaw while stealing our choicest cherries ; the soft
" coo-coo" of the stock-dove, the solemn caw of the
melancholy rook, the scream of the swifts as they sweep
and swirl about our chimneys or the church tower ; the
lazy flight and ominous hoot of the barn owl as he flaps
along the hedge-row or over the farmyard, with a thousand
other bird associations which crowd across the field of
memory, irresistibly draw us in feeling and desire to the
rural scenes, amid which we first learnt a now undying
love of "beasts and all cattle, creeping things, and flying
fowl."
Charms of the country forsooth ! Our wonder often
is that any who have really known them can tear them-
selves asunder from them except under direst compulsion,
and how there can be found man, woman, or child, who
is without taste for the beauties, the wonders, and
the ever-blessed influences coming from meadow and
woodland, <k banks and braes," streamlet and riverside.
Nature with a thousand voices seems calling to
us, " I have yet boundless glories to reveal," and
if our eyes are opened to see her wonders, and our
deaf ears are unstopped to listen to her harmonies, our
intellectual outlook will be daily enlarged, and our spirits
will be attuned continually to the praise of Him by whom
all things do consist, and we shall enter wholly into the
truths so well expressed by a writer, who says :
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICH1 2 17
" The shadow pictured in the lake
By every tree that trembles,
Is cast for more than just the sake
Of that which it resembles.
" The stars are lighted in the skies
Not merely for their shining ;
But, like the light of loving eyes,
Have meanings worth divining.
" The clouds around the mountain-peak,
The rivers in their winding,
Have secrets which, to all who seek,
Are precious in the finding.
" So since the Universe began,
And till it shall be ended,
The soul of Nature, soul of man,
And soul of God are blended."
W. H. HARRIS.
2 I 8 LAND I
CHAPTER XXV.
THE VALUE OF BOTANY TO COUNTRY
RESIDENTS.
BY THE REV. PROFESSOR G. HENSLOW, M.A., F.L.S., &c.
To be fond of flowers is a very common admission, but
to care to study botany is a comparative rarity. If one
attempts to speak of the wonders of the floral world, the
retort we have heard is, "Oh ! you don't really care for
flowers; you only like to pick them to pieces." It is
difficult, if not impossible, to open the eyes of the person
who gives utterance to such a remark to enable him or
her to see that to understand the meaning of a flower
and to be able to interpret its life-history, conveys an
intellectual pleasure far surpassing that of merely looking
at it, admiring it, or else smelling it. The remark, one
suspects, is really intended to hide the personal dislike
to make the effort required in studying botany it
conveys a lurking belief that it consists only of numerous
long Greek and Latin words to be learnt by heart. The
fact, however, that those who do venture on this unknown
tract of land soon discover that it is an Eden, and not a
wilderness, and become enthusiastic in the pursuit, is
sufficient evidence that there must be much more in
"picking flowers to pieces" than might be imagined.
One would not necessarily plead for botany alone,
but for any branch of natural history which might have
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 219
a special interest. Still, botany is inexhaustible, and can
be studied in the country in all seasons of the year. Even
in the depth of winter there are still lichens and mosses,
and the tissues of woody plants to be examined.
We may insist upon the intellectual pleasure we our-
selves derive from it ; but to convey any idea of it to
another is not so easy, for it is, of course, a purely sub-
jective enjoyment. Moreover, we must allow for the
fact that some persons have honestly tried to enjoy the
science, but found that it did not awaken the same
interest, much less the enthusiasm, which others boast of.
Such persons, however, we believe to be the exception to
the rule.
The intellectual pleasure derived from the study of
botany passes through four stages. First, there is the
delight of collecting, drying, and mounting specimens,
the names having been obtained by asking someone who
knew them. This I would call the embryonic stage.
The second is to understand the morphological structure
of plants, i.e., all the more conspicuous details of the
floral and other parts, so as to be able to distinguish the
different species by discovering for oneself their names
by means of the descriptions given in technical botanical
terms in a "flora," and thereby acquiring a knowledge
of classification. Botanists formerly almost entirely
limited themselves to this stage. A second branch is
the study of vegetable tissues by means of the micro-
scope. This is called histology.
In the third stage one seeks to discover the meaning
or uses of the infinite diversity of structures of plants or
physiology. It is here, for example, where we trace the
correlations existing between floral details and insect aid
in the processes of fertilization an endless source of
interest ; or, again it involves the study of the functions
22O LAND :
of leaves, e.g., to understand how the different rays of
the solar spectrum are concerned in the various processes
carried on by these important organs. The remarkable
modifications of so called insectivorous plants ; the
adaptations for climbing, involving extreme sensitiveness
to a mechanical irritation and rotatory motion ; the
remarkable properties of digestion, which show how
closely, nay, identically, the same processes are carried
on in both the animal and vegetable kingdoms, besides
numerous other physiological phenomena too numerous
to mention here. Each and all are sure to create the
profoundest interest to anyone who will take the pre-
liminary trouble of paying attention.
The fourth stage embraces etiology, or the investiga-
tions into the causes of structures, how changes are
brought about and adaptations secured. We are thus
led on to discover the law of vegetable life and develop-
ment, and thus gradually attempt to answer the great
question, " What is the origin of species ? " Thence one
endeavours to trace out the laws of evolution, to discover
how the whole of the vegetable kingdom, with its infinite
diversity, has arisen probably from a few or perhaps
only one primitive elementary living being.
We thus discover how unity in diversity meets us at
every turn, not only in any single plant, in which, e.g.,
all the "appendages "-whether leaf, leaf-scale, bud-scale,
bract, sepal, petal, etc. are fundamentally identically the
same thing ; but a community of structure is traceable
throughout all kinds of plants, flowering and flowerless,
thus proving that all have had a common descent from a
long lost primitive stock.
Now, botanists who have pursued the subject solely
for their own delectation, have realised the great benefit
which the study had worked within their own minds.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 221
The training of the intellectual faculties thus uncon-
sciously acquired has opened up the idea that botany
would form an admirable adjunct to the ordinary school
curriculum.
Consequently, elementary botany has often been
recommended as a subject for school teaching, not only
in high and middle-class schools, but in village and Board
schools as well. It has many advantages. First, it
requires a certain amount of mental effort, like all other
subjects which are worth teaching at all, yet the effort is
so greatly relieved by pleasure, that it is scarcely or not at
all felt, provided the teacher knows how to teach it well.
On making botany a school subject, one passes over
what I have called the first stage, the collecting of flowers,
and begins at once with the second, i.e., the examination
of the structure of flowers, etc., or morphology. Never-
theless, the various branches of the science cannot be
totally severed from one another ; and it is far more
interesting to introduce into the botanical lessons the
uses of the parts of plant s, or elementary physiology, as
soon as their structures are known.
The two primary educational values of the study of
botany are the cultivation of the observing powers, by
critically examining details of structure, and the acqui-
sition of accuracy of mind and habit by recording and
tabulating the observations involved in the study of the
structures and the classification of plants. All this trains
the mind to systematize, thus tending to prevent the
formation of that loose habit of a priori reasoning or
"jumping to conclusions," which is a common bane of us all.
Of course, with children a system of rewards may be
advisedly adopted, and the collecting and mounting
specimens may be made the subject of prizes. The
value of this latter procedure lies rather in the mechanical
222 LAND I
aptitude required than being strictly educational. Apart
from the mere collecting, flowers have always a peculiar
attraction for children, and long experience has shown
that the majority at least soon become enthusiastic over
the pursuit.
A great deal must be left to the judgment and dis-
cretion of the teacher, who has to consider the different
capacities of his pupils, and although the educational value
must be always foremost, that is the making the children
think for themselves, he need not altogether put aside
instruction, or the mere communication of interesting and
important facts, provided they be linked on to something
already known, and that he does not allow his information
to lapse into mere "cram." Thus a child may learn
what wild fruits are poisonous,* wherein lies the different
values of food in roots, seeds, fruits and ordinary
vegetables : while historical and scriptural allusions to
plants may be frequently made, as well as innumerable
uses of plants in the arts.
This is not the place to insert any elaborate details of
the practical methods of carrying out botany in schools ;
but allusion may be made to the school museum, which
should contain the herbarium, which should be con-
structed by the senior pupils themselves, the teachers
selecting the best specimens of their dried collections for
it. The raw materials of ordinary vegetable fabrics ;
models of roots and fruits if possible, and other objects
too numerous to mention connected with this science
which a good teacher will soon get together. The
purpose of them is for illustration during the lessons.
For all teachers should remember that with children the
use of the eyes is much more effective than that of the
* On the day this was written, August 25th, 1891, it was recorded in the Daily
News that a child died from eating the scarlet berries of the common bryony.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 223
ears. And no statement should, as a rule, be made of
any unknown matter, which cannot be illustrated, or at
least brought within the range of what is known to the
pupils.
As the proper cultivation of vegetables and flowers
depends upon the physiological functions of plants, no
one would dispute the statement that it is better for a
cultivator to understand the latter than know nothing
at all about it. Here, then, lies a practical addition to
the intellectual value of teaching elementary botany in
our villages. Much valuable information could be given
in a very simple way, coupled with easy experiments
by a competent teacher, who could explain, for example,
the best methods of combating the potato disease, and
others to which plants are liable ; or how to improve
garden flowers by cross breeding, etc.
Since allotments and cottage gardens are so much
more encouraged by landowners than they were fifty
years ago, cultivators would derive both pleasure and
profit if they had learnt when at school a few elementary
principles of plant life ; while some knowledge of plants
would lead them to eject the deadly aconite from their
gardens, and not mistake the root for horseradish, as has
been so often the case, when whole families have been
poisoned.
In the preceding observations, we have been pre-
sumably all the time in the country ; but suppose we live in
London, or in some great manufacturing town, what can
be done in the way of cultivating flowers and vegetables ?
Practically, little or nothing ; for the two most important
factors of successful cultivation are plenty of sunlight
and pure air. Assuming that good soil and abundance
of water can be supplied, these are of little avail if plants
are obscured by overshadowing or get their leaves
224 LAND I
incrusted with soot and dust ; and to add, poisoned by
the sulphurous acid gas which is prevalent in the smoky
atmosphere of London, Birmingham, and other large
towns. After all the care and precautions taken by the
most successful town cultivators, the results are at best
but disappointing, as compared with those secured in
the country ; though fair results have been obtained by
continually washing the foliage and utilising every ray
which fall within reach, as the following instance will
testify : At a London window-gardening show a fuschia
gained the first prize. As it was known to have come
from a typical London "slum," enquiries were made of
the grower, a little girl. She confessed to having altered
its position three times every day, in order that it might
catch the rays of the sun. First, she placed it on the
roof of an outhouse, later on it stood on a window-sill,
and in the afternoon it found a resting place on a water-
butt. Reward First Prize !
GENERAL SUMMARY. To all living in the country
an elementary knowledge of botany, if not to drink deep
of the well of science, is extremely desirable ; as from
youth to age it has its advantages and pleasures. To
the child at school it is one of the best educational
weapons that can be employed, if the teacher really
knows how to use it rightly. To the housewife a know-
ledge of the composition of vegetable foods is useful, as
she will then understand that corn-flour, sago, arrowroot,
etc., have no true nourishment whatever capable of build-
ing up the tissues of the body. The cottage gardener
will know that the aconite, so common in cottage gardens,
is a deadly foe to his children ; the children themselves
will know that they must avoid touching the bright red
or purple berries of the bryony, woody and deadly night-
shade and others. The clergyman or other pastor might
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 225
undertake the teaching botany in the village school, as
the late Professor J. S. Henslow and the present writer
have done, and so relieve the overworked master, who
has little time for extra subjects.
Besides utilising his knowledge as a teacher, he will
find an endless solace in the study of Nature, so that
time, in however out-of-the-way village he may live, will
never hang heavy upon his hands. The country doctor,
too, who has probably already had an elementary course of
lectures to attend in his youth, would, like the clergyman,
find it a pleasure in his declining years, when his son,
perhaps, takes the heavy part of his duties ofT his hands.
But it is immaterial whom one may address, the
subject is always fascinating, and the more lonely a man
or woman may be, the less alone they will be because
Nature will always be with them.
In conclusion I would only add that of the innumerable
charms associated with a country life, Science stands
foremost, if only one would believe it ! It matters not
which subject be chosen : Geology, Physiography, or
Zoology, such as Mammals, Birds, Butterflies, Beetles,
or even Earth-worms, which Mr. Darwin has shown to be
capable of affording the profoundest interest, while the
study of the habits of animals in general is inexhaustible.
As witnesses to this fact, I need only refer the reader to
Gilbert White's " Natural History of Selbourne," and Mr.
Jenyn's " Observations upon Natural History," and to
Mrs. Brightwen's ''Wild Nature Tamed by Kindness,''
to show what patient observers can do, how much there
is to learn where least expected, and how great can be
the enthusiasm which natural science can kindle : truly
proving that there are, indeed, " sermons in stones and
good in everything."
GEORGE HENSLOW.
SECTION III.
LAND I ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 22Q
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE DANGERS ATTENDING LIMITED LIABILITY
INVESTMENTS.
BY LEYSON T. MERRY, Assistant Editor of the City Leader.
I DO not know how many people there are in this country
who are dependent either wholly or in part for their
incomes upon undertakings that are being conducted
upon limited liability principles, but that they are very
numerous is only too apparent by the recently advertised
offer of a reputable Corporation in the City to supply a
list of 300,000 " selected investors," that is, I suppose,
300,000 people who have demonstrated their willingness
to invest their money in ventures of any kind provided
they see (or fancy they see) an opportunity of adding to
their store of this world's riches.
It naturally follows that a body from whose ranks
a " selection'* can be made of 300,000 is an exceedingly
large one, and not only large, but, unfortunately, in-
creasing. I do not propose to go into figures in this
chapter, but statistics in another part of this work will
demonstrate the utter folly of investing money in more
than a very small percentage of the industrial and other
undertakings that are annually offered to a too easily-
gulled public.
Let me say at the outset that I do not propose to
devote a line to the mining and other wild-cat schemes
230 LAND :
that are continually being dangled before the eyes of the
unwary, with no other object than the enriching of the
pocket of the unscrupulous company promoter and his
confreres. These schemes are so palpably dishonest and
so transparently fraudulent that the people who are taken
in by them may well be left to their fate. They are, as
a rule, too greedy to be careful, and if they are disposed
to relinquish a small substance for a big shadow that is
their look out. It may be taken, I think, as a pretty
safe maxim, that whilst there are herrings of this kind
in the sea of finance there will be sharks to eat them,
and no amount of writing, no number of Acts of
Parliament will have any appreciable effect in diminishing
the number of either the one or the other.
What I propose to do is to show that the average
investor runs almost as great a risk of burning his fingers,
even though he confines his attentions exclusively to
what on paper appear to be as sound commercial under-
takings as could well be desired. If the vast army of
shareholders who have been ruined by a speciously
worded prospectus could be marshalled into position and
interrogated, it would be found that only a very small
percentage of them owed their downfall to a gold-mine
or other similar speculative venture, whilst it would be
found that the remainder had been induced to put their
money into what they conceived to be sound, honest, and
prosperous undertakings. A carefully and craftily worded
prospectus, and a still more carefully arranged table of
figures, will have beguiled the investor into the belief that
at last he has found a substantial business into which he
can safely put his savings, But the first annual meeting
causes him to modify his opinions somewhat. The profits
on the year's trading have for some unaccountable reason
diminished when compared with the previous year. And
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 23!
this, in face of the figures in the prospectus, which showed
that for many years the business had been a steadily
increasing one.
At the end of the following year matters are in a still
more unsatisfactory position, and in a few months comes
the end. Then, and not until then, does the shareholder
realise that he has had foisted on to him a declining
business. The prospectus, upon examination, is found to
have contained no mis-statements to give ground for
action ; the figures are unassailable. The plain fact of
the matter is that the original owners of the business have
realised at the top ; they have hit off to a nicety the
exact moment at which their business has reached its
zenith, and they have sold it at a substantial figure to a
few hundred poor deluded shareholders, who never
stopped at the outset to ask themselves why this good
thing should be thrown in their way.
I do not think I shall be far wide of the mark if I say
that ninety-five per cent, of the established and apparently
successful businesses that are offered to the public are
only so offered when the erstwhile proprietors have had
all there is to be had out of them. Having eaten the
kernel they are quite willing that someone else shall take
possession of the shell. In the case of the other five per
cent., they seek the aid of the Limited Liability Acts
mainly for private reasons, and not because the owners
of them consider they are getting too much out of them
and desire to let other people have a share. From a
very close investigation of the concerns that have been
put on the market during the past year or two, I have
come to the conclusion that if there is anything good
going in the new company line, it is not the average
investor who gets a share of it. It is snapped up by
the sharp people on the spot.
232 LAND I
And if the question is to be argued, why should not
it be ? What right have I as an individual investor to
expect to participate in a good thing that has been made
good with somebody's money and labour ? But the average
investor never seems to look at the matter in that light.
He thinks it is quite natural that a slice of good fortune
should be offered to him by a perfect stranger, and he
sends his cheque to be used in a business about which
he knows nothing beyond what the prospectus tells him,
and by directors of whom he has never heard. He does
not think it is necessary to enquire who these gentlemen
are, or what is their interest in the business which they
propose to control with other people's money. He does
not know how far he is involving himself, or to what
he is committing himself, for we have it on the authority
of a prominent Secretary of public companies that
only five per cent, of shareholders apply for a copy of
the Articles of Association by which their company is
governed, and which may or may not comply with the
Act of Parliament. This very foolish shareholder, then,
accepts as gospel truth all the plausible statements
-contained in the prospectus sent him, and with visions
of a twenty per cent, dividend, and shares at five
hundred per cent, premium, he posts off the where-
withal to secure his hundred shares.
And this same man, if he were asked to invest in some
tickets for a Hamburg lottery would wink a knowing
wink, and take unction to his soul that he was not as other
men, but that there was a more than ordinary amount of
wisdom and caution in his composition. Yet, if I had to
choose between the two methods of making money, I
should unhesitatingly pin my faith to the lottery. In
saying which I am far from characterising every company
as a swindle or a doubtful investment. What I wish to
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 233
convey is that unless I were in the swim I should have
not the faintest chance of participating in the profits made
by a good reliable, prosperous and safe company.
The Directors' Liability Act, for which so much was
once claimed, has proved to be of no avail in protecting
the investor from the raids of the promoter. In some
way or other the promoter manages to evade it, and since
it became law, reckless and inaccurate statements have
been as prominent and as numerous in prospectuses as
they were before Mr. Warmington's measure was heard
of. So far as I can see no amount of legislation will
serve to protect the less prudent class of investors, and
the sooner they begin to realise that there are other and
safer methods of making money the better for them and
their pockets.
I do not think I can better illustrate the point I am
striving to make than by quoting one or two instances
that have come under my immediate notice within the
past year or so. In the present state of the law of libel
I must refrain from giving actual names, but I doubt not
that many of my readers will, to their sorrow, be able to
locate them. The first case I will refer to is that of a
company which had for its object the rearing and breed-
ing of poultry for the London market. The advertised
prospectus was of a very plausible nature, and I must
confess to a sneaking desire at the time to put some
money into it myself. I went over the estate that had
been purchased for the company's operations, interviewed
the vendor, and obtained from his neighbours the very
best reports as to his honesty and financial standing, and
recommended all my friends to put their money into the
thing. The Board, with but one exception, was com-
posed of well known men in the poultry world, and
everything seemed honest and above board. But it was
234 LAND :
not. Before the letters of allotment went out it was
discovered that the promoter was an adventurer of the
most approved order. Thanks to the efforts of a con-
scientious director the whole of the application money
was returned ; the rascally promoter eluded the duped
printers and newspaper proprietors, one of the vendors
retired hurriedly to another country, and soon afterwards
the one who remained behind admitted in the Bankruptcy
Court that the estate which he was supposed to have sold
to the company was not his to sell. I heard of that
promoter only the other day. He does not come to the
City now ; the judgment summonses are too numerous
for his liking. When I last heard of him he was prowling
round the West End seeking whom he might victimise,
and had just induced a confiding tailor to make him two
suits of clothes and lend him five pounds. In return he
promised to purchase the tailor's business and offer it to
the public with a fabulous capital.
In another instance, and even more recently, the
prospectus was issued of a company which was formed
with a capital of ,200,000 to purchase certain brown
bread businesses. I think something like ,137,000 was
to be paid for them, and a list of 1400 members of the
medical profession was given with the statement that
they were patrons of the company. Would it be
believed that these 1400 members of the medical pro-
fession were patrons only in the vivid imagination of the
promoter, and that the property to be acquired consisted
only of a dirty little baker's shop whose takings were
? per week ! And yet so plausible was this prospectus
that a good many thousand pounds were received from
credulous investors. Thanks, however, to the timely
exposure of the fraud by the City Leader, a journal
that has rendered signal service in this direction on many
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 235
occasions, the greater portion of the money found its way
back into the pockets of the silly people who parted
with it.
I could go on enumerating similar instances of fraud
and gullibility indefinitely did space permit, but I think I
have adduced enough evidence to prove, up to the hilt,
my assertion that it is sheer folly for any man, however
clever he may think himself to be, to expect to make a
fortune out of the new companies that are offered to
him at the present day unless he is in the swim. He
would be better advised to throw his money into the sea,
for then he would have none of the cares and troubles
that attend on the footsteps of the fin de sieclc share-
holder.
LEYSON T. MERRY.
236 LAND I
CHAPTER XXVII.
LOSSES BY STOCK EXCHANGE INVESTMENTS.
BY C. F. DOWSETT, F.S.I.,
Author of various Articles on Land and House Properties , " Striking Events in
Irish History" etc.
ONE of the calamities which has befallen the broad
acres of this country is the diversion of capital into
other channels, in consequence of the unpopularity into
which broad acre investments have fallen. Money
which in the earlier Seventies would have been used in
buying land or country houses for occupation or farms
for investment of family funds or advanced on mort-
gage of broad acres to enable the owners to build and
repair houses, cottages, buildings, fences, to drain, to
use improved implements of cultivation, and in a variety
of ways, has been withheld from the land through the
Eighties, to the impoverishment of the country districts,
and the dispersion of many farmers and labourers.
As wealth has increased, and as money must be in-
vested in something, and as "all the world" has done
its best to frighten it away from the soil, and as the
decreasing interest derived from Government Stocks has
spoilt the charm even of their " sweet simplicity," and
as the cupidity of human nature has been willing to
believe the fair promises of Boards of non-directing-
Directors, the result has been that capital has been lost
not only to broad acres but to the country generally.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 237
Out of the mass of companies formed and connected
with the Stock Exchange, how many of the Directors are
really competent to direct? A " promoter" starts a
scheme which on paper appears to ensure a future
according to the way it is represented ; he secures a
board of names, the best names he can command as
likely to impress the public so as to induce the sale of
shares that is the one object, the sale of shares and
out of the proceeds of such sale the promoters divide a
handsome sum, and having launched their scheme and
given it a push into the ocean of commercial compe-
titions they leave it to found another and another.
The names direct or misdirect someone manages, and
so long as they can draw fees for attending the Board it
is pleasant enough ; it is " heads they win, tails others
lose," they have no substantial stake in the concern, the
shares standing in their names in the articles of asso-
ciation were given them by the promoters. If all turns
out well, the shares are a property, if things are going
wrong and they have a character to lose then they retire
from the Board as soon as they can, perhaps never
reflecting that their names have been used successfully in
drawing some hard-earned savings from the poor duped
shareholders.
A country is prosperously governed according to the
ability and honesty of the people who govern it ; the
same of a County Council, or any other corporate body,
and of course the same principle holds good with the
Board of a public company. What chance has a com-
pany of succeeding whose Directors only hold their posts
because they were presented with a given number of
shares, and because they draw so many guineas per
month for attendance ? Directors who are oftentimes
utterly ignorant of the nature of the business the com-
238 LAND I
pany was formed to carry on, and yet they are to
direct it !
Millions sterling have been sunk in ventures which
are ephemeral, governed by Directors who are shame-
less, and supported by shareholders who are avaricious,
whose cupidity has led them to drop the substance for
the shadow. The winding up of these ventures means
not only losses to credulous persons who never enquired
into the concerns beyond the rate of interest promised
or intimated, but it means depopulated villages, dilapi-
dated buildings, neglected farms, and general depreciation
through the counties. The time has arrived to turn
the tables, and to show the public that: land is not so
bad nor the Stock Exchange so good in point of invest-
ment as a grasping fashion has led many to believe.
Let us examine some of the depreciated values ot
Stock Exchange investments ; we have heard enough of
depreciated land values ; let the following figures impart
a warning to those who have left the solid ground for
the paper property. The selection that has been made
includes many concerns which have existed for some time
before becoming limited liability companies, and here it
would have been expected that accountants certifying as
to the turnover would have been able to state whether
the concern would be an improving property, or rapidly
retrograding such as this list seems to show ; and if
they are unable to give any surety to the investing public,
to whom shall these turn ? The Trust Companies have
many of them been quoted at a premium, and were
much recommended in many quarters ; now month by
month their market value is lessened and the bottom of
the fall does not by any means seem reached.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
239
I
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Here there are facts enough to show that in a few
brewery companies more than three millions sterling have
been lost to the shareholders.
240
Take next some commercial companies-
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The above figures show a loss to the shareholders of
nearly seven millions sterling.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 24!
Take another set of commercial companies
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Here again is a loss to the shareholders of some two and
a half millions sterling.
242 LAND :
Take a set of financial companies-
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Here again is a loss to the shareholders of over two and
three-quarter millions sterling.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
Take next a set of trust companies
24,
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Here we find a loss to the shareholders of some four and
a quarter millions sterling.
244
LAND I
We will consider now the case of five sets of
companies which have failed, and which are in liquida-
tion or are being wound up altogether
WOUND UP IN 1888.
Company.
Formation.
Capital issued.
Australian Company ...
29 April, 1 88 1
,50,800
City of Dublin Brewery
1865
95,060
Dear and Company
21 July, 1886
16,250
Dewars and Bournes ...
29 April, 1886
176,250
Edwin Fox and Company
7 October, 1882
30,800
Highland Fisheries Company
1884
2O,OOO
Metropolitan Music Hall Company...
9 July, 1887
57,000
Patent Ventilating Granary Company
Scottish Metal- Edged Box Company
1863
1887
75,000
27,182
Sugar Refiners' Appliances Company
4 October, 1862
5i,i35
United Kingdom Metal-Edged Box Co.
17 December, 1886 66,667
National Building and Land Invest-
ment Company of Ireland
1865 32,020
National Standard Land Mortgage
and Investment Company
14 July, 1881
32,120
Tyne Forge Company
1881
3i,75o
West Cumberland Iron and Steel Co.
1872
216,000
written off.
^978,034
WOUND UP IN 1889.
Appleby Brothers, Engineers, &c
20 February, 1886
3I.5<
Argentine Sugar Estate Factories ...
1883
130.000
Armstrong and Company, Merchants
16 October, 1885
7',55Q
Australian Ice Company
2 July, 1878
18,370
Australian Trans-Continental Rail-
way Syndicate
12 May, 1 88 1
16,040
Billiter Street Offices Company
14 November, 1882
59,325
Brown, Davis and Company ...
16 January, 1879
45,000
Colorado Ranch
1879
20,000
Defries Safety Lamp ...
15 April, 1886
60,069
Electric Automatic Delivery Box ...
26 January, 1888
4^434
George Neal and Company ...
9 January, 1887
' 38,376
Glasgow Coal Exchange
1874
108,000
Jutnapore Indigo Planting
John's Bottling and Stopping
23 June, 1888
1 6 January, 1888
3,218
34,364
Lancashire Supply Association
26 June, 1880
9,552
Levy's Jute Spinning and Sack Works
Liverpool Household Stores Assoctn.
10 May, 1875
i September, 1887
87,790
i6,959
Liverpool Spice Company
12 May, 1885
6,080
London Consumers' Pure Sanitary
Milk Company
2 December, 1886
17,500
London Founders' Association
19 April, 1883
6,512
Martinstown (Dorchester) Brewery ..
16 June, 1888
15,000
Metropolitan Coal Consumers' Assocn.
31 January, 1889
55,878
Moldacot Royalties Trust
27 August, 1886
60,000
Mozambique Produce Company
8 June, 1887
30,000
/88i,qi7
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
WOUND UP IN 1889.
2 45
Company.
Formation.
Capital issued,
National Agricultural Hall
1 6 May, 1884
100,000
National Pure Water Engineering Co
17 November, 1886
89,657
Paper Bottle Company
II June, 1887
29,095
People's Bread Company
19 March, 1888
56,568
Porous Carbon Company
30 December, 1886
38,500
Ridcdale's Railway Lamp and Light
ing Company
Scarborough Promenade Pier Co.
Scotch Whisky Distillers
10 December, 1886
I December, 1865
21 April, 1887
20,98l
13,350
64,825
Scottish Carolina Timber and Land
C'nmnanv
23 February, 1884
06 QQO
Stein's Bakery and Patent Oven Co.
25 March, 1886
y\j,yyv^
22,500
Tunnel Driving Company
27 March, 1886
33, 2I
Universal Simplex Type Writer
4 February, 1887
50,000
Wiltshire Brewery Company...
North Australian Territory Company
19 July, 1888
1 8 May, 1887
13,960
110,000
United Land Company
, 1867
39,945
City of Dunedin Suburban Gas
29 October, 1887
94,550
Nottingham & Derby Water Gas Co.
27 April, 1889
57,720
Sovereign Life Assurance Company
Lochore & Capeldrae Cannel Coal Co.
, 1845 94,500
, 1872 130,000
Rajawelle Coffee Estate Company ...
21 April, 1864
45oo
German Union Telegraph and Trust
1 9 July, 1872
205,000*
1,212,103
IN LIQUIDATION OR WINDING UP ORDER MADE 1890.
Ab-Jutra Boot Making Process
9 July, 1887
48,000
Anglo-Belgian Safety Horse-Shoe Co.
15 February, 1888
49,428
Astrop Patent ...
29 January, 1 886
27,008
Cox's Horse Repository
2 December, 1889
30,000
East Riding Club and Race Course...
28 November, 1883
49,208
Eureka Refrigerating ...
2 July, 1887
84,109
Henry K. Terry & Co.
23 October, 1888
57,435
H. Pound, Son, and Hutchins
12 August, 1886
70,000
J. Rolls and Son
3 May, 1886
77,38o
Johnson and Company
ii February, 1878
50,000
Lyons Brothers
9 January, 1886
60,000
New Brunswick Trading of London...
12 August, 1885
76,100
Oil-Seed Crushing
1863
67.820
Public W r orks and Contract ...
13 June, 1883
38,965
Pure Spirit Company ...
9 July, 1888
70,536
Shoreham Portland Cement ...
6 December, 1883
38,787
United Bacon Curing ...
14 November, 1889
Weston's Music Hall ...
26 November, 1886 70,000
Canadian (Direct) Meat Company ...
21 November, 1889 121,008
Landed Estates Agency
29 December, 1885 52,260
Mortgage and Agency of Australasia
j March, 7881
68,787
Universal Automatic Machine
17 September, 1887
90,000
New Zealand Agricultural
12 January, 1879
311,020
W T anser...
25 July, 1888 73,350
Hop Bitters
24 August, 1889 57,091
Bread Union ...
8 August, 1889 195,181
1,750,816
Wound up. g IDS. returned per .10 Share. Loss, ,10,250.
246 LAND I
IN LIQUIDATION OR WINDING UP ORDER MADE 1890.
Company.
Formation.
Capital issued.
British and New Zealand Mortgage
and Agency ...
Manchester and County Property ...
Mortgage and Agency of Australasia
Property Investment of Scotland
Uruguay Pastoral
Staffordshire Gas and Coke ...
4 November, 1881
1874
i March, 1881
1875
1 8 January, 1864
29 May, 1889
342,S22
59,659
68,787
60,000
64,000
49,170
644,438
Thus the last-named sets of companies, commencing at
page 244, which are in liquidation, or have been wound
up, show a total amount of capital issued of no less than
about five and a half millions sterling.
In 1882 as many as thirty-three companies connected
with electric lighting were offered to the public some
few had appeared previously in 1878, 1880, and 1881
representing a nominal capital of .14,168,000; the
amount to be taken in cash or shares by vendors
amounted to ,2,980,100. In 1883 the amount of capital
issued was over three millions and a half, which would
be that subscribed by the public. Thirteen companies
were in liquidation by 1884, an d twenty-three by 1887.
The above ^3,500,000 represents an early stage of the
movement, and later calls must have considerably enlarged
this sum, the greater part of which was entirely lost to
the public, for one company had to write off ,5 per
share, representing a loss to the public of 400,000.
The Morgan Geld Mining Company was constructed
in 1888, with a capital of ,210,000 ,140,000 was
taken by the public; later, a further issue of 90,000 ,1
shares was made ; 45,000 were taken by the shareholders
at 6s. 8d. per share, ,15,000. The company was
recently reconstructed, and 140,000 shares were allotted
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 247
to shareholders at 55. each, with is. credited as paid.
The loss to the public in this company nearly reaches
,150,000.
The Prairie Cattle Company, Limited, was formed
in 1880, and in June, 1890, just ten years after, from a
capital of ,441,082, had to write off as lost ,274,649.
The Hansard Publishing Union was formed in 1889,
the capital to be 375,000. In August, to purchase new
business, the capital was increased to ,500,000, and in
August, 1890, capital was increased to .1,000,000. How
much was taken by the public was never stated, but no
doubt considerably more than half. A receiver was
appointed in February, 1891, and a winding-up order
has since been made. The businesses which were con-
solidated have been sold or are being sold in most cases
at a price much lower than that paid by the Union, and
it seems that small will be the amount (if any) per share
that is likely to be returned to the shareholders.
The City of Glasgow Bank stopped October 2nd, 1878,
the excess of liabilities, according to the Investigator's
Report, was ^5,190, 98 3. The capital of the bank was
; i, 000,000, which was entirely lost, and a call of ,500
per 100 share was made representing another
,5,000,000. In consequence of the Caledonian Bank-
ing Company holding 430 stock of the City of
Glasgow Bank, it also stopped payment on the 4th
December.
In the same year, on December 9th, the West of
England and South Wales District Bank stopped
payment owing to extensive losses on advances in
South Wales. The paid-up capital was 750,000, the
reserve was 157,000, the calls on 50,000 shares
amounted to 14 per share, a further loss on the paid-up
capital of 700,000.
248 LAND I
The Oriental Bank Corporation stopped payment
in 1884, and went into liquidation. Its capital was
^1,500,000 in ,25 shares, and the liability of the
shareholders was ,25 per share beyond.
The Bank of New Zealand, in October, 1888, had
to reduce its capital, and wrote off i 155. per share
on 100,000 shares, and 2 los. per share on 50,000
shares, a total reduction of ,300,000.
The English Bank of River Plate stopped payment in
July, 1891. The called-up capital is ,750,000, and
liability ,10 per share, equal to another ,750,000.
The foregoing tables representing the depreciation
in value of many marketable securities quoted in the
London Official List could have been extended
indefinitely had only slight variations been taken.
As regards the brewery section, it is noticeable that
the whole depreciation has taken place in five years.
Allsopps was so great a favourite that prospectuses could
hardly be obtained, and the shares went quickly to a
premium; now, in February, 1892, only half the pre-
ference dividend can be paid.
The American breweries were offered to the public
during 1889 and 1890, and their future prospects
highly extolled in the prospectuses some of them have
already ceased to be dividend-paying properties. The
Press warned the public of these concerns, but the specious
promises made were believed in, and shares bought.
The same may be said of the financial true companies.
The list of companies wound up could have been very
largely increased, but for the fact that so many of
them die shortly after being floated, so that little
information is obtainable.
In order to convey some clearer idea to the minds
of my readers of the misery which results to the public
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 249
through these Stock Exchange properties. I will recall
some utterances of the Press in reference to the failure
of the City of Glasgow Bank, which I collected and
used at the time of its collapse. To show the sudden
and tremendous depreciation of value, it is sufficient to
remark that a few weeks before its doors were closed,
the shareholders believed that the then market value of
their ^100 shares was ^240 each, but when the crisis
came, they knew that they had not only lost the ^240,
but were liable for about ^500 per share besides.
The Times of October 2ist, 1878, said :
" This is not a mere case of directors lending money on insufficient
security and then throwing away more and more in the false hope of
getting back what was irrecoverably lost. Those who were responsible
for the periodical balance sheet of the City of Glasgow Bank went far
beyond the common temptation of reckoning as good what ought to
have been abandoned as hopelessly bad debts; they seem to have
invented securities which never had an existence, and to have suppressed
liabilities that were only too real. They even went the length of making
a false return of the coin and bullion kept on hand against the notes
they issued. The accountants report that since the commencement
of this year it has been the habit to add to the weekly return of
bullion made to Government an imaginary sum, less or more, according
to the emergencies of the period fluctuating weekly
until it reached ^300,000. The additions thus made are openly and
regularly entered in the circulation ledger in smaller figures over the
amount of gold really in hand in Glasgow. The reckless audacity of
this conduct marks the crown of a long period of deception. . . ."
" Putting the loss at six millions, the belief is, that not one-fourth
of the shareholders will be able to meet the first call made upon them,
and the amount of misery that will result cannot be estimated. . . ."
" In this case the first call made is likely to be at least ^500
per share, and it looks extremely improbable that s w iU be enough.
For the majority of the shareholders that means absolute ruin. A great
number will fail to pay the call in full. Some cannot pay it at all, and
the consequence will be heavy drafts upon the residue v:ho are rich.
These drafts will paralyze business, weaken credit, and prove a source
of misery to Scotland for years to come."
250 LAND :
The Daily News of October loth has the following:
" Some sadly interesting facts and figures are obtained by analysing
the list of partners of the unfortunate establishments. In Glasgow and
the immediate suburbs there are, out of a total of 1272 registered
partners, 292 shareholders, who are possessed of, including \$ 3, 5 36
in the bank's own name, 439, 240 stock. Unfortunate trustees and
executors are many, numbering no fewer than 184, and the amount of
stock for which they are responsible is ^132, 822, while there are 31
holding over ^1000. There are 25 widows, having .8376 stock, which
with the exception of one lot of/'2ioo is mostly in fioo holdings.
Clergymen are represented to the extent of 33 proprietors and their
proportion reaches ^19,970 stock, the highest being 4000. Altogether
there are 360 women registered in the last list, and the total amount of
stock opposite their names is ^103,560; there are only 95 shareholders
having under /"ioo stock; over that amount and not exceeding/ 1000,
240."
And in the same paper of October I2th :
" Heartrending incidents are told of the poorer partners in the
lapsed bank. Widows have had iheir all lost in the sunken ship, and
small shopkeepers who had invested in the stock for iheir old age are
almost paupers. Doctors had almost retired from practice because
they thought they had a competency in the interest of their stock, but
have now in their advanced years to resume active practice. Ruin,
if not absolute beggary, is the only prospect of many, and it is for them
that substantial assistance must be given"
Again in the same paper of October 1 5th :
"It appears that this bank had in connection with their Glasgow
cross branch a savings bank with no fewer than 699 depositors, con-
sisting principally of working-class people residing in the east-end of
the city."
And in the same paper of October i6th :
" All who have held shares within a year before the commencement
of the winding-up are liable to be called upon to contribute to deficiencies
existing at the time their names were taken off the books."
The Times of October iQth :
" The sum of the whole matter is that the bank has lost on a
moderate, and probably favourable estimate, 6,200,000, i.e., the whole
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 251
of the paid-up capital and reserve funds, together with fully ^"5,000,000
besides.
" That is a most disastrous statement for the unhappy shareholders,
and we need hardly say that a loss of such magnitude could never have
fallen on them but for reckless mismanagement to begin with, and
deliberate and long continued fraud practised to hide that mismanage-
ment. The story set forth in the report now published is one of the
most disgraceful in the history of banking. Accounts have been
deliberately falsified, securities entered at fictitious values, bad debts
taken as good assets, and the very gold, which ought to have been
held under the Act of 1845 against the note issue, deliberately
squandered to the extent of over ^300,000.' The Government has
been deceived by false returns, the shareholder by * cooked ' balance-
sheets, and everything done, in short, that a perverse ingenuity could
think of to conceal the bankrupt condition of the bank until it became
a national calamity."
The Times of October 23rd has a report of the
meeting of shareholders, held in the City Hall, Glasgow,
on the 22nd. In Mr. Robert Young's speech, I notice
the following :
" Why, sir ! it is hardly possible to speak quietly with reference
to such tremendous defalcations. That sum of $, 000,000 we,
the shareholders, are now called upon to make good. What the
ultimate result may be I cannot tell. The deficiency is overwhelming,
and the prospect appalling. It means to many very many of the
shareholders ruin and misery, and to all poverty, privation and
suffering; our money, perhaps our all, we must lose."
* * * * *
" We have believed in reports and balance-sheets which have
been false, fictitious, and misleading ; but we hope, although we have
lost money, we have not yet lost our personal honour."
As regards the West of England and South Wales
Bank, which failed soon after the City of Glasgow Bank,
the Daily Telegraph said :
" Such a calamity happening to a bank having its branches in
nearly every district, agricultural and commercial, throughout the West
of England and South Wales, must entail much suffering and, in some
cases, utter ruin to hundreds of families, and by no one will the disaster
252 LAND :
be more acutely felt than by the class of shareholders coming under
the head of widows and spinsters, of whom there are between 700 and
800 on the share list, which also includes 403 tradesmen, 143 professional
men, 449 gentlemen, 144 farmers and yeomen, 32 clerks, 41 merchants,
30 bankers, 27 clergymen, 19 schoolmasters, 27 butlers and valets, and
five labourers."
The Caledonian Bank was brought to ruin by the
fall of the City of Glasgow Bank it had four shares in
the City of Glasgow Bank registered in its own name,
and as the shares were unlimited the liability crushed it.
About this period a report was issued of the evidence
taken before a Royal Commission on the Stock Exchange
in which it was shown that the total of loans to foreign
States taken in London amounted to ^614,228,300.
Of these loans all obligations were fulfilled only on
^81,828,500 ; on ^175,160,100 there was a partial
default and on ^157,239,700 there was a total default or
about 54- 1 1 per cent, of the whole amount. A total loss
on foreign loans of 1 5 7 J millions sterling / ! !
Sudden ruin, homes wrecked, helpless women and
orphans driven to face the world with empty pockets;
aged gentlemen and gentlewomen having to abandon
their comfortable homes and end their days as paupers
in workhouses, are facts which should make men reflect.
A Scotch newspaper published a poem on the collapse
of the City of Glasgow Bank, in which was the following
verse :
" Pity us, God ! Must our little things go ?
All even our mother's things cherished with care ?
Must we leave the old home the one home that we know ?
But not for the Poorhouse O surely not there ?
Could they not wait a while ? We will not keep them long
We could live on so little, too, cheerful and brave,
But to leave the old house, where old memories throng,
For the Poorhouse ! O rather the peace of the grave !
Pity us, pity, O God ! "
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 253
The mass of facts this chapter records should cause
capitalists to pause before they put all their money into
Stock Exchange securities. They should remember that
for .-t least a portion of their wealth, investments in broad
acres should be made, because if giving a little more
trouble they are tangible and in the long run safe, con-
sidering the increasing commerce, wealth and population
of the limited area forming Great Britain.
C. F. DOWSETT.
254
LAND :
CHAPTER XXVIII.
LOSSES BY STOCK EXCHANGE INVESTMENTS.
(No. i.)
BY E. J. GIBBS, M.A.
THE course of events during the past year should provide
once more a serious warning to investors who are inclined
to neglect real property, and to devote themselves entirely
to purchases on the Stock Exchange. I propose to show
in this paper how heavy and disastrous has been the
recent fall in many of the securities usually quoted,
including stocks and the shares in limited companies.
For this purpose I compare the prices of 3Oth June,
1890 and 3oth June, 1891 the last complete half-year
before the writing of this paper and I afterwards add
some notice of the great losses in Foreign Stocks during
the last quarter of a century.
Let us take first Foreign Stocks for the year ending
30th June, 1891.
Name of the Country and Stock.
Nominal Rate
of Interest.
Price
3<Dth June, 1890.
Price
3oth June, iSor.
Per Cent.
Argentine Railway Loan, 1881
6
I O2
55
,, Loans, 1886-87
5
94
66
,, Central Railway Extension
Government Bonds
5
9 1
46
,, Internal Gold Loan ...
JT
79
3C
,, External Loan...
si
65
O D
2Oi
Buenos Ayres, 1882-86
6
100
*va
7Q
1883
6
99
3s
4.2
Cordova Province, Redeemable 1919 ...
6
86
*T^
24
Bonds
85
22
Costa Rica (A)
e
J
07
'it
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
255
Name of the Country and Stock.
Nominal Rate
of Interest.
Price Price
3Oth June, 1890. 3oth June, 1891.
Per Cent.
6
QQ 34.
4
66 40*
784 66
4
73 6l
Honduras Loan, 1870
Mexican 1888
10
6
154 74
08 8q
Paraguay 1886
2
AC -TA
Salvador, Redeemable 1914
6
7
93 65
6^ 44
Santi Fe 1883-84
6
Q4 ^2
Bonds
C
81 28
c
7S 4.8
,, Sterling Loan
6
89 55
CA AJ
It must further be remembered that in many cases there
have been alterations in the terms of foreign loans before
the 3Oth June, 1890, by which the payments made for
interest have been reduced, a process which ought to have
increased the value of the security of the capital involved.
In United States railway shares and bonds there
was, for the most part, no very serious change, but it may
be noticed that in previous years nearly every penny
subscribed for ordinary shares has been absolutely lost.
Even after all the previous losses it may be said that
there is general depression, and in some cases a serious
fall occurred during the year under review. Thus Chicago,
Millwauke, and St. Paul's fell from 76 to 63, and the
Preferred from 123 to 117; Illinois Central Common
Stock from 120 to 96^; New York, Pennsylvania and
Ohio First Mortgage from 40^ to 31^. Of the total loss
to British investors resulting from their trust in the
integrity of United States railroad promoters, I shall
have more to say hereafter. The heaviest losses in
foreign railways are to be found in the Spanish
States of South America, of which the following are
specimens :
2 5 6
LAND
Name of Railway.
Prices
3oth June, iGgo.
Prices
Sothjune, i
Argentine Great -Western Debenture Stock
83 xd
53
, , North-Eastern 6% Cumulative Preference
74! x d
30
,, ,, 5% Debenture Stock
84
37i
,, ,, Stock Certificate to Bearer
84
374
Brazil Imperial Central Bahia
83
68
Buenos Ayres Great Southern
.
J 74
138
Buenos Ayres and Encuada ...
.
J 54
70
,, ,, ,, 7% Preferenc
170
JI 5
Buenos Ayres Northern Ordinary ..
195
170
Buenos Ayres and Pacific 7% Preference
I2 5
70
,, ,, 7% Debenture S
Lock
136
So.',
Buenos Ayres and Rosario Ordinary
1601
89
Central Uruguay of Montevideo
158
9 1
Cordoba and Rosario...
.
97
75
East Argentine, guaranteed ...
.
9ii x d
62i
,, Debenture Stock 6%
108
87
Midland Uruguay, ,10 Shares
.
7
3^
., Debenture Stock
,
107
60
New Argentine 7% Preference 10 Shares
9
3
New Uruguay 20 shares ...
ii
Si
Paraguay Limited 5% Preference Debentures
77
45
It may be said that I confine myself chiefly to losses
on South American securities. I reply that it is no part
of my duty to discuss the general decline of all Stock
Exchange prices. I am concerned rather to show that
we have invested large sums of money abroad and at
home, on which heavier losses have been incurred than
would have followed from investments in land. We
have lent to South America more than 250 millions
sterling, and the loans so made were not worth on
3Oth June, 1891, more than one-half of what they were
reckoned at on 3Oth June, 1890. The loss on United
States Railways must also be reckoned at many millions,
and it seems to be increasing, for since ist July, 1891,
different railways have declined to pay sometimes an
ordinary, and sometimes even a preference dividend.
Besides the specific examples I have given of these
railways, it may be said that, taken all round, they show
a fall varying from 8 to 20 per cent.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
257
What shall we say as to the wisdom of those who have
preferred to invest in financial trust companies, and scoff
at landed property ? There has been a heavy fall in
most of the preference stocks of these companies, but the
deferred stocks which have to bear the first brunt fell
in the one year from thirty to forty per cent. The
following list will show the truth of this assertion :
p_;j
Prices
Prices
JtcUQ.
3oth June, 1890.
3oth June, 1891.
100
Army and Navy Investment Trust, Deferred
109
85
100
Bankers ,, ,,
106
70
100
British
135
98xcL
100
Consolidated Trust
IOO
67
100
Foreign, American and General
118
92
100
General and Commercial Inv. Trust
1 02
67
100
Government Stocks Investment
1 14 xd.
66
100
Guardian Investment Trust
no
67
100
International Investment
116
85
100
Merchants Trust Co., Ordinary ...
102
78
IOO
River Plate and General Trust, Deferred
95
68
100
U.S. and S. American Investment ,,
104
72
Here, therefore, we see a loss of thirty to forty per cent,
in one year.
Under the head of Financial Land and Investment
Companies I find the following reductions in value :
Paid.
Prices 3oth June, 1890.
Prices 3oth June, 1891.
5
International Financial Society
6 xd.
3
i6/-
New Belgium Land and Exploration
12/6 pd., price 7/6
i6/-pd., price 2/6
i
Oceana Land (Transvaal)
ioi
41
2
River Plate Trust Company
54
3
20
vSanta Fe and Cordova Land
20
ii
I
Transvaal Land
I
2/6
The following prices are taken under the heading
" Commercial and Industrial" :
IO
Anglo-Chilian Nitrate Pref. Shares
6i
3
5
Bell's Asbestos
*52
84
IO
Buenos Ay res Water Supply
84
No price.
10
,, ,, ,, Pref. ...
9^ xd.
44
10
Eastman's Meat Supply
71
5i
2
Elmore's Patent Copper
Si
34
10
Hotchkiss Ordinary
4i
2
IOO
,, Debentures
95
70
5
Liverpool Nitrate
9
6xd.
5
London Nitrate
5
3
IOO
Maxim Nordenfelt Debentures
65
55
2 2
Nitrate Provision Supply
2
i
5
Primitiva Nitrate
I2i
6
LAND I
It may be said, of course, that I have selected the
worst cases. That is perfectly true. The present paper
is not intended to analyse the Stock Exchange returns,
and to show the reasons for reductions in value varying
from one to twenty per cent. It is meant to show how
great losses have been incurred in a single year on
stocks which have fallen forty or fifty per cent., and by
inference to show that investments on the Stock
Exchange have lately been far more disastrous than
investments in land.
But these are returns for a single year. When people
talk of the depreciation in the value of land, they do not
refer to the last twelve months, for, as a matter of fact,
stocks have been falling heavily, while land has been
slowly advancing. During the last quarter of a century
what has happened to Stock Exchange investments ?
The fall in Argentine and Uruguayan Stocks
occurred last year, and has already been noticed. If we
include the provincial cedulas it may be safely calculated
that a great deal more than ,100,000,000 has been
lost, and that there is little hope of its recovery. The
nominal capital value of the Turkish Debt was reduced
in 1882 from 228,000,000 to about 100,000,000, and
the interest from five and six per cent, to one per cent.
The reduced capital is to be repaid in full some
time or other. In nine years about .100,250,000 of
Series A has been repaid. The total loss, of which
this country bore a large part, is not less than
"150,000,000.
The debt of Peru was "31,500,000. It has been
cancelled, and the price paid is the cession of all the
railways, and certain lands and mining rights. The
holders of each ,100 have received about 23 of i
preference shares, and about 28 of i ordinary
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 259
shares in the Peruvian Corporation, Limited. The
present value of the ordinary shares is about two
shillings, and of the preference shares five shillings.
The actual loss is more than seventy-five per cent.
The funded debt of Portugal is now more than
^"100,000,000 sterling, and the greatest part is due to
England. It is a safe calculation that, besides the
arrears of interest, the British public has lost ^"80,000,000
sterling in Portugal.
The foreign debt of Spain has been nominally
reduced from ^"512,000,000 to ^"254,000,000 and the
interest from five per cent, and upwards to four per cent.
There has thus been a loss to the holders of ^258,000,000
sterling and interest.
Time would fail me to go through the losses in the
smaller States of South and Central America. Nor
is it necessary, for I have surely said enough to
support my thesis, that the reduction in the value of
land in the United Kingdom during the last twenty-
five years has involved no such disastrous losses as
have occurred to our investments in foreign stocks and
foreign railways.
EDW. J. GIBBS.
LONDON, 31^ October, 1891.
260 LAND :
CHAPTER XXIX.
LOSSES BY STOCK EXCHANGE INVESTMENTS
(No. 2.)
BY E. J. GIBBS, M.A.
IN order to understand more fully the losses incurred by
speculative investments, it is necessary to take notice of
South African gold mines and American railroads. It
is computed that at least twenty millions in hard cash
has been invested in the Transvaal mines. The shares
in these mines were forced to such a price as to repre-
sent more than a hundred millions. About three hundred
gold mining companies were started with capitals varying
from ,5000 to ,250,000. Of these the great majority
are defunct. Yet these investments only began in 1886.
The mines of South Africa had undoubtedly been
worked in the times of King Solomon and the Queen of
Sheba. It is commonly said that King Solomon drew
nine hundred millions sterling from South African gold
mines. This seems to be an exaggeration, but we are
told on the authority of Scripture that among the
presents brought to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba,
there was in gold ,657,000, and that the annual income
in gold was ,4,631,500. It should have been natural to
suppose that a large part of the alluvial gold of South
Africa had been taken away, and that there was so much
less remaining. For gold does not grow, even in three
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
26l
thousand years, and every ounce taken away leaves the
mines the poorer. No one took any notice of this. A
few rich pockets were discovered, and forthwith British
investors anticipated fortunes from gold mining. It was
nothing to them that on a field of about twelve acres the
Transvaal Government charged duties amounting to
^650 per annum, whether gold was found or not, a
charge about one hundred times as great as is made by
any other country. The new El Dorado was found.
Let us look, then, at this profitable investment, and
compare the prices quoted at nearly the highest figures
with those of 3Oth June, 1891, bearing in mind at the
same time that these are all that remain of about three
hundred mines opened in 1886-7-8.
Name of Mine.
Paid per
Share.
Price
Both March, 1889.
Price
3oth June, 1891.
JL
s. d.
2 17 6
086
2 10
066
I s O
040
200
17 o o
850
3 5 o
726
2 10
19 10 o
300
226
650
8 10 o
o 17 6
6 17 6
15 2 6
2 12 6
5 7 6
i 13 6
900
i 15 o
4 15 o
100
3 IS o
I IO O
s. d.
O 12 6
046
009
o i 3
010
O 2 O
030
3 5 o
076
276
080
076
9 10 o
I IO O
026
12 6
o 15 o
020
315 o
i 15 o
060
2 10
050
096
O IO O
060
076
039
O 17
Balkis Consolidated
Bankets .. ...
Bonnie Dundee ..
Black Reef
Central Lanylaagte ..
City and Suburban
Croesus ...
Durban Roodeport
Evelyn
Heriot
Joe's Luck ... . . ...
Jubilee .
Jumpers... . . . ...
Knight's .
Langlaayte
Block B
May Consolidated
Moodie's Gold
Moss Rose
Pigg's Peak
Royal
Sheba Gold
262
LAND :
Name of Mine
Paid per
Share.
Price
3oth March, 1889.
Price
30th June, 1891.
r l
s. d.
21 O O
s. d.
076
Robinson ... ... ... ...
/"r paid UD
60 o o
' "
226
Simmer and Jack ...
Standard ...
i
jo 5 o
226
$ s O
3 15 o
12 6
^ o o
United Langlaayte ...
Van Ryn
I IO O
lie o
050
o i 6
o 7 o
006
"Wernmer ... ... ...
12 C O
276
3 IO O
o i 6
Wolhuta
4c o
J
076
To these may be added the following i shares of
South African and other mines which have fallen to a
low price : Bantjes are now quoted at 45. 6d., Barrett's
Gold, is. Qd. ; Battery Reef, 55. ; Cornucopia, 2s. ;
Champion Reef, 75. 6d. ; Cumberland, 6d. ; Day Dawn
Block, 75. 6d. ; De Kaap, 2s. ; Doomkof, gd. ; Du Preeg,
6d. ; Eagle, 35. ; Eagle Hawk, 2s. ; El Callao ^5, paid
155.; Esmeralda, is. 6d. ; Etheredge, 6d. But it would
be wearisome to continue the list. It may be sufficient
to say that out of 272 mines quoted on joth June
last, and nearly all with i fully paid-up shares,
only- 36 stood at above par, while the majority were
worth less than five shillings, and very many could be
bought for a few pence. Such are some of the final
results of the great craze for mining investments.
I have already said that American railroad stocks are
for the most part a long way below par. So far as the
ordinary stocks go there is little reason to wonder at this,
although great reason to wonder at the infatuation with
which English buyers purchased these stocks. As a rule
the market for American railroad stocks is confined to
preference shares and mortgage. Only 58 ordinary
stocks are quoted on our market ; of these eight only are
above par, four are above 70 for the 100 dollar shares,
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 263
and eleven above 40. The fact is that in most United
States railways the ordinary stocks never were worth
more than the paper upon which they were printed.
The money paid for them was never used, and never
intended to be used, for the construction or working of
the lines. It was simply put into the pockets of New
York millionaires. In innumerable cases it has been
swept away by the fact that the holders of mortgage
bonds have foreclosed, after which the shares are wiped
out of existence. The process by which the above
ordinary stocks were created is carefully described by
Mr. Clews in his book called " Thirty-eight Years
in Wall Street," and the accuracy of the descrip-
tion has recently been confirmed in an article by the
Duke of Marlborough. When a railway in the United
States had to be built, it was usually built entirely by the
moneys received for the first mortgage bonds. Enough
of these were issued to lay and equip the line, and the
promoters who issued the bonds managed, as a rule, to
become also the contractors, under another name, and
to secure by the double position a handsome profit. But
in addition to the mortgage bonds, the money received for
which was really employed on the railway, a large
number of ordinary shares were issued, the money
received for which was not used for the railway at all but
simply passed to the credit of the promoters' private
account. It mattered little if these shares were sold at a
discount. The remedy for that was to increase their
number, and whatever they sold for was all profit. They
were largely sold in England, and some of the railway
oligarchy in New York obtained high and deserved
reputation for the skilful way in which prospectuses were
drawn up, and English money secured. This art of
advertising a desert as if it were a garden of Eden has
264 LAND I
been assiduously cultivated from the days of young Martin
Chuzzlewit until now. Perhaps some of our English
limited companies could supply similar examples, but the
Directors* Liability Act has put a sharp curb on the
exuberant imagination of promoters. It is not too much
to say that scores or hundreds of millions have been paid
by British investors for shares which represented nothing
but a name and a remote and very doubtful possibility.
EDW. J. GIBBS.
LONDON, $ist October, 1891.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 265
CHAPTER XXX.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A COMPANY
PROMOTER.
BY H. DAWSON,
Author of jztimerous Articles on Financial Matters.
COMPANY-PROMOTING has changed sadly for the worst. A
few years ago it was really an interesting occupation, but,
owing to various causes, and especially the keen com-
petition which has arisen, and to the large accession to
our ranks, it is now risky and really uncomfortable work.
The law, too, has been busy tightening its grasp upon all
those who are engaged in starting or managing Joint
Stock enterprises. Numerous and quite unnecessary
technicalities have been introduced, and it is somewhat
difficult to steer clear of the many pitfalls which await
the unwary.
It is many years since I turned my attention to
Company-promoting ; prior to doing so I had had a
somewhat chequered experience. I had tried many
things and had been more or less successful with all
of them. Just before beginning my new operations
I was engaged in a not interesting task of securing
advertisements for a publication, the utility of which
had been suggested to me. I was doing fairly well,
but the work was very hard and my partner was
inclined to shirk it. I had just completed a rather
266 LAND :
unprofitable morning's work, and feeling despondent, I
turned into a wine-bar in the City, a few hundred yards
from the Royal Exchange. There I met a gentleman and
we got into conversation. He told me he was engaged
in bringing out a company which was to purchase a
patent for manufacturing candles. The subject interested
me, and I treated my new acquaintance to several glasses
of wine, as well as to numerous questions. By degrees
I discovered that he was to pay the patentee about ^200
for a valuable (?) invention which he was selling again to
the company for no less a sum than ,25,000 in cash,
and a substantial number of fully-paid shares, which he
said he was compelled to take, otherwise the public
would not believe in the thing. After a little further
conversation I found that this profitable transaction for
my friend was the work of a very few days. I think six
weeks at the outside. Leaving the wine-bar I reflected
on the subject-matter of the conversation I had had. I
considered my own position ; the numerous insults and
disappointments to which I was subjected in securing my
advertisements, and the paltry return they yielded when
obtained, and contrasted all with the glorious chances I
had had expounded to me in the wine-bar. I resolved
that night to have done with advertisements and to try
patents. The next morning I was early at the wine-bar.
As I anticipated, my acquaintance of yesterday was not
long in following me. A few glasses of wine ensued
and I boldly suggested the subject of a partnership.
He jibbed a little, and evidently wanted the whole of
his profit. I discussed the patent, asked him if he had
any statistics as to the number of candles used nightly.;
put down various figures on paper for his edification,
and ultimately we came to the conclusion that a partner-
ship would not be undesirable, but that the terms upon
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 267
which the company was to obtain the patent were very
much too low. This was the beginning. After a good
deal of haggling we came to terms, but had some con-
siderable difficulty in getting the directors of the candle
company to agree to our terms, and they only did so after
we had somewhat modified them. The company was
launched, but. it was not altogether a success ; still I
cleared by my first effort about ^3000 in hard cash, and
obtained possession of ^5000 worth of fully-paid shares.
These, however, I regret to say, proved valueless, as
owing to the mismanagement of the company, on the
part of the directors, the undertaking very soon after-
wards found a resting place in an accountant's office.
Having made a beginning, and being a really energetic
man, I very soon set to work with other schemes, and in
one year I formed five companies for the purchase of
patents, two mining companies, a bank, and an insurance
company and a dressmakers' association. I am sorry to
say, however, that all these concerns were not successful.
I had not quite caught the public fancy, and in two
instances I was severely bitten. In fact my banking
experience was decidedly disastrous, as the concern
which I intended to form into a worthy successor
to the Bank of England was very rotten, and it
was necessary for all concerned in the matter to
change their addresses late at night, as well as their
names. I fear a good many of the public suffered as well
as myself. I know for several days some suspicious-
looking characters followed me about in a most unpleasant
manner ; but, after about a week's inactivity, it suddenly
occurred to me it would be good for the shareholders to
meet and discuss their grievances. In two of my other
enterprises I recollected that obnoxious individuals had
circularised their fellow shareholders. Why should I not
268 LAND :
do likewise ? No sooner had I thought of the idea than
I was at work, but I had a difficulty to face. I knew if
1 wrote to the shareholders and gave them my address I
would have rather a warm quarter-of-an-hour. I there-
fore adopted the somewhat bold expedient of calling upon
a shareholder, a gentleman whom luckily I found to be an
invalid, and after a short interview persuaded him that I
was a very much maligned man. He read through my
circular and signed it. This was what I wanted. I had
it lithographed, signature and all, and taking an address
in the City my fellow-shareholders received by the next
morning's post a circular from their invalid colleague. As
I had anticipated all were ready to support the <4 invalid "
and to heap their abuse on me. I really felt somewhat
amused as I opened their letters. Their remarks were
very vindictive, and they were quite prepared to support
the " invalid " in any steps he might take against the
base promoter. Of course, I had a sympathetic reply sent
out again from the "invalid," and quite friendly relations
were thus established ; in fact, several called, but the old
man I had in my employ was careful not to introduce
them to the " invalid." Matters were progressing most
favourably ; a subscription list had been started to defray
the costs of any action taken against myself. I opened
an account in the name of the " invalid " in one of the
banks, and I most scrupulously employed the money
thus acquired in paying my office expenses, costs of
postage, circulars, etc. The time, however, was getting
on, and it was necessary that the shareholders should
soon meet, and I foresaw a difficulty in dealing with the
" invalid." I thought over several plans, but for a
whole week I could not solve the difficulty. On Sunday
afternoon, however, I resolved to call on the " invalid."
I did so, and imagine my surprise when I found that
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 269
the good gentleman had died on the night of my first
visit. The difficulty was solved. It was now only
necessary to obtain another shareholder, or a gentleman
to represent the "invalid." As I came away from the
house of the " invalid," who had so ably assisted me but
who, alas ! had departed this life without knowing how
very much he had benefited me, I thought of a friend
of mine who would make an excellent executor for
him, and who would be just the person to meet the
shareholders and revile me. I saw him as quickly
as possible, and after a little hesitation on his part,
I persuaded him to undertake the office. The meeting
was called, the executor's address (which, by the way
I had written), was excellent, and was received with great
applause. Resolutions were carried, the executor was
thanked most cordially and everything was left in his
hands, and I could, consequently, resume my daily work
without fear of interruption. I suppose it is hardly
necessary to say that the "executor" did not take
proceedings against me, but was " advised by Counsel that
the shareholders had better consent to a voluntary
liquidation " ; which they did. This event took place
during the early years of my promoting experience.
These years were not particularly profitable, still I made
a few thousands, and lost a few thousands on the Stock
Exchange and lived very comfortably.
My time, however, was coming. An ingenious
German called upon me one day with a sweet little
invention, quite the thing for the ladies. Nearly every-
one has seen people struggling with brooms and brushes
cleaning carpets. My German caller had invented the
neatest little arrangement for accomplishing this without
any trouble, and without any dust, that it was possible to
imagine, if it would only work. It could be made and
270 LAND :
sold, so he led me to believe, at a handsome profit for a
few shillings. I bought that invention, or at least I
arranged with the German that I would find the money for
manufacturing, etc., and pay him a royalty upon all machines
sold if he assigned me the patent. After a little negoti-
ation I found myself the proud possessor of his patent.
I lost no time in preparing a plausible prospectus which
carefully set forth the numerous advantages to be obtained
by using the machine; the enormous profits which were to
be realised by the sale which was sure to follow its intro-
duction, and indeed when I had finished the prospectus I
could hardly convince myself that my little treasure was not
a perfect gold mine. Unfortunately, just when I had got
thus far my supply of cash ran out, and I was vulgarly
near being " stone broke/' I consulted a friend or two
on the subject, and they consented to join me in engineer-
ing my treasure, and forming a syndicate to bring out a
company. A difficulty, however, arose. We could not
get the machine made at anything like the price we
anticipated ; go where we would, try as we would, all
manufacturers were unwilling to quote anywhere near the
German's figures. Still our syndicate prospectus and
circular letter had brought us up sufficient money to
bring out the company, and we thought, after mature
consideration, that our manufacturing friends might be
wrong, and our German friend right, so we determined to
go on with the scheme. We had several machines made
at considerably more than six times the cost mentioned
in the prospectus. These worked admirably, and we
employed several nice-looking housemaids to use the
machines in a shop window. The result was truly
magic, In a few hours after we had issued the pro-
spectus of the company the whole of the share capital
had been subscribed, and we were positively inundated
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 271
with orders for the machine. Postal orders came in by
the score. So many orders reached us that the postal
authorities actually grew suspicious and employed detec-
tives to watch our office. The company was a brilliant
success as far as I was concerned. I cleared by its
promotion about ,10,000 in hard cash, and very many
thousand shares ; but here again these proved valueless,
as the directors turned out to be utterly incompetent, as
they could not get the machines made at our price.
Two other small things came off about this time, and
in a few weeks I found myself, from being penniless, a
happy possessor of ,20,000. I had almost made up my
mind to retire, but the shareholders in the Sweeping
Company grew exceedingly restless, and this restlessness
resulted in a big storm which made me decide to visit the
States. There, finding time hang somewhat heavily on
my hands, I embarked into various speculations. At first
I was very successful and matters went well. Touch
what I would, fortune smiled upon me. I enjoyed the
game and took to plunging, but for some unknown cause,
or whether it was that the Yankees were too sharp, as
soon as my speculations reached three or four figures, I
began to lose rapidly. Before many months were out it
was necessary for me to leave New York and proceed
South. Here, however, my reception was not particularly
encouraging, and I could do nothing, and I resolved once
more to try my luck this side of the herring pond.
I returned very quietly. During my journey across I
had the good fortune to meet with a clergyman who was
very much interested in speculations. He put me on my
feet by relieving me of some shares which I had been
vainly endeavouring to sell elsewhere. For a little time
we were great friends, but he grew sceptical as to the
value of the shares, and made some exceedingly
272 LAND :
ungentlemanly charges against me, and I had once
more to change my address. This unpleasantness blew
over, and with the aid of one or two of my old friends,
and a most valuable colleague in the shape of a real live
Major, whom I met on the racecourse at Sandown, I
soon found myself busily employed. The Major had
the most unblemished reputation, and we became fast
friends. I made him director of a syndicate I formed ;
its chief object was to undertake anything Bunder the
sun ; its memorandum and articles were decidedly wide,
and I think, barring murder, we could do anything.
We took an excellent suite of offices, opened a modest
banking account, and began operations. A grand
scheme presented itself. I was somewhat dubious at
first as to its feasibility, but as our banker's balance
was getting low, it was necessary that we should make a
bold bid for success. This we did by founding an
association for supplying the Metropolis with firewood
on co-operative principles. 1 1 is astonishing what weight a
circular signed by a Major will have with a certain class
of individuals. I prepared the circular and my gallant
Major signed it, inviting noblemen and gentlemen
holding high positions to co-operate with him in
establishing on a firm basis the " Firewood Associa-
tion." In a few weeks everything was completed. A
splendid prospectus, about one of the most respectable I
have ever seen, was prepared and ready for issue. I still
had my doubts as to whether the public would come in,
but these were speedily dispersed when we brought the
concern out. There was quite a rush for prospectuses.
The capital was subscribed for three or four times over
in less than twelve hours. Indeed, so eager were certain
gentlemen to obtain shares in our Association, that one
gentleman travelled up from Brighton, called at his
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 273
bankers, filled in a cheque for ^3000, and wrote on it
that he would accept shares for nothing less than that
amount. I had a good deal to do with the management
of this Company. Hitherto nearly all my failures had been
due to the want of business capacity of the directors, and I
was determined that this should no longer be the case.
The management was a peculiar one. There was a
board and a committee. One was ornamental and the
other practical. I belonged, of course, to the practical
body, which was composed of my friends. We set to
work and voted to ourselves a small remuneration for
our services in promoting the undertaking. We also
voted away several other sums of money for promoting
other industries, and began our operations ; but, some-
how or other, the shareholders would not be quiet.
I verily believe, had they let me alone, I could have
made a handsome fortune for each one of them. But no,
they began to try and wreck their own property.
Several stormy meetings were held, and numerous
circulars were issued, but up to a point I held my
own. Suddenly, however, I discovered that a large
number of shareholders, who had hitherto been my warm
supporters, were getting lukewarm, and the adjournment
of one meeting was carried only by the narrowest
majority. I could not risk another, so I conceived the
idea of making a call, which disqualified about one-half
of the shareholders from voting. Nearly all of these
were antagonistic to myself. I also distributed shares
to various men whom I employed, and to my friends on
whom I could rely, and thus we managed to carry the next
meeting by a large majority of proxies. The committee
appointed by the opposition shareholders were, however,
not to be done. They went into Court, and after a severe
fight the company was ordered to be wound up. But
I may remark that, in my opinion, the Judge strained
274 LAND :
the law severely on the side of the shareholders. This
result was most disastrous. The shareholders were
vindictive in the extreme, and I think, if I had not been
a particularly active man, some of them would have had
my blood. They really thirsted for revenge. I never
saw a more inhuman lot in my life. I am now con-
vinced that one must never expect gratitude from a
British shareholder. Give him good dividends, and he
wants more ; treat him moderately well, and he thirsts
for your blood. As I just said, the winding up of
my " Firewood Company " was most disastrous. My
health immediately required a change of climate, and
I decided to winter abroad. I had, of course, made
a few thousands by the promotion of the company, and
was able to live pretty comfortably for a time ; still I could
not altogether forsake my old resorts, and with the aid of
a pair of black glasses, a wig, and a respirator, I am
able to visit London on occasions without suffering any
ill effects, although I am advised by my doctors that
it is an exceedingly risky thing to do. Owing to my
health not having yet recovered the severe strain it
underwent I am still compelled to take great care of
myself, and I consequently do very little in the way
of promoting. As I hinted before, the game is
hardly now worth the candle. Thanks to some of the
promoting fraternity, the British Investor has become
sceptical of prospectuses, and I fear it will be some time
before he once more regains his original guilelessness ; until
he does I think I shall abstain from helping him further.
The above narrative may to some readers appear to
be a mere sketch of the imagination. It is, however,
nothing of the sort. Every word written is vouched for
by documents which have been shown me during my
conversations with various promoters.
H. DAWSON.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
275
CHAPTER XXXI.
FORTUNES BY LAND BUYING.
From The Argus t Melbourne.
THE following is a statement of the prices which lands
in Melbourne were sold at in the year 1837, and the
prices which they are worth in the market to-day,
including the buildings upon them :
COLLINS, WILLIAM, KING, AND FLINDERS STREETS.
Lot.
Sale Price in
1837-
Purchaser.
Present Value in
1889.
2
I
2
3
4
32
25
27
27
Jno. P. Fawkner
Jno. P. Fawkner
John Moss
Henry Howie
165,000
85,800
85,800
85,800
it
Joseph Sutherlan
L. M'Allister
l"
85,800
85,800
7
29
James Simpson
..
.
85,800
8
75
Tno. Bateman
..
198,000
9
35
Fras. Nodin
..
m
148,500
10
40
Fras. Nodin
,
148,500
ii
65
Jno. Bateman
264,000
12
33
Jas. Smith...
..
132,000
*3
40
Jas. Smith...
..
132,000
14
42
David Fisher
..
.
132,000
15
33
Skene Craig
..
132,000
10
26
Wilson & Eyre
132,000
I 7
3i
Wilson & Eyre
..
132,000
18
50
J. H. Wedge
212,800
19
4i
Thos. Brown
..
.
132,000
20
42
J. H. Wedge
132,000
276
LAND :
COLLINS, ELIZABETH WILLIAM, AND FLINDERS STREETS.
Lot.
Sale Price in
1837-
Purchaser.
Present Value in
1889.
I
I
40
Horatio Cooper
230,500
2
34
Mich. Carr
118,800
3
35
Jno. Mills
118,800
4
29
Jas. Simpson
118,800
1
32
35
Thos. Field
L. M'Allister
Il8,8oo
118,800
7
35
L. M'Allister
Il8,8oO
8
46
Dr. Thomson
428,000
9
35
L. M'Allister
247,000
10
3i
Geo. Coulstock
247,000
ii
40
Geo. Coulstock
493,500
12
22
Joseph Hewson ...
198,000
I?
2O
John Piers
198,000
o
14
20
Thos. Napier
198,000
15
21
William Sharpe ...
198,000
16
19
Mich. Fender
198,000
17
2 3
John Batson
198,000
18
42
B. Willis
262,000
TQ
<f^
JO
R Russell
o v *')*-"-"-'
198 ooo
*y
20
J' J
4 8
Michael Carr
198,000
BOURKE, SWANSTON, ELIZABETH, AND COLLINS STREETS.
Lot.
Sale Price in
'837-
Purchaser.
Present Value in
1889.
2
T
Tas Ross ... ...
AQ~2 COO
2
18
Henry Batman
'Vy ot j v -' 1 -'
198,000
3
18
Gilbert Marshall
I98,OOO
4
19
Synnott
198,000
5
18
George Scarborough
198,000
6
20
Henry Howie
198,000
7
29
Henry Howie
198,000
8
Henry Howie
493,500
9
26
John Woods
250,000
10
30
Chas. Swanston
223,600
ii
30
Barry Cottar
3OO,OOO
12
22
Henry Allan
188,800
T "3
2O
Jas. Hill
Il8,8oo
H
20
Jas. Macdonald
118,800
TO
Darke
Il8,8oo
16
20
J. H. Lancey
118,800
17
20
Jos. Moore
118,800
18
28
John Roach
280,000
19
28
John Roach
203,000
20
22
John Gardner
203,000
1
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 277
BOURKE, ELIZABETH, QUEEN, AND COLLINS STREETS.
Lot.
Sale Price in
1837.
Purchaser.
Present Value in
1889.
I
61
E. W. Umphelby
362,000
2
28
Thos. Combs
198,000
28
A. Willis
1 08 ooo
4
3
Hugh M'Lean
198,000
1
23
23
John Piers
Rob. Fleming
198,000
198,000
7
23
Thos. Brown
198,000
8
4i
Thos. Brown
493. 5
9
10
42
24
Jno. Highett
Henry Hoddle
203,000
198,000
ii
3
Henry Hoddle
247,500
12
13
21
2O
John Hughes
Horatio Cooper
99,000
99,000
14
21
William Evans ...
99,000
15
23
David Snillan ...
99,000
16
17
18
11
40
Thos. Walker
Jas. Smith
Thos. Brown
99,000
99,000
247,500
19
41
Thos. Brown
198,000
20
4 6
Vaughan ...
198,000
BGURKE, QUEEN, ELIZABETH, AND COLLINS STREETS.
Lot.
Sale Price in
1837-
Purchaser.
Present Value in
1889.
I
2
9
Wilson J. Eyre
Geo. Smith
289,600
198,000
3
43
Geo. Robson
198,000
4
42
Geo. Lilly
198,000
5
4i
Ebden
198,000
6
AC
Ebden ...
108 ooo
8
TO
1
Ebden
Bowerman
i^/^,ww^
198,000
362,000
9
6 9
Jas. Connell
198,000
10
55
Thos. J. Weatherley
198,000
ii
70
Geo. Mercer ...
247,500
12
35
Henry Smith ...
99,000
J 3
36
William Hutton
99,000
14
36
Jno. P. Fawkner
99,000
15
39
Thos. Walker
99,000
16
40
Thos. Walker
99,000
17
4i
Thos. Walker
99,000
18
67
J. H. Wedge
244,000
19
50
Fras. Nodin
165,000
20
56
George F. Read
165,000
Lots i, 8, 9, 10, n, 1 8, 19 and 20 in each of the blocks are corner
plots, and contain a superficial area of about 20,691 square feet. All
the other lots in each of the blocks contain a superficial area of about
21,780 square feet, being exactly half an acre.
278 LAND :
The results as set forth above should be an encourage-
ment to investors to put some of their money in town
and suburban lands.
When Queen Victoria Street in the City was formed
a few years ago, several fortunes were made by those who
leased and re-leased, bought and sold, the plots offered.
The same thing is being done now in other newly-formed
eading thoroughfares of the metropolis. The same thing
is constantly being done in the suburbs around London,
where land bought at the rate of a few hundred pounds
per acre twenty years ago is now worth at the rate of
thousands of pounds per acre.
These facts should stimulate capitalists to put some
of their money into land.
C. F. DOWSETT.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 279
CHAPTER XXXII.
INVESTMENTS.
BY C. W. HECKETHORN,
Author of " The Secret Societies of all Ages attd Countries? " Roba (Fltalia, a
Record of Travel " Essays, Biographies, Reviews, Original Essays, &c.
IT requires a mental effort to realize the full meaning of
the term " Land," for it expresses that which is the sole
but inexhaustible source of all, which man calls property,
the foundation not only of all his material prosperity, but
of all his moral and intellectual progress. The three
physical wants of man housing, clothing and food are
all supplied by the land. But it does a great deal more
than this. The treasures with which it teems, and which
man seizes, making himself master of all their inherent
properties, virtues, and powers, by chemically and
mechanically manipulating them ; these treasures having,
by passing through the crucible of the human mind, been
elaborated into roots of wealth and forms of grace,
beautify the existence of man, and ennoble his aspirations.
Mankind would never have emerged from barbarism ;
science and art would have no existence, had man not
sought out and discovered the land's hidden wealth ; and
we find, as a matter of fact, that in regions where the
soil is poor, deficient in mineral stores or a productive
vegetation, man remains in a low stage of physical and
mental development ; we may give the Esquimaux as an
instance.
280 LAND :
Hence, seeing that whatever not only renders man's
existence on earth possible, but makes life worth living,
is derived from the land, we shall not be surprised to find
that in all countries, as soon as they attained to a certain
civilization and a settled government, the latter proclaimed
itself lord paramount of the land, and maintains that claim
to the present day, and so jealously as to exclude the alien
from acquiring any share of it, even by legitimate
purchase. Hence the strong desire of almost every
citizen of any State to become, as soon as his means will
allow him to do so, the owner, subject to legislative
restrictions, of a portion of his native soil. His object
may be simply the enjoyment of the pleasures of a country
life the purest and most lasting of all pleasures or he
may aim at social or political influence, or he may have
the ambition of desiring to become the founder of a
county family ; but, whatever his object, it is only as the
owner of the land, that he can expect to participate
directly in the benefits derivable from it.
Let us inquire somewhat more closely what these
benefits already generally indicated are.
The value of land is determined by a variety of con-
ditions and circumstances, which offer to investors,
whether for pleasure or profit, with the most divergent
views and purposes, an almost unlimited choice. The
conditions and circumstances referred to above vary
according to time and place ; but there is one advantage
inherent in land which is universal and constant : land is
an indestrztctibie possession, it cannot take wings to
itself and fly away, as other property may ; no natural or
artificial convulsions can annihilate it. We know, of
course, that there are regions subject to the eruptions of
volcanos, to frequent earthquakes ; or, to come nearer
home, that on our own eastern coast, portions of land
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 28 1
occasionally drop into the sea ; but we are not writing
for investors who would buy land in such localities !
Land, therefore, is the securest investment for capital.
Some kinds of land may be used for agricultural purposes.
True, there may be periods of depression, caused by bad
seasons, foreign competition, general stagnation of trade,
and other causes ; but as behind the darkly clouded
sky, which is but a temporary condition, there is the per-
manent and powerful sun, which may at any moment
re-appear ; so there is latent in the soil a reproductive
power, which may by some splendid harvest compensate its
owner for years of disappointed hopes. We have passed
recently through a period of depression, which however
may be considered to be at an end. Those who were
wise enough to purchase land, when it was a drug in the
market, will reap beneficial results ; but such chances still
occur. It is not my province to go into statistics and
technicalities they will be found in the contributions of
abler writers than I am, on the subject of farming and
kindred topics, in other parts of this volume ; but I know
they will confirm the above statements. When I think
of the millions of pounds which have been sunk in
foreign and mostly unproductive investments, often
ending in the loss of the capital itself, the conviction is
forced on me that if a portion of that money had been
devoted to the development of British land, the cry of
agricultural distress would never have been heard in
these islands.
And the pursuit of farming may be made a pleasure
as well as a source of profit. It need not be carried on
on a farm of hundreds or thousands of acres ; villa
farming, horticulture, and even dairy farming may
pleasantly and successfully be pursued on small plots of
land, and afford the man of business, when he has left his
282 LAND I
office, warehouse, or factory, a healthful recreation,
combined with the pleasure of resting, when so inclined,
under his own vine and fig-tree,* and having on his
dinner table the freshly gathered fruit and vegetables
from his own orchard and kitchen-garden. But to render
the enjoyment of his country-estate, however small it may
be, complete, it should be his own freehold.
Let us turn to another phase of the land question ; let
us refer to the mineral wealth concealed within the
bowels of the earth. The mineral produce of England
and Wales includes coal, iron, copper, lead, zinc, tin, and
gold ; marble and other valuable building stone abound.
This means riches to the fortunate owners of the land
where these products are found. And metals only need,
what their general name implies, l< seeking " or " searching
for " (jtAgra^aco), and may still be discovered in the most
unlikely places, and thus become not only figuratively but
literally mines of wealth to the proprietor of the soil.
Circumstances are constantly arising, which prove
favourable to the landowner. A new railway is projected,
or an old one extended, and land, perhaps quite unprofit-
able hitherto, at once acquires considerable value, and
even when the price to be paid for it has to be adjusted
by arbitration, it always is a remunerative one. Again,
the local or central authority decides on the formation of
a new road, or a canal ; the owner of the land through
which it is to pass has been known to obtain as much
for the strip he sold for the new road or canal, as he had
given for the whole estate out of which the small strip
was taken. It may be objected that the making of a
new road may injure the owner of property fronting an
" Vine and fig-tree ! " the reader, especially the London reader, will exclaim.
The writer of these lines sits under his vine and fig-tree every summer's day, though he
lives in South London.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 283
already existing road, by diverting the traffic, and thus
rendering his frontage less valuable. True, I have in
my mind's eye a case in point in South London. To
avoid a' short bend in an old road, a new one was cut
through the intervening property a very profitable pro-
ceeding to its owner and the owners of the land and
houses in the semi-circular bend thus left out in the cold,
found the value of their property greatly deteriorated ;
the tradespeople, who tenanted the houses, applied to the
parish for compensation for loss of custom, which they
failed to get. But compensation came to them and to
their landlords in another form. The formation of the
new bit of road, which greatly facilitated access to the
locality, caused a large piece of garden ground, which lay
on one side of the deserted road, to be covered with
some hundreds of houses, thus securing to the desponding
tradesmen more custom than they had ever had before,
and rendering the owners' property more valuable than
it had ever been.
I spoke just now of "land, perhaps quite unprofitable
hitherto." When it is so, it is usually the owner's fault,
either from neglect or ignorance. There is no land in
these islands, having any commercial value, such land
as a prudent man would buy, which need be unpro-
fitable. Land may be useless for agricultural purposes,
it may be uncultivated, and yet pay. I am informed that
a gentleman, who owns about 7000 acres of uncultivated
land in one of the midland counties, uses it for plantations
and the rearing of game and rabbits ; this, with the
timber felling, pays him. Or the land may be utilized
for building purposes. And this brings me to one of
the most fertile sources of income to be found in land.
With a population yearly increasing at a rapid rate,
the annual demolition of thousands of houses in crowded
284 LAND :
neighbourhoods for railway extensions, public offices or
parks, and other objects, we need not be surprised at the
gigantic building operations going on round our large
towns in the erection of workmen's and middle-class
dwellings, whereby splendid revenues are coined in the
shape of ground rents. In an article entitled, "The
Past and Present Value of Building Land in and near
London," and published in the last December number
of the " Land Roll," I have shown how enormously the
value of land has been increased, and is daily increasing,
in and around the metropolis, wherever turned into build-
ing land ; and this increase may be, and in fact is being,
obtained in all parts of the country by the same process of
turning fields into streets. !t is, I admit, grievous to the
lover of fine landscapes, of verdant pastures, of old histori-
cal parks, to see turf and trees disappear under ugly bricks
and mortar ; but necessity has no law, or, indeed, is all
inexorable law. Where houses are required, houses must
and will be built, and apart from the sentimental aspect
of the matter, this process of creating new towns or suburbs
is not one to be regretted. Barren wastes and desolate
districts are thus made productive and full of life. I
remember being shown, some years ago, in the neighbour-
hood of Col wall, in Herefordshire, a number of small and
most tasteless villas built on the slope of a hill, producing
only stones and stunted shrubs ; but the villas being
quickly occupied by inhabitants of Ledbury or Malvern,
produced the enterprising owner of the land golden
guineas. Besides, these building operations spread all
over the country, create and find employment for hundreds
of thousands of skilled workmen, whose occupation in the
erection of improved, sanitary, and often cheerful dwell-
ings, is not only beneficial to themselves and their
families, but advantageous to the community for the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 285
wages they earn, and the employment provided for local
labourers, and the custom brought to local tradesmen,
mean prosperity for the places where the work is carried
on. There is a cheap kind of philanthropy which consists
in abusing the speculative builder ; but if he be not what
is popularly known as a jerry-builder, his pursuit is no
more reprehensible than that of the boat-builder or of the
cotton spinner. Both these latter work to supply an
existing or expected want ; if there be over-production,
it is the producers who suffer from, the public gain by, it.
In the same way, if the speculative builder build more
houses than are wanted in the locality he has chosen,
rents must come down, and the public are the gainers.
Not all speculative builders are rogues ; moreover,
most of them are tied down by very stringent clauses
in the leases granted by the ground landlords, to erect
sound and substantial buildings. But this, after all, is
only an obiter dictum, suggested by the theme. The
honesty or dishonesty of the builder lies beyond the
sphere of my discourse, and does not affect the principle
I advocate, and this principle is that, land being the
source and comprisal of all the values constituting
industry and commerce, and as such the original of all
in which man can speculate, an investment in land is a
dipping into the cornucopias of Nature itself, with the
certainty of drawing therefrom, sooner or later, the
anticipated prizes. We hear of gigantic fortunes made
by successful commercial speculations, by lucky hits in
mining enterprise, by striking u ile" ; we find that those
among the speculators, who are wise, invest their wealth
in land, so as to rest it for ever on a safe basis ; for
trading ventures may fail, mines and "ile" give out;
while the produce of land, especially if it shows itself in
the shape of ground rents, is not only permanent but
286 LAND :
likely to increase, and the owner can in perfect security
enjoy his otium cum dignitate, whilst his golden apples
are ripening. The wealth of the greatest financier rests
on an unstable foundation ; political convulsions, monetary
catastrophes may at any time give it a rude shock as
recent experience may teach us ; but fortunes such as those
of the Astors, the Westminsters and the Bedfords, seem
above the attacks of fate, for these fortunes have their
roots, so to speak, in the very soil of the globe itself.
True, not every one can be or become the owner of a
vast domain, but all the advantages and charms of one
may be reproduced on a reduced scale in the small estate.
The intending buyer of land, of course, is guided in
his selection by the object he has in view in making his
purchase. He may require the land for his own
occupation, either for pleasure or profit ; he may buy it
as an investment to be let on leases or otherwise, or to
be turned into a building estate, yielding ground rents ;
or he may acquire it on speculation, with a view to a
re-sale at an enhanced price in the near or distant future ;
he may require a water-frontage, or easy access to a
railway. In this selection, requiring considerable
technical knowledge, the purchaser needs sound advice.
It is the object of this book to give it him. And if acted
on, no investor in land will have reason to regret his
venture ; for it is quite certain that, whilst the industry
and commerce of this country are on the increase and
that they are so cannot be doubted its wealth will
increase, and consequently the demand for land for
business and pleasure. We know that broad expanses of
waste and totally unproductive land have, within the
memory of almost the youngest among us, by the
erection of factories been gradually covered with big
towns. But whilst the demand grows, the supply
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 287
cannot be increased, as that of almost any other
commodity ; and hence the land which remains disposable
must from year to year, in the eager competition for it,
command higher prices, and the large sums now
obtained for it in favoured localities will gradually
become the standard for most parts of the country ; as
we already find, to give an illustration, that the land
around what a few years ago were poor fishing villages,
now that they have become seaside resorts, is daily rising
in value.
I cannot conclude these remarks without expressing
the hope that our legislators will, when the occasion
arises, with firm decision stamp out the silly and wicked
schemes of would-be spoliators, who, under the fine name
of " nationalization of land," propose a wholesale robbery.
As long as principles of justice and common sense prevail
in this country, these schemes cannot succeed ; but to
propound them is an insult to Englishmen which should
not be tolerated.
C. W. HECKETHORN.
288 LAND :
CHAPTER XXXIII.
IMPROVING FARMS A SAFE INVESTMENT.
BY CHARLES E. CURTIS, F.S.I., F.S.S.
Professor of Forest Economy, Field Engineering, and General Estate Management at
the College of Agricidture, Downton, Salisbury ; Member of the American Academy
of Political and Social Science ; Consulting Forester to the Right Honourable Lord
O'Neill, Shanes Castle, Antrim, Ireland; Author of " Estate Management," 3rd
edition (Field Office}, "-Practical Forestry'" (Office of Land Agents' Record),
"Principles oj Forestry" (R.A. Society's Journal), " Valuation of Property
(Corporeal and Incorporeal)" &c.
WE are too apt when speaking of land to overlook the
fact that the term comprises something more than mere
soil. We are apt to forget, too, that in this highly
civilised country the term must be taken in its concrete
sense because it is impossible that land in its crude state
can be found, except in a few solitary instances of wastes,
which serve to prove the rule. To see and to be able to
appreciate land in its crude or prairie state we must look
beyond the circle of civilisation.
Land may be said to consist of two parts, first, the
land itself, which may be said again to consist of two
parts, namely, the soil and the minerals beneath it ; and
secondly, what man has placed upon it by skill and
investment of capital. The first is the natural, the second
the artificial component part.
It is in this country practically impossible to separate
these, for the value of land depends upon the quality of
the soil aided by artifice rather than upon its productive
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 289
qualities alone. Nevertheless the quality of the soil
apart from artificial assistance is the first element of
value, and all who attempt to value land will first consider
it. It must be clear that land naturally productive, that
is, possessing those ingredients essential to plant-life, in
abundance and in an available form, possesses something
which cannot be lost and cannot, in the same degree, be
added. Naturally fertile land will be always fertile;
though man may to some extent exhaust it, he cannot
completely rob it ; whereas naturally barren land, aided
by skill and expenditure of capital, may be rendered
productive, but the elements of production may be
readily lost.
If we except drainage, which is only occasionally
required, we shall find that rich and poor land require
the same amount of expenditure in buildings, fences,
roads, and so forth ; and if, say, five per cent, is required
upon the capital thus invested, the rent of the land itself
will be found to vary greatly. It is conceivable that
much of the poor land without buildings would command
no rent at all under present agricultural conditions,
whilst the richer land might let for a considerable sum.
It is clear, therefore, that the inherent capabilities of
the soil bear very directly upon the value of land. The
landowner who improves good land by the erection of
buildings, fences, and fixed machinery, or who makes
roads, and plants for shelter, is investing his capital well,
and with a certain prospect of a good return ; but if the
same investment is made upon poor land, there may be in
times of agricultural prosperity a fair return, but in times
of depression, the land may yield no interest in the shape
of rent at all. This being the case, care is needed in the
carrying out of permanent improvement, if it is to be
done upon purely business principles. If for the purpose
LAND I
of private residence, and with a view to pleasure, these
principles will not be so essential.
If land is bare, it will require for agricultural purposes a
house, cottages, farm buildings, fences, gates, roads, water
supply, perhaps drainage, and other matters not necessary
to specify. These, if well carried out, may cost from $
to ^10 an acre, according to the size of the farm and the
character of the buildings. As these buildings will
require a yearly expenditure to keep them in repair, say,
to the extent of half-a-crown an acre, we shall require,
with five per cent, upon the expenditure, from seven shillings
and sixpence to twelve shillings and sixpence an acre as
rent, apart from the rental value of the crude land. Now,
if land is good by this we mean that it possesses an
ample supply of plant food, that it is not too dependent
upon weather, that it is capable of being cultivated without
extraordinary horse-power and manual labour, and that
the site and aspect induce to rich harvests it will bear
this incumbrance ; if not it becomes a matter of doubt.
In determining how far a landowner may improve his
estate by investing capital in this manner, we cannot
altogether leave out the investment of capital by the
tenant. Under the English system land is as a rule
owned by one party and cultivated by another ; the one
invests his capital in the land and buildings, and the
other in stocking and working the farm. This latter, of
course, represents a temporary investment, as it will be so
far as possible withdrawn at the termination of his tenancy,
but in every change of tenancy something is left which
cannot be carried away, such as the manurial value of
feeding stuffs, manure, tillages, and so forth, and these
must be bought or taken to by the owner of the land.
This is constantly going on, so that some amount
must be added to the original expenditure in buildings
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 2QI
already alluded to. True, this sum may be to some
extent recovered when the farm is re-let, but those who
have had experience in these matters know that a loss is
almost invariably borne by the owner at every change.
This loss is capital invested in the land, and its tendency
is to decrease the interest upon the sum invested. If
instead of re-letting, the farm is occupied by the owner
the loss will be in almost every case greater.
The capital value of land is of course what it will
command in the market and has not necessarily anything
to do with the sum originally invested by the owner.
Supply and demand, beauty of scenery, presence of
timber, adaptability to sport, and so on, will probably have
a greater effect in value than the fact that so many
thousands of pounds have been sunk upon it. Neverthe-
less there can be no doubt that where money has been
wisely expended on farm houses, cottages, farm buildings,
and in the adoption of natural characteristics to the pro-
duction of crops, there will be an increased demand for
it, which means, of course, a full rental according to the
state of agriculture at the time. This will no doubt
mean a full percentage upon both the crude land and the
improvements. The owner of such a farm, too, is always
in the position to take advantage of the influences which
so greatly affect the agriculture of our day.
On the other hand if the land is poor and in low
condition and in a low state of fertility, for there is a
difference between condition and fertility ; if the house and
buildings are in a dilapidated condition and insufficient
for the requirements of the farm ; if the roads are in bad
order, and so forth, the letting can only take place on
such conditions as a peppercorn rent for a period,
assistance in the purchase of manures and feeding stuffs,
and, perhaps, by the payment of burdens usually borne
2Q2 LAND I
by the tenant. In addition to this the buildings must be
placed in repair, the fences be set up, roads made pass-
able, and other defects made good, which means invest-
ment of capital. Therefore there is the double loss, the
loss of rent and the loss accruing from the withdrawal of
capital otherwise invested.
Take as an example the case of a farm say of 500
acres, the soil of which is a fertile loam, but somewhat
out of condition through slovenly farming, the buildings
of which are in a state of dilapidation, the house unfit for
the requirements of a tenant of the present day, the fences
and gates out of repair, the live fences overgrown, roads
with deep ruts and unfit for heavy cartage, and altogether
in such condition as to render letting difficult and only at
a low rent. Will it -pay to invest capital in re-building
and repairing, in the erection of covered yards, in fitting
the house for a modern tenant, in drainage, in the repair
of fences, and so forth ? This is a question which the
landowner of the present day has to answer very often.
It is clear that without it there is nothing coming in at
all so that some expenditure is rendered a matter of
necessity. A moderate expenditure to fit the land for
simple agriculture will probably do no more than render
it possible to let the land, and the rent obtainable will
but suffice to pay a fair interest on the capital invested ;
the land will still yield nothing. What is required is to
obtain a return upon the capital and a rent for the crude
land. To bring this about the expenditure must be of a
two-fold character. There must be the outlay in buildings,
in repairs, in fencing, drainage, and so on, and in addition
inducements held out to the tenant to bring the land back
again into a fertile condition. Without his assistance the
expenditure, in our opinion, will be comparatively useless.
No landlord can farm so successfully as a good tenant,
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 293
but the tenant must be made to feel that it is worth his
while to improve the farm, and to leave it when he quits
in a condition to command a full rent. This, therefore,
is a matter of time. No capital can immediately renovate
the land which has been robbed ; it may set up the build-
ings and fences and repair the roads, but it cannot give
back the lime, the phosphates, the nitrogen, and other
ingredients of which it has been deprived, all in one
season. Therefore the sum invested in bringing back
this farm into orderly ways is only partly told when the
initial cost has been incurred ; there will be for years a
low rent, a helping hand, and at the end a liberal com-
pensation for unexhausted improvements something
more than can be secured by custom and the statutes.
All this is money and must be looked upon as such.
There is no doubt that judicious investment of capital
upon land with a view to promote economic production
does pay ; but money lavishly expended on good or bad
land must, from an investment point of view, end in
disappointment.
Let the landowner study well the soil itself, the site
and aspect, the water supply, the possibility of making
roads with a reasonable gradient, the proximity to markets,
and the adaptability to certain crops; and then consider how
he can best promote a full production by the expenditure
of capital. If he cannot see his way to five per cent,
and an increased rent of the land itself, there will be
naturally a doubt as to its wisdom, for improvement may
mean increased taxation, even if the rent is not materially
increased.
To render the foregoing hypothesis more clear it
may be well to bring it into figures. Figures, it is said,
may be made to prove anything, but in this case it is
simply to price the various acts of repair, and to ascertain
294 LAND :
whether a fair interest upon this sum will so increase the
rent of the farm as to render it still more difficult to let,
or whether it will render it more desirable and therefore
fit it to command a rent in excess of the interest and the
crude rent of the bare land.
It is of course impossible to take exact figures,
because this would imply a precise knowledge of the
state of dilapidation, and this is not professed. But if
the house and buildings are out of repair, the drains
choked and deranged, the fences overgrown, the gates
broken and decayed, the roads unfit for cartage, and the
land poverty-stricken, money somewhat as follows will
have to be expended :
s. d.
Repairs to house i.e., carpenters' work painting,
papering, white-washing, external painting, repairs
to tiles and roof timbers, re-laying of drains, and
sundry small items of repair . . . . . 60 o o
Repairs to the farm buildings, say . . . 50 o o
Repairs to field drainage i.e., examination and repairs
to outfalls, exposing and re-laying here and there, say 50 o o
Cutting back overgrown hedges, and trimming others 800
New gates, posts, ironwork, and hanging, say 6 at
305. each 900
Repairs to old gates 300
Repairs to farm roads, collection, and cartage of
stones, and breaking . . . . . .1000
^"190 o o
These figures are by no means excessive and do not
necessarily imply a sad state of dilapidation, but such an
expenditure to render the farm fit for occupation is a
serious matter to the owner. There can be no doubt,
however, that when this money has been expended there
will be an increased demand for the farm, and that more
than five per cent, upon the ^190 will be procurable as
increased rent.
The poverty-stricken state of the land, however, still
remains to be considered, and this, perhaps, is of greater
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 295
importance than the actual dilapidation of the structural
portion of the estate. It may be, under these circum-
stances, taken for granted that the quitting tenant has
not availed himself of the Agricultural Holdings Act of
1883, which, had he done so, would have enabled the
landowner to raise a counter-claim ; therefore, the only
recovery open to the owner would be an action in the
matter which probably he would consider inexpedient.
The incomer will, of course, look to the owner to tide
him over the first three or four years of his lease by
direct payment of money, by presents of cake or manures,
or by very substantial compensation when he quits.
This, however, is only a case of a farm the lease of
which has expired, and upon which it is necessary to
expend capital to render it fit for re-letting. The
matter becomes more important when a complete equip-
ment of buildings is needed. Let the farm, say, of
five hundred acres, have been an off-farm without any
buildings at all, or a portion of a larger farm set off with
a view of decreasing the area and increasing the
number of farms. To erect a farm-house and suitable
buildings with all the numerous requirements, a large
expenditure of capital will be necessary. The following
figures, though not professing to be accurate, will be
very near the mark, and near enough for the purpose of
this argument :
s. d.
A farm house ........ 800 o o
Two pair of cottages, that is four in all, for shepherd,
ploughman, cowman, and labourer . . . 800 o o
A central block of farm buildings with all necessary
appliances, including nag-stable, coach-house, dairy,
and outbuildings ....... 1400 o o
Walls to yards, road making, tanks, water-pipes,
troughs, &c. 200 o o
One covered yard, say 300 superficial yards @ 75. . 105 o o
Fencing of paddock, orchards, gardens, &c. . . 5000
^3355 o o
296 LAND I
or in all ^3355 or nearly 6 155. per acre. Now if the
farm unequipped was worth, exclusive of tithes, rates, and
other charges, 155. per acre or ^375, it must with 5 per
cent, upon this expenditure be worth ^175 more, or
^550 in all, if the investment is to prove satisfactory. This
we think would undoubtedly be obtainable if the farm
possessed all those attributes which might be reasonably
expected. Of course many farms with a complete
equipment, such as this and in certain favoured districts,
would let for much more, but we prefer to take an
ordinary case without question as to position. At the
present time farms can be had for any rent, from a
pepper-corn to pounds an acre, so that it is impossible to
deal with exact figures.
o
Sufficient has been said to prove that capital wisely
expended upon land will yield a reasonable return.
CHARLES E. CURTIS.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 297
CHAPTER XXXIV.
SMALL HOLDINGS AS AN INVESTMENT.
BY W. J. HARRIS, F.S.S.
THERE has been great controversy as to the advantages
which can be offered to the labouring classes by giving
them facilities to become farmers on a small scale, and
thus stemming the constant drain of the rural population.
As a political question, this subject is constantly being
put forward by both parties in the State. It is used as a
sort of political stalking horse, and when an election is
near, the interest that is suddenly assumed on behalf of
the rural voters is almost ludicrous. The correspondence
which recently took place in one of our largely circu-
lated Liberal journals was too much tinged with political
controversy to throw much light on the subject. The
special correspondent studiously kept away from those
parts of the country where a thoroughly good feeling
exists between landowner, tenant, and labourer, and
equally studiously made the most of districts in which
the destitution was greatest. The correspondents who
have written letters in the same paper, have been too
openly seeking for the disestablishment of the Church,
and attributing to the Parson's influence all the evils that
exist, while the typical Squire, who is always supposed
to be a Tory, has been pictured as the universal Tyrant.
Had the correspondence been carried on without any bias
towards party politics, nothing could have been more
298 LAND I
useful at the present time. The chief points to be con-
sidered are these : First Do small holdings pay the
labourer ? Second Do they pay as an investment for
the landowner ?
There is at the present time a great tendency among
the newly enfranchised to attack' the rights of landed
property. The land laws of England have been framed
to prevent property changing hands. The increase of
the population has created a vast number, who would be
only too happy to purchase a little land, and, although
there are no end of large estates in the market, yet they
are either too unwieldy for moderate individual invest-
ment, or the would-be investors see before them a crisis
approaching, which deters them from operating pending
its culmination.
Presuming that the reform of our land laws has taken
place, and that real estate becomes just as easily dealt
with as consols or railway stocks that the unlimited
accumulation in the hands of a few is prevented, and
every inducement given both to individuals or corporate
bodies to invest in land ; let us see whether the induce-
ments would be sufficient to attract the investing public,
and to cause them to arrange their properties in such a
way as shall encourage a thriving peasantry, without at
the same time discouraging the higher agricultural element,
in the shape of well educated and intelligent farmers.
Personal experience is better than any amount of
theory, and I now proceed to give, at the Editor's
earnest request, a description of my own proceedings on
the Halwill Manor Estate.
I came into possession of the larger part of the
property in 1871, and the remainder some years after-
wards. The buildings were in a very dilapidated
condition, and there were no cottages worth the name.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 299
Such as existed were very similar to those one sees in
the far west of Ireland.
The country around was in a somewhat similar
condition, but I think Halwill might have been described
as one of the poorest parishes in Devonshire. Nearly
half the estate was moorland, from which the farmers now
and then snatched a crop or two, without applying
sufficient dressing, and then it relapsed and did not feel
the plough again for twenty or thirty years. Even this
treatment was only for the best of it, and the rest had
not been tilled in the memory of man. The cultivated
land, contiguous to the farm houses, was better farmed,
and the system of farming universally adopted was to
keep this in very fair cultivation and treat the moorland
as a summer run for the cattle. Originally all the land
had been moor, but sometime between its first settlement
and the time when I purchased it, nearly all of it had
been tilled. This could be plainly seen from the old
furrow marks. I imagine that it was the high price of
wheat and rye in the first twenty years of the present
century which had induced the farmers to grow corn on
the moors. The rough banks with hedges growing on
them still remained at the time of my purchase, but
everything wore a dreary, uncared-for aspect. My
reason for purchasing was not with a view to making
money, but I thought it would be a healthy relaxation
of mind and body, and a good study of the English
Land Question. My first purchase consisted of about
1700 acres. I afterwards increased my holding by
purchasing about 1300 acres in addition, making in all
an estate of 3000 acres. It was just at the time when it
was all the rage with most landowners to consolidate
farms, and make one dwelling do the duty of two or
three. Old cottages were voted a nuisance, costing more
300 LAND :
in repairs than any rental which they could be hoped to
pay. My first feeling was to run with the tide, but my
intentions were entirely altered after I had been in the
country for a few months. I saw cottages where the
land was of very small value, and where consequently the
landowner (or more often the farming tenant) had readily
given consent to the moorland surrounding them being
used by the labourers who lived in them. I could not
help being greatly struck by the bright appearance which
had been given to the few acres immediately surrounding
these cottages by the unaided effort of the labouring
tenant. These men would earn the wages of the district,
which were then from IDS. to iis. per week, and would
spend all their spare time, and occasionally take a day or
two which their employers readily gave up to them, in
working for themselves. They had in some instances
more than doubled the value of the land immediately
contiguous, even without any guarantee of permanent
residence. It was these instances of industrial success
(there might have been half-a-dozen of such within three
or four miles of my place) which converted me, and I
quickly made up my mind to keep my labourers on the
estate, and to give them every inducement to stay.
Instead of pulling cottages down, I at once commenced
to put up new ones, and to repair the old ones. Several
of the larger farms had fallen in hand soon after I bought
the property. It was not that tenants could not be found
for them, but they were in low condition, and I tried to
persuade myself that I could farm better, with bailiffs, than
my tenants could farm for themselves. A great many
people who purchase land, make the same error. They
suppose that farming is a business which every townsman
can learn in a few months. I believe that after twenty
years' practical experience I have learnt something, but
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 3OI
not so much as I should have known if the first five years
of my life after leaving school had been spent as a
labourer.
It is the labourer, as a rule, who knows from
experience what will answer, and what will not answer,
and if his brain is not taxed too much by having more
land than he can manage, he almost always succeeds.
The fact of having farms on my hands, and farming them
myself, enabled me without any trouble or dispute to cut
off certain fields from each farm, and allot them to a
cottage. One after another small farms thus grew up.
My great delight was to employ labour in improving the
farms which I had in hand, and I was therefore able to
give employment to the cottagers, and very soon a
cottage at Halwill was eagerly sought after by the good
labourers of the district. The object of letting a cottage
was not to get a good rent for the building itself, but to
let some land with it, and thus to decrease the size of the
larger farms, and especially to take off some of the moor-
land enclosures, which were not valued at more than 55.
per acre in their rough state. It was on such land as
this -that the tenants could make the great change.
Where meadows were made, they were already worth
from 305. to 505. per acre letting value, according to the
nature of the herbage. Every tenant required a small
piece of good land such as this, which he would never
break, and then the rough land was broken to provide
him with corn, and straw, and roots. When once broken
it was never allowed to lie idle, and the result has been
that by constant tillage and clever working, some of it
has already been brought into permanent grass, and is
now worth fully 303. per acre, although the tenant is only
paying 55. for it. The population of the parish, which
was 243 in 1871 when I bought the property, is now
3O2 LAND I
over 430. Now what I claim for this sort of manage-
ment is this : I have got a rent-roll which is perfectly
safe. The land is now worth far more than the rental
paid, and there is therefore no inclination to leave ;
moreover, larger farmers finding that in Hal will labour
can be got at almost any part of the year, are far more
desirous than they used to be of becoming my tenants.
The farms which have been curtailed of their outlying
portions for the sake of the cottagers, are letting as .well
as they used to let before they were divided. The wages
have risen to I2s. and 143., and there is a general air of
prosperity and contentment.
The village publichouse was a great nuisance when I
first bought my property. It did not belong to me, but
it was bought by me about fourteen years ago. I had it
closed. I am not a teetotaller myself, nor am I an
advocate of total abstinence to others, but if my evidence
is of any value to the temperance party, they are welcome
to it. The parish has been happier without it. Where
wages are 12s. a week, the publican generally gets what
would otherwise be spent in keeping the children warm.
Many of my men would never have succeeded as well
as they have done had it been allowed to remain.
Many a cow has been bought out of the savings that
would otherwise have gone into the pockets of the inn-
keeper and brewer. About four years after it was closed,
a small hotel was opened at the railway station, but a full
licence was opposed by the tenants and myself. A six-
day licence was allowed, but the utmost care has been
taken by the worthy innkeeper and his wife, that it shall
be conducted in such a respectable way that the name of
publichouse hardly attaches to it.
The agreement between my small tenants and myself
is very simple. It is not even written. Every tenant
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 303
knows perfectly well that he will hold his house and farm
in peace and without any additional rent until he dies, or
wishes to retire from it. It is true that I have constantly
been investing money on new buildings and improve-
ments, but all these things have been done in the
simplest possible way, and not for show. Interest is
charged by me on permanent improvements of this
sort.
My readers will naturally argue that I have had
facilities for altering my estate that other landowners
would not be able to imitate, because so few would
like to take farms on their own hands and reapportion
them. I admit that at first I made a slight financial
mistake in becoming a farmer, but to almost every
farm in this country there is an outlying piece of
ground which the farmer values at very little, and which,
if taken away from him with a slight reduction in the
rental, is often more profit than loss. It is just such places
where the industrious man is willing to settle. The
cottage tenant must (at all events for some years) have
some other means of earning money than by tilling his
own little farm. I have shoemakers, blacksmiths, railway
porters, butchers, poultry dealers, and farm labourers as
my tenants. All of them have been brought up as farm
labourers, or have lived amongst farm labourers. Their
sons and daughters are growing up to understand agri-
culture. I don't pretend to have lined my pockets with
gold by the policy, but I do claim to have improved my
investment. The tenants are, some of them, becoming
independent of the wages which I at first paid them for
estate and farm work, and the holdings are increasing in
size. One man, who was a labourer when first I came
to the parish, has now increased his holding to over fifty
acres, and instead of requiring wages to supplement his
304 LAND :
earnings, he gives occasional employment to one or two
of the others. The tendency is to increase.
Every moment of time is fully employed. The men
are better pleased to take piece work than to work by the
day. It gives them more liberty to spend an hour or so
at home, which would otherwise have to be given to their
employer. They have learnt thrift, and all their savings
go to increase the stock on their little farms, and then
more land has to be found. There is quite a competition
for any fresh piece of land that I can dispose of, pro-
vided it be contiguous. That is the great secret. The
land should be close home. Allotments at a distance are
not much use. It is the garden round the house and the
cow ground beyond, and the apple orchard that is sought
for. Then the freshly-broken field that comes in the
first year for oats, the second for mangolds or sweeds ;
then oats again with grass and clover seeds under for the
third year, and then to lie down as long as it will in
grass, and frequently it lies down for ever, and becomes
a good meadow.
I daresay I have not proved that mine is an experi-
ence which commercial men will be induced to imitate
with a view to profit ; but this is all I have to say as an
inducement to some. How many men there are in com-
merce who would like to invest their money in a way
that would give them healthy relaxation and an honour-
able position with the sense of doing some good to their
fellow creatures accompanying the venture.
I am bound to admit that a much larger amount of
rural employment is necessary before my proposals can
be very generally carried out. The small farmers for
many years must be dependent to some extent on out-
side work yielding wages. So long as our acreage
under tillage is on the decrease, the prospects for the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 305
establishment of small holdings are bad. I fully believe in
legislating for the larger tillage farmer, and making it
profitable for him to continue a good system of rotation
farming. I see no way of doing this except by the
imposition of duties on imports from abroad. I am a
Protectionist against my own interests, for I happen to be
a large importer of corn from abroad. I believe that a
rise in the price of corn in this country would be for the
benefit of nine persons out of ten. Tillage .of land
would thereby be so greatly stimulated that the surplus
population would be drawn back to the land, and wages
would consequently advance both in town and country
to a much greater extent than the extra cost of food. At
the same time I would stop the importation of foreign
labour, and I would encourage emigration to our
Colonies, and give to those Colonies preferential treat-
ment over all foreign countries.
W. J. HARRIS.
306 LAND :
CHAPTER XXXV.
VILLA FARMS. (TOWN TOILERS NEED QUIET AND REPOSE).
BY C. F. DOWSETT, F.S.I.,
Auihor of various Article* on Land and House Properties ; "Striking Events in
Irish History " ; etc.
VILLA FARMS, or Broad Acre Gardens, are the kind of
Home needed by toilers in towns.
In February, 1882, I commenced writing a few articles
on this subject, and used the term "Villa Farm," which
has since become a well recognised expression, and the
principle of the proposal is gradually finding its develop-
ment. I then compared the relations between the people
and the land, to men at sea suffering from thirst, although
surrounded by water. Had seamen the power of condens-
ing the sea water and so make it usable their supply
would be unlimited ; and likewise if large tracts of land,
which in many places the owners are willing to sell, were
made usable for the dwellers in towns, the demand
would compensate the supply. Large tracts of land,
within reach of London and other towns, can generally
be purchased, and yet many persons in these towns
are thirsting for a good, honest, broad acre of garden,
instead of the confined back yard, or prison-like con-
ventional strip which is found outside their back doors.
Country-born persons who have to work all day in
London, or in any large town, appreciate, at its full value,
the calm, the quiet, and repose, which appertain to a
home in the country.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 307
In a large town, and especially in London, there is
a hum of noise, even in the quietest parts, from which it
is impossible to escape, and to be beyond the reach of
which is a charm not less essential to the restoration of
the nervous system than attractive in a variety of ways.
I shall never forget an experience I had when a lad of
seventeen. I was staying at a hotel in London with my
father, waiting for instructions to join my ship the
constant din and roar of the streets, day and night,
distressed me beyond expression when we learned that
a delay of another week was necessary, and my father,
therefore, took me back with him to our rural home in
East Kent ; the change made an impression upon me I
could never lose : the peaceful country, the perfect quiet,
broken only by song birds, or animals giving expression
to their enjoyment of it, the green meadows, the leafy
trees, and those many charms which surround a rural
home, tended to fill my young heart with a sense of
gratitude and delight, such as only those who have
experienced the sensation can understand. The contrast
was stupendous ; it was as of a change from a rack to
a couch, from the wildest discord to the sweetest music,
from interminable strife to perfect peace..
The change from hard, hot pavements and monot-
onous brick walls, in ever continuing miles, to the comforts
and calms of Nature's solitudes, is not only a subject for
poets but an experience which the majority of the whole
human family values at a high estimation.
Quiet and repose are needed by men whose daily
duties are performed amidst more or less of constant
excitement, hurry and worry. These, however, can only
be obtained by living at a sufficient remove from
perpetual noise. Many suburban districts are much
affected by noise from railways, a great variety of road
308 LAND :
vehicles, street cries, foot passengers, and other sounds.
To secure real quiet, one must get on to the broad acres,
and something more is needed than any system in vogue
at present to bring the people and the broad acres
together.
Streets and roads are pushed out, gradually absorbing
the next green field, and the next, and the next, but it
is only to multiply closely-packed houses by turning
fields into streets, and not by carrying houses into fields.
My proposal in suggesting Villa Farms was not to
turn fields, into streets, but to put houses into fields, and
this I proposed to do by running short spur light
railways or tramways from existing lines into tracts of
land which could be divided up into small broad acre
communities. Such lands being bought at a low price
would enable purchasers to secure half-an-acre, and
sometimes an acre, at the same price as they now have
to pay for a strip too small for productive or recreative
purposes.
Thus a class of Villa Farm yeomen would be created
who would own from half-an-acre to a few acres each.
A great deal of suburban building land produces, say
^"125 for a plot which is a sixteenth of an acre, i.e.,
2000 per acre. On [this one-sixteenth of an acre a
house is built and furnished as luxuriously as the means
of the owner will permit ; the costly furnished drawing
and dining rooms of the mansion are imitated in a small
way, and every effort is made to convey a sense of the
highest gentility the means are spent upon the inside
of the house. As to the outside^ it is too small to enlist
much interest ; if it be devoted to flowers, the children
are restrained in their movements ; if it be kept as a
small play-ground or drying-ground, then, for the
smallest productive purposes it is useless.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHKS. 309
Land Companies and individuals buy, say from five
to fifty acres of land, construct drains and roads, and
then cut it up into fragments and sell it ; but the division
of large tracts of land into Villa Farms or Broad Acre
Gardens, has yet to be more fully developed. In some
places where work is centralised, and thousands of men
have to labour within a small area, their dispersion is
more difficult, but there are many localities where some
such suggestion as the following could be carried out.
Supposing 1000 acres of land producing an agricultural
rental of from 155. to 305. per acre, say an average of
2os. per acre, be cut up into lots ranging from one acre
each upwards, and let on building leases at ground rents
of from $ to $ per acre, or the freehold sold at
from ^"60 to ^100 per acre, this would give a return
justifying the enterprise. To turn an agricultural estate
into a residential one of this character would not need
the expense usually incurred in forming a suburban
building estate, because no sewers would be needed ;
there would be sufficient land to each house to bene-
ficially absorb all the sewage which could be created ;
a drain, of course, would be necessary for carrying off the
surplus or overflow water then the roads would be
constructed at a comparatively small cost, and a proviso
would attach to each lease or conveyance that the owner
should maintain his portion of the road when necessary.
If the subsoil were chalk or gravel this expense would
principally be one of labour.
There remain water and transit. The supply of water
would be an undertaking remunerative in itself, and, there-
fore, would add nothing to the cost of the land. The same
may be said of the light railway or tramcarway running
between the land and the main line. The roads could be
lighted by oil as even fashionable Wimbledon is to this day.
3io LAND :
If the land were near churches, chapels, schools,
and shops, well if not, the natural law of supply
and demand and the religious instincts of the people
would soon meet all those needs, as Englishmen have
met them in thousands of cases in all our Colonies, as
well as -in parts of the old country. All the residents
would feel an interest in properly equipping their new
Broad Acre Town with all the requirements of com-
fortable social life. Men bred and trained in great cities
at first hesitate to settle in a field, although their sons
have to settle in the bush of Australia or the prairies
of America, and in a few years have found many other
homes surrounding theirs. Men thirst for broad acres,
and yet town life has warped their enterprise and created
an idea that unless there is a row of shops within a
few minutes' walk, they are scarcely within the pale
of civilization, but when once brought to face a
more primitive or rural condition of things the enter-
prise of our national character asserts itself, and what
appeared to be difficulties are no longer regarded as
such.
Our supposed venture of 1000 acres should have a
central reservation, for the formation of at least one good
broad street or market place, and this would be sold in
small plots, suitable for stores and shops, and would
fetch high prices, which would add very materially to
the prosperity of the undertaking.
Free leases or free conveyances should be given and
the land should be freed from tithe and land tax.
The houses would be homely in character of the
farm-house type no money would be wasted on
fanciful angles and expensive decorations, but they
would have what town houses lack, some good useful
outbuildings.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 31 I
The advantage to residents of a healthy home for
their children with a freedom which only broad acres can
give, and the luxury of fresh vegetables, fruit, honey,
eggs, poultry and perhaps pork and bacon, too, and in
the larger areas milk and butter, is such as would amply
compensate for what those accustomed to town life would
at first experience to be inconveniences. In addition, the
indulgence of a " hobby" and physical recreations are of
no mean consideration.
Men whose early years were lived in the country
have an instinctive yearning for those pleasures which
only a really rural home affords, and in this vast London,
this great aggregation of towns, the poorer men feel shut
out from that which adds so much enjoyment to existence.
To inhale air which is pure, to gratify the sense of sight,
not by a canvas landscape but by a view of the ever-
lasting hills and their charming adjuncts ; to roam at will
over an open country, with many other gratifications,
determine the fact that the possession of a rural Home
has a value beyond its mere intrinsic worth.
C. F. DOWSETT.
ADVANTAGES OF A DRY SOIL AND A HILL TOP.
The following opinions on the advantages of residing
at a high level on a dry soil have been collated by
Mr. W. Gilford :-
" If we were asked what was the single quality in a soil, the pre-
dominance of which would entitle it to be called good, we should say
dryness ; and as chalky soil is almost always dry, it is favourable for
building on." LOUDON'S Suburban Gardener.
" It is a known fact, although possibly not so generally under-
stood as it should be, that frosts are more biting in valleys than upon
hills ; vegetation therefore is far more likely to suffer in the former than
3 1 2 LAND I
upon the latter, the reason undoubtedly being attributable to excess of
moisture in the air in valleys ; frost being certain to lay hold of any-
thing damp more firmly than anything dry." Gardening, Aug. iQth,
1882.
" Moderately elevated situations are the dryest, and relatively the
warmest, in most if not all localities, particularly in winter ; it is an
equally well-established fact that the free circulation of air upon
elevated situations renders them relatively cooler in summer ; on the
other hand, the want of such free circulation in more sheltered places
generally makes them close, hot, and oppressive." Dr. JAMES
WILLIAMS.
" Countries moderately elevated are always more healthy than
those at the level of the sea ; their inhabitants enjoy an atmosphere
more invigorating, and are perceptibly stronger, more active, energetic,
and enterprising than lowlanders. An open elevated site is also more
beneficial, because there is a freer circulation of air." Dr. SCORESBY
JACKSON.
" Dr. Tyndall showed that where there is quiescence in the air,
the tendency of his sterilised infusions to produce organisms was
increased." Report of Sanitary Congress, Times, September 2yth, 1882.
" If it be necessary in the eyes of the farmer that his fields should
have a dry subsoil, that his crops may live and thrive on their surface,
how much more obviously necessary is it that the ground on which our
houses stand should be so dry that the people who live in those
dwellings should be healthy and strong ! The primary care of the man
who is determined that his house shall be warm and dry, should be
devoted to seeing that his site is naturally a dry one. Art and skill
may do much to improve a malarious, a marshy, or a merely damp site,
but such a piece of ground can never in the nature of things be so
satisfactory as one which possesses a naturally dry subsoil." Land,
April 8th, 1882.
" Lands which permit of a rapid percolation of water are more
healthy than those which emit all their water by evaporation, and thus
give rise also to a diffusion of gases through the atmosphere which
render it unwholesome." Dr. SCORESBY JACKSON, on Medical
Climatology.
"A chalk subsoil is remarkably porous, so much so, indeed, that
no artificial drainage is required, neither are there any ditches or water-
courses. The whole of the pluvial waters pass off by infiltration. The
great porosity of the subsoil, and the quickness with which the moisture
drys up after rain give great dryness to the atmosphere." Dr. KEBBELL.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 313
" In chalky districts the air is cool and dry, and the bracing, ex-
hilarating nature of its effects upon the body corresponds with the
pleasing sensations that are excited in the mind by the transparent sky
and the cheerful smiling richness of the landscape so usually observed
in such districts." Dr. FRANCIS, on Change of Climate.
" To come down on a calm winter's day from the top of White Hill
(700 feet above the sea-level) into the Caterham Valley, is like coming
from a warm climate to a cold one ; there is a sensation of raw coldness
in the air in descending into the valley which is not experienced on
the hill.
" The owner of some property at Ealing became also the proprietor
of a small villa farm of four acres, in a high-lying valley at Woldingham,
and as the result of numerous visits there, he states that the air is drier
and lighter than that of Ealing, and that he always feels much better,
breathes more freely, and has a more buoyant feeling at Woldingham.
The climate of this valley is no doubt much drier than that of valleys
generally, not excepting even valleys in a chalk district, because after
about six feet of friable soil at the surface, the chalk which, as a rock,
would be porous, has its porosity greatly increased by its being in very
minute fragments to the depth of forty feet from the surface-soil, after
which it changes into a firm bed of chalk, and in the heaviest rains no
water stands on the surface, but passes through the soil at once, thus
ensuring great dryness to the atmosphere, even in the valley.
" ' Give me,' writes a correspondent, * chalk soil, dry but not
burning, free- working but fairly fertile, high-lying but low rented, not so
rich as grateful, sound, safe cropping, healthy chalk." Agricultural
Gazette, September iQth, 1881.
" Where there is a tendency to cancer, let the patient be removed
to the high dry sites. Cancer does not thrive on a high dry soil;
the essentially chalk county of Hampshire is remarkably free from
cancer, and we find throughout the whole of England the districts
situated on the chalk hills are the healthy or low mortality districts."
Dr. HAVILAND.
" Children, who are more susceptible than adults to local climatic
causes, suffer sooner from fatigue on ill-drained clay than they do on a
naturally drained soil." Dr. HAVILAND.
; - Cold air being heavier than warm, the stratum next to the soil will,
as a rule, be colder than the one above it. Hence land at the bottom
of a valley will be chilled by the descent of cold air more than that
higher up, so that what are called sheltered places are often in spring
and autumn the coldest. The growth of the sheltered gardens in the
314 LAND :
Valley of the Thames has often been killed by frosts, whose effects were
unfelt on the hills of Surrey and Middlesex." Dr. DAUBENY, on Climate.
"At night, and in the winter when the sun is feeble in its influence,
and the surface of the ground is cooled by radiation below the superin-
cumbent air, the particles of air resting on the ground become cold by
contact wiih it, and, increasing in density, descend the slopes of the
downs and collect at the bottom of the coombes, displacing the warmer
air \ creeping from the coombes as shallow streams of cold air of
limited 'extent, they gather in the wider valleys, and the descent of cold
air in this way through the valleys is counterbalanced by the ascent of
the comparatively warm air which it displaces, so that the hills enjoy a
somewhat higher temperature than they otherwise would. In Croydon,
dahlias and scarlet runners always last longer on the higher ground, and
I have known the latter especially to be black and withered by frost on
the lower ground weeks before they were touched on Park Hill, the
highest ground in Croydon. Many half-hardy shrubs and valuable
ornamental trees, I am persuaded, would stand with impunity the
climate of Warlingham, which would perish in some parts of the Cater-
ham Valley." Mr. STORKS EATON, F.M.S., in Paper read at Meeting
of Croydon Natural History Society, April, 1881.'
" The chalk downs furnish the purest and most exhilarating air in
the world. Never on the Alps, the Apennines, or the Jura have I felt
so intensely, so exultingly, the abstract pleasure of mere animal
existence as on the Downs in the neighbourhood of Brighton. No
decomposition on the surface, because no humidity will remain there ;
at such a distance, or such an elevation, above the sea, that all which
is insalubrious in the air has been deposited before it reaches there.
A canter over the Downs on a fine day produces the feelings of the
Arab in the desert ; the breathing deep and complete, and every air-
cell of the lungs fully opened and performing its duty. Eat and drink
whatever you please, and as much as you please, if you can take
abundant exercise on the Downs. " Dr. WIGAN.
" I think it must be admitted by even the greatest admirers of the
seaside, that inland situations, all things considered, have certainly the
advantages over those on the coast in March, April and May. I do not
mean all inland places indiscriminately, but dry, open, elevated, or un-
dulating spots, with a gravelly or chalky porous soil, and with no marsh
land or other well-known source of disease sufficiently near to affect the
salubrity of the atmosphere. There can be no question that the air of
such places during the day is warmer, softer, and more pleasant to the
feelings." Dr. KEBBELL.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 315
" A spot which Dr. Epps had lately discovered, and which greatly
delighted him, was Warlingharn Common, a few miles beyond Croydon.
It is part of a range of table-land on the Surrey hills (on the chalk), a
most salubrious spot, and there is charming scenery round about. His
happiness in this place was very great it became enthusiasm. The
increase of his usually buoyant spirits commenced so soon as, on his
way from Croydon to Warlingham, he reached the high land at Sander-
stead, some three miles from Croydon, for then he felt the chest
relieved, and could breathe better." Biographical Notice of Dr. Epps
attached to Diary.
" Foliage does not add to the salubrity of any place, and in excess
is positively injurious. Many of the country seats of the gentry, so
delightfully surrounded and embosomed in woods, are from that very
cause unhealthy. Independent of the interruption of the free circula-
tion of air which is so essential, a large quantity of vegetable matter in
a state of decomposition is sometimes productive of disease, more
especially in spring and autumn." Dr. WIGAN on Brighton and its
Climates.
" The pent-up valleys in some of the loveliest spots in England are
never thoroughly flushed of their air sewage, in fact never thoroughly
ventilated ; the consequence being that they are often cold, damp, and
filled with the air of vegetable decomposition, whilst the heights which
wall them in are warm, dry, pure, bracing, and full of health. Frosts
affect potatoes and fruit more frequently in the dewy calm air of a
valley bottom than they do on the heights above, where the air is
constantly changed. In such valleys man contracts rheumatism, the
basis of the national heart disease, and what is of equal importance to
know is, that in such valleys all diseases of the zymotic class linger the
longest and assume the most aggravated form. The rheumatic and
fever miasms hang about the still air of the valleys, and as it were grow
in strength with the accumulation of air sewage." Dr. HAVILAND on
Brighton as a Health Resort.
"Those districts which are entirely hemmed in on all sides, and
thus do not admit of thorough air-flushing at all, have invariably the
very highest mortality from heart disease, while those districts whicli
admit air-flushing on all sides have the lowest mortality. Wherever
the highest mortality from heart disease is indicated, there is to be
found the greatest amount of rheumatism, and to rheumatism must be
attributed the bulk of the fatal cases of heart disease in this country ;
t will therefore be seen how necessary thorough air-flushing is/'-
Dr. HAVILAND, Geography of Disease.
3 1 6 LAN D :
" Dryness, a free circulation of air, a full exposure to the sun, are
the material conditions to be attended to in choosing a site for a
residence. Of all the physical qualities of the air humidity is the most
injurious to human life, and therefore in selecting a situation for
building, particular regard should be had to the circumstances which
are calculated to obviate humidity in the soil and atmosphere. "~
Sir JAMES CLARK on Climate.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 317
CHAPTER XXXVI.
RECLAMATION.
BY EDWARD HOWARD DAWSON, of Lancaster, F.S I., A. R. I.E. A.,
M.R.A.S.E.
IT would be difficult to find a side of the subject of
" Land " of more entirely entrancing interest than that of
the development of the latent powers of our Mother
Earth, which are either buried below the unquiet waters
that engirdle our shores, or lying all helpless and
untrained under their heather blush on our mountain-
sides and moorland mosses.
And if to the general mind this redemption and
cultivation of land possesses such a charm, how much
greater joy that man must feel, who having been guided
by a science engendered of well-fraught practice, can in
the eventide of life feast his eyes upon acres of fair
pasture-land and waving grainfields, that have come as
a crown of glory to reward his manhood's toils.
Swift's oft-tolcl observation that lk the man who
makes two blades of grass or two ears of corn grow
where but one grew before, deserves well of his
country," seems but the scantiest meed of praise in
recognition of such patriotic work as the enlargement
of the area and of the food-producing capacity of his
country !
Without entering on the technical and highly-
important data of such a subject, t may be possible in a
3 1 B LAND :
few sentences to indicate the course usually pursued
to make a reclamation of land, and if haply, arouse
interest and stimulate support to those who are only
waiting for this to be given them either by the nation
through its Government, or by the subscription of
capitalists who, whilst blind to the possibility of the
development of the resources of their own country,
venture the wildest schemes over-seas, to attempt the
reclamation of a part of some of the 600,000 acres which
so long ago as 1844 were computed to be available for
this purpose in the British Isles alone.
The soil of a country has always been regarded as
the basis of its national trade and wealth, and from the
earliest times there have been men in these islands who
have bestowed their energies and treasure upon plans and
projects for the reclaiming, planting and cultivation of
land to gain increased production.
There has, of course, been nothing of the enormous
extent and gigantic and complex character as that to
which Holland sometimes called "the gift of the
ocean " owes its existence ; but the great inland refor-
mations in the time of Elizabeth and the vast level of
the Fens, reclaimed under the reign of the Stuarts and
since, are instances of operations where the national
resources have been sensibly devoted to promoting and
carrying forward what were and are essentially national
interests.
Most schemes of reclamation have, however, been
left to be promoted and executed by individual enter-
prise, and great activity under these conditions was
apparent towards the close of the last century, and
during the first three decades of the present, when many
thousands of acres were embanked off the estuaries of
rivers or snatched from sea shores on almost every coast.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 319
The work of Reclamation of Waste Land may be
divided into two classes, (i) that which rescues it from
the coeval creation and its ever-predatory enemy, water ;
and (2) that which saves it from itself and delivers it
from the degradation that came upon it as punishment to
our first parents at the Fall.
The process in the case of the former class is of a
threefold nature, viz. : (i) embankment, (2) drainage,
and (3) bringing into a state of cultivation. The second
class requires the application of the two last stages only,
and is consequently of a much less venturesome character.
The consideration that the land is of a suitable description
for its proposed reclamation is, however, an equally
important one in dealing with both classes, and generous
attention should first be directed to this. After satis-
faction as to the general conditions of eligibility and
ripeness, the chief points to be observed in reclamation of
land from water are
( i .) Sufficient average height of siirface above ordinary
or medium low-water level to admit of efficient natural
superficial drainage, both for its own and any fresh
water that may have to flow over it, and this not
only for the sake of its own better fertility and freeing
from saline matter, but because the construction and
cost of the embankment will be increased in pro-
portion to the lowness of the land, and it must be borne
in mind that this expenditure bears sensitive relation
to the estimated ultimate agricultural value of the
enclosure.
( 2 . ) The nature of the soil whether of a clayey, sandy,
or loamy character this not only guiding the subsequent
operations of the husbandman, but actually determining
the period of time that must elapse before any thought of
cultivation is entertained, due to the necessity for the
32O LAND :
complete maceration, decomposition, and amalgamation
in renewed chemical combination, of the elements of which
it is composed. This may be assisted by rough-harrow-
ing, the addition of non-indigenous matter to correct the
paralysis of neglect, and the prevalence of favourable
operations as mentioned under the first heading.
The embankment having been constructed then, of
such form and contents as the character of the reclamation
demands, efficient drainage secured, and sufficient time
allowed for the conversion and reformation of the soil, the
agriculturist, after making means of access in the shape
of roads, and subdividing the ground into plots of suitable
area, puts his hand to the plough and with favouring
seasons and virginal response from the object of his
assiduous attentions, woos her, till she yields him of her
fulness, and then after a period of fertility and rich crop-
bearing is gradually translated into a placid ever-green
age of constant fructivity and beauty.
The reclamation of waste tracts or moorland is of a
more tedious nature. The wild beautiful freedom whether
of bush or heath has to be curbed and treated with almost
barbaric severity, and though the operations are arduous
and long, the transformation is the more to be treasured,
as, in response to the drainage and liming and the civilising
presence of "out-barns " with their complement of cattle,
their faces begin to express a more varied alternation of
lovely tints than even the pristine glories of ling and moss.
There will be many disappointments in the course of
this true love for reclamation, but inspired by the struggles
and sacrifices of generations of his fore-fathers, the man
who is capable of applying the "science of experience" and
the courage of an indomitable will, must go forward in
the patriotic nay, greater work of the " making of the
land," even though it cost years of anxiety, exertion,
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 321
and deprivation to carry out such regenerative processes
as will fit it for the practice of the best forms of husbandry
suited to the times and the wants of the people.
Such efforts, directed on a well considered and
practical scheme of reclamation should command the
enthusiastic support of Parliament and platform, peer and
peasant, pedagogue and press ; never forgetful of the fact
that, whether the land be the "common birthright of the
race " or not ; in its crude state, it is only valuable in the
degree that it presents a surface upon which the opera-
tions of varied tillage or occupation may with profit be
expended.
ED. HOWARD DAWSON.
322
LAND :
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE AGITATION FOR RATING GROUND RENTS
AND VACANT BUILDING LANDS.
BY C. F. DOWSETT, F.S.I.,
Aitthor of various Articles on Land and House Properties ; "Striking Events in
Irish History " ; etc.
AGITATION does not necessarily mean alteration. Ag ta-
tion is an influence conspicuously at work when a
General Election is approaching, and, therefore, we
should be prepared to give a proper estimate to protesta-
tions and promises, especially such as appear to offer
great benefits to the greatest number of voters.
There is a strange anomaly abroad, a strange blowing
hot and cold by the same mouth. A certain section of
politicians demand that by some means or other the
people are to have the land, and yet this same political
section demand that such burdens shall be laid upon the
possessors of land as would ensure that all small
capitalists would prefer to put their savings or their
stock-capital into anything else but land.
A proposal has been made to tax Ground Values
which means: (i) Ground Rents; (2) Ground Rent
Reversions ; (3) Vacant Building Lands. To these may
be added a fourth, which, however, refers principally
to buildings, and which I will call Interim Interests.
This form of the proposal is gathered from the
statements of those few persons who held these views
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 323
out of the many who held opposite views of those who
gave evidence before the Select Committee of the House
of Commons on Town Holdings, some of whom have
since written pamphlets in order to publish more
widely the opinions they expressed before that Com-
mittee.
Mr. Fletcher Moulton, Q.C. ; Mr. William Saunders,
late M.P. for East Hull ; and Mr. Sidney Webb, have
published pamphlets. Mr. Moulton has been answered
in an exhaustive manner by Mr. C. H. Sargant, of 9, Old
Square, Lincoln's Inn, a barrister, in his work entitled
" Urban Rating," published by Messrs. Longman,
Green & Co., and by his article in " The Contemporary
Review" for February, 1890; also by Mr. G. M.
Clements, a solicitor, of 17, Gresham House, Old Broad
Street, E.G. Mr. Webb was also answered by Mr.
Sargant who, however, found that Mr. Webb's pamphlet
was "too slight and too violent in tone," therefore
needing but little serious consideration. Besides these
writings, I must refer my readers to Mr. G. O. Bellewes,
the Secretary of the Property Protection Society, 45,
Parliament Street, and to Mr. W. C. Crofts, the Secretary
of the Liberty and Property Defence League, 7, Victoria
Street, Westminster, ' each of whom have a mass of
literature on the subject, exposing the fallacies of the
agitators.
There is no central authority setting forth, the pro-
posal of the agitators definitely, and I find by their
written and verbal statements that they disagree very
much in their opinions upon the subject, but the nearest
approach to agreement at the time of writing (January,
1892), was shown at a meeting of Mr. Moulton, Mr.
Saunders, and a few of their friends held in the Conference
Room of the National Liberal Club, on the igth January,
324 LAND :
1892 (reported in the "Daily News" of January 2oth),
when it was stated that the proposal was to :
1. " Divide the rates between owners and occupiers."
2. "To place a separate tax on the value of land as distinguished
from the value of the buildings. But while the first tax ought to be
divided between the owner and the occupier the second would have to
be laid entirely upon the owners."
3. "That a special lax be laid upon the owners of land values
including the owners of vacant land."
Mr. Fletcher Moulton then moved that these proposals
" should be kept prominently before the electors during the forth-
coming election of the New County Council for London and of a new
Parliament."
The object of the agitation, as gathered from the
evidence referred to, and from a frequent reference to
one clause in the report of the Royal Commission on the
Housing of the Working Classes, is an attack upon the
great ground landlords of London, and thus a con-
stitutional principle, which has obtained through all our
history, is to be set aside to spite half-a-dozen men of
large means, and to inflict an incalculable injury upon
thousands of deserving persons of small means.
I have no interest whatever in these great ground
landlords of London who, if they were even robbed, as
some would wish of a portion of their wealth, would not
probably feel it very much, but I have a great interest in
the many thousands of persons throughout London and
the country who would be injuriously affected if the pro-
posals referred to became law ; the funds of trustees
representing widows and orphans, the funds of building
societies, provident societies, insurance companies and
others representing the savings of working men and of
thrifty persons in the great middle strata of society, and
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 325
who were content with a small rate of interest because
of the abundant security which ground rents provide,
have been invested in the purchase of ground rents.
Mr. Saunders' pamphlet of sixty-four pages thus
refers to those who have chosen to invest money in
land :
" Grinding landlords," " landlords' oppression," " idle landlords "
(page io)j "goes to ground landlords for doing nothing," "exaction of
land values of landlords " " sixpence out of a shilling goes to a ground
landlord who does nothing " (page 14). "The 'interests ' of the ground
landlord and of the ground tenant are perhaps more opposed to each
other than those of any other relationship in human affairs " (page 29).
" The ground landlord does nothing, prides himself on doing nothing,
and yet raises his demands seven thousand fold." "A ground landlord's
capacity and rapacity." "You cannot take anything from a ground
landlord ; throughout his life he remains as naked of useful works as
when he came into the world. The only question is how much he
can take from other people " (page 35). " He waits not to see what
he can do, but to see what he can exact. He holds the property not
for use but for extortion. He never intends to do anything, but merely
to get as much as he can from those who propose to do something"
(page 45). "We now take the value created by the dense population ;
and give it to ground landlords who create nothing " (page 52).
Mr. Saunders said in his examination before the
Parliamentary Committee already referred to that in his
opinion all property in land was " legal robbery" and that
" if he had his way he would tax land at 2os. in the ."
Mr. Saunders thus urges in his pamphlet that land should
be taxed on its capital value.
" It will, we believe, be impossible to discover any equitable
method of rating or of dividing rates which is not based on capital
value " (page 24).
Quoting from Mr. C. Harrison, Mr. Saunders says :
" Ground values should be assessed on their capital value whether
occupied or vacant " (page 33). " Now unless you tax the capital value
326 LAND I
of the ground landlord's reversion you do not take a penny from him<
until the lease falls in " (page 44). " Many properties are now rated
far below their capital value, because the existing buildings are unsuited'
to the locality The principle should not be departed from
of charging all land at its actual capital value, and apportioning the tax
to each or every one interested in the property in the same degree as
the capital value of his holding. This capital value is the true test of
the beneficial interest which each owner enjoys " (page 45).
Mr. Saimders proposes that :
" The amount of tax shall be twopence-halfpenny in the pound."
Now twopence-halfpenny in the pound is i. os. lod. on.
every ^100 of capital value, and 10. 8s. 4d. on every
;iooo of capital value.
Mr. Saunders says :
" We propose a tax of twopence-halfpenny in the pound on capital
land values. By that method we bring the new tax to bear fairly on
reversionary interests which are now of such great value and import-
ance in London " (page 52). "That all interests in land be taxed at
twopence-halfpenny in the pound on their capital value " (page 53).
THE RATING OF GROUND RENTS.
During the last quarter of a century many millions-
sterling have been invested by the thrifty persons of this
country in the purchase of ground rents ; many purchases
have been made at public auction ; and this class of
property has been selected because the buyers were
content with a small rate of interest in consideration of
the security which ground rents offered ; and the security
consisted in the fact that the laws and customs of our
country regarded contracts seriously entered into and
stamped by Government as absolutely binding upon those
who were parties to them.
Before such ground rents were created the acquisition
of the land was the subject of a careful negotiation by
the purchaser, aided by his surveyor and solicitor, and in
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 327
consideration of his solemnly binding himself in covenants
to pay whatever rates and taxes might arise in respect of
such land it was leased to him for so much. It was a fair
bargain, and the Government was paid a fee or stamp
duty to make it binding.
Owners of ground rents sold them, and the purchasers
purchased them in good faith ; both lessor and lessee
received fully what they bargained for ; but our modern
agitators say that the contract should be made void, in
order that the lessor or his heirs or assigns should be
made to pay rates and taxes, which means that the
contract should be opened by Act of Parliament in order
to give the lessee an advantage by force. An example of
this is given in Mr. Saunders' pamphlet (page 41), in
which he states :
"If ground rents were taxed 30 per cent, and a man had
200 thus invested, bringing him in 6 per annum, he would
lose 36s,"
Thus Mr. Saunders refers to small investors, and proposes
to open their contracts and to take away nearly one third
of their property !
If the contract is to be opened at all, and if our
English instinct of equity is to prevail, then each party
to the contract must have a voice in the new terms to be
arranged, and if the lessee may pay less than he bargained
to pay, then the lessor may receive more than he
bargained to take.
If a precedent were created to open contracts which
have been seriously and legally entered into, it would give
a sanction to the opening of any contract whatever,
whether it apply to property, or commerce, or labour, or
anything else, and it would prove a constant source of
discontent, litigation, and even danger to the public
peace.
328 LAND I
It is well known that ground rents are already taxed
or rated, because the rates paid in respect of any house
are paid in respect of the building and the land together,
and not of the building alone. If there were no rates at all
the owner of the land would get a higher ground rent.
It is impossible that any English Government, however
Radical, could perpetrate so flagrant an act of injustice as
to open officially stamped contracts between parties in
order to deprive one party of a right by handing it over
without compensation to the other.
The Select Committee on Local Taxation appointed
in 1870, reported : -
" That the evidence taken before your Committee shows that in
many cases the burden of the rates, which are directly paid by the
occupier, falls ultimately either in part or wholly upon the owner, who,
nevertheless, has no share in their administration."
If an additional rate or tax were placed on ground
rents, or even the existing rates or taxes on property
were apportioned, part on the building and part on the
ground rent, it would be an act of confiscation if it were
made retrospective.
If any alteration in the law were made as to future
ground rents by apportioning the rates and taxes, that
would involve no violation of existing contracts, although
it would materially damage ground rents as a first-class
investment. Parliament would not be likely to make any
law retrospective. If any alteration were made at all, it
would doubtless be as in the case of the recent Tithe Act,
which provides :
" Where the occupier is liable under any contract made before the
passing of this Act to pay the tithe rent charge, then .... he
shall be liable to pay to the owner such sum as the owner has properly
paid on account of the tithe rent charge which such occupier is liable
under his said contract to pay."
TS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 329
THE WITNESSES WHO WERE EXAMINED BEFORE THE
TOWN HOLDINGS COMMITTEE WERE ALMOST UNANIMOUS
IN THEIR OPINION THAT A DIRECT ASSESSMENT ON
GROUND RENTS COULD NOT BE SUPPORTED.
Should any change be made in the system of rating,
it would probably be a very sweeping change, for there
would be a demand that personal property should be
taxed, and this would open up a very large subject.
Consols alone are said to represent a value of
seven hundred and fifty million pounds sterling.
GROUND RENT REVERSIONS.
The proposal is to assess the value of the building
apart from the land, and then to separately assess the
capital value of the land.
I know of a house in London which is held on lease,
having yet ten years unexpired at a ground rent of five
pounds per annum. The present value of the rent of the
ground, if it were vacant, would be three hundred pounds
per annum, and the house and the land together are
assessed at eleven hundred pounds per annum. In this
case, then, the occupier would be required to pay rates on
the building, half of which would have to be paid back to
him by the owner of the five pounds ground rent. Then
the value of the land would have to be rated, according
to Mr. Saunders, at twopence-halfpenny in the pound
calculated on the capital vahte.
Now a reversion to three hundred pounds per annum,
after ten years, is worth in present money (calculated at
four per cent.) over five thousand pounds, and a rate
of twopence-halfpenny in the pound on five thousand
pounds would be ^52 is. 8d. per annum. Thus the
owner who receives for the next ten years a sum of
330 LAND :
five pounds per annum (being all that he has received
for the last eighty-nine years) for his land would be
required to pay on the capital value of his land (being
five thousand pounds) a rate of ^"52 is. 8d. per annum,
and would also be required to pay half the rates as
regards the building !
Examples could be extended indefinitely by taking
any leases granted many years ago, and calculating
accordingly. The proposals are so absurd as to be their
own best refutation.
Many London estates when let years ago for building
purposes were leased in blocks at a certain ground rent.
The lessees built a sufficient number of houses on part
of a block and sold them subject to ground rents, which
in the aggregate were sufficient to pay the ground land-
lord the full amount of ground rent which was agreed to
be paid for the whole block. By this arrangement the
lessee secured the remainder of the land rent free
(commonly called a peppercorn rent). The lessee there-
fore had nothing to pay the ground landlord in respect of
the land for which he obtained leases at peppercorn rents,
but the houses built on the peppercorn portion are of
equal value with the houses built on the portion which is
subject to ground rents. There are thousands of pepper-
corn ground rents in London, and in such cases the
agitators propose to estimate Represent rental value of the
ground on which such houses stand, and then to estimate
the capital value -of such estimated ground rents and to
charge the owners a rate of twopence-halfpenny in the
pound (i.e. 10 8s. 4d. on every thousand pounds of
Value), although during the past portion and during the
future portion of the ninety-nine years' term granted he
has not received and cannot receive any rental whatever.
As regards the general principle of ground rent
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 331
owning, it must be remembered that when the ground
landlord parts with his land for building purposes, he
does not receive the purchase-money for it ; he only
receives the rental value of it at the time at which it was
let. The lessee, on the other hand, builds his house and
as experience almost invariably proves that metropolitan
properties very considerably increase in value during the
ninety -nine years' period of a ground lease, the lessee and
his successors during the whole period of the lease have
the advantage of the increase of rtntal value, commonly
called the " unearned increment " ; for if after ten years
his house, which was worth a hundred pounds a year
when he built it, has increased in value to a hundred
and twenty pounds, to a hundred and fifty pounds, or
more, so if the ground landlord could re-let his land it would
bring not only the twenty pounds ground rent at which
he let it, but twenty-four pounds up to thirty pounds, or
more, and so on during the period of the lease. It has
sometimes happened that during the last twenty years of
a ninety-nine years' lease, property has enormously
increased in value : the lessee or his heirs have received
the whole of the enormous increase without giving any
portion of it to the owner of the ground rent ! If the
house were taken away and the land were vacant, the
ground landlord or his heirs could have let it at an
enormously increased ground rent ; thus the ground
tenants, and not the ground landlords, have all the value of
the " unearned increment" during the ninety -nine years.
The ground landlord, if he had sold his land, could
have used his money as the lessee had used his in a form
to bring an increased income with an increase in value.
But no ; the bargain was that he was absolutely to part with
it for ninety -nine years at the fixed rent agreed upon, and
no matter how much it increased in value, he and his heirs
332 LAND:
could not receive any benefit whatever till the ninety-
nine years had expired, and then according to the bar-
gain he was to receive the building which had been
erected.
The lessee has reaped all the rises in rental value
during the ninety-nine years, but he still only paid the
same original ground rent ; he has had the whole of the
unearned increment while his ground landlord has only
received the same small rent which the land was worth
years ago.
Thus in the case I have given above, the land when
let eighty-nine years ago at five pounds per annum, is
now worth three hundred pounds per annum, and the
lessees have had all the benefit of the gradual rises in
value (the unearned increment) during these eighty-nine
years, and will continue to do so for ten years more. If
we take the average rental value at a hundred and fifty
pounds per annum for the term of ninety-nine years, the
lessees would have received nearly fifteen thousand
pounds, and would only have paid five pounds per annum,
or during the ninety-nine years four hundred and ninety-
five pounds in all.
INTERIM INTERESTS.
By interim interests I mean the sometimes numerous
ownerships which exist between the actual occupier
and the original or ground owner in fee ; thus A,
the freeholder, lets a block of land to B. B builds on
part and lets part to C still retaining an interest in it.
C builds on his part and grants a lease for twenty-one
years to D. D enlarges and improves the building and
lets it to E at an increased rental. E succeeds in business,
and after ten years sells the goodwill of his business,
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 333
and lets the premises at a higher rental than he pays for
them to F.
Thus from A the freeholder, to F the occupier, are
six interests sometimes there are more than six and
it is proposed that each of these persons shall pay a
proportionate part of the rates and taxes. Mr. Saunders
suggests thus :
" It would be easy to enable the occupier who first pays the rate to
deduct from owners such portions as may be equitable" (page 23).
" Given the annual value of land and buildings separately, which
must be ascertained, and then given the term of lease or leases, and the
capital value of all interests, is a matter of calculation which would be
discovered by reference to tables" (page 24).
" The occupier must pay the whole rate and have statutory power
to deduct from owners that amount of rate which is in proportion to the
capital value of their interest in the property " (page 46).
Do my readers think that tables could be found to
make it " easy " for the unfortunate F to exercise his
''statutory powers," and assess a proportion to each
which would satisfy each ?
If the rates were to be apportioned over every interest
in property, the confusion and contention that would
ensue would be complete.
RATING VACANT BUILDING LAND.
Mr. Saunders refers to Brock well Park, near Herne
Hill. This property comprised nearly a hundred acres,
and was occupied as a private park by its owner, who
paid rates on its value as a park, i.e., five pounds an
acre per annum. Mr. Saunders contends that the land
was worth forty pounds an acre per annum for building
purposes, and that although the owner chose to occupy it
for residential purposes, he should be required to pay
rates on it as if it were developed for building purposes.
334 LAND:
Now, one hundred acres at forty pounds per acre would
be four thousand pounds per annum, and four thousand
pounds per annum capitalised at four per cent, would
represent a hundred thousand pounds, and twopence-half-
penny in the pound on a hundred thousand pounds would
be ^1041 135. 4d. per annum. So that for the privilege
of using his own park for residential purposes he would
be required to pay ^1041 135. 4d. per annum for rates !
In like manner Mr. Saunders and his friends pro-
pose that all persons who have a large garden, such as
the grounds around Lambeth Palace, for instance,
should have the land valued as building land, and that
value capitalised at four per cent, and then rated at two-
pence halfpenny in the pound on such capital value !
And here another anomaly comes in the professed
object is to "force" owners to sell their land, so that by
flooding the market with building land the prices should
be reduced, and thus by extended building operations
overcrowding should become impossible. But the effect
would be the very opposite. Take Lambeth Palace
grounds, Buckingham Palace grounds, the grounds of
the Houses of Parliament, and the grounds of every
residence or building which exceeded a small back yard,
and crowd them with houses the effect would be a
most insanitary condition ; it would result in over-
crowding to the point of pestilence. The open spaces
are the safety valves of health.
If all vacant Building Land were to be assessed at two-
pence-halfpenny in the pound on its capital value it would
indeed "force" very extensive sales, and the competition
of owners to sell would result in very reduced prices, and
the extended purchases would mean extended buildings,
and the extended buildings would mean streets of empty
houses ! London is periodically overbuilt as it is, and a
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 335
great extension of unnecessary buildings must mean
empty streets, with bankrupt builders and mortgagees.
Desolation would reign, and discontent verging on Revo-
lution, would endanger the safety of the Metropolis.
Mr. Saunders writes (page 43) :
" It is now generally admitted that vacant building land should be
taxed on its capital value."
No one admits this but Mr. Saunders and the few
persons who are connected with him in this agitation.
The public as yet know nothing of the proposal
probably not one person in a hundred thousand has ever
even heard of it, much less knows anything of what it
involves but when they do know and reflect upon it,
Mr. Saunders will find that his estimate of the intelli-
gence and honesty of his fellow citizens is based upon a
delusion.
The question naturally arises, Who is to determine
what is building land ? Take the South-Western Railway
country as an example. It will be agreed that the land
between Clapham Junction and Wimbledon is building
land ; then in passing Wimbledon, we notice boards
announcing land to be disposed of for building purposes.
Take the next field, and the next, and the next. If one
field has a residential value, why not the next ? If up
to the northern hedge of one field is building land, why
not three feet off, just over the hedge, the southern side
of the next field, and so on ? We reach Surbiton, which
is a centre of its own, but the same principle will apply
to lands ranging out of every centre in the kingdom.
Lands are worth more than agricultural value have
probably been bought, not at a building value but at
some residential value that is a value between an
agricultural and a building value ; but it may be many
years before such lands will be used for any other than
336 LAND :
an agricultural purpose, and in the meantime are they to
be assessed by Mr. Saunders and his friends as vacant
building land, and charged with rates at prices far ex-
ceeding the rentals obtained for them ? Certainly not !
Owners who improve neighbourhoods by constructing
roads, sewers, etc., and thus turn agricultural land into
residential land, are not likely to be handicapped by any
Government imposing upon them fines for benefiting the
community.
Vacant building land is a great advantage to a
neighbourhood, in that it forms a reservoir of pure air ;
if it were subject to rates, it would be built on in some
form or other, or else would drift into the possession of
the wealthy, who could afford to pay rates and let it lie
until it was much needed, when an exhorbitant price
would be demanded. Vacant building land surrounding
a town does not derive any benefit from the rates.
Let any one read the purposes enumerated on their
rate and tax demand papers and say how vacant building
land is benefited by the application of rates to any of
such purposes. So soon, however, as this vacant land is
built upon, then it contributes to these purposes.
In conclusion, some importance has been given to this
subject, because when the Royal Commission on the
Housing of the Working Classes sent in its report it
opined that " land available for building in the
neighbourhood of our populous centres," should be
rated.
A Royal Commission, or a Committee, is only a
delegation to obtain evidence which those appointing it
may or may not use in its consideration of a subject.
This Commission introduced this clause into its report
practically without any evidence whatever to warrant it in
doing so ; the result was that some of the members of the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 337
Commission, namely, Lord Salisbury, Mr. Goschen, and
Lord Cross, objected to the clause because it was based
on no evidence, and they refused to sign any agreement
with the suggestion. Lord Salisbury said, " This
paragraph was introduced into the report just before jt
was signed, and I cannot find that it is based on any
evidence laid before the Commission. I believe that the
evil results of such a change would outweigh its
advantages."
When the grounds of the agitation are understood by
the people, they will be rejected, as has been every
other proposal which has not been based upon our old
English sense of justice ; and capitalists may continue to
own or buy ground rents or residential or building lands
with the assurance that no more legislative injustice will
affect them in this than in the purchase of any other
description of property whatever.
C. F. DOWSETT.
338 LAND
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
i
LAND AND HOUSE INVESTMENTS.
BY C. F. DOWSETT, F.S.I.,
Author of variotis Articles on Land and House Properties ; "Striking Events in
Irish History " ; &*c.
WHEN investors are brought to face an income of only
25 per annum for every ^1000 of capital, their energies
may well be quickened to contemplate the whole field of
possible investments, so that by reflection they may be
able to ascertain how their means can be more profitably
employed than in two-and-a-half per cent Stock.
Debentures, bonds, and the whole tribe of scrip
securities have little attraction for some persons, especially
those who remember losses which their friends have made
by Stock Exchange securities. They dislike depositing
their money and only receiving in exchange a piece of
paper which admits them to possible privileges or
responsibilities. They prefer to see something for their
money ; they believe in something tangible so many
acres of solid earth, so many well-built houses these are
the securities which, apparent to their senses, they are
better able to understand, and so the better able to
appreciate.
FARMS.
Farms may now be profitably purchased, if care
taken in the selection to buy land in sound condition,
with substantial buildings, conveniently placed as to
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 339
roads, station and market, and let to tenants who are not
impecunious. Considering the rise in the price of corn,
and other favourable conditions referred to in other
chapters of this book, such farms purchased to pay four
per cent, on their present rentals will prove to be not
only safe, but improving investments.
Dairy Farms command higher prices, and if pur-
chased to pay 3J- per cent, would be a sound investment.
They are not subject to such fluctuations as arable or
even mixed farms, and are always in demand by a
good class of tenant.
RESIDENTIAL LANDS.
By residential lands, I mean land which has more
than an agricultural value, and yet would not correctly be
described as building land. Residential land has pecu-
liarities of value in its position in relation to towns,
villages, parks, stations, etc., also in its contour and its
intrinsic merits as to soil, water, timber, etc.
Such lands, if wisely chosen, and paying an interest
from an agricultural rental of from one to three per cent,
are worth securing by those who can afford to wait, or
who buy for posterity. Immense fortunes have been
made by buying land having residential capabilities, and
which has grown more or less rapidly into building land.
Very striking instances of this were demonstrated to
me in crossing the Continent of North America from the
Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean at the end of 1890. I
learned that that vast continuity of cities, townlets, and
homesteads west of Chicago, that is, for more than 2000
miles, are the growth of fifty years, that in fact fifty years
ago the extensive prairies west of Chicago were known
only to the Indian and the occasional white-man-trapper.
For the information of such of our readers as do not know
340 LAND :
the United States, and who will not perhaps take the
trouble to refer to a map, I may mention that Chicago is
913 miles west from New York, and that from Chicago
to San Francisco on the Pacific Ocean is 2355 miles by
the sraight route I traversed, and excepting perhaps a
few miles around San Francisco, the whole of this 2355
miles was, as I have stated, known only to the trapper
and the Indian fifty* years ago. Now, it is a succession of
ranches, villages, towns and cities, the whole traversed by
railways, and in most places there exists a great develop-
ment of electrical light and motors, telephones and other
recent scientific inventions. Now, within these fifty
years, the wealth that has been accumulated may be
reckoned by vast millions of pounds sterling. At one
town, Council Bluffs, where I stayed, I learned that land
quite in the suburbs fetched in lots ^640 per acre, and
business sites in the heart of the town fetched prices
equalling ^3 2,000 (not dollars) per acre. The secret of
the growth of so many American millionaires during
the past twenty years, is that they were wise enough to
buy lands along the railway tracks which have developed
into homesteads, villages, towns and cities.* Land in
some parts of the city of Chicago will equal in value land
in Cheapside, London. Larger fortunes have been made
in land buying and developing and selling than perhaps
in any other description of enterprise. Certainly mil-
lionaires are plentiful in America, and many of them
owe their wealth to the results of enterprises in broad-
acres. The same argument applies in a degree to our
various British colonies, one example of such is given in
Chapter XXXI.
*City, in England, means a town with a Cathedral, or which has been the capital
of a Bishop's See ; but City in the United States means a corporate town, a town or
collective body of inhabitants incorporated and governed by a Mayor and Aldermen.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 341
Some generations ago thoughtful men, such as the
ancestors of our Westminsters, Bedfords, Portlands,
Portmans, Derbys, Norfolks, and others, as also Corpo-
rate bodies acquired lands lying around London and
other large towns of Great Britain, and with what result ?
Lands then bought at agricultural prices have since
developed into high building prices, and have accordingly
enriched the descendants of the far-seeing purchasers.
Their sagacity was rewarded by gains in some instances
beyond the dreams of avarice. Outside Old London
were the Bishop of London's Stepney Manor in the
East, and his Paddington and Westbourne Manor
in the West, with many prebendal Manors between ;
these have since become building estates of enormous
wealth.
Queen Elizabeth let Ebury Farm of 430 acres on
lease to a person named Whasbe for 21 per annum.
In 1663, Sir Thomas Grosvenor, on the death of
Alexander Davies, Esq. (whose daughter and sole heiress
Sir Thomas had married in 1656) became possessed of
this farm ; it was open land and the resort of low
characters till the reign of George IV., but building
operations commenced upon it, and as is well known, it
has since become the centre of aristocratic residence in
London, and is known as Belgravia, and is largely owned
by Sir Thomas Grosvenor 's descendant, the Duke of
Westminster.
That magnificent property in the City of London,
now known as Draper's Gardens, was in part let to the
father of the celebrated Stowe for 6s. 6d. per annum as
a garden. The ground rent of Draper's Gardens is now
stated to be ,10,000 per annum.
Provincial towns, such as Liverpool, Sheffield, etc.,
bear testimony to the fact of great wealth amassed
342 LAND :
to fortunate owners through their ancestors having
prudently bought lands forming part of, or contiguous
to them.
In A.D. noo land at Hampstead was let at i^d. per
acre, which would now sell at ^5000 per acre. In the
next century 70 acres of Kensington Manor were let at
4d. per acre, which now is worth many thousands
per acre.
In A.D. 1340, 1 20 acres of the Lisson Grove Estate
were let at ^10 per annum.
In A.D. 1580, Marylebone Manor was let on lease at
26 per annum. In 1710 the Duke of Newcastle bought
it for 1 7, 500, now its value is enormous.
Moorfields, let at four marks per annum in the reign of
Edward II., now yields ^60,000 a year.
In A.D. 1512, the Portman Estate of 270 acres was
let at ,8 per annum ; now its value is estimated by
hundreds of thousands.
In A.D. 1504, the Pedlars' Acre at Lambeth produced
2s. 8d. ; in 1690 4. ; in 1860 upwards of ^700 per annum.
In A.D. 1600, Netting Barns, a portion of Netting
Hill, was purchased by Sir William Cope for ^2000,
now it produces considerably more than that per
annum.
In A.D. 1617, the Bloomsbury Estate was sold to the
Earl of Southampton for ^600, its value is now estimated
by hundreds of thousands.
In A.D. 1668, two acres of grass land at Highgate
were valued at ,120 purchase-money, now they pro-
duce ^673 per annum.
Instances of increased value might be given to any
length, but in the above few varied cases sufficient has
been stated to prove that a prudent choice of residential
lands would be a wise purchase.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 343
BUILDING LANDS.
Lands having an immediate building value are
building lands, but although land may have a building
value, it does not follow that it is wise to build upon it
immediately. Nothing tends more to depreciate a
neighbourhood than a large number of empty houses
and carcases. Building operations should be conducted
with a due regard to the chances of the houses being
occupied.
No investment is more profitable than the development
of building lands if prudently carried out. Lands which
I valued and which were sold in the London suburbs ten
years ago at ^300 per acre are now covered with houses,
and produce in ground rents about ^ico per acre per
annum, or of the capital value of ^2500 per acre.
When some of the new streets in London were formed
a few years ago, such as Queen Victoria Street, Charing
Cross Road, and Shaftesbury Avenue, the prices at
which the plots were sold when first offered by the
Metropolitan Board of Works, and the prices which
were afterwards obtained, left in some instances very
large margins of profit, especially to those who built
upon them, and created ground rents.
Whether in the central parts of London or the
suburbs, or in provincial towns, there is no surer way
of securing a handsome competency by those having the
command of capital, and who can afford to wait for the
right moment than by buying building lands.
GROUND RENTS.
It was immediately after the financial calamity of
1866 that freehold ground rents became so popular a
form of property, and the desire to purchase them spread
344 LAND :
so widely that many persons, especially the trustees of
widows, orphans, and industrial and other Corporate
bodies, regarded them as the very acme of a safe and
satisfactory investment, because not only are they
secured by rack rents often five times the amount of the
ground rents, but at the expiration of the leases these
rack rents become the property of the owner of the
ground rents.
Competition for ground rents increased so rapidly
after 1866 that^prices increased too.
The same class of freehold ground rent which, in
1866, and few following years, could be purchased at
twenty-five years purchase, could not, in say 1880 and
few following years, have been purchased for less than
twenty-seven years purchase.
Prices, of course, have fluctuated during the period
named to some extent, according to the position of the
money market and the price of consols.
An agitation on the part of some Radical politicians,
suggesting that ground rents should be taxed or rated,
has of late temporarily affected their value by decreasing
competition on the part of timid investors, but as soon as
the public understand the proposals of these agitators,
then such proposals can be met, as explained in the
previous chapter, and ground rents will again assume
their normal value.
%
Ground rents being secured several times over are
absolutely safe, and if purchased to pay three-and-a-half
to four per cent, offer an investment in point of safety,
income, and reversionary value, of an unparalleled
character, and thus are justly in great demand.
Leasehold ground rents may be bought to pay from
four to five per cent., according to the length of the lease
and the nature of the security.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 345
HOUSES, SHOPS AND COTTAGES.
Well built house property in good positions, let on
repairing leases, may be bought to produce a perfectly
secure income, ranging from four to six per cent, for free-
hold, or from five to six-and-a-half per cent, for leasehold.
Good shop property in leading thoroughfares of
London, or other large towns, is a class of investment
much sought after, for the reason that there is a good-
will attaching to the premises. Goodwills range in
value from hundreds to thousands, and thus there is an
additional security.
Cottage property, if in positions where cottages are
greatly needed and, if really well built, forms also a safe
investment. The income is ready money, it comes in
regularly every week ; and the owner generally employs a.
local man to collect the rents, attend to tenancies and
repairs, so that the owner receives a liberal interest
devoid of any anxiety or trouble. Poor weekly property
brings trouble, and should never be purchased by prudent
investors.
HOUSES FOR OCCUPATION.
By the purchase of a house, whether it be a mansion
and park, a moderate residence, a villa, or a cottage, the
owner is always certain of one thing, regular payment of
interest for his outlay.
If he did not live in his own house he would have to
live in a house belonging to some one else, and to pay rent
for it ; but inasmuch as houses pay a higher rate of interest
than many other investments, it is a wise and safe way
of employing money by purchasing a house for occupation.
It has also this additional advantage that whatever money
is spent upon it by the occupier, goes to improve his own
and not another's property.
346
LAND I ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
Lands and houses, if prudently purchased under
advice, would return more profitable results in the main
than could be secured by dealings at the Stock Exchange.
The following Equivalent Tables will be found useful
to purchasers of income-producing property. I have
constantly used them since I commenced practice in 1859.
EQUIVALENT TABLES.
Years.
s. d.
Years.
s. d.
Per cent.
Years.
Months.
I
ioo per cent.
21 4 15 3
3
33
4
2
50 o o
22 4 10 II
si
30
9
3
33 6 8
23 470
3 i
28
26
6
8
4
25 o o
24 434
4
2 5
5
2O
25 400
4T
2 3
6
6
16 13 4
26 3 16 ii
4*
22
2
7
14 5 8
27 3 U i
4i
21
8
12 10
28 3 ii 5
5
20
9
II 2 2
29 39
Si
6
18
16
2
8
10
10
30 368
*J vJ
6 if
15
4
ii
9 i 10
3 1
3 4 o
7
14
3
12
868
32
3 2 6
7^
13
4
13
7 13 10
33
3 o 7
8
12
6
14
7 2 10
34
2 18 9-J
8t
II
9
I4 1
6 17 IT
35
2 17 l
9
II
i
IS
6 13 4
36
2 15 6J
10
10
10
6
'Si
690
37
2 14 Oj
ii
9
i
16
650
38
2 12 7^
12
8
4
i6j
6 I 2
39
2 II 3^
13
7
8
17
5 i7 7
40
2100
14
7
i
18
18*
5 T 4 3
5 IJ i
5 8 i
42
43
2 8 9
2 7 7i
266
15
16
17
18
6
6
5
8
3
10
7
19
553
44
2 5 5i
5
/
3
20
500
45
2 4 5i
20
5
EXAMPLE. A property bought at 16 years'
purchase of the net income will pay 6 per cent.,
i.e., 16 years' purchase is -equivalent to 6 per cent.
EXAMPLE. To purchase
a property to pay 5^ per
cent., multiply the net in-
come by 1 8 years and 2
months' purchase, i.e., 18 -j^
C. F. DOWSETT.
SECTION IV.
LAND : ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 349
CHAPTER XXXIX.
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.
BY PROFESSOR PRIMROSE McCONNELL, B.Sc.
Author of" Agricultural Notebook" and numerous other agricultiiral works : High.
Sac. First Prizeman in Agriculture, Edinburgh University ; Fellow of the Highland
and Agricultural Society of Scotland ; Member of the Royal Agricultural Society of
England (by exam. ); Assistant Examiner, "Principles of Agriculture" Science
and Art Department ; Lecturer on Agricultural Science to the Indian Civil Service
Students, Oxford University ; etc.
FOR the last century and a half the farmers of Great
Britain have been noted as the best all round practical
men in the world. They have produced more crop per
acre of good quality than any other country can show,
while the breeds of live stock which they have developed
have been brought to so great a pitch of perfection, that
they are without rivals, and foreign countries continually
come here for supplies to improve their native varieties.
But we have not by a long way reached the limits of
possible improvements yet, and history shows us that the
march of civilisation and development goes on, and that
those who do not keep moving are left behind. We see
this exemplified in the activity developed of recent years
in foreign countries, for though we have hitherto beat
them, yet in spite of their peasant proprietorship (a
system inimical to advanced farming) they are slowly
coming upon us, and have in fact long passed us in
some departments, as in dairying, seed-testing, and
various other matters, which could be named. If there-
350 LAND :
fore we wish to keep the first position which we have
long held we must needs be stirring a little, while if we
wish to live at all, we must fight the foreigner with his
own weapons.
Within the last generation or so the modern scientific
spirit has been permeating all departments of human
industry, and it would be strange indeed if agriculture
could escape its influence. The tendency of all modern
work is to become more specialized, more " intense," and
more accurate. The old easy-going unmethodical system
of working is gone for ever, and in the farming of the
future good as it has been in the past we will see a
greater amount of exact knowledge and definite rule
applied than ever before. It is the acquiring of this exact
knowledge practical as well as scientific which is com-
prehended in the term " agricultural education," and
regarding which it is intended to say a few words.
Science is knowledge made definite and accurate the
substitution of exact measurement for rule-of- thumb, and
scientific agriculture is farming carried out on these lines.
Model farming is not necessarily scientific sometimes
the very reverse while experience has demonstrated
that it is too expensive to pay in these days, when the
first object is the production of the greatest amount of
yield at the least cost, leaving mere neatness of work
and the " appointments " of the farm as secondary
considerations.
Looking at it in this way, then, let us study a little
more closely all that is comprised in the term "agricul-
tural education," or the study of scientific agriculture.
It includes first and chiefly a knowledge of the practical
work of the farm in all its details : the ability to do most
of the manual operations on the farm as well as the
regular labourer, while at the same time being able to
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 351
manage, that is, to plan and arrange the work as regards
the crop, stock, etc., and to buy and sell. Now, this
can only be learnt on a farm by taking part in the
work of it for several years. The ordinary farmer's son
naturally goes through this course of training unless he
considers himself too grand a man to dirty his hands -
beginning often long before he has left school, so that
by the time he is twenty years of age or so, he is a good
all-round workman, and pretty well understands the
management and financial aspects of farming generally,
and what more he has to acquire in this line can only be
from the " experience " which time alone brings. It may
be argued that it is not necessary for a young man, who
is taking to farming, to ''come down" so much, and
become a labourer for a time, and that he can learn his
business quite well by looking on. The answer to this is
that it is a question of degree. The small tenant-farmer
must of necessity be his own "first man," and do much
of the regular labour of the farm himself, while the large
landed proprietor who has hitherto got along very com-
fortably as a receiver of rents only can afford to depute
his work to another, and manage without having any
knowledge of farming, either practical or scientific, at all.
Between these two extremes there are any number of
degrees of practical knowledge necessary ; but it may be
looked upon as an axiom that every man who intends
to make a living by farming, in the ordinary sense, must
have a thorough knowledge of practical work, the more
the better, and many men have failed just because
though they called themselves " practical " they had
not a sufficient knowledge of the actual work, and they
followed farming too much on the "gentleman" style,
leaving the details of management to others.
Now, as to the education in this practical part of
352 LAND :
farming. For those who do not require to make a living
by renting a farm, but are in the position of owners or
agents, etc. or intend to be there is no better place
than the agricultural colleges where there is a farm
attached. They will see and take part in as much
practical work in, say a couple of years, as will serve
their turn, while, of course, getting a thorough training
in the scientific management of land, forestry, and all the
other departments concerning the development of the
soil. But for the bona fide young farmer there is a great
deal more training necessary in the practical part than is
to be had on such a place. It has been again and again
pointed out that the teaching of the practice at a college
to young farmers has been a failure chiefly from the
experience of the host of agricultural colleges in America
but, notwithstanding this, there are a great many
farmers in favour of founding more agricultural colleges
with farms, where farmers' sons may be taught the
practical part, and where even labourers may be trained.
The arguments against this sort of work may be shortly
summed up as follows : i. A young farmer best learns
the practical work at home on his father's farm, and under
his father's eye, or as a pupil under a practical farmer, if
his father is in some other business. 2. A pupil's work
is of most value at home, and a farmer would not care
very much to pay for this part of the tuition of his son,
when he could train him free of cost himself. 3. A
college farm, worked largely by apprentices, as the pupils
would be, cannot be anything than a huge failure finan-
cially, and this would not look well on a place which is to
be an example to others. 4. Manual labour is not con-
ducive to study, in fact it is a physical impossibility for a
young man to, say, plough part of a day and study the
other part.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 353
This list of arguments might be greatly extended, but
it is enough to point out that these difficulties have never
yet been overcome, and that the attempt to teach the
practice has been well-nigh abandoned in the American
colleges, and there are at least forty of those. Let those
therefore who are in favour of this system of practical
instruction be earnestly entreated to consider how much
has been done already in this line, and with what poor
results, before they found fresh institutions. A farm is
all-important for purposes of illustration to those under-
going a course of scientific tuition ; but the practical part
can best be learnt in practice, and partly at least before
the scientific part is entered on at all. This warning is
all the more necessary because of the large amount of
money lately placed at the disposal of County Councils,
and of which a proportion must be devoted to " technical
instruction " in agriculture, and there is a tendency to
launch out into schemes for spending this money which
can never according to past experience give satis-
factory results. The scientific principles which underlie
all the different operations of the farm ploughing,
manuring, cropping, feeding, and so on can very well
be learnt from books and lectures ; but the ability to put
all these things into practice, the ability to get a fair day's
work from a dozen men, or to buy and sell, can best be
learnt by actually taking part in them on an ordinary
farm ; and on these points will depend more of the success
of a farmer than on a knowledge of chemistry, botany, or
any other science. Further, the failure of college-
trained farmers to get on as rent-paying tenants, is pro-
verbial, although they make the best of landlords, agents,
lecturers, and so on. Let it be repeated, therefore, that
the practice is best learnt as it has hitherto been, by
entering into the life of an ordinary-going farm, and
2 A
354 LAND :
taking part in everything done on and about it for several
years, and supplementing this by going to see what
others do elsewhere.
This latter point is of vast importance, for it is
surprising how blind many successful practical men are to
improvements in some of their practices, which improve-
ments they would see successfully carried out by others,
if they would go and investigate or listen to what others
have to say. Every district does something specially
well and very often other things badly ; while one who
has seen the practice of different districts, or of different
countries can do something towards combining various
good practices on his own farm. The rapidity and
cheapness of travel, nowadays, however, is doing much
to destroy this insulation and prejudiced state of mind,
as is also the shifting and mixing up of the farming
population, so that by-and-by we may hope to see the
good practices of the best farmed districts common
to all.
It may be urged that the success of dairy schools in
teaching practical work is a proof that practice can be
taught at a school or college. A little consideration will
show that this is one of the exceptions which prove the
rule. Buttermaking and cheesemaking are operations
which are conducted indoors on every farm, with limited
requirements as to space, time, and utensils, and therefore
it has been found convenient to arrange for travelling
schools with the most satisfactory results. But these are
only single operations out of a score, and no attempt to
teach dairy farming is made in connection with such.
Even with respect to those two operations, fixed dairy
institutions are considered better, as at Aylesbury and
Kilmarnock. It would be difficult to name any other
kind of work on the farm which could be taught at a
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 355
" school " in the same way, however. Take milking the
cows, for instance, an operation on many dairy farms of
infinitely more importance than either butter or cheese-
making, and consider the impracticability of teaching a
class of young men or women how to do this, while each
can learn well at their own homes without trouble or
expense to anyone.
Now, let us take a look at what is more especially
designated "agricultural education," namely, a study of
the sciences and principles which underlie all the prac-
tices of the farm. It is matters connected with these
which are more especially agitating the public mind just
now, and have been for some time past, and a little
information concerning these may be necessary. A study
of the syllabuses of the various agricultural colleges and
schools, together with those of several examining bodies,
such as the Royal Agricultural Society of England, and
the Highland Society of Scotland, discloses the fact that
there are some eight or ten subjects or groups of sub-
jects which it is desirable that a young man connected
with land should get up. These are, in addition to agri-
culture itself, chemistry, agricultural chemistry, botany,
geology, farm engineering, veterinary science, farm
entomology, and perhaps several others which might be
named, while some of those mentioned may be divided
up into two or more special branches. The published
prospectuses of the various teaching or examining bodies
differ slightly from one another, but a man can never
know too many branches, provided he does not lose sight
of the fact that he must subordinate the whole course to
the practical department. This warning is necessary,
because there is a great temptation to make some or all
of these the first concern, with the necessary result that
one may develop into a good chemist or botanist, but
356 LAND :
thereby cease to be a good farmer, and if so financial
troubles will follow.
Now, if a young man were sitting down in the
evenings with a determination to succeed, he could
acquire a great deal of information by reading up for
himself, and many have acquired enough in this way to
serve their turn ; but these are exceptional cases, and for
the great majority who wish to get a thorough know-
ledge, it is necessary that they do some systematic study,
such as they would gain by attending for a session or two
at some of our agricultural colleges after having mastered
the practice. There are plenty of these to choose from
already in existence, and the charges are so reasonable at
some, that a season's tuition can be had for 50, or even
less inclusive of everything so that no ordinary farmer
need hesitate to send his sons on the score of expense.
Further, there are proposals mooted in various quarters
to apply some of the County Council grants to establish-
ing more colleges, and while this would certainly be a
waste of money while existing institutions are only half
filled, yet if it draws out fresh pupils, and there is no pre-
tence made of teaching " practical" work, benefit will
accrue to the coming race of tenant farmers.
The system of agricultural education sketched above
has been in practice now for a generation, but it is only
here and there that a man more intelligent or more
liberal-minded than his fellows has taken advantage of it.
Moreover, the great majority of those who have done so
in the past have worked their way into what may be
called the higher departments of farming, have become
land-agents or factors, lecturers, professors in colleges at
home or abroad, land valuers, and so on, and only a
small proportion have become regular tenant farmers.
But now, within the last year or so, County Councils
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 357
have been flooded with grants of money to be applied to
the purposes of " technical education," which in rural
districts must mean agricultural education, and the great
majority of these bodies have already put various schemes
into operation, the general principles being those of the
University Extension Lectures, in which people who
cannot go to central institutions for systematic instruction,
have this instruction brought to their doors by travelling
lecturers, so that it does not interfere with their daily
work. The most that can be said in favour of this system
is that it is the only way that the thing can be done
at present, and gives some information or at least offers
information to people who would otherwise have none.
But nevertheless, the teaching must be more or less
desultory, and not much ground can be covered in a
season or two. The success of the movement will depend
on the abilities and tact of the individual teachers, and it
is a pity that the County Councils, which have so many
thousands of pounds at their disposal, should in many
instances have offered so small a salary to their lecturers
that only young men care to take up the work. Farmers
as a class have certain prejudices which they are justified
in sticking to, and one of these is the feeling of contempt
which they have for those who have never borne the burden
and heat of the day entailed in farm work ; and another is
the opinion that experience in farming can only be gained
in the course of years. It follows therefore that a young
man who has just come fresh from his studies no matter
how clever and ''sound" he may be will not influence
middle-aged or old farmers very much, while the mistakes
he is certain to make will be noted, and the subject of
scientific education will thus get discredit thrown on it
which it does not deserve. It is a thousand pities, there-
fore, that some Councils have not offered terms good
358 LAND :
enough to induce reliable men to undertake the work.
One comfort remains, that other Councils have done so,
and therefore we may look for satisfactory results with
them, and thus prove that knowledge is a good thing.
One of the most successful systems of dealing with the
ordinary farmer is that known as the Farmers' Institutes,
as practised in the United States. A series of meetings
is organised at various centres, and men of standing in
practice or science give addresses or conduct discussions,
and in this way matters of the most vital importance
are treated of. The way has been shown in this direction
in this country by the County of Chester, where practical
men have been asked to give a lecture or two each on
his own special department in which he excels the
subjects chosen being those on which the farmers of a
given district are most interested. Men of this calibre
and standing are listened to with a respect and attention
which a youngish scientist can never hope to attain for
many years, and the results accruing from the employment
of such will be infinitely more satisfactory.
In view of the fact, again, that after all, for the
younger men, such teaching is desultory, and that they
should be encouraged to attend institutions where sys-
tematic study is engaged in, the offering of good scholar-
ships to draw out such for this purpose, is to be highly
commended, and in this respect the Norfolk County
Council has led the way, while for many years past the
Royal Agricultural Society and the Highland Society
have offered bursaries to junior students.
Education, however, of whatever kind, or for whatever
station in life, is a matter for the young, and therefore
the greatest endeavour should be made in connection
with those, leaving the older folk very much to their own
devices. For this reason, anything that tends in this
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 359
direction is to be encouraged, and for the young rural
population generally, the schoolmaster is the most suitable
teacher of the elementary principles, and the success
which has attended work in this direction up to the
present is a warrant to proceed still further in the
development of the agricultural education of all young
countryfolks, more especially of the labouring and small-
farming class. The Science and Art Department have
for many years encouraged the study of the principles of
agriculture by giving prizes and certificates in common
with many other branches of study, and there is every
inducement to further this work, by County Councils or
other bodies finding the money to encourage teachers
and pupils to take it up. It is acknowledged that the
labourers would be rendered much more efficient workmen
if they had some knowledge of the principles which
underlie the work which they do, and it would appear
that the schoolmaster is the person who can most easily
get at the boys and girls who will compose the future
race of workpeople. Various operations which are usually
conducted indoors are being successfully taught- to classes
of young people and old as well such as cookery and
carpentry ; but as already pointed out the operations of
the farm do not lend themselves to this easy arrangement ;
and therefore for the present at least we must content
ourselves with teaching the theory and reasons only, as
labourers are not in the position to go to special training
institutions, as would a farmer or a landowner's son.
Of all those who are connected with the land, how-
ever, there are none stand more in need of technical
education in agriculture than the landowners. Here
and there are enlightened men who understand and
have taken a personal interest in the development of
their estates, but the great majority know and care very
360 .LAND I
little about what ought to be the first concern of their
lives the business of land owning, a business which
requires to be learnt like any other. A man of great
wealth and high social position cannot, of course, be
expected to become an expert in farming matters, and at
the same time do the share of public work which is
expected of him, but he can, at the least, depute his
duties in this respect to a thoroughly qualified man, if he
has no taste himself for this sort of work. It is gratifying
to see that of recent years there is a growing tendency
among landowners to appoint ik agricultural experts" as
their agents, and the good results of this must appear in
time. It is of little use for the farmer or the labourer to
become trained in their work and armed with the know-
ledge which would enable them to develop the resources
of the land, if the man who owns the land is careless or
ignorant of the proper way to manage it. It is with him
that the success of agriculture and agricultural science
rests : he has the power, the position, and the money,
and if he will but set the example those under him will
soon follow. If he will not do so then the whole move-
ment will be rendered nugatory. The proposal to found
chairs of agriculture in our ancient universities, where
the majority of our future landlords are educated, and to
make agriculture one of the subjects for a university
degree, ought to be hailed with satisfaction by everyone
who has the welfare of the rural population and the success
of agriculture at heart. But unfortunately those places are
still dominated by the scholastic follies of the middle-ages,
and the practical needs of the present age are ignored.
These matters will be set right before very long, however,
as far as agriculture is concerned, for public opinion in
favour of such changes is gathering in force. At present
there is nothing to hinder young landlords from attending
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 361
for a year or two at some of our agricultural colleges if
they would only do so. If they will not do so then let
them be earnestly entreated to depute their duties to some
one properly qualified.
There is one point to be noted in connection with the
establishment of a course of agricultural education in our
old universities, and that is the fact that the men who
teach the branches which would be included in an agri-
cultural curriculum would be the most eminent in their
various departments. The professors of botany, chemistry,
geology, and so on in a county college, or other compara-
tively small establishment, cannot be of the same standing or
acquirements as those in such places as Oxford, Cambridge,
Edinburgh, Glasgow, etc., thus bearing out the general
statement that, in the present movement, County Councils,
colleges, etc., are not getting the best men because they
-do not offer enough salary or a good enough position.
It is a thousand pities that, outside of the Extension
System, those in authority and who are moving in the
matter, do not utilize existing institutions of importance,
for in this way the maximum results would be obtained
at the minimum cost.
And now we come to the greatest engine of agricul-
tural education practical as well as scientific the Printing
Press. This, of course, has been the great cause of
progress in the world, as the means of communicating a
man's knowledge to all his fellows. It was said above
that the most important part of agricultural education
was the gaining a knowledge of the practical part by
living on a farm, but next to this come the weekly
farm papers which are a record of the current life of the
farm, and from which a reader learns of the progress,
success or failure, of his "professional brethren." Johnson
said that books were the great universities, and any
362 LAND I
farmer who procures one of the many excellent text-
books to be had, and reads it through, will learn much
that will be of value to him ; but unfortunately farm work
is inimical to systematic study, and therefore, the ordinary
farmer can get more good from his weekly modicum
served up in one or more of the farm papers, while the
information is more varied. A farm paper is first and
chiefly a record of practical farming men will write
there regarding what they know who would never think
of attempting a book. But it is also a concise epitome of
scientific information, for when anyone writes a volume
on a subject, he goes into all the minute details, and
spreads it out " thin/' in order to make up a book of
a respectable size, whereas when he writes a column or
two for a paper, he " boils it down," and gives the most
valuable points in few words. When an old or young
farmer, therefore, bethinks himself of cultivating the
" farm within the ring-fence of his own skull " the first
thing to do is to take in one or more of the weekly farm
papers, and the books and lectures and systematic study
will follow as circumstances permit.
Agricultural education, whether of the landlord,
tenant, or labourer, is a very wide subject, and perhaps
the headings of the other chapters in this book give the
best idea of the wide range of subjects included in the
term ; but in its usual limitation it is restricted to a study
of the sciences which bear on farm-work and manage-
ment, and to which the remarks above have been chiefly
confined. The last word has not yet been said on the
matter, however, and most likely from the attention
which has been devoted to the subject since "Technical
Education " matters were taken up, we are on the eve of
great and unlooked-for developments, which may satisfy
farmers and carry them with the movement. But so
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 363
far agricultural education is not a matter of yesterday,
being, in fact, a century old in this country, but in the
above short article the main points of the subject, as
they have hitherto been accepted by those who have
given attention to the subject, have been set forth with-
out prejudice to whatever new developments the future
may see.
PRIMROSE McCoNNELL.
364 LAND
CHAPTER XL.
THOROUGH CULTIVATION OF THE SOIL.
BY GILBERT MURRAY, F.S.I.,
Author of practical articles in " The Royal Agricultural Society's Journal" " The
Highland Society's Journal" Colmarfs " Cattle and Sheep of Great Britain"
Mortoris Handbooks, "Farm Series" Stephen's "Book of the Farm" and most of
the leading periodical piiblications of the day ; Alember of the Royal Agricultural
Society of England ; Life Member of the Highland Society; Past President of the
Midland Valuers' Association; Agricultural Examiner for the B.Sc. degree of the
University of Edinbtirgh ; Winner of many prizes for reports and for designs of
Farm Homesteads and Labourers' Cottages ; Winner of the 100 prize offered by The
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for the best cattle truck with facilities
for feeding and watering in transit; Author of numerous pamphlets on "Dairy
Farming" "Agricultural Depression," "The Shire Horse," "Agricultural
Edtication" and many other subjects.
THE progress of science during the last decade has
thrown a flood of light on the cultivation of the soil, and
has rudely shaken the faith of the scientific farmer in the
utility of any culture which was long held to be an
important essential in the growth and development of
the cultivated crops of the farm. Modern science has
turned to ridicule the ancient proverb, " Plough deep
whilst sluggards sleep, and you'll have corn to sell and
keep." Those whose experience extend to the early
days of steam tillage when deep cultivation was a
craze, have long since been painfully convinced of the
injury it inflicted, both in the case of strong and light
lands, more particular the latter. Not only was the hungry
subsoil disturbed and worked to the surface. On
strong clays, it assisted drainage by hastening the perco-
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 365
lation of the rain-water, which at the same time carried
with it a portion of the manurial constituents contained in
the soil. I had long observed and been puzzled to account
for the difference in the growth of the wheat crop on
the ferruginous sands of the lower oolite ; the four-course
system was that most generally pursued, wheat following
one year's ley ; the wheat crop always succeeded best on a
shallow furrow. This could not be altogether attributed
to the more firm seedbed, and on the same soils where
autumn cultivation was practised, and the land ploughed
six inches deep during the latter part of October and
throughout November, it became much washed and weak-
ened by the winter rains, and never worked so kindly as
when ploughed up early in the spring. We noticed
in a paper the report of a lecture on " Soils and their
Cultivation, by a County Council Official," who attributed
the superior fertility of certain lands to deep cultivation.
The chief object of cultivation is to bring the atmos-
pheric air into direct contact with the chemical constituents
contained in the soil ; the most valuable of which are
nitrogen, phosphoric acid, potash, soda, lime, and
magnesia. Before the nitrogen of the soil can be
utilised by plants it must first be oxodised. The object of
cultivation is to bring the atmospheric air into contact
with the nitrogen in the soil which takes up the nitrogen
and forms nitric acid ; this chemical change is chiefly
performed in the soil through the agency of living
organisms which are present in the soil in myriads.
Recent discoveries in plant nutrition have opened up a
new and interesting field of investigation. There can be
no nitrification without the aid of living germs ; these are
admittedly of a low order of life, the oxygen of the air is
of itself sufficient to sustain their operations ; darkness is
also requisite for their activity. This will explain to the
366 LAND :
cultivator the advantage wherever practicable of stirring,
rather than inverting the soil ; the action of these microbes
and their operations cease at a temperature slightly above
freezing, and cannot endure a temperature of more than
one hundred degrees. They are most active in their
operations a few inches below the surface, and prac-
tically become inoperative at a depth of ten inches,
hence their activity is greatest near the surface. This
is clearly apparent in the development of young fruit
trees of five or six years' growth, where mulching or
surface manuring has been practised. Within a few
inches of the surface there is a complete network of
slender roots, or spongioles, whilst not a root has pene-
trated the soil beyond a foot. Where no surface manuring
has been practised, the trees are sending down tap
roots to a considerable depth into the subsoil. These
make less wood, and are not so healthy in appearance as
those that have been regularly manured. Alkaline
solutions put a stop to nitrification through the agency
of microbes ; lime and liquid manure curtail their action.
In waterlogged soils these organisms are destroyed,
and are replaced by another set of living organisms, which
do not require air for their active development. The
efforts of their lives is the destruction of nitrifying
germs, and reducing the nitric acid in the soil to the
state of nitrous acid, which, reacting with amides largely
contained in the soil, causing the evolution of nitrogenous
gas, which at once escapes from the soil and is lost, the
oxidization of the carbon, which has hitherto been re-
garded as a purely physical process, is now found to be
carried on through the medium of minute forms of
animal life. The soil is a world peopled by innumerable
myriads of living workers, which grow and multiply, and
which, during their short lives, effect mighty changes
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 367
according as they find in the soil conditions suited to
their existence. It has been proved beyond a doubt
that the leguminous order of plants alone possess the
powers of extracting and conserving the nitrogen of the
air. This explains the fructifying effects of a bean, tare,
or clover crop on the subsequent produce of the land.
The application of bones, kainet, and superphosphates to
poor grass lands stimulate the growth of clover, which
collect nitrogen from the air and by this means increases
the nitrogen in the soil for the benefit of future plants.
As a marked contrast undrained land is invariably
poor in manurial condition from the action of the living
organisms with which it is peopled, and whose lives are
spent in dissipating the nitrogen contained in the soil.
Here science makes clear much which to the practical
man was obscure. I have seen and practised deep
cultivation, tried subsoiling on an extensive scale,
practised steam tillage under widely varying conditions
of climate and soil, without obtaining any very marked
results. Steam cultivation acquired an unenviable
reputation, not through its legitimate use, but rather
through its abuse. The old school of practical farmers
were well aware of the fact that deep cultivation required
heavy manuring ; beyond this they were careful not to
carry the argument, and as to the causes they did not
stay to inquire. It is now well known that nitrification
proceeds very slowly, if at all, at depths below nine
inches ; hence the effort of the scientific cultivator is
to keep the manure near the surface, and wherever
practicable, to keep the soil frequently stirred. This
can only be effectually done when the land is under
a root crop. The extension of the growth of catch
crops preserves the soil from the wasting influences
of sun and rain ; nitrification proceeds very slowly.
368 LAND :
if at all, in a naked soil exposed to the powerful rays
of the sun in a cloudless sky ; hence the utility of
keeping the soil clothed with vegetation. Wherever
necessary, the foundation of every improvement is
drainage ; without this, the efforts of the husbandman
prove to be abortive. The opinion of practical men on
the system of drainage has been modified during the past
twenty years. In most cases, the system of deep drains
at wide intervals have been abandoned ; the general rule
is not to exceed three feet ; the distance apart must ever
be regulated by the nature of the formation by affording
a passage for the surface water, which invariably carries
with it a certain quantity of atmospheric air containing
nitrogen ; this assists in the development of the changes
which are silently going on in the soil, the loss of nitrogen
passing off in the drainage water is trifling. A useful
practice as applied to old hidebound pastures, originated
with the use. of steam culture ; a number of sharp steel
blades mounted on a strong frame were passed through
the soil at a depth of five or six inches ; this gave access
to a current of air which aided the microbes in their
operations. When followed by a well-selected dressing
of artificial manures, the result was generally satisfactory.
On well-drained, strong lands, summer fallows are no
longer a necessity, their special advantages can now
be obtained by other and better means, the growth of
tares and other catch crops to be fed on the land by
sheep during the summer months in conjunction with
a daily allowance of cake or other artificial food ;
this is the least costly method of raising the manurial
condition of the land. The growth of mangold and other
root crops on strong land for the purpose of drawing them
off for consumption in the yards is generally a losing
game. Where the land is suitable for the growth of roots
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 369
I have long been practically convinced of the utility of
constantly stirring the soil between the rows ; we start
the horse-hoe as soon as the young plants make their
appearance. We strongly disapprove of the scuffle or
cutting hoe, which we view as weed propagators ; the hoe
or grubber which we prefer is armed with five chisel-
pointed tines, and is drawn by one horse. The first
operation is confined to a shallow depth, each time the
depth is increased, and is continued once or twice a week
when the weather is favourable, so long as it can be done
without injuring the leaves of the plants.
A considerable change has taken place in the cultiva-
tion of the root crops. Formerly the regulation distance
between the rows was twenty-eight to thirty inches, now
reduced from twenty to twenty-four inches. In this way,
although cultivation cannot be so well carried out, yet,
owing to the greater number of bulbs, a greater weight
per iicre can be grown, and the bulbs, though smaller, are
more nutritive. On the best turnip soils the early sown
crops, particularly in dry seasons, are subject to mildew.
Where the grubber has been continually and deeply
used we have never known it to fail in warding off all
attacks of a fungoid character. It is useless scratch-
ing the surface. Better do nothing, even during the most
parchingly dry weather, when the tiny plants have
been singled, when the grubber is frequently and deeply
used, it is marvellous the progress they make. We make
a rule of having them singled as soon as they come into
rough leaf ; deep stirring, even on weak sands, promotes
nitrification and induces capillary attraction ; hence the
young plants derive sufficient moisture from the subsoil
to supply their wants. Another advantage is that certain
chemical constituents contained in the subsoil are carried
up with the water forming new combinations near the
2B
370 LAND :
surface, and are thus rendered available for the food of
plants. In the case of the potatoe crop, equal advantages
will accrue from repeated stirring of the soil ; in this
case cultivation begins before the young stems make their
appearance, the ridges are harrowed down, and set up
again several times ; this checks the growth of weeds.
As soon as the young plants make their appearance, the
grubber is freely used between the ridges ; the more
frequently the soil is stirred to a moderate depth, the
better prospect there is for a heavy crop. In the growth
of cereal crops the farmer is dependent on the snow and
rain, and the thorough drainage of his fields to convey
the oxygen of the air to supply the silent workers in the
soil. In the application of farmyard manure to the soil,
frequent errors are committed by burying it too deeply
in the soil ; here ancient practice confirms the teachings
of modern science. I have frequently been struck with,
to me, the peculiar practice of drawing out and spreading
the farmyard manure on the land in preparation for the
root crop ; it is then covered in with a shallow furrow,
rolled down and allowed to remain in this state for
a fortnight or three weeks until the period for sowing-
arrived, generally about the twenty-first day of June ; the
land was then scuffled, and as a consequence bringing
a considerable quantity of the manure to the surface ; the
seed was then drilled on the flat in rows twenty inches
apart. All the after cultivation they received was setting
out the young plants and one or two light hand hoeing
between the rows ; the use of a grubber or scuffler was
practically unknown. In dry seasons the crops invariably
suffered from attacks of mildew and were often rendered
comparatively worthless, whilst in dripping seasons
moderate crops of good quality were grown. Whatever
success was attained was due to keeping the manure near
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 371
the surface, here nitrification was carried on at a very
shallow depth. In the best cultivated districts of Scot-
land the bean crop is grown on ridges and the horse-hoe
freely used and the soil to the depth of six or eight inches
well aerated ; hence the bean crop acts as a good prepara-
tion for the subsequent wheat crop. Undoubtedly our
increasing knowledge of science is leading on to improved
practice by which the productive powers of the soil are
rapidly increasing.
GILBERT MURRAY.
372 LAND
CHAPTER XLI.
LAND DRAINAGE.
BY GILBERT MURRAY, F.S.I.,
Author of practical articles in the Royal Agricultural Society's Journal, the Highland
Society's Journal ', Colmarfs "Cattle and Sheep of Great Britain" Mortorfs Hand-
books, "Farm Series" Stephens "Book of the Farm" and most of the leading
periodical publications of the day Member of the Royal Agricultural Society of
England ; Life Member of the Highland Society ; Past President of the Midland
Valuers' Association : Agricultural Examiner for the J3.Sc. degree of the University
of Edinburgh ; Winner of many prizes for reports and for designs of Farm Homesteads
and Labourers' 1 Cottages ; Winner of the 100 prize offered by The Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for the best cattle trtick -with facilities for feeding
and watering in transit; Author of miiueroiis pamphlets on "Dairy Farming"
" Agricultural Depression" "The Shire Horse" "Agricultural Education," and
many other s^tbjects.
THOROUGH drainage is the foundation of all other
improvements on bibulous soils. Whether it be a single
field, a farm, or an estate, the first duty which devolves on
the drainage engineer is the preparation of a skeleton
plan of the subject to be operated upon. Next he must
examine the course of the brooks or natural watercourses,
and then ascertain the lowest and most conveinent outlet
for his chief mains. These are set out on the plan from
levels taken on the spot. The direction of sub-mains
are next laid down. Before deciding on the size of pipe
to be used it is essential that some calculations be made.
Efficiency and economy should rule the practice of every
drainer. This is a point that seldom receives much
attention from the so-called practical drainer, who boasts
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 373
of his long experience and knowledge of the work, con-
sequently he very frequently uses pipes of a capacity far
beyond the necessary requirements of the case. I well
remember, when a young man, having an altercation
with one of this class, whom no argument would convince
that two four-inch pipes were not equal in capacity to one
eight-inch ; the only convincing proof was to place the
eight-inch pipe upright on a lump of tempered clay, and
stopping the end of a four-inch filling it with water, and
emptying it into the former until it reached the top ;
by this means I gained the confidence of a reliable
workman. With amateur drainers it is a common
occurrence to use much larger pipes than are neces-
sary, both in the main and the minor drains, hence
the cost is piled up to an enormous extent. Employers
complain with good cause, though they generally have
only themselves to blame, for employing unskilled
persons. I have another objection to the use of large
pipes, where smaller ones are sufficient, on account of their
greater liability to become silted with a slack gradient
and only a small flow of water which in a large pipe
covers a greater surface and hence is less capable of
removing obstructions.
According to reliable datum large and deep rivers
flow with sufficient rapidity with a fall of one foot per
mile ; small tortuous rivers require at the least two feet
per mile ; small brooks can with difficulty keep an
open course with a fall of four feet per mile ; covered
drains require about eight feet per mile. The quantity of
water that will require to be removed during twenty-four
hours will not under ordinary circumstances exceed one
tenth of an inch of rainfall. With a head of ten feet per
mile a six-inch pipe at the outfall will be sufficient to
discharge the drainage from a field thirty-six acres in
374 LAND :
extent ; with a greater head a smaller pipe will be sufficient.
With a head of sixteen feet a four-inch pipe would be
sufficient to discharge the drainage from a field seventeen
acres in extent. If there be sub-mains discharging their
waters into the main at different points, the size of the
pipes in the main drain may be correspondingly lessened.
Wherever practicable the main drain should have a clear
fall of six inches from the lower side of the outlet pipe to
the level of the brook or river through short lengths of iron
pipe corresponding with the different sizes of main pipes.
One end of these is cast with a socket into which the drain
pipe fits ; to the outer end is attached a hinged grating
to prevent the ingress of vermin which collect obstruc-
tions and imperil the free action of the water. The
outlets should be protected both in front and at the sides
by a wall constructed of fireclay bricks set in hydraulic
mortar ; the end of the pipe should project four to six
inches beyond the face of the wall, a large flag or other
smooth stone should be placed at the outlet ; in fact, this
stone should be built into the wall. On the low lands of
the river valleys I have frequently experienced great
difficulty in obtaining sufficient fall for some of the mains
which, in flood time, are often many feet submerged.
This does not entirely stop the flow, as many suppose.
Although the pipe may be full for a considerable distance,
there is still a circulation in the drain, the water in which
proceeds at the same rate of speed as that of the river.
My experience extends over a number of years, and only
in a very few cases have I found the efficiency of the
drain impaired. We have long since superseded the
wasteful and unsatisfactory practice of cutting a hole in a
main pipe to receive the sub-main. At every junction or
angle in the main drain we form a cesspool, or what in
the Derbyshire vernacular is called a panter pit ; this
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 375
consists of a fireclay socket pipe set on end and sunk
considerably below the level of the main, both the water
coming through the main as well as that from the sub-
main is delivered into this pipe. These were originally
constructed with holes to receive the main and sub-main,
by this means the outlet can be arranged at different angles.
The socket pipes are carried to the surface if on pasture,
and are protected by a movable lid, by removing which
the action of the drain is readily observed. This also
affords a receptacle for any sediment that may from time
to time find its way into the drain. These pits are
examined and periodically cleaned out. The depth of
drains has undergone considerable modification within
my experience. There can be no fixed rule as to depth ;
soil and situation must ever be the ruling factors here.
At one time four feet was the minimum. The late
Josiah Parkes was a warm advocate of the system of
deep drainage. It was he who carried out deep drainage
at wide intervals with one-inch pipes, on the late Lord
Berner's Keythorpe Estate in Leicestershire, which
subsequently proved unsatisfactory. Except it be in open
soils, with a gravelly subsoil, depth under ordinary
circumstances cannot compensate for distance apart,
though I have occasionally succeeded. The open porous
soils of the upper oolite are frequently skirted on the
lower levels by beds of dark-coloured clays; when the
drainage from the upper levels reaches this they are
immediately thrown to the surface. Much of this land
had formerly been drained with horse-shoe tiles ; many
of these drains had become useless. By cutting a drain six
to eight feet deep at the outcrop of the clay with the
oolite I succeeded, at a comparatively small cost, in laying
dry many acres. Such cases seldom occur, the object of
drainage is to remove subsoil water, and afford more free
376 LAND :
access to the rains which carry with them a quantity of
nitrogen.
The experienced drainer who is generally an obser-
vant man well fortified with useful data has little difficulty
in fixing the depth and distance apart necessary to
effectually drain the land. His general knowledge of the
different geological formations and of the maximum
rainfall of the district furnish him with sufficient data to
enable him to arrive at a correct conclusion. If he has any
hesitation as to the nature of the sub-soil a few trial holes
here and there settle the point. As a guide to the inex-
perienced a line of trial holes is cut in the line of fall to
the depth at which the work is intended to be done ; on
each side of the line a drain is cut throughout the whole
length at such a distance as is deemed sufficient to dry
the land. If these drains fail to completely drain the water
from the trial holes the distance apart is too wide and
must be reduced ; a more simple plan is to regulate the
distance by the depth. In strong clays, the distance
should not exceed six times the depth ; in gravelly clays
the distance may be six to eight times the depth, and in
open gravelly or sandy sub-soil they will prove efficient at
a distance of twelve times the depth of the drain. A skilful
drainer cannot be trained without a certain amount of
practice and careful instruction. The bottom of the drain
when finished should be the exact width of the pipe,
which when laid cannot possibly shift. Where the subsoil
is free from stone and is of sufficient consistency
to stand without calcine, the left hand side of
the drain is cut perpendicular from the surface to
the bottom, whilst the right hand side is bevelled from
the surface downwards. This is an advantage to the
workmen, whose great object is to reach the required
depth with the minimum displacement of soil. I have
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 377
seen twenty men at work on old permanent pasture on
the London clay-formation cut drains to an average depth
of four feet, not one of which removed a clod more than
sixteen inches wide at the surface. Many would only
break the turf twelve inches, while some would be as
narrow as ten inches. A great deal of the draining done
in years past was simply a waste of money and materials ;
the work was generally done by the ordinary labourers
at slack times. These men were many of them first rate
labourers, but unaccustomed to the work of drainage,
and thoroughly unprovided with suitable tools ; hence
the bottoms of the drains when finished were frequently
double the width of the pipes, which had all to be
packed, otherwise the line of connection was broken in
filling the drain. This is an improvement of too ex-
pensive a character to be carelessly and inefficiently
performed. I have long been opposed to tenants under
taking permanent and costly estate improvements. Their
business is to cultivate the land, and the owners' duty to
effect the permanent improvements. Under the ordinary
conditions of a yearly tenancy, the occupier has only
a temporary interest in the holding, and even if he
possessed the necessary skill and experience, he can
scarcely be expected to exercise it to the best
advantage, as on the termination of the tenancy his
interest in the improvement ceases. We seldom put
in a drain less than three feet deep, unless compelled by
circumstances. During the cycle of wet seasons, a craze
set in amongst inexperienced drainers as to the use of
large pipes in minor drains. We have already explained
our views on this point. We never use a larger bore
than two-and-a-half inches ; for minor drains with a
moderate amount of fall two inches is ample ; the larger
the pipe the greater the cost of the work. With two-and-
37 8 LAND :
a-half inch pipes at twenty-one shillings in the yard in
ordinary cases the cost of draining should be from five to
six pounds per acre ; except in the case of a difficult main.
All the work is done by contract at a fixed price per chain
of twenty-two yards. Where a sufficient number of men
are at work a pipe-layer is invariabiy employed, this man
is paid by the day ; he is likewise entrusted with the
responsible duty of seeing that the levels and depths are
maintained. The drainer is only responsible for the
cutting and filling in of the drain. On grass land the
clod or surface sod is laid by another person, the contract
price for which is twopence per chain. We have paid
for the cutting and filling three feet drains prices ranging
between one shilling and eightpence and three shillings per
chain. One thousand 2-inch pipes, 12 inches long, weigh
about 1 7 cwt. ; a one-horse cart will hold about 750.
One thousand 6-inch weigh about five tons, and 180 is
about what a one-horse cart will carry. Some twelve years
ago we drained several hundred acres of old grass land
with the mole plough ; the formation belonged to the
glacial drift, for the most part an adhesive clay in which
pebbles of different sizes were firmly imbedded ; the land
had originally been under tillage and probably on account
of its wet state had been laid down in lands or stitches
four yards wide. The drainage work was done under con-
tract with a steam-plough company, who used two engines
working on the direct traction system ; the main drains
were cut by hand and laid with ordinary drain pipes, the
ends of the minor drains were connected with the main by
pipes. The depth of the drains was thirty inches ; the con-
tract price including labour and coal but exclusive of pipes
was one pound per acre ; the work has been most satisfac-
tory, the drains are acting as well now as they did at the
commencement. In a few instances, where a vein of sand
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 379
cropped up the run of water has the effect of washing away
the sides and letting down the roof, causing a stoppage
which soon gives indication of its whereabouts ; the drain
has then to be opened and made good by laying a few pipes
as far as the sand extends. I tried it to a more limited
extent on tillage land, which has since been laid down to
permanent pasture ; here, too, the drains are still acting
efficiently. My experience leads me to infer that many of
the old permanent pastures on the strong clays may be
laid sufficiently dry for all practical purposes at a very
moderate cost. This if followed by suitable manuring will
restore the land to some degree of fertility.
GILBERT MURRAY.
380 LAND
CHAPTER XLII.
TENANT RIGHT.
BY WILLIAM E. BEAR,
Author of '' The British Farmer and his Competitors" " The Relations of
Landlord and Tenant" etc.
NOTHING would more effectually encourage agricultural
enterprise, and so conduce to the advantage of all classes
connected with land, than an Act of Parliament securing
fair and adequate compensation to tenants for actual
improvements to their holdings. Except as "a homily
to landlords," the Agricultural Holdings Act has proved
a failure. It has been only beneficial so far as it has
induced landlords and tenants to make satisfactory
arrangements by private contract in order to avoid the
risks of coming under its provisions, which are more
conducive to costly litigation than to a fair settlement of
the respective claims of landlords and tenants. In the
great majority of cases tried under the Act, the tenant
has put in an extravagant claim, the landlord has retorted
by the production of an equally unfair counter-claim,
and the umpire or judge has "split the difference,"
awarding so little balance to either party that it has
been about swallowed up in costs. Proposals have been
made for the amendment of the Act ; but it is too
hopelessly bad in construction for effective amendment.
It was so framed as to allow of its administration upon
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 381
a wrong principle that of payment for expenditure ; for
although the first section provides that compensation for
improvements shall be measured by their value to an
incoming tenant, less " what is due to the inherent
capabilities of the soil," valuers have almost, if not
quite, universally based their allowances upon outlay.
As respects the landlord's counter-claim, too, the Act
encourages demands for infringement of covenants,
independently of actual waste or deterioration, and
tenants have actually been fined heavily for cropping
irregularities which were clearly advantageous to the
landlords or succeeding occupiers. The proper principle
to govern counter-claims, as to rule claims, is that of
payment for results. In short, the tenant should have
a legal claim to any addition to the value of his holding
effected by his improvements ; while the landlord should
be able to demand an indemnity for any deterioration in
its value due to the tenant's faults, mistakes, or neglect.
When the Agricultural Holdings Act was under
discussion, great efforts were made to alter its principle
and its details. But landlords were unnecessarily afraid
of payment for results, and strongly and successfully
opposed its effective embodiment in the Bill. By means
of the simple proviso of barring results due to "the
inherent capabilities of the soil," which no man can
measure, they destroyed the nominal principle of com-
pensation in proportion to value to an incoming tenant.
Valuers would not face " inherent capabilities," and got
out of the difficulty as already stated. The result is
that, while landlords succeeded in preventing tenants
from getting any considerable payment for improvements,
they also stopped the inducement to improvement which,
if they had been wise, they would have encouraged. In
effect, the tenants' claims were limited and handi-
382 LAND I
capped, while the landlords' counter-claims were entirely
unlimited. In a paper read before the London Farmers'
Club, Mr. C. S. Read clearly showed how unfair many
of the landlords' counter-claims have been, and how
foolish it was for any tenant to have anything to do
with the Agricultural Holdings Act. It is, of course,
impossible to gauge the advantages which that measure
has, as a kind of scarecrow, secured to tenants. Agree-
ments made in order to avoid it have probably, in some
cases, been such as to encourage agricultural enterprise.
Directly, however, the Act is of no appreciable advan-
tage in this direction. The improvements which it
allows tenants to make, with a claim to compensa-
tion, without their landlord's consent, are just such
temporary improvements as all decent farmers make
without any legal encouragement. It may be that, in
the last year of a tenancy, a farmer here or there has used
cake or artificial manure more freely than he would have
used it if there had been no Act of the kind. This,
however, is not of much account. The Act fails to
stimulate the steady and continuous enrichment of land,
and the execution of permanent improvement, because it
is so administered that it does not recognize anything but
bills for feeding stuffs and fertilizers, and it allows no
claims for permanent improvements unless the landlord's
consent to their execution was obtained. It is true that
a tenant may drain land, after giving notice, if the land-
lord will not do the work, and claim compensation for
what is deemed the unexhausted proportion of his outlay;
but I have not heard of a single instance in which this
doubtful privilege has been embraced. The privilege, or
right, is that of a tenant to say to his landlord, " I shall
drain this land if you will not, and claim compensation."
The mere necessity of having thus to "fly in the face" of
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 383
his landlord is sufficient to deter any tenant from using
this right, unless he and the owner of his holding are
already on bad terms, or unless he holds under a long
lease and is prepared to leave at its expiration ; and as
to this last point, it is to be observed that most leases
bar the Act. Moreover, the assertion of the right can be
easily checkmated by a notice to quit, for no tenant would
take the trouble to drain land unless he expected
several years of occupancy in his holding. Draining
is such a necessary improvement, where it is required
at all, that every tenant should be entitled to execute it if
his landlord will not do the work instead. The tenant
should not be paid a penny if the draining has not been
a real improvement, whether because it was not needed,
or because it has not been properly done. But where
it has reclaimed water-logged land, and made it sound
and sweet for all kinds of crops, he should receive the
full value of its increment in value.
Then, take the case of a tenant laying down land
in permanent pasture. Good pasture always adds to the
letting value of an ordinary farm, and landlords must
have gained, as a rule, by a law affording security to
tenants' capital invested in the making of such pasture.
The condition of the pasture would clearly show whether
it was a real improvement or not, for it would not thrive
on soils or in districts not suitable to it ; yet a tenant is
not entitled to a penny of compensation for the best of
pasture laid down without his landlord's consent.
We have all heard and read a great deal of late as to
the desirability of growing more fruit in this country, but
how can tenant-farmers be expected to incur the great
expense of planting land with fruit trees or bushes without
any security ? A fruit farm would never long lack a
tenant, but would let readily at a good rent. Then' why
384 LAND I
should not tenants be encouraged to plant fruit trees and
bushes if their landlords do not feel disposed, or are
not able, to do the work when occupiers desire to go into
the business of fruit-growing ? The Act, however, bars
compensation for the planting of orchards or fruit bushes,
unless the landlord's consent is obtained. It is the same
with the making of gardens or fences, the reclaiming
of waste land, and other highly desirable permanent
improvements.
It is true that there might be some hardship in
requiring a landlord to provide a large sum of money
to compensate a quitting tenant for a number of costly
permanent improvements, and for that reason I have on
previous occasions proposed that he should be entitled
to leave the tenant to get compensation by selling the
improvements to a future tenant. In my opinion the
right of free sale of improvements is by far the best form
of tenant-right for all parties concerned ; but this has been
commonly objected to, because it involves a valuation of
rent, The Ulster system worked well for landlords and
tenants alike, so far as it was carried out in its integrity,
and not unfairly hampered by "estate rules." It was far
more equitable than the Irish Land Acts are, for they
are in some respects unjust to landlords ; but if objections
be raised to such a system for universal application, what
harm could be done by giving landlords the option of
paying their quitting tenants compensation for improve-
ments, or allowing them to sell these improvements in
the open market ? Improved farms always let readily,
even in the worst of times, and although, if tenants
obtained the full value of their improvements, landlords
would not get for nothing enhanced rents upon those
improvements, it would be no slight advantage to have
farms always in such order as to be readily lettable.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 385
Between two stools we fall to the ground, and agri-
cultural improvement is to a great extent in that position.
The landlord, unless in possession of much wealth apart
from his estate, which is to descend to a single heir, does
not feel justified in using for increasing the value of his
land money needed to provide for other members of his
family ; while the tenant dares not risk the expenditure
of capital without security. The result is that farmers,
as a rule, are careful to spend no money on their holdings
except for such fertilizers as will yield a speedy return,
and they deliberately and justifiably under the circum-
stances scheme to take out as much as possible of what
they have put into the land before they give it up. No
one can deny that this see-saw of good and bad farming
is disadvantageous to owners, occupiers, labourers,
mechanics, manufacturers, commercial men, and con-
sumers of farm produce alike. In short, it is impoverishing
to the nation. Surely, then, we should not be satisfied until
a complete remedy for the evil has been provided. A
partial remedy, possible of application, but not much used
hitherto I fear, has been provided by the Act which
empowers a limited owner to sell a portion of his estate
in order to obtain capital for the improvement of the
remainder. If all landowners, whether their estates are
settled or not, would dispose of as much land as is
necessary to enable them to execute all permanent
improvements required to put what land they retain in
first-rate order, and use the money obtained for that
purpose, the greatest of ail obstacles to a more perfect
system of farming would be removed. The farm buildings
on the majority of holdings in England, and on many in
Scotland, are insufficient, or not good enough for
improved stock-keeping or dairying, and the owner is
certainly the proper person to erect buildings. The con-
2 C
386 LAND I
dition of farm orchards, too, is scandalously bad, most of
them being full of worn-out trees or nearly worthless
varieties. Thorough draining, again, is required on
millions of acres, and no land improvement pays better
than draining, sensibly executed, though the unnecessarily
deep draining which has been too long in fashion often
costs more than it is worth.
Of course, the Agricultural Holdings Act must be
admitted to be another partial remedy for the evil above
mentioned, though its effects have been chiefly indirect,
acting through private agreements in lieu of the Act. But
as landlords, as a rule, in offering compensation for im-
provements by private contract are only obliged, at the
most to use an American phrase to " go one better "
than the Act, the many shortcomings of that measure
tell against satisfactory agreements. They are not con-
strained to agree to compensate their tenants for per-
manent improvements, because the Act leaves it entirely
at their discretion to allow or disallow such improve-
ments to be made with security for compensation. Even
with respect to temporary improvements, the Act is not
a good model ; nor is it a good example when it endorses
the system of levying fines for breaches of restrictive
covenants, independently of any damage resulting from
such breaches. As to this last point, I would empower a
landlord to stop any tenant from committing waste or
deterioration on his holding, on the verdict of an arbi-
trator ; but I would also render invalid in respect of
damages all restrictive covenants as to cropping or sale
of produce as " in restraint of trade," except as far as
actual damage to the landlord's property could be proved
to the satisfaction of an arbitrator. It is intolerable, in
these times of fierce competition, that a farmer's hands
should be tied in respect of the conducting of his business.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 387
The lawyer-made cropping restrictions are altogether
out of date, and should be relegated to the limbo of the
dark ages of farming. Let every tenant be fully com-
pensated for all his improvements, and as fully fined for
all his deteriorations, and no restrictions as to cropping
or sale of produce will be required as a rule. As for the
exceptions, they would be met by empowering a landlord
to stop a tenant from committing obvious waste, as already
proposed. The recent bad times have at least done
good by getting rid of restrictive farm covenants in
thousands of cases, as sensible and prudent farmers
have lately refused to take land in hand unless they
could act upon their own judgment in making the best
use of it.
These abominations, however, are not by any means
extinct. As recently as last September the North
British Agriculturist published a circular sent to
the tenants of an estate in Nairnshire in reply to an
application from them for the " privilege " of wintering
sheep on their farms. The circular is such a beautiful
example of the Scotch idea of holding farmers in leading-
strings that I should like to give it in full ; but space
forbids. It sets forth, in arrogant and hectoring language,
the grudging allowance of the " privilege " under the
most elaborate of conditions and restrictions. The par-
ticular number of a special breed of sheep which each
tenant is to be allowed to winter is set forth, as well as
the particular section of each farm on which the sheep are
to be kept. The number of shepherds to be employed
is also paternally prescribed, and that of sheep-dogs also,
both men and animals having to be "previously approved"
by the lawyer-factors who act for the proprietor. As an
example of hectoring language, this sentence may be
.quoted: "That while recommending to the proprietor
388 LAND I
the granting of the privilege of sheep-wintering as herein
specified, we expect each of you to do all in your power
to prevent trespass, poaching, or damage; and if it shall
appear to us that any one or more of you are not doing
so, the privilege shall be withdrawn from any one or
more." This is the style of address to capitalist farmers
which the members of a "leading firm of lawyer-factors
in Edinburgh " deem proper in this last decade of the
nineteenth century.
What is needed is a free flow of capital in land im-
provement, with freedom in making the most profitable
use of the improved land. I believe that the produce
of the land of the United Kingdom could be doubled,
and doubled profitably, under favourable conditions as to
the investment of capital and the conveyance, the
purchase, and the sale of farmers' requirements and pro-
ductions.
During the long period of agricultural depression the
lack of fair tenant-right has not come prominently into
notice, because farmers, as a rule, have had no spare
capital for improvements ; yet in the opinion of many
competent witnesses, cited in an article contributed by
the present writer to the Royal Agricultural Society's
Journal for June, 1891, judiciously high farmers have
stood the strain of depression better than low farmers.
But if, as there is reason to hope, a period of moderate
prosperity for agriculture is setting in, we should prepare
to "make hay while the sun shines," and towards that
end the most essential course of action is the speedy
restoration of neglected farms, and the improvement of
the land generally. We want to attract to the land
some of the immense amount of capital now wasted
in foreign loans and bogus companies, and he is no
true friend of landowners, or of any other class of the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 389
community, who stands in the way of such legislative
reform as would make capital invested in land improve-
ment safe from confiscation.
WILLIAM E. BEAR.
i9O LAND :
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE PROSPECTS OF FARMING.
BY WILLIAM E. BEAR,
Author of ic The British Fanner and his Competitors" " 7^he Relations of
Landlord and Tenant" etc.
IT is extremely unfortunate that at a time when fanners*
prospects appeared to be brightening in a marked manner,
one of the wettest of harvests ever experienced should
have occurred. At the end of July, in spite of some
harm that had been done during that month by heavy
rains, there was a promise of excellent crops of wheat,
barley, peas, potatoes, and hops, a passable outlook for
oats in England and a good one in .Scotland and Ireland,
and a fair chance of satisfactory root crops. The hay and
bean crops alone were distinctly below the mark in the
United Kingdom as a whole, most of the hay having
been more or less injured by wet weather. With every
reason to expect satisfactory prices for corn, then, a
profitable season appeared to be almost assured to the
farmers of this country. Unfortunately, August proved
to be one of the wettest months on record, and a great
deal of damage was done to the corn crops by the rain
which first laid them, and then kept the ears in a sodden
condition; while sheaves of wheat and oats and swaths
of barley were wetted through repeatedly. In some
districts sprouting took place extensively ; but as a rule it
was less common than everyone feared it would be. The
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 39 1
wheat grain failed to develop to the full extent during the
unseasonable ripening period, and there is, accordingly,
an undue proportion of shrivelled kernels in many
samples, while barley was generally stained more or less,
and peas and beans shelled out through the opening of
the pods. Moreover, blustering winds caused much
shedding in over-ripe crops of wheat and oats, and blew
off whole ears of barley to a lamentable extent. Hops
were injured more by the high winds than by the rain,
but still promised fairly at the end of August. As to
potatoes, disease set in rather badly in some districts,
but did not become an extensive attack. The first half
of September was, for the most part, dry and hot, so that
the early harvesters were able to stack their corn in
excellent condition, except for the damage to colour and
quality ; and the results of early threshing showed that, in
spite of all the loss that had occurred, there were generally
fair or good crops of corn. In the late districts wet
weather returned all too soon for the completion of harvest,
and the season thus proved unfavourable almost through-
out. The hop crop was injured by the scorching sunshine
which did so much good to corn crops in the first half of
September, so that barely an average yield was secured.
At the end of the month roots showed a fair promise,
and potatoes were found to be a very abundant crop, not
much diseased as a rule. At the time of writing, then,
bearing in mind the chances of comparatively high prices
for corn, and allowing for the losses experienced, it still
seems possible that farmers of arable land will have
balances on the right side of their accounts, though not
nearly as good ones as they had reason to expect earlier
in the season. Breeders of live stock, on the other hand,
suffered from a heavy drop in prices in the early autumn.
They have had their turn in previous years, however, and
39 2 LAND :
winter feeders will gain what they lose in the prices of
store cattle and sheep. The summer grazing season proved
unprofitable on account of the fall in prices, and dairy
farmers complained of the extreme cheapness of milk and
butter during the summer. Thus the start on what might
be hoped would prove an era of agricultural prosperity
was to a considerable extent put back.
It is not chiefly with the prospects of a single season,
however, that I am concerned in writing this article, for
what I have to consider is the more or less permanent
prospects of farming. A good start is a great point in
a race, and it is much to be regretted that farmers will
enter upon the third year of the " nineties " with less
money in the banks than they might reasonably have
expected. Still the signs of the times appear to me to
point to a period of comparative prosperity for agriculture
in the world at large, and in this country in particular.
Farmers' expenses have been greatly diminished since
the long period of depression set in. Rents have been
commonly reduced from twenty-five to fifty per cent,
during the last twelve years in the arable districts, where
the pressure of low prices has most been felt. Even the
assessment for income tax, which does not show the full
drop in rents, denotes a fall of nearly twelve millions
sterling in the annual value of the lands of the United
Kingdom, as having taken place between 1879-80 and
1889-90. Most of this large annual sum has been lost
by the owners of arable land, whose tenants alone, as
a rule, have felt severely the depression of which we
have heard so much. Dairy farmers have suffered from
the low prices of milk and butter during the spring and
summer for several years past, but have still held their
own pretty well. Thus a great relief has been given to
those who most needed it. But rent is only one item
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 393
in respect of which there has been a great reduction.
Rates have declined with rents, and tithes with the prices
of corn, while the prices of feeding stuffs, manures, im-
plements, and, in short, of nearly everything that the
farmer buys for his farm or his household have been
greatly reduced. Bad times, too, have taught farmers
to economize labour and their personal and household
expenses. So great has been the reduction in the
expenses of farming, indeed, that, in spite of the con-
tinuance of low prices for corn and other products of the
farm up to the end of 1890, we have heard but little of
the ruin of farmers during the last few years, and the
bankruptcy records have been comparatively favourable.
It is clear, then, that if an era of moderately high prices
for agricultural produce has set in, farmers will be in a
much better position for reaping a profit on their business
than they were when such prices were last to be obtained.
Adversity has taught them many useful lessons, and the
schoolmaster has been about the country affording other
valuable information. A marked improvement has
already taken place in dairy practice, through the in-
struction which has been given, aided by the invention
of excellent machines and utensils, and farmers have
more knowledge of the manuring of crops and the
feeding of stock than they or their forefathers had
twelve years ago. Breeding, too, has improved, and it
has never paid better than during the last few years. It
is a question whether the fattening of live stock ever did
yield much profit, apart from manure, and the high price
of stores has often been against the feeder's chance of a
favourable balance ; but the price of meat has generally
been satisfactory of late, while purchased feeding stuffs
have been extremely cheap. Taking all things into con-
sideration, there has been reason to believe that farmers
394 LAND :
as a whole had adapted themselves to new conditions,
and generally gained a living in spite of the low prices of
some kinds of farm produce. If, then, they have been
prepared to fight a hard battle without actual defeat,
there is surely reason to expect them to prosper in no
mean degree if the strain of foreign competition is be-
coming lighter, for a short time at least, and possibly
for a long period.
In my opinion an era of higher prices for agricultural
productions has begun, and I will now give my reasons
for coming to that conclusion. Let us first take into
consideration the probabilities in relation to grain, begin-
ning with wheat.
The low price of wheat in the " eighties " was caused
by an enormous increase in the wheat-growing area of
the world during the decade ending with 1880. In the
United States alone the increase was from 18,992,591
acres in 1870 to 373986,717 acres in 1880, or about
exactly 100 per cent. Statistics for Canada are so im-
perfect that the exact increase in that colony cannot be
stated, but in Ontario alone it was over half a million
acres, and probably it was about a million for the whole
of the colony. In Australasia the advance was from
1,201,682 acres in 1870 to 3,377,551 acres in 1880, a
gain of more than two million acres. During the same
period there were small increases in France, Russia, and
other European countries, and larger additions to the area
in South America and Africa ; and, then, on the top of
the heavy additions to supplies from the countries and
colonies named above, there came to Europe during the
"eighties" large quantities of wheat from India. There
is no doubt that there was a great over-production of
wheat in the few years preceding and succeeding 1880.
The result was that the annual average price in England,
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 395
which had been nearer sixty shillings than fifty shillings
a quarter in five years out of the ten ending with 1880,
and over forty-five shillings in three other years, was
under thirty-three shillings in 1884, and lower still
during the rest of the " eighties," and the further result
was that wheat-growing became unremunerative in all
parts of the world. Sanguine writers endeavoured with
some success to convince people that the owners of
mammoth farms in Manitoba and the Western States of
America could profitably lay down wheat at Liverpool at
twenty-two shillings a quarter, or some scarcely less
ridiculous price ; but somehow the mammoth farms usually
came to grief, like the great Bell Farm in Manitoba,
concerning which the bragging about cheap production
was most notorious. The truth is that, although
American and Canadian farmers were not put even to
the test of laying down wheat in Liverpool at a lower,
if as low, a yearly average price as thirty shillings a
quarter at any time during the " eighties," the unre-
munerativeness of wheat-growing in both countries was
clearly proved.
After 1880 the average value of an acre of wheat in
America, which had usually been fifty shillings to nearly
sixty shillings, fell until, in 1884, ^ was under thirty-four
shillings an acre, and this was about the average for
all the remaining years of the decade except 1888,
when there was an advance to fifty-two shillings for
that one year only. Moreover, in some States distant
from good markets or shipping ports, where production
is cheapest, the farm value of the wheat crop was much
less than the average. An official volume of statistics
recently issued shows that the minimum State average
for ten years ending with 1889 was twenty-four shillings
an acre, and that in seven States it was less than thirty-
396 LAND :
two shillings. After 1884 these returns were even lower
than the average for the decade. American farmers could
not grow wheat profitably with such miserable returns.
In an official report for 1885, Mr. J. R. Dodge,
Statistician to the American Department of Agriculture,
writing on the returns for 1884, when the exceptionally
high average of thirteen bushels an acre was produced,
and the farm value of the wheat crop was thirty-three
shillings and sevenpence an acre, said that it might
confidently be assumed that there was no profit in wheat
production, except where farmers secured twenty-five
bushels, or at least twenty bushels, an acre, and of these
he only said that t( they obtained a small profit, provided
the cost of fertilizers was not too large an element." Even
in the prolific year referred to, there was only one State
which averaged as much as twenty bushels an acre of
wheat. For the whole of the " eighties " the average
yield of the wheat crop in the United States was only
12*03 bushels. Besides, the farm value alluded to by
Mr. Dodge was not the lowest for the decade, and for
five years out of the ten the average was only thirty-
three shillings and ninepence an acre. The best proof,
however, of wheat-growing not being remunerative lies in
the fact that the acreage was practically stationary during
the " eighties." It was 37,986,717 acres in 1880. and
38,123,859 acres in 1889, while in 1890 it fell to
36,087,184, partly because of winter- killing. The broad
fact is that the area remained about the same during a
decade in which the population increased by twelve and
a half millions, and in spite of the fact that, in the mean-
time, millions of acres of new land were broken up,
growing wheat almost from necessity to start with,
millions of acres in the old-settled States were withdrawn
from wheat-growing; farms were deserted, or sold to pay
ITS ATTRACTIONS . AND RICHES. 397
taxes, iii great numbers ; farm and crop mortgages
increased ; and the great wheat farms of California were
to a considerable extent turned into fruit plantations,
or used for mixed husbandry.
To avoid wearisome details of statistics, I will simply
state, as a fact that can be verified, that the wheat
acreage of Canada, Australasia, and even India, fell off
during the last half of the "eighties." In Canada, in
spite of the settlement of Manitoba, in which province
623,245 acres of wheat were grown in 1889, the acreage
of that province and Ontario was smaller than in 1881.
In South America, the increase in wheat area has been
barely sufficient to meet the growth of population.
Without going to the extreme of writers who declare
that America will cease to export wheat in five years,
and import it in ten, it is reasonable to conclude that the
country will not long export wheat unless prices are
higher than they were during the last decade ; and the
same may be said of Canada and Australasia, the former
of these sources of supply to Europe, indeed, having
been pretty well dried up in recent years. As to India,
the enormously growing population must soon deprive
that country of the power of exporting wheat. Russia
has of late had some great crops of wheat on an extended
acreage, but is not likely to increase or even maintain
the volume of her exports permanently, unless prices are
comparatively high. Unquestionably, the growth of
wheat in Europe has failed to keep pace with the
demands of the increasing population during the past
ten years ; and this may also be said, as already in-
timated, of America, Canada, and India.
The wheat area of the world, which was too great
at the beginning of the " eighties," had become too small
at the end of the decade, and it was only an exception-
398 LAND I
ally good crop in Europe which saved us from scarcity
in 1890, while, this year, the supply of wheat and rye is
far below a year's consumption, in spite of the production
of a phenomenal crop of wheat in America. The facts
cited above appear to me to show conclusively that the
wheat-consumers of the world will not be adequately
supplied during the rest of the present decade not to
look further ahead at anything like such prices as
prevailed during the last decade. Hence I venture to
predict a period of fair prices for wheat.
The prices of other kinds of grain usually move up or
down more or less " in sympathy with >; those of wheat.
As far as barley and oats are concerned, there has been
no great increase in direct competition. It is the com-
petition of maize with feeding-barley and oats that has
done most to lower prices. But probably, if the price of
wheat rises, as I contend that it must, in order to stimulate
sufficient production, a good deal of maize land will be
devoted to wheat in America, and in Europe more wheat
and less barley and cats will be produced. In this way
the supplies of these two last-named cereals will be
reduced, and prices will rise accordingly.
Very much the same arguments as those applied to
competition in wheat might be repeated in relation to
meat. The frozen mutton traffic seems to defy prices ;
but then that traffic, greatly as it has increased, has not
prevented the price of British mutton from remaining
quite as high as it was generally before Australia, New
Zealand, and the Argentine Republic began to send their
frozen carcases. As to American cattle and beef exports,
it is well known that the cattle range and ranch interests
have declined, and it is only reasonable to conclude that
the era of very cheap beef-production in America is
drawing to an end, as the ranches get cut up into small
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 399
farms, and the ranges become settled. As it has been, a
study of the statistics relating to our cattle and beef imports
shows that they have been increased or diminished as
prices advanced or fell in this country. Exporters have
often lost heavily, and there is good reason to believe that
it pays to send cattle and beef here only when prices in
this country are high enough to be satisfactory to home
graziers. Every year the people of the United States
require more of their own meat as well as of their own
wheat, and as the range system of feeding cattle passes
away, they will require more of their own maize to feed
the animals. It may be that meat-producers will in the
future have more to fear from the competition of Australia
and South America than from that of the United States,
if any plan of bringing beef in a chilled, instead of in a
frozen state, from those continents can be made perfect.
But I do not believe that the production of meat in the
world will ever increase for any considerable period
faster than the population.
Competition in dairy produce has been increasing for
many years, and is increasing still. But no one has yet
shown why dairy farmers in this country should be beaten
in their own markets by the producers of other countries.
Their chief competitors are Europeans who pay at least
as high rents as they pay, and whose pastures and cows
are on the whole inferior to theirs. If British dairy
farmers keep on improving their practice as they have
improved it during the last few years, they will need
nothing but a better system of distribution than that
which exists at present to enable them to defy foreign
competition.
Fruit-growing in this country is a fairly prosperous
business, in spite of the occasional stories of those who
declare that their crops do not pay for picking. But
4OO LAND I
high rail rates and an utterly abominable system of dis-
tribution at present tell against an extension of fruit-
growing, and so does the lack of security for capital
invested in planting by tenants.
I am far from desiring to represent the prospects of
farmers in too optimistic a manner. They will possibly
have a struggle for years to come, and they will need
the advantages of moderate rents and many improve-
ments in the economy of farming and marketing to
which references will be found in other parts of this
volume. It must not be forgotten that the enormous
advance of rents which followed the Russian War did
much to produce the crisis which made land for many
years a drug in the market. Landlords and farmers
alike were greatly injured in the long run by the war
prices ; but neither such prices nor the mad scramble
for farms at any rent will be likely to recur. What is
to be looked for is moderate agricultural prosperity,
with its natural consequence, an improved demand for
land. I believe that capital sunk in land at present
prices will prove an excellent investment, and that
farmers who take leases at current rents will have
reason to congratulate themselves a few years hence.
There is much to be done by Parliament, by landlords,
and by farmers themselves to bring farming in this
country under the most favourable conditions for its full
development, but if all who are responsible in this con-
nection will co-operate in efforts for the advancement of
agriculture, there will be every reason to count confidently
upon the prosperity of the oldest and most important
of all industries.
WILLIAM E. BEAR.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 401
CHAPTER XLIV.
FOREIGN COMPETITION AND THE PRICE OF
LAND.
BY WILLIAM E. BEAR,
Author of " The British Farmer and His Competitors^ " The Relations of
Landlord and Tenant" etc.
THERE cannot be any doubt that the growth of foreign
competition in agricultural products during the last decade
but one had a greater effect than any other cause in re-
ducing the value of land. It is true that the harvests of
the " seventies " were in the aggregate far below average
in productiveness, and that bad seasons had a great deal
to do with the climax of depression, which was reached
in 1879 ; but if prices had kept up to the level which
they had attained in former periods of scarcity, no such
serious collapse would have occurred. It was the con-
junction of bad harvests and low prices which brought
about the ruin of thousands of farmers, and caused rents
and land values to go down with a run. The price of
wheat has always to a great extent ruled the values of
other grain, and the price of the principal cereal was
bound to fall when the American wheat area had been
going up by leaps and bounds for ten years, while the
cost of conveying it from distant inland prairies to the
seaboard, and thence to Europe, grew less and less. In
1870 there were less than nineteen million acres of wheat
in America, and ten years later the area was nearly
2D
4O2 LAND I
thirty-eight million acres. Such a doubling of pro-
duction in ten years meant an enormous increase of
exportable wheat. During the same period, too, the
growth of wheat in British Colonies, South America,
and India increased considerably ; but it was not until
the latter half of the decade that the markets of Europe
became glutted with ex-European wheat and flour.
Our own imports of these commodities, for instance,
had not shown any steady increase in the ten cereal
years ending with 1871-72, the quantity being still
under ten million quarters, and less than the home
production. There was a sudden increase in the
next cereal year, when the net imports were over
twelve and a quarter million quarters ; but prices kept
up well during that year and the next two years of smaller
imports, and only began to fall steadily towards an
unremunerative level after 1876-77, the year when India
first became an important contributor to our wheat supply.
In the following year we imported nearly fourteen and
a-half million quarters of wheat, including flour, in the
next year, nearly sixteen and a-half million quarters, and
never as little as fifteen millions afterwards. In 1880
the area devoted to wheat in the world was so greatly in
excess of the requirements that, although it has made but
little advance since, while the population has been
increasing by millions annually, the demand for wheat
has only just overtaken the supply. Since 1878 the
annual average price of wheat in this country has not
reached forty-six shillings a quarter, and it has only twice
reached forty-five shillings. Under the rents which pre-
vailed before 1880, with other expenses high, farmers
could not grow wheat at the price.
Barley and oats kept up well in value, taking one
year with another, during the " seventies," and would
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 403
have been very dear (as there was no great increase in
their cultivation, if any at all), if it had not been for the
enormous increase in the supplies of maize, which nearly
doubled in America and greatly increased elsewhere
during the period.
During the decade under notice, moreover, our
imports of meat, wool, butter, and cheese increased
enormously, and foreign competition became fierce all
along the line. Fiercely, too, the battle has raged through
the last decade, although at the cost of reverses to our rivals
at least as serious as our own. We have had the annual
average price of wheat once below thirty shillings, that
of barley below twenty-five shillings and sixpence, and
that of oats below sixteen shillings and sixpence a quarter.
Wool has been very low in price, as a rule, for many years,
cheese sometimes, and butter frequently, while meat has
occasionally been below the cost of production, though
not often under the level of past times.
Under such circumstances the value of land was
bound to fall, especially as it had been forced up inordi-
nately, as explained in another chapter. As gauged by
the assessment for Income Tax, the climax of high values
was reached in 1879-80, the worst year of agricultural
depression. This shows how slow the value of land was
to fall after real property had been high in favour as an
investment for a generation or more ; for farmers had
begun to suffer before the "black year" came. In that
year the gross assessment in annual value of land in the
United Kingdom amounted to ^69,548,796, and ten years
later it was less by nearly ^12,000,000 (^11,938,896).
Some authorities have put the fall at a much higher sum ;
but the returns of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue
are the only complete ones available.
It is not only in this country that the value of land
404 LAND :
has fallen. Our foreign rivals have suffered from compe-
tition as we have, and more so in many instances. Land
has fallen greatly in some continental countries, in parts
of the United States, and in British Colonies. According
to a recent number of the Toronto Globe (October i4th,
1891), the value of land in Ontario has fallen on an
average twenty-five per cent. The fall is probably greater
in the Eastern States of America, as far as agricultural
land is concerned, and in New Zealand and parts of
Australia also.
It would not be very profitable to speculate upon what
would have happened if we had shut out foreign compe-
tition during the last twenty years c That we could have
produced all the corn, meat, and dairy produce we have
consumed, I do not doubt ; but it would have been at a
great cost, and food would have been extremely dear.
What the price of land and food would have been can
hardly be imagined ; but it is certain that, before the
end of the former of the two decades, there would have
been a revolution, and the owners of landed property
might then have lost far more than they have lost under
the actual circumstances. It may be doubted whether
the people would have submitted to even moderate
import duties on food ; but that is a question into which
I will not enter.
In my opinion, free competition with the whole world
has done its worst to British agriculture. I do not expect
to see the price of wheat below thirty shillings a quarter
again, or the annual value of the lands of the United
Kingdom down to ,58,000,000, after the current year.
Since the price of wheat has been under forty shillings
in this country the increase in wheat-growing has come
to an end. The wheat area has recently declined in
Australia, New Zealand, and India, while it has been
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 405
stationary in America and Canada* during the last ten
years. Inquiries made as to the decline in South
Australia by the collectors of the Census of 1891, are to
the effect that, because wheat did not pay, thousands of
acres formerly devoted to that grain had been depastured
with sheep. Yet prices in 1890 were higher in Australia
than they had been for two or three years before. More-
over, the people of South Australia used to boast that they
could grow wheat more cheaply than the farmers of any
other country in the world. In Victoria, New South
Wales, Tasmania, and New Zealand, the same cause was
unquestionably accountable for the falling off in the
wheat area.
In India the growth of food barely keeps pace with
the population, and will not be able to do so much longer
unless a vast improvement in Indian agriculture takes
place. Several authorities might be cited in support of
this statement.
As to the United States, always the chief competitor
of this country in agricultural production, the wheat area
there can only keep pace with the increase of population
at the expense of other branches of production. At a
price, an immense quantity of wheat more than is at
present produced can be grown, but not at a low price.
The American Land Office Commissioner, in his report
for 1890-91, says that there is comparatively little un-
settled land outside the arid regions desirable for farming.
This statement has recently been emphasised by the
mad scramble for the second tract of land in Okahoma,
opened for settlement, in spite of the destitution which
has prevailed among those who raced and fought for the
The wheat area in Ontario and Manitoba, where nearly all of it is situated,
was smaller in 1890 than in 1881, but showed a slight increase in 1891, which was
probably about balanced by a decrease in Quebec and the Maritime Provinces.
406 LAND :
first tract in that old Indian reservation. The era 01
cheap meat-making, too, is departing, as the ranges and
ranches become divided into small farms.
In course of time great tracts of land in Africa and
South America may be brought into cultivation ; but long
before that can be the case, the population of the world
will have increased greatly. Indeed, it will be only the
need of the population, as shown by higher prices, that
will bring into cultivation tracts of country which cannot
now be cultivated at a profit. Long before that can
happen, the value of land in settled countries will have
got back to the old standard, if not to a higher one.
WILLIAM E. BEAR.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 407
CHAPTER XLV.
OUR FOOD SUPPLY.
BY WILLIAM E. BEAR,
Author of '" The British Farmer and his Competitors" " Thi, Relations of Landlord
and Tenant" etc.
A GLANCE at our agricultural statistics conveys the im-
pression that the food supply of the United Kingdom has
diminished during the last twenty years, as the area of
permanent pasture has been greatly increased, and that
of corn crops has diminished, while the increase in our
live stock does not seem proportionate to that of the land
devoted to the feeding of the animals, A more careful
examination of the figures, however, will show that it is
not by any means as easy to make the comparison as might
be supposed. As far as yield per acre is concerned, there
are no official figures for 1870 ; but we may at least con-
clude that the lost area is not met by an addition to
the yield. Indeed, the evidence is rather in the other
direction, as there is no doubt that large areas of land are
in a poorer condition than they were twenty years ago,
the long period of depression having made economy in
expenditure the leading principle of most farmers, rather
than enterprising liberality in the enrichment of the soil.
The. following table shows the changes in acreage and
numbers of live stock of the last two decades for the
United Kingdom:
408
LAND I
Corn Crops
Green Crops ...
Grass, Clover, &c.
1870.
1880
1890.
Acres.
Acres.
Acres.
",755.053
10,672,086
9,574,249
5.107,135
4,746,293
4,534,145
28,405,421
31,106,324
33,212,635
No.
No.
No.
9,235,052
9,871,153
10,789,858
32,786,783
30,239,620
31,667,195
3,650,730
2,863,488
4,362,040
Cattle ...
Sheep ...
Pigs ...
Here we have a decrease of over two million acres
of corn in twenty years, against which we have to set
increases of 1,554,816 cattle and 711,310 pigs, and a
decrease of 1,119,588 sheep. The extra meat derived
for the year will be calculated shortly, when it will be
seen to come out at a little over three million hundred-
weights. But this meat was to a great extent made by
the use of foreign feeding-stuffs, which consideration
brings a further complication into the reckoning. It
is also to be borne in mind that all corn is not used for
human consumption, nearly all the oats, rye, and beans,
and some of the barley and peas being used for horses
and other live stock, and a good deal of such corn for
stock on farms. Therefore it would not be correct to
regard what would have been the average produce of
the decrease in the corn area as all a loss of food sold off
the farm lands of the kingdom. Moreover, the decrease
in the acreage of oats, the kind of grain most commonly
sold for the use of horses in towns, is less than three
hundred thousand acres for the twenty years ; the decrease
in barley for the twenty years is only about three hundred
and sixty-two thousand acres ; and the decreases of beans,
peas, and rye together are less than the last-named
quantity. The only decrease in corn acreage which can
be taken as practically all loss to the supply of food from
the farm lands is that of wheat, which is 1,290,068 acres.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 409
The produce of this area, at the average yield, would be
about two million hundredweights, which is a small item
in comparison with the large quantity of additional meat.
But, then, it is to be borne in mind that a large pro-
portion of the meat, as already intimated, is the product
of imported feeding stuffs, which have greatly increased
during the last twenty years. Taking averages for
three or four years close to 1870 and 1890 respectively
so as to avoid accidental extremes, I find that the
imports of maize have increased by about twenty million
hundredweights, those of linseed by about one million
quarters, those of cotton seed by about three million
hundredweights, and those of oilseed cakes by nearly two
million hundredweights. There have also been large
additions to our foreign supplies of oats, barley, other
grain, and meal, all partly used for feeding live stock for
meat. It is impossible to make an exact comparison ; but
there can be no doubt that if we could get at the precise
quantities of meat produced in 1870 and in 1890 re-
spectively from what is grown upon the land of the
United Kingdom, no great increase would be shown to
set against the diminution of corn.
This is seen to be all the more serious when we notice
that, during the twenty years, there has been an increase
in the total area under cultivation, including pasture, of
over 1,868,000 acres. The exact increase of permanent
pasture for the whole of the United Kingdom cannot be
stated, because it was recently discovered that the Irish
returns did not distinguish permanent from other grasses ;
but it has been shown that the increase of grass, clover,
etc., in the twenty years approached five million acres,
and there is reason to believe that nearly the whole of
this increase represents permanent pasture, because in
Great Britain alone there was an increase of nearly four
4io LAND :
million acres. Thus, the whole of the increased cul-
tivated area, and some three million acres besides, have
been swallowed up in permanent pasture. Now, it is
well known that more meat can be produced on arable
land than on pasture, and the figures just cited therefore
strengthen the impression conveyed by those previously
given, to the effect that our production of meat, from the
produce of our own fields, has not greatly increased.
Among the green crops potatoes are included, and
the statistics for the twenty years' period show a decline
of over three hundred and eighteen thousand acres in that
crop; but this is probably covered by improvement in
varieties grown and in their cultivation, while there is a
further set-off in an additional production of various
market-garden vegetables and fruit. In Great Britain,
at any rate, there was in 1890 a decrease in the area
of roots and- other green crops besides potatoes about
equal to the small increase in clovers and grasses under
rotation. Broadly speaking, then, we have an increase of
about four and three-quarter million acres of permanent
pasture to set against a decrease of two and three-quarter
million acres of corn and green crops. Some extra meat
or dairy produce, or both, can scarcely have failed to come
from the additional pasture, but not enough, if we allow
for the extra foreign feeding stuffs, to make up for the
loss of corn. There cannot have been a great increment
of dairy produce, for reasons hereafter to be given.
So far I have been dealing with agricultural statistics
up to 1890 ; but if we take the figures for 1891, so far as
they are available, we shall see reason for a much more
favourable review. The tide of agricultural production,
after having been long ebbing, had turned in 1890, when
there were over half-a-million more cattle, over two
million more sheep, and nearly 462,000 more pigs in the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 411
United Kingdom than in 1889. But the preliminary
returns for 1891 show increases of 552,350 cattle and
1.859,095 sheep, against which there are only to set
decreases of 87,426 pigs, and about 227,000 acres under
wheat, barley, oats and potatoes. It is clear, then, that
our production of food is now rapidly increasing, and
that if it goes on as it has gone for the last two years,
we shall soon recover what we have lost.
Let us see whether the quantities of foreign food
imported will throw any further light upon the question
under consideration. We know very closely what the
population and imports were at the different periods,
but with that knowledge no exact comparison of the
proportion of food supplied by our own land at different
periods can be made, because the people may have in-
creased or diminished the quantity of any particular
kind of food consumed per head. A fairly approximate
comparison, however, may be attempted.
It will be impossible within my limits to take every
article of food into calculation, and I will only deal with
the principal articles which are produced on British as
well as foreign farms. Taking animal food first, the
quantities imported at the three periods dealt with above
are shown in the following table :
ANIMAL FOOD IMPORTS.
1870.
1880.
1890.
No.
No.
No.
Cattle
202,172
389,724
642,593
Sheep ...
66Q QOl
Qd. I I Q I
7CS ACS
Pigs
*-"-'y y^j
Q6.I72
y't 1 ) Jf*
CI.I7I
JJ <J >tJ' J
4,036
;7 V > A / **
Cwts.
J , O
Cwts.
*T9^^O
Cwts.
Beef, fresh
12,035
727,392
1,854,593
salt
203,713
290,564
274,726
*Mutton
1,656,419
Pork, fresh
36,481
23,056
45,295
salt
220,533
384,211
254,857
* Previous to 1882 Mutton was included with meat unenumerated.
412
LAND I
ANIMAL FOOD IMPORTS-
-continued.
1870.
Cwts.
1880.
Cwts.
1890.
Cwts.
Bacon
536,844
4,387,802
3,790,570
1,209,446
Meat, preserved
83,081
655,810
734,8n
,, unenumerated
34,300
149,000
103,881
^Rabbits
143,641
Total dead meat
1,157,307
7,565,391
10,068,239
Butter
Margarine
Cheese
| 1,159,210
i 041 281
2,326,305
I 77^*007
1 1,079,996
2.I44.O7O
Lard
217,696
*>// J)ssl
927,512
**> Li rT'? v- v w
1,273,236
Eggs, thousands
430,842
747,409
1,234,949
A few years back some official estimates of the dead
weights of animals imported from various countries
were given, the ranges being from 70 to 103^ stones
of 8 Ib. for cattle, 16^ for calves, 6 to 8-J for sheep, and
14 for pigs. Taking into consideration the numbers
received from the several sources of supply in relation
to these estimates, I have worked out the following
approximation of the dead weight of our imports of live
stock, adding the totals for imported dead meat :
IMPORTED MEAT.
Inc. or dec.
1870.
1890.
in 1890.
Cwts.
Cwts.
Cwts.
Cattle (dead weight) .,.
1,213,032
3,829,900
+ 2,616,868
Sheep ,,
377,700
205,000
- 172,700
Pigs
96,172
4,000
- 92,172
Meat
1,157,307
10,068,239
+ 8,910,932
Total
2,844,211
14,107,239
+ 11,263,028
Deduct Exports ...
22,<K2
1,454,168
+ 1,431,216
Net Imports
2,821, 2^9
12,653,071
+ 9,831,812
Now, the population of the United Kingdom in the
middle of 1870 was in round figures 31,205,400, and in
1890 it was 37,500,000, showing an increase of 6,294,600*
or 20*17 per cent. Compared with this we have an
Not distinguished prior to 1883.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 413
increase of 348 per cent, in our net imports of meat,
including what came as live stock. Per head of the
population we consumed 10*13 Ib. of foreign and colonial
meat in 1870, and 37*82 Ib. in 1890. Unless our
consumption of meat per head has considerably increased,
it follows that the home supply has fallen off; but there
is every reason to believe that the consumption per
head has greatly increased, as cheap frozen and tinned
meat and foreign bacon and hams have become very
abundant, while bread has been extremely cheap, so that
the poorer classes could afford to spend more of their
wages in meat than they formerly could. The working
classes, moreover, were generally well employed in 1 890.
Readers may, therefore, be prepared to find the usual
method of getting at the consumption showing a quite
extraordinary increase in the quantity of meat eaten
per head of the population.
The weight of the imports of meat, including those
of imported live stock, has been given for the two
periods, and I am convinced that it is not over-rated.
Let me now attempt to show as nearly as possible
what the home supply was in each of the two years
under notice.
It has been usual to reckon that, taking the animals
enumerated in any year, 25 per cent, of the cattle, 40
per cent, of the sheep, and 116 per cent, of the pigs are
slaughtered during that year. Owing to the advance
of early maturity, these proportions are now too low, but
then the average weights of the several classes of animals
are less than they were, in consequence of slaughter at
an earlier age. In 1884 Major Craigie, basing his
figures upon calculations made by Sir H. Thompson, in
1872, allowed 600 Ib. per head as the average dead
weight of cattle of all ages killed in each year, 70 Ib. per
414
LAND
head for sheep, and 1 34 Ib. each for pigs. The weight
for cattle seems low, bearing in mind the edible meat in
the "fifth quarter"; but I propose to adopt it, while
increasing the proportion of cattle killed in each year to
the total number enumerated from twenty-five to thirty
per cent. In respect of sheep and pigs of all ages, I
keep to my old reckoning of 64 Ib. each for the former
and 112 Ib. for the latter, without altering the proportion
of animals slaughtered each year, in order to avoid all
possibility of exaggeration. According to this method
the results are as below :
HOME PRODUCTION OF MEAT.
Cattle (Dead Weight)
Sheep ,,
Pigs
TOTAL
Adding the net imports to the home products, the
total consumption is shown as follows :
1870.
Cwts.
1890.
Cwts.
Increase
or
Decrease.
Cwts.
14,842,048
7,494,128
4,234,846
17,340,841
7,238,216
5,059,966
+ 2,498,793
- 255,912
*- 825,120
26,571,022
29,639,023
+ 3,068,001
TOTAL MEAT CONSUMED.
Home Supply
Net Imports
TOTAL
Per Head of Population..
Percentage of Home Supply
Percentage of Imported
Supply
1870.
Cwts.
26,571,022
2,821,259
1890.
Cwts.
29,639,023
12,653,071
Increase
Cwts.
3,068,001
9,831,812
29,392,281
42,292,094
12,909,813
Lb.
Lb.
Lb.
I52
I26|
2Of
90-4
9-6
70
30
Decrease.
19-6
Increase.
20 "4
lOO'O
100
In comparing this estimate with calculations pre-
viously published, it is necessary to point out that the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 415
population in recent years, before the census of 1891 was
taken, was set too high. This fault probably does not
apply to the figures for 1870, as they were published
after the census of 1871 was taken, while the population
for 1890 is corrected by the census figures for 1891.
The following estimates, added to those given above,
were published by Sir James Caird in 1877, by Major
Craigie in 1885, and by myself in 1886 :
Year.
Home Supply. Imported Supply. Total. Per Head.
Cwts.
Cwts.
Cwts.
Lb.
1870
... 26,571,022 ...
2,821,259
... 29,392,281 ...
105*
1877
24,500,000 ...
6,300,000
... 30,800,000 ...
103
1885
27,220,000 ...
9,460,000
... 36,460,000 ...
112
1886
26,682,000
9,100,000
... 35,782,000 ...
109
1890
... 29,639,023 ...
12,653,071
... 42,292,094 ...
I26J
In 1886 the number of sheep and pigs and the imported
supply were less than in 1885. Depression in 1886, too,
was severe, many men being out of employment, and
wages having been reduced in some avocations. But,
as already remarked, the quantity of meat consumed per
head would have come out greater for 1885 and 1886 if
the population had been known correctly.
The percentages of the home and imported supplies
shown by the figures given above are as follows :
PERCENTAGES OF HOME AND IMPORTED MEAT.
1870. 1877. 1885. 1886. 1890.
Home 90'4 79'3 747 74'6 70
Imported 9'6 207 25-3 25-4 30
100 100 100 100 100
It will be seen that there was a great rise in the
imported percentage between 1870 and 1877, and that
the advance has been steady since then, except that the
jump-up in the four years ending with 1890 is a con-
siderable one. There will be a drop, however, for 1891,
imports having fallen off greatly, while the home supply
has been increased.
416
LAND
Turning to dairy produce, the table already given
shows how great the increase of imports has been since
1870. The net imports of butter and margarine together
have advanced from 1,101,682 cwts. in 1870 to 2,987,220
cwts. in 1890, showing an increase of 1,885,538 cwts.,
or 171 per cent. The advance in the net imports of
cheese has been from i, 016,08 7 cwts. in 187010 2,072,161
cwts. in 1890, showing an increase of 1,056,074 cwts.,
or 103 per cent. The cows and heifers in milk or in calf
for the United Kingdom during the same period have
increased from 3,705,553 to 3,956,220, showing an
addition of 250,667, or barely of 7 per cent. In spite
of the fact that during a considerable portion of the
twenty years there was a tendency towards breeding
almost exclusively for beef, the improvement in our dairy
cows in recent years has been so marked that it is
certain that the yield of milk per cow on the average
is greater now than it was in 1870; but so much more
milk is consumed in its natural state that there can
scarcely have been any material increase in the home
supply of butter or cheese. In 1886 I made careful
estimates for that year as compared with 1876, with
the following results :
Years.
ESTIMATED HOME PRODUCE.
NET IMPORTS.
Total.
Per
! Inhabitant.
Total.
Per
Inhabitant.
:
BUTTER & MARGARINE.
Cwts.
MX
Cwts.
Lb.
1876
1,785,700
6-05
J , 6 36,379
5-52
1886
1,918,660
5-85 i 2,348,850
7-16
CHEESE.
1876
2,520,000
8-53
1,486.266
5-01
1886
2,710,000
j 8-27
1,728,253
5-14
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 417
As the increase in the number of cows since 1876 was
only 181,017 up to 1890, I am of opinion that the propor-
tions of the home supplies of either butter or cheese have
diminished rather than increased, because of the increased
consumption of milk in its natural state. They have
certainly diminished since 1886, when the number of
cows and heifers was greater by 18,256 than in 1890.
As far as dairy produce is concerned, then, the only
considerable increase in the home supply for any of the
periods mentioned has been in milk, and that must have
been great. The increase in imports of lard, as shown
in the table, has been enormous.
Imports of eggs have been almost constantly in-
creasing during the last thirty years. Poultry and game
imports are shown only in values, and the figures are
,158,482 for 1870, and ,497,858 for 1890. Rabbits
were not separately given prior to 1886. For 1890
the quantity imported was 143,641 cwts. There are no
trustworthy data for estimating the home supplies of
eggs, poultry, and game at the different periods.
As there are no official statistics giving the quantities
of corn and other vegetable products grown at home as
far back as 1870,' I shall show only the net imports for
the different periods, taking only the kinds which are
grown in the United Kingdom, with maize added. The
remarks already made on the acreage of crops show that
the home supplies of corn, at any rate, have diminished,
and a rough estimate of the decrease in wheat production
has already been given. Seeds and cakes are also in-
cluded in the table, because they have indirectly to do
with our food supply :
2 E
4i8
LAND
NET
IMPORTS OF
CORN, &c.
1870.
1890.
Increase.
Wheat
cwts.
10,045,778
60,143,895
50,098,117
Barley
7,217,369
16,677,988
9,460,619
Oats
10,830,630
12,727,186
1,896,556
Maize
16,756,783
43,437,834
26,681,051
Other Corn
3,559,898
5,187,406
1,627,508
Flour & Meal of Wheat
4,231,574
I5,6i7,3i3
n,385,739
Do. ,, other Corn
*33,695
662,979
629,284
Total of Corn, Flour &
Meal
52,675,727
154,454,601
101,778,874
Linseed ...
qrs.
1,457,495
10,039,319
8,581,824
Rape
j>
321,831
1,886,549
1,564,718
Clover & Grass Seeds
cwts.
213,779
379,589
165,810
Oilseed Cakes ...
tons
158,453
280,616
122,163
Hops
cwts.
127,853
175,656
47,803
Potatoes
,
771,854
1,940,100
1,168,247
Onions
Bush.
t -
3,87i,i95
Apples
,
t
2,574,957
Other Raw Fruit
5 J
t
3,584,668
These figures show that, since 1870, our net imports
of wheat have increased nearly six-fold, and those of wheat
flour about three and a-half times, while the total for all
kinds of corn and meal is nearly trebled. With respect to
potatoes, the imports in 1870 were exceptionally small.
Other vegetables and fruits were given in mixed lots in
1870; but there is no doubt that the increase has been
considerable, though not equal to the increase of home
produce, as market gardens and fruit plantations have
been largely extended. Tropical fruits are not included
in the total for " other raw fruit." Our imports of other
culinary vegetables than potatoes and onions are unim-
portant, the value in 1890 having been only ,773,590.
The immense growth of our dependence upon foreign
countries for our supplies of food is to be regretted. To
some extent it has been inevitable, but not altogether.
The settlement of vast acres of new land since 1870 for
* Gross imports, value only being given for exported British meal,
t Not distinguished for 1870.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 419
a time swamped the markets with corn and some other
kinds of produce. But with respect to many of the items
enumerated in the tables given, we should never have
fallen so much behind in our home supplies if all that
could have been done had been done to attract capital
and stimulate enterprise in connection with the land.
WILLIAM E. BEAR.
42O LAND
CHAPTER XLVI.
THE EARLY MATURITY OF LIVE STOCK.
BY HENRY EVERSHED,
The well-known Author of varioiis articles, papers, and pamphlets on Agricultural
Crops, Stock, &c., in the "Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England"
the Agricultural Newspapers, Reviews, &c.
MOST persons are aware that the cattle and sheep of three
hundred years ago were exceedingly diminutive compared
with those of the present day. They were slow, too, of
growth. Even a hundred years ago, notwithstanding
the improvement of breeds which had at that time been
effected, sheep and cattle were rarely killed until they had
attained the age of three or four years. An erroneous
notion seemed to have prevailed that an animal must have
attained its full growth before it could be profitably
fattened. The great breeders of the modern epoch were
Bake well, the brothers Colling, and John Ellman, who
respectively turned their attention to Longhorns and
Leicester sheep, Shorthorns and Southdowns, and under
their skilful management, by cross-breeding and selection
of the most fit, their representatives of these various breeds
assumed the shape which, in all animals of their order, is
associated with rapid growth and early maturity the
square figure, the deep chest, the round and spreading
carcase, the rotund belly, and mild countenance. Under
Ellman's care the little Southdown of old times, with its
small carcase, flat sides and light fleece, became the most
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 421
useful and famous of short-woolled sheep. The better
breeds replaced the older sorts throughout the country,
as Mr. Youatt observes in his work on sheep, where he
states that certain " disgraceful breeds," as he terms them,
had been replaced by better stock. It is true that in
many cases the size of the animals was diminished.
When the great, clumsy Teeswater sheep, for example,
was crossed with Ellman's Dishley Leicester the effect
was the production of a sheep of diminutive size, now
known as the Wensleydale sheep. There is still a
superstition on this point and a leaning to mere size.
But when a smaller sheep is rounder and more compact
than another, it comes to maturity sooner, and it makes
better use of its food than a bigger and coarser animal of
inferior build. The same remark applies to cattle.
On the principle that " like produces like," the habit
of quick fattening and early maturity is transmitted to
the offspring ; and the breed, with proper care, becomes
permanently improved. The period of the great breeders
whose names have just been mentioned, may be called,
with accuracy, the golden age of discovery in the breed-
ing of live stock ; and if we refer to Youatt's Synopsis, in
the Complete Grazier (1846), we shall find that subse-
quent breeders kept in view the aims of their predecessors,
and that continuous progress has been effected up to the
present time, as a comparison of weights and ages at
different periods shows. Seventy years ago the average
weight of Southdown wethers was nine stone, and at
that time they were usually fattened at two years old.
Before Ellman's improvements the sheep of the older
Southdown breed were rarely fattened until three years
old. They are now commonly brought to market at a
year old, weighing nine to ten stone each. Other sheep
have been improved in proportion ; so that by virtue of
422 LAND :
earlier maturity those stock farmers who maintain
superior sheep of the best breeds, and who practice
scientific methods of feeding, can reap the fruit of a
hundred years' discovery and progression. They can
produce their beef and mutton at a cheaper rate, or in
other words, each acre of their turnips and forage crops
yields a greater weight of meat ; and, more than that, they
can afford better cultivation of the land, and a greater
production of green crops by means of higher farming.
It is obvious, too, that the corn crops are rendered more
productive under this system, owing to the increased fer-
tility of the soil, cattle being the cheapest source of good
home-made dung, while "muck" is, as an old saw has
it, "the mother of meal."
It was formerly asserted by theorists that, as maturity
implies complete growth and development, which neither
cattle nor sheep can reach even in two years, that
fattening at thirty months old must be a more natural
and profitable system than the production of year-old
mutton and "baby beef." Young meat, it was said,
must necessarily be inferior. This, however, may be
doubted. It is admitted that young meat costs the least,
and as to which is the best, consumers have declared
their preference for that which is tender and digestible,
and for small joints not too fat. According to the expe-
rience of Professors Simonds and G. T. Brown, who have
written on dentition, the teeth of cattle, sheep and swine
are developed at earlier periods than those stated by
Youatt, and this earlier development appears to have
been induced by the improved systems of breeding and
feeding. Hence it is thought that it may be possible to
induce the animals of the farm to produce their young at
an earlier period than was formerly their habit. This
has in fact been done under the Hampshire system, of
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 423
using ram lambs for breeding purposes, and in the
practice of those who, like Mr. de Mornay, of Walling-
ford, obtain from the ewe four instead of three crops of
lambs in four years, and also by those numerous breeders
of cattle who arrange for the first calf, when the heifer is
two-and-a-half years old, or about six months before the
completion of permanent dentition.
Whatever theories may be in vogue, it is certain that
within the past thirty years a great advance has been
accomplished by expert farmers in the ripening of cattle
for market, when young. The taste of consumers has
completely altered. Even ten years ago the marketing
of young bullocks at sixteen to twenty months old was
rarely practised. It is now common ; one hears every-
where that old-fashioned feeders who have brought their
prime, ripe, three-year-old bullocks to market, have found
to their disgust especially in summer that the young
bullocks are much more saleable than their own, and
fetch higher prices small joints of beef being preferred
to large ones.
In the county of Surrey, which shares with Sussex
the honour of having introduced this plan of rapid
ripening of cattle, an accomplished agriculturist has
reared at home and fattened, in a single year, one hundred
and seventy young bullocks, which were sold at from
fourteen to eighteen months old, at an average weight
of sixty-five stone of eight pounds each, the average
price being ij 155., so that the animals must have
brought their owner, after paying for the calf, 45. 7^d.
per week. Young bullocks will gain eight pounds per
week in weight from birth till eighteen months old, and
it appears that a skilful feeder, having good-sized and
well-bred animals to deal with, may vie with the experts
who prepare animals for the shows ; the gain of bullocks
424 LAND I
under two years old exhibited at Islington not having
exceeded 9^ Ib. per week.
A slow breed cannot of course be fattened rapidly,
and slow breeds, or inferior animals of all breeds, are at
present only too common ; but in the case of fairly good
specimens of the improved breeds it is now recognised
that early fattening is mainly a question of good feeding.
It cannot be said, at present, that the majority of farmers
are experts in the feeding of stock ; on the contrary, there
is no branch of farming so much neglected, especially by
the lesser farmers.
Passing now from beef to mutton, the management of
sheep is nowhere better understood than on the great
sheep farms, tenanted by capitalists, in Hampshire and
the adjacent counties, the home of the famous Hampshire
Down sheep, which holds the first position, for early
maturity, of all the breeds in the world. The system of
early fattening pursued by the skilled agriculturists of
this district has altered the management entirely. The
breeding-farms have ceased to be breeding-farms ex-
clusively, and the great farms where the lambs were
formerly disposed of as stores, to be fattened in other
counties, have been replaced, to a great extent, by auction
marts, where the wether lambs are sold, fat, to butchers
from London and elsewhere. On the farm of an eminent
breeder and feeder the wether lambs, born in January,
will be found, on September ist, feeding on rape, with
plenty of cake and corn, and weighing at seven months
old not less than eight or nine stone each, the whole
flock averaging ten stone when sold as mutton under
one year old.
Even these results, great as they are, have been
exceeded, as shown in the following extract from the
Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society. In an article
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 425
on " Early Fattening of Cattle and Sheep," we read :
"Such additions to knowledge have effected the stock-
feeding of the whole country. Except in the case of
mountain sheep, and of cattle as slow, the ripe three-year-
old wethers and oxen of the old school are no longer met
with at market. Quite recently the fat-stock clubs have
been compelled to re-cast their prize lists, so as to meet
the requirements of the times. The Smithfield Club
admitted lambs to the competitive classes in 1875, and on
several subsequent occasions the champion prize offered
for the best pen of three sheep of any class has been won
by lambs in 1884, by Southdown lambs which, at ten
months old, had gained '61 Ib. a day, or i83lbs. of live
weight, yielding probably sixty per cent, of carcase, or
13 stone 5 Ibs. each. Mr. de Mornay's three Hampshire
prize- winning lambs in 1877 weighed, when dead, seven-
teen and a half stone each ; and one of his lambs has
scaled, when dead, eighteen and a half stone at ten
months old. The same club established young classes
for bullocks in 1880, having previously, in 1870, restricted
the champion prize for sheep to one-year-old sheep, i.e.
under twenty-three months in December."
The altered practice of the Hampshire breeding
district has necessarily increased the difficulty of obtaining
store sheep on the feeding farms elsewhere, and this has
occasioned a very desirable change of management,
which has been much discussed in the agricultural press
for several years past. It is now seen that no reason
exists why the breeding of sheep should be confined
within such strict limits. Those farmers who have not
hitherto practised sheep breeding will learn the art. They
will learn to rely less on their corn crops, and they will
sow a larger proportion of forage crops, in accordance
with the practice already adopted by leading agricul-
426 LAND :
turists. It is generally admitted that a change of this
sort a revolution, in fact- will prove highly advan-
tageous. It will obviate the transit of animals from one
part of the country to another ; check the dissemination
of disease, lessen the number of dealers and middlemen,
and diminish the risks and costs of those great autumnal
purchases which have hitherto been made. It will be seen
that the revolution now in progress is closely connected
with early maturity. Even on Surrey sand farms, where
breeding was once regarded as impracticable, animals
are now bred and fattened young. Summering is the
difficulty on light land farms, where the pastures are few ;
but by the plan of early fattening, one year's summer
feeding is avoided. The cattle are always fat, and
always ready for market, to which they may be consigned
at any age between fourteen and twenty months old,
according to weather and food supply, and other
circumstances. The new system, therefore, and the
extended use of forage crops, admits of a plan of intensive
farming, which, among other advantages, fertilises the
land liberally, and lessens that rather abject reliance on
corn crops, which has proved ruinous to many farmers
within the past twenty years.
These then are some of the reasons why the future of
agriculture mainly depends on the extension of skilful
stock farming, the improvement of breeds, and the
earlier fattening of cattle and sheep.
HENRY EVERSHED.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
CHAPTER XLVII.
IMPROVEMENT OF CROPS AND STOCK.
BY HENRY EVERSHED,
The well-known Author of various articles, papers, and pamphlets on Agricultural
Sy Stock, er-V., in the " Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England,"
the Agricultural Newspapers, Reviews, &*c.
THE improvement of any one of the plants or animals of
the farm implies the production of an increased amount
of food from the soil, and every one of our vast com-
mercial interests is therefore directly concerned in the
improvement of crops and stock. The methods of
effecting such improvements are various, but so far as
our general subject is concerned, it may be confidently
stated that all well-directed efforts in this direction have
always been rewarded, and that the field is by no means
exhausted. All improvers, from Ceres, the legendary
ennobler of corn, to the latest hybridiser and selector, or
from the first tamer of the wild ox to the modern breeder,
have deserved honour as public benefactors.
A sketch of the early history of improvement would
involve an inquiry into the origin of domesticated animals
and plants, far too lengthened for these pages. It must
suffice to say here that in modern times every animal
and plant used for food has been closely questioned as to
its origin, and although we cannot enter into the early
and often legendary history of those improvements of
animals and plants, to which we owe our modern short-
428 LAND I
horns and southdowns, our wheat, barley, cabbages,
swedes and turnips, we may refer the student interested in
those matters to such works as Darwin's "Animals and
Plants under Domestication," Victor Hehn's " Wander-
ings of Plants and Animals" (Sonnenschein & Co.),
and De Candolle's " Origin of Plants and Animals "
(Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.)
In "Cultivated Plants, their Propagation and Im-
provement," Mr. F. W. Burbidge has described the
various methods of hybridising, cross-breeding and
selection, which have, in recent times, produced such
marvellous results, especially in the department of hor-
ticulture. Mr. Burbidge says comparatively little about
the plants of the farm, for the simple reason that they
have at present received far less attention at the hands
of improvers than the plants of horticulture. Hundreds
of eager enthusiasts have manipulated the latter, while
the former have been neglected. There is not a fruit in
the garden, from the pine-apple to the gooseberry, that
has not been largely modified and substantially improved.
Quite recently a gooseberry has been produced which
may be put on the market a week earlier than any other
sort. It is notorious how very advantageously T. A.
Knight modified the garden pea of the last century, as
the late Mr. Rivers and others have done the apple, pear,
plum and peach. Our great seedsmen, nurserymen and
florists employ an army of experts who are continually
engaged in all those interesting operations by which
plants may be "improved," and rival exhibitors at the
shows, where their excellence is tested, left a little in the
rear. Even the blackberry has been taken in hand, so
that a fruit which most persons well remember as con-
sisting chiefly of pips, has assumed a sweetness and size
resembling that of the raspberry. In a seedsman's trial
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 429
grounds might be counted last summer four hundred
plots devoted to as many varieties, or so-called varieties,
of the potato. The maxim of the great firms seems to
be, " Try everything ; hold fast that which is good." In
Messrs. Carter's nursery at Forest Hill, we were shown
a giant pea, seven and a-half feet high, growing side by
side with a dwarf two feet high, and these extremes of
habit were produced solely by art, and we may add, too,
that although the dwarf has short haulm, its pods and
the peas within are of the large marrowfat type. In
horticulture there is absolutely no limit to the modifica-
tions of form, flavour, size, period of maturity, and colour,
which time and skill may attain to. At the flower-seed
farm at St. Osyth you may see an acre of the Tom
Thumb tropseolum, all ablaze with scarlet blossoms, and
hardly a leaf to be distinguished among the mass of
blossoms certainly a striking contrast to the unmodified
nasturtium of thirty years ago, which was little better
than a tangled jungle of leaves and straggling stems,
with few blossoms. Scores of other flowers might be
named, all of them amazingly improved.
In the kitchen garden, the lettuce has been strangely
modified, and its usefulness much increased. Formerly
the forms of lettuce were few and they remained in season
only a short time. The other day sixty-five varieties
were counted in a seedsman's garden, and the different
sorts, early and late, from little Tom Thumb up to
champion mammoth and long cos, supply lettuces from
spring to autumn. For some years past a skilful horti-
culturist has had the tomato under his care, and he has
marvellously improved it by cross-breeding, followed up
by selection. As an example of what may be effected
by selecting for early maturity year after year, his earliest
sort ripened on August 8th, while a late sort, grown next
430 LAND :
it for comparison, had ripened only partially on September
29th, when it was destined to speedy destruction by
frost. This same improver states that he cannot afford
to work outside the garden and to undertake the plants
of the farm, because in that direction no adequate remu-
neration awaits him. It is a common complaint that
farmers do not care to pay the price of improvements, but
the possibility of such improvements cannot be doubted.
On this point, M. H. de Vilmorin, the head of a dis-
tinguished firm of seedsmen, and himself an eminent
plant improver, says : "I have no doubt but the process
of improvement, which has given such excellent results
as applied to vegetables and ornamental plants, might
also be used successfully in the case of the plants of the
farm."
Our illustrations of improvement have been taken
from the garden, where they chiefly abound. In agri-
culture, the leading firms of seedsmen have been the
great improvers of plants, and no doubt much has been
effected, especially in connection with plants used in the
feeding of stock. Turnips, swedes and mangolds have
all been rendered more nutritious and more productive
by selection and re-selection, and the production of stock-
seed for the purposes of reproduction. Sheep and cattle
on a well-managed modern farm may now be supplied
with roots in every month of the year. Early turnips
may be folded in August, followed by the numerous
later sorts, and then by swedes till March, and by
improved mangold such as all kinds of stock delight in,
rich in saccharine matter and retaining their sweetness
when other sorts are dry and pithy, up to August. The
drumhead cabbage has been greatly improved and yields
heavy crops, reaching seventy to eighty tons per acre.
The thousand-headed cabbage is among the most notable
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 431
introductions for the benefit of sheep farmers. But the
improvement of the farmer is quite as much needed as
that of his plants. The men among them possessing
intelligence and capital sufficient to enable them to farm
in modern style are few, compared with the rank and file
whose breeds animal and vegetable are not of a
superior character.
Among all the plants whose quality and yield deter-
mine the measure of success of those who cultivate them,
the most neglected are the cereals. As the cereals are
self-fertilising plants, crossing them artificially must needs
result in an invigorated offspring, which is, in fact, the
case with crosses generally. But in this country nothing
had been attempted in this direction until Messrs. Carter,
of Holborn, commenced, in 1882, a series of experiments
at their nurseries at Forest Hill. Having collected a
number of the best varieties of wheat, about twenty
crosses were effected, and, as only such varieties as
millers most highly esteem were selected as the parents,
there was reason to expect that the offspring grain would
prove of the best possible quaiity, distinguished by a
much higher milling value than English wheat generally.
As Bakewell altered the forms of sheep by a systematic
process, so the experts employed by Messrs. Carter
sought to impart to their new varieties of wheat, superior
quality, early maturity and productiveness, both of grain
and straw. In all these points they have succeeded.
The vigour and productiveness of the cross-bred wheats,
as compared with the parents, was evident from the first.
The greater number of the stems and ears, and their
superior bulk, weight and quality, were, in several cases,
surprising, and in the present season (1891), one of the
new varieties, appropriately named " Earliest of All,"
ripened a fortnight sooner than other sorts, and the
432 LAND :
Essex farmer who grew it was enabled to sell the whole
of his spare seed amongst his neighbours at a high price.
" Hundredfold," another sort sent into the same county
by the raisers, was also sold for seed, on its merits, to the
neighbouring farmers ; and one plant, the produce of a
single grain, bore sixty well-filled ears containing an
average of fifty grains in each, or three thousand grains
of wheat from one seed. In Australia the cross-breds
have proved freer from rust than the native varieties,
a manifest proof of invigoration.
It must not be supposed that the labours of the
improvers ended with the mere act of crossing ; on the
contrary every cross produces several types and
numerous varieties, each differing in character, so that
the experimenter finds it an arduous task to select and
fix the best. For this purpose, selection and re-selection
for several years is usually found necessary. It rarely
happens that a cross proves fixed in type and character
from the first. The breeding of plants is conducted on
the same principles as in the case of horses, cattle, sheep
and dogs, and a famous 'breeder of greyhounds described
the method correctly when he said, " I breed many and
hang many." Messrs. Carter have weeded out many.
Among those they have retained are sorts specially
suited to various soils and destined to wide distribution
when their merits become known. It is right to add
that barley and oats have been immensely improved by
Messrs. Webb at their extensive seed farms at Kinver,
Stourbridge.
It seems unnecessary to describe in detail the improve-
ments in cattle and sheep. A primary object in founding
the Smithfield Club was to determine what breeds of
animals and methods of feeding yielded most food for
man from given quantities of cattle food. During the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 433
hundred years, or more, of the existence of that society,
each breed of meat-making animals has been in these
respects brought up to much the same level, so that
Sir John Lawes, in the course of his experiments in cattle
feeding at Rothamsted, discovered little or no difference
in the quantity of meat made from a given quantity of
food by well bred animals. In proportion to the lesser
quantity of food consumed by a Southdown sheep, or by
a little Devon bullock, as compared with that consumed
by the larger Hampshire sheep, or Shorthorn bullocks, is
the smaller amount of meat they make. In agricultural
phraseology, a larger number of the lesser animals can
be kept on the same ground. The article on " Early
Maturity " shows the progress that has been effected in
the rapid making of meat by the improved breeds. It
was, however, only in 1875 tnat the Smithfield Club
admitted lambs to the competitive classes, reducing the
age of competing bullocks in 1880. Since those dates,
lambs and young bullocks have won the champion
prizes, frequently as the best in the show of any age.
Without for a moment asserting that no further improve-
ment of breeds is possible, it must be admitted that the
next steps in the direction indicated by the Smithfield
Club will consist in the further extension of the breeds
already improved. The better classes of animals are now
confined to comparatively few hands, while the rank and
file of farmers, deficient alike in capital and in a knowledge
of stockfeeding, keep far too little stock for their land
and that of an inferior character.
Another point of great importance in connection with
the improvement of the live stock of the country, is the
age at which reproduction takes place. A breeder of
Hampshire sheep a sort which matures earlier than
others has induced early breeding by selecting the more
2 F
434 LAND :
forward and matured lambs, and he has thus obtained
four instead of three crops of lambs in four years. This
opens up a wide field of improvement, and assists us in
measuring the possibilities of our subject. Not only may
great improvement still be effected, especially in the plants
of the farm grown either for human consumption or for
cattle, but it may be hoped that the improvements already
accomplished, as well as those to follow, will become more
widely distributed. When that time arrives, Lord Derby's
famous dictum that the produce of the land might be
doubled, may perhaps be realized.
HENRY EVERSHED.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 435
CHAPTER XLVIII.
DAIRY FARMING.
BY PROFESSOR LONG.
Author of" British Dairy Farming^ " The Dairy Farm," " The Book of the Pig, :
" Farming in a Small Way" etc.
DAIRY farming as we understand it to-day, is a branch of
our agricultural system which is but of modern growth.
Dairying has been conducted in a more or less slipshod
manner for generations, for it has not been properly
understood, and it is only by the light of modern investi-
gation and by sound instruction that the best work can
be done. It is quite common to hear those w r ho were
engaged in butter or cheese-making forty years agq
declare that the produce of those days was superior to
that which is produced to-day ; but the imagination of
the speaker can only be compared to the equally incorrect
belief of others in the good old times when Charles the
Second was king, when England was supposed to be
"merry," and the people happier and more pros-
perous than they are to-day. The British Dairy Farmers'
Association came into existence about fifteen years ago,
and from that date until this there has been one continued
advance in dairy farming. For several years this and
other Associations, which added the dairy to their pro-
gramme, worked almost in vain. Here and there they
gained adherents to the cause, who assisted, as many have
436 LAND I
continued to assist, in the promulgation of knowledge
destined to advance the interests of dairying; but although,
by the determined efforts of a few, prizes were offered for
dairy farms, for the records of dairy herds, for cheese
and butter, and for practical makers of butter and cheese,
the whole subject was restricted to a limited area. A
Committee appointed by the House of Commons, and
presided over by Sir Richard Paget, sat some four years
ago, and recommended the introduction of dairy schools.
The grant of five thousand pounds made by the Govern-
ment, which helped such schools as were worthy of
assistance, small though that help was, was a fresh
incentive to those who were working in the interest of
dairy farming. The schools were talked about, their
work was recognized, and as the Americans say, they
" took on " to such an extent than when the County
Councils had to determine how to expend the windfall
which they received from the Government in 1890-91,
in connection with technical instruction, dairy teaching
seemed to leap into the first place, and within twelve
months classes were being held or demonstrations
given in butter-making in almost every county in
England.
We have to consider how the dairy affects the value
of land. It is quite unnecessary in dealing with this
question to attempt to show in detail how possible it is
for a dairy farmer to succeed and to pay a fair rent for
the soil he occupies. Such a course would occupy far
too much of our space, but we can point out that high-
class dairying is one of the most profitable branches of
farming if, indeed, it does not occupy the first place.
During the trying times which followed 1878, the milk-
seller and the cheese-maker maintained their position
much better than any other class of farmer.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 437
There is not, and never has been, a wide margin
between the values of dairy produce in Great Britain and
in other countries, and it has always been possible, and is
possible to-day, for our own people, especially under
modern conditions, to compete against the butter-makers
of France, Denmark, Sweden and Italy, and the cheese-
makers of the American continent and New Zealand.
The market for dairy produce is at our very doors.
No other country can land such fine cheese as the best
we make, or finer butter than we can produce. We have
no competitor in the production of milk for sale ait naturel ;
our consumption is increasing enormously in every
direction, and our means of producing with greater
economy have assisted us materially in holding our own.
For use in an article upon "Our Trade in Dairy
Produce," written for the Christmas volume of the
Co-operative Wholesale Society, the writer calculated
upon the basis of public statistics, that the consumption
per head of our population per annum of imported butter
is 9*4 Ibs., and of home-made butter 5*6 Ibs. ; of imported
cheese 57 Ibs., of home-made cheese 7*9 Ibs., repre-
senting in all the value of eighteen shillings and tenpence
(at wholesale prices) in money, or fifty-four gallons in
milk, and this without any reference to the consumption
of margarine, which is now enormous. In 1861 the con-
sumption of butter and margarine per head was 3*9 Ibs. ;
this had increased to 4*8 Ibs. ten years later, and in
1881-85 each set of figures being placed upon a quin-
quennial average to 7*2 Ibs. These figures alone
should be sufficient to show that there is tremendous
scope for the dairy farmer in these islands, even admitting
that in order to sell his produce, he must be prepared
to accept such prices as are paid to the foreign producer.
Butter-making has transformed the agriculture of
43 8 LAND :
Denmark ; it is materially assisting the farmers of Sweden,
and the system adopted in these two countries is being
adopted in all suitable parts of Norway. The French
butter-maker is able to make both ends meet, and by
thrifty habits to lay money by. The Italian has com-
menced modern butter-making upon a large scale, and
he too finds the business answer his purpose. It has
been the business of the writer to investigate, even
in detail, the system pursued in each of these countries,
and there is very little reason for the assumption that the
British dairy farmer is handicapped either from the point
of view of rent, taxes, or labour.
We have never been enamoured of the business of
butter-making under all circumstances, and do not
suggest for a moment that it can be conducted with profit
in every district, even in every dairy district ; but if we
except bleak hilly farms adapted only for the breeding of
sheep we have always maintained the opinion that milk
can be profitably produced whether the farm be arable or
pasture. There is a popular error to the effect that dairy
farming is adapted only to pastoral districts. A greater
mistake has seldom been made. Not only can more milk
per acre be produced from arable land adapted to the
growth of roots and forage crops, but the milk costs less
to produce. Even the pastoral farmer requires a small
acreage of roots to enable him to carry his cows through
the winter in high condition. Some of the most success-
ful dairying is conducted in Manche and Calvados in the
north of France, by the assistance of arable crops in the
summer season. It is true that the cows are tethered,
and tethered, too, upon such forage crops as clover,
vetches, and trifolium incarnatum, but the difference in
the yield of the animals and in the number which can be
kept per acre is surprising. Those who understand the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 439
feeding properties of these crops and of grass, from the
point of view of milk production, will readily recognise
their value, more especially as compared with grass of
second rate quality, or of pasture in which leguminous
herbage is deficient. The dairy farmer of to-day is in
possession of means and of knowledge which were utterly
unknown to those who preceded him. By the use of the
separator, by means of which milk is creamed by centri-
fugal force, he is able to extract a much higher per-
centage of butter from the milk, and to place the skim
milk upon the market in a perfectly fresh and sweet form.
By the aid of the instantaneous butter-maker he will
soon be in a position to economise labour still farther.
The old-fashioned dairy with its large number of utensils
and costly cleanings is abolished for ever upon every
well-managed farm. The dairy exhibitions have enabled
the farmer to select milking stock of the highest type, and
bulls which he can use for the improvement of his herd,
which alone should add very considerably to the average
milking power of every cow in the herd. The practice,
derived from the teaching of able experimenters, of mixing
rations upon a scientific basis for the economical pro-
duction of milk, is one of the most important, as well as
one of the most valuable, additions to dairy farm practice ;
and the discovery by a German chemist, confirmed by
men of equal eminence in England, France, and America,
of the power of clover and allied plants to absorb nitrogen
from the air, is not only one of the greatest achievements
of our time, but is specially calculated to assist the dairy
farmer in providing the most valuable portion of the
ration of his cows, and at the same time of maintaining
the fertility of the soil he cultivates.
So far we have said nothing with regard to the
manufacture of cheese, but this is not because we
44-O LAND :
consider cheese-making either an inferior or unprofitable
branch of the dairy business ; on the contrary, we place
it before butter-making, not only because a good maker
is able to realise a higher price for his milk, but because
foreign competition to-day is, and is likely to be, in the
future, less keen where the finest quality is in question.
There are several permanent schools where cheese-
making is taught. The most important of these is the
British Dairy Institute near Aylesbury, where, in addition
to the best English systems, the methods of making the
leading varieties of foreign cheese are demonstrated.
There are several kinds of foreign cheese which have come
to England to stay, and there is no reason why they should
not be produced in England as we have practically
shown they can be thus adding largely to the possi-
bilities of an extended cheese-making industry. The
inferior price of British cheese is largely, almost entirely,
in fact, owing to lack of knowledge on the part of some
of the makers. All this, it is hoped, will be rectified
when the County Councils, having concluded their butter-
making campaign, have seriously taken cheese-making
in hand. Extensive as dairy farming is in Great Britain
at t,his moment, it is in one sense in its infancy, for in
spite of the enormous influx of foreign butter, butter is
being made at home in immensely larger quantities every
year, and the prices are not only maintained, but in
many instances, owing to superior quality following upon
successful teaching, increased. Our people are yearly
increasing the quantity of butter they consume per head,
and there is little reason to think that this yearly increase
will soon be checked. Just as the inferior type butters
with their strong flavours and their high percentage of
salt and water have been practically driven out of the
market and replaced by the mild butters which we
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 441
import, and which we are now making at home, so will
the strong, dry, inferior cheeses with which dairy farmers
and consumers have alike been too closely ^acquainted,
be supplanted by the mild, nutty, mellow and more
digestible cheeses, which modern teaching will enable
every manufacturer to place before the public if he
chooses. We write with no optimist views, but with a
sound belief in the prospects of British dairy farming in
the future, so long as it is conducted by practical men
who do not expect to reap abnormal profits from an
industry in which there is keen competition, and whose
grasp of knowledge of crop growing and of the capacity
of the soil, entitles them to handle arable as well as
pasture land.
JAMES LONG.
442 LAND :
CHAPTER XLIX.
FRUIT AND ITS CULTIVATION: FALLACIES
AND FACTS.
BY JOHN WRIGHT, F.R.H.S.,
Assistant Editor of the " Journal of Horticiilture" ; Editor of "Garden Work";
Author of " Mushrooms for the Million" (171, Fleet Street) ; "Profitable Fruit
Growing for Cottagers and Small Holders" (Gold Medal Prize. Essay, 171, Fleet
Street); the "Fruit Growers' Guide" (Virtue's, 294, City Road}; Lecturer on
Horticulture for the Surrey County Council ; Member of the Fruit Committee of
the Royal Horticultural Society, &c.
IN treating on the important subject of fruit cultivation,
for improving the value of land, endeavour will be made
to avoid the error into which writers, without cultural
experience, so often fall, of showing, with the aid of the
multiplication table alone, how golden harvests can be
insured by all who plant trees. Fruit growing by arith-
metic is a very easy and interesting exercise. Fabulous
profits can be shown on paper by taking as a basis of
calculation the highest prices obtainable for selected
fruits, and exceptional crops grown under specially
favourable conditions. It may be quite true, and, indeed
it is true, that the choicest of apples and pears grown in
British gardens find a ready sale, not only at sixpence a
pound, but sixpence a fruit for fruiterers' windows ; also it
may be true that a precocious young tree here and there
has produced half-a-bushel of fruit two years after plant-
ing ; but to take this tree, and those prices, as typical of
what any person may accomplish who will plant fruit trees
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 443
of particular varieties, is what no experienced cultivator
with a reputation at stake would think of suggesting.
Here is a formula for showing the prodigious profits
attainable by fruit cultivation. A three or four year old
apple tree bears twenty pounds of fruit, priced at three-
pence a pound : value of crop, five shillings ; plant dwarf
trees on French paradise stocks, six feet apart, or 1210
per acre, and the gross value of the crop from them, as
demonstrated by figures, is upwards of ^300! Of all such
teaching beware, for it is fallacious. The case can be
made clear to the uninitiated by analogy. Take the high
prices of prize animals at a Smithfield show as a basis
for appraising the value of the flocks and herds in our
pastures, and it becomes obvious how utterly false the
result must be a veritable fabric of exaggeration. Prize
animals and prize fruits must be judged as such, and with
each other. Both show what can be accomplished by
capital, skill and selection, but neither represents the
average that is attainable under the best possible manage-
ment in commercial routine.
Practical men, who desire to increase the value of the
land by the cultivation of fruit, wish to know what can
be accomplished in gardens and orchards by enterprise,
labour, and the best cultural skill they may possess or
can acquire. And now to pass from fallacy to fact ; it is
undoubtedly a fact, firm and immovable, that only those
persons who have been engaged in the work of fruit
production over a series of years can guide safely along
the path that leads, if not to fortune, at least to a reason-
able measure of success.
LANDMARKS FOR GUIDANCE.
As the mariner is guided to the harbour he seeks by
the lights and landmarks on the shore, so will the prudent
444 LAND .
husbandman who is essaying the cultivation of fruit, but
cannot see his way, look for the light of experience
provided by others to determine him in his course.
Fortunately landmarks in fruit-growing are not
wanting, and they show with great clearness that when
wisely-chosen fruit trees and bushes are well managed in
suitable soils, and appropriate situations, they materially
enhance the value of land. There is not the least need
for over-estimating the yield of fruit trees and the value
of their crops, because, after making all reasonable
allowances for adverse contingencies, such as inclement
seasons and insect attacks, which frequently injure and
sometimes spoil some of the crops, the fact is established
that a well considered and well conducted system of
fruit culture is advantageous to landowners, occupiers,
and labourers, while consumers must also of necessity be
benefited if they can obtain, as they should, superior fruit
for the same price they have too often had to pay for
inferior.
This suggestion of selling superior produce at a com-
paratively low price may appear to tend against the
interests of cultivators, but such is not in reality the case.
There are thousands of trees in this kingdom, if not in
every county, which bear trashy and practically unsale-
able fruit only, while much more space is occupied by
them than would suffice for healthier trees of better
varieties, capable of affording crops of ten times greater
value. But that is not all, for it is a fact that fruit of the
best market quality can be grown, and is grown, at less
cost than is incurred in the production of relatively
worthless crops. If this were not so, it would be im-
possible for apples to be grown and brought three
thousand or four thousand miles to our markets and sold
so cheaply. Only large or well-grown fruits could be thus
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 445
imported and leave a profit to the cultivators, and they
could not send inferior fruit except at a positive loss. The
truth is this Large, well-fed, fleshy fruits deprive the
soil of less of its substantial constituents than do the small
"woody," juiceless samples in which rind, core, and seeds
are the chief characteristics, or, in other words, the parts
which cannot be eaten cost more to produce than does
the thick luscious flesh, which alone can find favour with
consumers. That is one of the truths which science
teaches, and practice confirms, and it ought not to be for-
gotten ; it is a " landmark " that should both guide and
encourage to a better, cheaper, and more profitable supply,
namely, fruit which, by its size, colour, and quality, will
command attention, and meet with a ready sale at prices
remunerative to the producers. It must not be inferred,
however, that young fruit trees should be planted on the
sites of old orchards. The soil there is deprived of the
elements that build up healthy trees, and its fruit-pro-
ducing power is exhausted.
Another landmark stands out with great boldness as
a pillar of guidance to the public, and there ought to be
inscribed on it in deeply graven letters, "There is no
known case where the best varieties of hardy fruits have
been planted in appropriate positions and fertile soil of
good staple during the past ten years in this country, and
the trees and bushes have made good progress under good
culture, that the value of the land has not been substan-
tially improved." That broad general fact is significant
and encouraging. There is not a land agent or valuer in
the kingdom who can say that plantations of thrifty
young fruit trees, either in the bearing stage or approach-
ing it, do not increase both the letting and selling value
of properties on which they are established. Ancient
orchards of debilitated trees in inferior varieties planted
446 LAND :
in bygone generations may, and doubtless do, give a "bad
character " to land ; their woe-begone appearance is
depressing and suggests poverty of the soil, which they
have, in fact, long since deprived of the essentials to
healthy growth and productiveness. It has to be re-
membered, however, that those orchards and trees do
not represent culture but neglect, and the natural
concomitant of this always has been, is, and will be
depreciation in the value of land in those rural districts
where it can only be devoted to the production of food
for the animal world and the human family. Young-
trees possessing vigour of growth, and branches studded
with spurs and bold buds, the certain precursors of
blossom, have an exactly opposite effect ; they represent
"culture," and impart a value to the land they occupy
that it could not possess under ordinary agricultural
tillage.
This is proved to demonstration, not in Kent only,
but wherever a well-conducted system of fruit culture has
been in operation during the past few years. Where no
mistakes have been made in planting, or after manage-
ment, the results have been such as to lead to an
extension of the practice as capital was forthcoming and
more land could be acquired, while there has been a great
increase in the number of fruit growers in those districts
where profitable object lessons have been afforded to
enterprising pioneers. Under such practical experience
as that indicated actual work and actual results
nothing coulcl show more conclusively the advantages
accruing from well considered and well conducted
methods of fruit culture in this country. Nor is it
difficult to make clear the principles on which to act,
and the methods to adopt, so that they can be com-
prehended and followed by intelligent, industrious men,
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 447
who have had some experience, if not very profitable
experience, on the land.
POPULAR DELUSIONS AND PROPOSED METHODS.
There are persons who have had little or no practice
in the work of cultivation who are so apt in acquiring
knowledge, and diligent in applying it men who com-
bine zeal with prudence that they succeed as well as,
if not better than, do some others who have much to
unlearn, and find it difficult to shake off the fetters which
have long bound them to ancient and unprofitable
routine ; but the truth has to be told on the matter of
dissatisfied townsmen who long for country occupations,
and who have been led to believe that if they can obtain
an acre or two of land, they will be assured of a liveli-
hood by growing fruit. The idea is delusive. Only a
small percentage could do anything of the kind, and
these must not only combine sound judgment with
industrial enterprise, but also possess adequate capital
for investment in the work, and a surplus for subsistence
till remunerative crops are obtained. There are plenty
of men in the country to grow all the fruit that Britain
needs, and more for exportation, without drawing the
impecunious town-born and town-trained workers into
an occupation in which the majority would fail. When
agricultural labourers, who in too great numbers find
their way into large cities, can be transformed into hotel
waiters, and as such gain a livelihood, the much-to-be
pitied unemployed townsman will prosper on the land as
a fruit grower, and not till then. The great desideratum
of the times is the acquirement of land by a greater
number of city capitalists, who will so conduct the
operations on their country estates, that employment can
448 LAND !
be given to a greater number of workers, and thus keep
them out of the too thickly populated towns, where a life
of misery is lived by thousands ; but the investment in
labour, to be satisfactory, must leave a margin of profit
to the employer. Fruit can be grown much more profit-
ably than farm crops, by farm workers, under competent
supervision ; and at the same time worthy, striving,
capable men should be encouraged to grow fruit, especially
bush fruit, on plots that in many districts either are or
might be provided near their dwellings. Regard the
matter from whatever point of view we may, it cannot be
otherwise than desirable to find work for labourers on
the land. Depopulation is an indication of decay, and
leaves a country poorer, because the strong and most
enterprising the real creators of wealth are the first to
go, and become in other lands competitors with their
kinsmen at home, leaving the weak, lame and lazy behind
them. These prey on the accumulations of others, and
hence impoverish instead of enrich the land in which they
spend their profitless time and live their luckless lives.
Many landowners in the kingdom have it in their
power to improve their possessions by increasing the
productiveness of the soil by the systematic cultivation of
hardy fruit, and at the same time by the necessary
employment of more labour do good to others as well as
themselves. They may not heap up riches in the work,
but if they realise even five per cent, on the outlay, is it
not better than less than half the amount derived in the
old way, with the attendant grumbling of men who can
scarcely find sustenance for their families ? The founders
of fruit gardens of two or three acres, more or less,
according to the extent of estates, and the suitability of
soil and position, would stand to gain by their establish-
ment, while the inhabitants surrounding would have the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 449
opportunity of acquiring knowledge that might be of
substantial value in the cultivation of fruit for their families
and the populations of adjacent towns. In this way good
would be done in which all would share, owners of land,
workers and consumers.
ENCOURAGING EXAMPLES.
What it has become customary to describe as the
' Xew Fruit Movement," is not so new as the majority
of persons imagine. It is no mere speculative enterprise
founded on theoretical propositions, but the extension of
methods which have been long enough in operation to
prove their soundness. Quietly but surely the work has
been going on for some years in Kent and a few other
districts ; and the best evidence of that soundness the
most practical, cogent and indisputable is the fact that
numbers of persons who were among the first to engage
in the revival of fruit culture are enlarging the field of
their operations. The result of this is that hundreds of
acres of land have been raised from a low agricultural to a
high horticultural value, to the advantage of owners and
occupiers of land, labourers and purchasers of produce ;
for the first get higher rents, the second better profits,
the third receive more money in the form of wages, and
the fourth obtain better fruit at prices that were formerly
paid for inferior ; thus fruit culture, well conducted, is
beneficial all round.
Many examples, both on a large and small scale, of
the striking advantages of fruit culture could be adduced,
but a few only need be cited. About eight years ago
Mr. George Bunyard, a well-known and extensive grower
of fruit trees at Maidstone, planted a portion of a field on
an estate in Kent consisting of woodland, copse and open
2 G
450 LAND :
agricultural land. The woodland when inspected was,
commercially speaking, worth next to nothing ; the fields,
as such, were worth, and probably let for, about thirty
shillings an acre, not more ; but the slice of one of them
under fruit culture would now let readily for five pounds
an acre, and Mr. Bunyard would only be too glad to
have the opportunity of taking it at that rental. A
fence divides the two portions of this field. The soil
staple is identical, yet the land on one side of the fence
could be let or sold for more than thrice the amount which
could be obtained for that on the other. The difference
is due to cropping and good management alone pre-
paring the land well, and planting it with profitable
varieties of apples and gooseberries, the former for
producing a "top" and the latter a "bottom" crop of
fruit. The cost, including seventy-five apple trees per
acre twenty-five feet apart, and one thousand one hundred
and thirty-five gooseberries at six feet asunder, manuring,
preparing the land, planting, and the first year's cultiva-
tion, would be about twenty-five pounds ; second year's
cultivation, including hoeing, light digging and pruning,
five pounds ; the third year the gooseberries would more
than defray cost of culture, the fourth year give a gross
return of ten pounds an acre, the fifth fifteen pounds, the
sixth twenty pounds, and the seventh twenty-five pounds.
The apples would defray expenses the fifth year, weather
being favourable, be remunerative the sixth, increasing
in value yearly, in ten years giving a return of twenty
pounds ; in fifteen years forty pounds. In eight years
the combined gross returns would be forty pounds, in
twelve years fifty pounds. This is assuming the varieties
are good, the trees well managed, and the weather in
those years not unfavourable ; if specially favourable and
the soil of the best character, the returns might be con-
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 451
siderably more. When in full profit the cost of gathering,
marketing and cultural routine would be twenty-five
pounds. Such a plantation would give a full return for
twenty-five or thirty years or more according to the soil
staple and support given to the trees. The gooseberries
would wane after twelve years, but the apples would
increase in greater proportionate value up to twenty
or more years. These estimates are not founded on
maximum crops and values, but on average yields and
prices. In the absence of suitable soils and positions,
also of good varieties and management, fruit culture
cannot be expected to prove remunerative ; but, for-
tunately, the necessary concrete conditions, fertile soil
and favourable situations, are waiting to be turned to
profitable account in various parts of the kingdom, the
requisites for this being enterprise, business aptitude,
and cultural skill.
The example of success and procedure given is in
Kent, and many persons appear to be of opinion that in
no other county can fruit be grown so well and so profit-
ably. That is a mistake a popular fallacy. Kentish
cultivators are planting extensively in other counties also.
It is a fact that the fruit crops have often been more
abundant in the midlands and north than in the south,
because of the later expansion of the blossom north-
wards, and thus escaping injury or destruction by spring
frosts ; and fruit from healthy young trees grown in the
east, west or north, is always of higher quality than that
from aged, exhausted, canker-eaten and moss-laden trees
in the south. Moreover, small or bush fruits, which are
very reliable and profitable, can be grown better in the
north than the south, as a rule.
An example may be usefully given of what has been
done in one of the bleakest districts in the kingdom,
45 2 LAND :
namely, in the marsh or fen land on the Lincolnshire
coast, where there is nothing to break the force of the
keenly-biting north-east winds in' spring. Some years
ago, Mr. Charles Parker, a tenant farmer of two hundred
or three hundred acres, in the parish of Pinchbeck,
planted about twelve acres of land with standard fruit
trees and gooseberry bushes in the manner previously
described. The ''top " crops apples and plums mainly,
with some pears fail on an average every alternate
year, the gooseberries never. The annual yield of these
varies from thirty to forty tons, the prices obtained for
them being on the average about eight pounds a ton.
When the "top" crops are also good, the value of the
whole is at the least fifty pounds an acre. The goose-
berries are gathered as soon as they are large enough
for use, cleared off as quickly as possible, and sent in
hundredweight hampers to London and the northern
towns. He employs five times more workpeople than
most farmers do who have five times more land than he
has, and by good culture generally, and especially fruit
culture, he has been enabled to build himself a home on
his own freehold, and never grumbles about " bad times."
The land is rich, but cold, as water is within three feet
of the surface. His most profitable varieties of fruits
are the two hardy Nottinghamshire apples, Domino and
Bramley's seedling, the former for early use, the latter
for long keeping ; the Victoria plum and the Crown Bob
gooseberry.
The mention of Nottinghamshire reminds me of an
extraordinary combination of culture by which the value
of land has been enormously enhanced. It is near
Southwell. Twenty years ago strong clayey, ill-working
land was bought and planted with Bramley's seedling
apple trees, ten yards apart, or forty-eight per acre, and
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 453
osiers between them for undergrowth. The total cost of
the generally considered worthless land and planting was
only twenty-five pounds an acre. Ten years afterwards, it
could not be bought for thrice that amount, nor could it
be acquired at anything like one hundred pounds an acre
at the present time. The osiers abstracted the excess of
moisture from the soil, and their myriads of fallen leaves
enriched it for the apples. The combination has been
greatly extended in the district, with the addition of some
damsons. In land not quite so heavy and wet, an under-
growth of black currants (which are not profitable in dry
soils) would pay much better than osiers, though these
give a profit of ten pounds an acre. The apple referred
to was introduced to commerce by Mr. H. Merry weather,
of Southwell, and the crop from one fine tree of it in his
orchard has been sold for upwards of five pounds. A
large farmer near Sittingbourne, Mr. A. J. Thomas, who
has planted more than one hundred acres with fruit, has
a tree of the brilliant Gascoigne's scarlet seedling apple,
which rarely fails to yield six pounds worth of fruit at the
cost of a water-cart of liquid manure yearly, the profit
derived from this one tree being greater than that from
an acre of wheat.
Mr. T. F. Rivers, of Sawbridgworth, an extensive
raiser of fruit trees, is the proprietor of a considerable
extent of land, both under agricultural tillage and fruit
farming, or rather gardening. His fruit culture is con-
tinually extending, his farm crops being correspondingly
reduced. The reason is obvious. Fruit pays the best, and
thus the trees the fat kine, are eating up the lean grain
and roots, in Hertfordshire. Mr. Rivers' method differs
from those previously referred to, and is highly worthy
of attention. It is fruit gardening rather than orcharding.
He plants no tall standard apples, pears or plums, to
454 LAND :
require staking, but prefers trees growing as free bushes,
with stems three feet high or thereabouts. They are
grafted on stocks, the nature of which is to prevent
rampant growth and to promote fruitfulness. These
trees are planted twelve feet apart three hundred to
the acre and small fruits, strawberries, raspberries, cur-
rants and gooseberries, grown between until the larger
bush trees cover the ground. These bear heavily, the
fruit is not blown off them the same as from tall orchard
trees, and the crops are readily gathered, the bulk being
within reach from the ground, and the remainder by
workmen, or women, standing on large flower-pots or
boxes. Much more fruit can be gathered in a day from
such bush trees by women than can be secured by a corre-
sponding number of men from lofty trees with the aid of
tall ladders. An acre of good land, well prepared and
planted in the manner indicated, also fenced around
against animals, not forgetting galvanized wire for ex-
cluding rabbits, would produce ten times more fruit than
could be had from an acre of orchard trees on grass.
Obviously the preparation of the land and cost of
planting would be greater, but the returns would justify
the outlay. Grazing land, however, near homesteads is
often desirable, with trees for affording shade ; this is as
well provided by fruit as by forest trees, by apples and
pears as by elms and crabs, by plums and cherries as by
thorns a fact which should not be overlooked ; but for
producing the fullest crops of the finest fruit what may
be termed garden culture, in contradistinction to orchard
planting, is the right course to pursue.
As further evidence of fruit culture enhancing the
value of land, an example in Sussex may be cited. A
gentleman at Petworth had a small field of about four
acres near his home. This he worked himself, growing
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 455
ordinary farm crops, but these did little more than defray
the cost of production. He divided the field into fifteen
allotments, and the occupying tenants planted many fruit
trees and bushes. The result of the change from farm
to garden culture, from corn to fruit growing mainly, is
very striking, for the land which formerly brought him
next to nothing per acre, now brings him a rental of
thirty-five pounds per annum. With the object of
encouraging the tenants to grow fruit, this landlord made
a rule that when a plot was vacated, the incoming tenant
should pay a fair valuation for the trees established on it ;
thus, these are the property of the tenants, and the allot-
ments have always been let on that condition. It is a
just and fair condition which has proved mutually advan-
tageous.
As will be perceived, the increase in the capital value
of the land is little less than astounding. One of the
tenants has a plot of seventy-five rods, for which he
cheerfully pays five pounds ten shillings a year, or at the
rate of eleven pounds an acre. It is a narrow strip with
buildings on a portion of one side, against which he
grows pears, and a hedge of raspberries next the path on
the other, also round the ends. From this hedge alone
he gathers and sells between four and five pounds worth
of raspberries yearly. He has four or five standard apple
trees in vigorous growth, their branches bending down
to the ground, which yield two pounds worth of fruit each,
with dwarf trees between them that bear abundantly, the
fruit being fully equal in size, colour and quality to the
best that reaches our markets from any part of the world.
The secret of the success is soil made fertile to the depth
of two feet, and growing only the best varieties of fruit
in the best manner. The plot and trees have been
examined by the writer, who vouches for the strict
456 LAND :
accuracy of this narration. The tenant's name is William
Jacob. He has reason to be proud of his work, and the
country ought to be proud of such men.
An instance may now be adduced of the profitable
nature of the highly appreciated " soft " fruits, raspberries
and strawberries ; it is both remarkable and encouraging.
On the estate of a very prominent Member of Parliament
a twenty acre field in Kent was divided into half acres
and smaller allotments several years ago. The plots
were cropped with potatoes till the land became ''potato
sick." Different changes were tried, and one man,
named Collins, planted his half acre with raspberries and
strawberries. The year on which the returns were
obtained on the spot, and their accuracy is beyond
dispute, he gathered nearly a ton and a half of straw-
berries, which he sold for forty pounds, and a little over
a ton and a half of raspberries, which he sold for thirty-five
pounds, or the extraordinary total of seventy-five pounds
sterling from half an acre of land. This is above the
average for strawberries, considerably, but for raspberries
only slightly. The strawberries were in their prime, the
raspberries approaching it. Upwards of sixteen tons of
manure were used, and there would be the cost of
gathering tile fruit, say a total of twenty-five pounds.
Also the cost of planting and cultivation the first year
might amount to thirty pounds. Assuming there were
no returns the first year, the second half an average
crop, and the third a full yield, then allowing a margin for
contingencies, we have an average profit per acre of
thirty-three pounds. This is in exact accordance with
experience in Hampshire, where the actual average profit
per acre over an extent of one thousand five hundred
acres of strawberries is just thirty-three pounds. Full
crops of raspberries are still more profitable, but they
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 457
are one or two years longer in becoming remunerative,
or say strawberries in two years, raspberries in three or
four years ; but the former only remain productive over
three, four or five years, according to the soil, while the
latter are profitable over twice the period, and even
much longer under good management.
The land around Botley (Hants), has, in consequence
of the change from ordinary agricultural tillage to straw-
berry cultivation, increased from a rental of thirty shillings
to sixty shillings an acre, and sixty tons of fruit have
been gathered and sent by rail to London and other
markets in one day. The same or a greater increase in
the value of hundreds, not to say thousands of acres of
land, has followed similar action in Kent. In one district
grain and root crops have been driven away by fruit,
strawberries chiefly, and as indicating the extent of pro-
duction it may be stated that during the month of July,
1891, as recorded in the railway company's books at
Swanley, " Four hundred and seventy-two tons three
hundredweight of strawberries were sent direct to
northern towns, and one hundred and thirty-three tons
four hundredweight to London, the most sent in one day
being seventy-eight tons, sixty-five tons to the north
and thirteen tons to London, or a total of six hundred
and five tons in ninety-seven thousand baskets of fourteen,
pounds each, or one million three hundred and fifty-eight
thousand pounds weight of strawberries from one station in
one month." (Journal of Horticulture, August 27th,
1891.) Many were also preserved in the local jam
factory, besides several van loads sent by road to
London daily or nightly during the season.
45$ LAND : '
AMERICAN AND ENGLISH METHODS A PROPOSED
REVOLUTION.
The demand for fruit is enormous, and first-class
samples placed on the market in first-class condition in-
variably meet with a ready sale at remunerative prices ;
inferior fruit or unsightly samples do not ; and only the
best can be produced by vigorous plants and thrifty
young trees, clean and well-tended, in fertile soil. This
applies to all kinds of fruits, and the truth of the state-
ment is exemplified in the readily-bought importations of
American apples. These could only be borne by trees
in the best of health and youthful vigour. Moreover, the
varieties are few and well chosen, the fruit carefully graded
and honestly packed, all being the same right through
the barrels. The pernicious system of deceiving by cover-
ing the bulk of inferior fruit with a layer of good at the
top, too long prevailed in this country, and gave a great
opportunity to American cultivators in supplying our
markets. When home growers, as many are now doing,
grow fruit well, sort it carefully, and pack it fairly, also
when purchasers have confidence in the bulks offered,
higher prices are obtainable for the brisker and more
piquant British apple than for the more highly coloured,
drier, and more or less insipid culinary varieties and
samples grown under a tropical sun in foreign climes.
This is distinctly encouraging ; and as an example is
desirable for showing the advantages of taking a useful
lesson from our rivals, it is afforded by Mr. E. J.
Baillie, F.L.S., of Chester, one of the most careful and
reliable men in the fruit world, who states that a man
who began life as a labourer, but gained knowledge on
fruit culture in America, then commenced a fruit farm of
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 459
thirteen acres in Cheshire, and eventually, with his savings
from the profits, bought the freehold of his little estate.
This he could not have done by the ordinary methods of
cropping land which prevail in the district.
Perhaps one of the most striking and encouraging
examples of success in the acquisition of land in small
plots by earnest and industrious tillers on the outskirts of
populous towns is to be found near Nottingham. " There
are about five thousand small gardens a short distance
from the town. As far as the eye can reach from a
commanding eminence, the neatly-fenced and much
cherished plots extend. Some have been under culti-
vation for generations, others are quite new. The last
freehold purchased and divided into eight hundred allot-
ments is unique. Applicants for gardens contributed
two shillings a fortnight to a fund. Sooner than was
anticipated a substantial sum was obtained, land bought,
divided, fenced, traversed with good roads, and a water
supply provided. Every plot was promptly taken pos-
session of by the shareholders, and the fortnightly sub-
scriptions being continued, each plot becomes the freehold
of the occupant in seven years from the commencement,
and it may be much sooner by increasing the payments.
This admirable scheme secures the most thrifty and
earnest men, and therein rests the secret of success."
(Allotments, their advantages and Utilization. By the
author of this article.)
This is probably the best solution of the allotment
problem. Full value is paid for estates, one of which
is divided into many freeholds, both vendors and
purchasers being abundantly satisfied with the transaction.
The acquired property is at first vested in trustees and
managed by a strong and sympathetic committee, then
distributed on safe, sound and equitable principles. In this
460 LAND I
remarkable series of gardens, fruit trees and bushes have
been planted in thousands, as these are found to give
satisfactory returns to the tillers. If a similar system
of increasing the number of owners of land on a fair
business basis could be established around populous
centres generally, something like an industrial revolution
would be effected by which thousands would benefit and
none suffer, while the markets, practically at the garden
gates, w r ould be well supplied with home grown fruit.
METHODS OF CULTURE.
Sites and Shelter. Where sites can be chosen
between low valleys and higher yet sheltered ground,
let not the rich warm valleys tempt the planter. Not
only does the blossom expand sooner in low, warm
nooks, but the atmospheric moisture is greater, causing
fogs in spring and tender blossoms, which spring frosts
often blacken in a night, destroying all hopes of the
coveted fruit. It is not at all uncommon to see trees
planted on a level with the watercourse of a district
fruitless ; while those on higher ground adjoining are
bearing their golden harvest. Still shelter, natural, as
afforded by hills or trees, or belts or screens provided by
planters is desirable, especially from the north-east and
south-west, for the prevailing winds from the former
quarter in spring often seriously cut the blossom, while
boisterous gales from the latter in autumn may dash
much fruit to the ground. Lombardy poplars make the
closest screen, also take up the least space of all trees,
and two or three closely planted rows soon form a good
wind barrier. For sheltering a garden of dwarf fruit
trees, an outer row of damsons on four or five feet
stems, planted nine feet apart, next the fence, form a tall
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 461
hedge and often bear abundant crops on one side if not
on both.
Soil and its Preparation. The worst kind of soil for
fruit trees is dry poor sand, and the only way in which
trees and bushes can be made to flourish in such soil is
by spreading manure thickly on the surface of the
ground as far as the branches spread above, and there
leave it to decay. Especially should the soil be well
covered in summer. The next most unsuitable soil is
that of a black peaty nature ; but this, if well drained, so
that water does not stand within at least three feet of
the surface, and also heavily limed, a bushel to each
square rod (thirty and a quarter yards) or one hundred
and sixty bushels per acre, will afford useful produce.
Lime should not be given to sandy soil, half-a-ton of salt
per acre in spring being a better application. Heavy
clay soils are unsuitable for fruit, but some by draining,
weathering, liming and general amelioration have been
made to grow good crops of plums and black currants ;
also such free growing, hardy and excellent apples as
Lord Grosvenor and Duchess of Oldenburg, early ;
Beauty of Kent and Golden Noble, midseason; Bramley's
Seedling and New Northern Greening, late ; these
apples for standards to be on English crab stocks ; for
dwarfs, on the broad leaved English paradise, not the
narrow leaved French paradise stocks. The best soil
for fruit culture is rather heavy yet free working loam,
or sand and clay naturally blended, the latter pre-
dominating ; or land that will grow good crops of wheat,
clover, peas and vegetable crops generally. No kind of
soil can, however, be relied on for fruit culture through
which water does not steadily pass by filtration, and in
the. absence of this, efficient draining is a necessity.
Deep culture is essential. In preparing land with the
462 LAND I
plough a subsoiler should follow in each furrow, smashing
it up to a depth of sixteen inches or more from the sur-
face if possible. If worked with spades, or steel digging
forks, which are generally preferable, it should be bastard
trenched, that is, keeping the upper layer of a foot deep
on the top, smashing up the under layer to the same
depth and leaving nearly the whole of it at the bottom.
The reverse, and too common, practice of burying the
top, or best, soil in a trench two feet deep under a foot of
the inert, or worse, dug out of the bottom, means very
much onore than a waste of labour, for it has spoiled much
land. A little of the subsoil may be incorporated with
the upper layer, but only a little, for much sour soil
brought to the surface is inimical rather than beneficial
to the growth of trees and crops.
Manuring* Too much manure is often placed in the
soil before planting fruit trees, which induces succulent
growth, and too little given afterwards when the soil
has become more or less exhausted by crops of fruit.
When land is obviously poor, as much town or farmyard
manure may be worked in as would be suitable for a good
crop of potatoes, not more. This applies to all ordinary-
kinds of fruit trees, but strawberries and raspberries
require more highly enriched soil. The time to apply
manure is when fruit trees do not make adequate growth,
and then it should be given on the surface over the roots
for the rains to wash its virtues down. Farmyard manure,
also decayed vegetable matter and wood ashes, are good ;
failing supplies of these, chemical manures should be
employed. A mixture of six Ibs. or cwts. of superphos-
phate of lime, three of muriate of potash and two ot
nitrate of soda or sulphate ammonia is beneficial to all
kinds of fruit that need more support than the soil
affords. If the annual growth exceeds eighteen inches
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 463
in length, the soil, as a rule, is rich enough ; if it is
less than a foot a moderate fertilizing or dressing is
needed ; if they do not exceed six inches, a liberal
application is demanded. A moderate dressing means
two ounces of the chemicals to each square yard, a liberal
one twice the quantity ; and it should be remembered that
the best feeding roots are not close to the stems, but at a
distance from them equal to the spread of the branches.
Liquid manure, such as household sewage, drainings from
manure heaps, or made by dissolving a pound of guano
in twenty gallons of water, applied either in winter or
summer, or both, is excellent for weakly trees and bushes,
also for invigorating enfeebled strawberries.
Planting. The sooner trees are planted after the
leaves can be shaken off them in autumn, the better
they will grow, always provided the soil is in a friable
condition. It is a mistake to force them into the ground
when it is in a wet, adhesive state. When they arrive
in that condition, well bury the roots in a trench and
plant on the first favourable opportunity. Spring planting
answers when carefully done. The point of greatest
importance is to keep the roots moist when out of the
ground. If they are dry on arrival, plunge them in
water for twelve hours or more. Before planting, cut
the end off every broken root from the under side with
a sharp knife. That is important for the quick production
of new fibres. Spread out the roots their full length in
layers, with soil between them, then level the earth up
to the stems, but no higher than it was before they
were taken up, as may be seen by the bark. Many trees
are planted too deeply, and with manure in contact with
the roots. The surface of the soil over the roots and a
foot beyond their extension is the proper place for
manure. When the work is completed the trees should
464 LAND :
appear as if on slight mounds, the soil to be made firm,
but not hard by rough treading. All tall trees must be
secured to stakes, with a pad between the stem and
stake ; but dwarf trees, needing no stakes, are the best
for enclosed fruit gardens.
Pruning. Many fruit trees are spoiled and much fruit
prevented by the injudicious use of the knife. If there
is one operation in gardening in which the brain should
guide the hand it is in pruning ; but to guide safely
and surely the brain must be educated, or, in other
words, the cultivator must know what will be the result
of every branch he shortens. The certain result in the
case of every tree that makes free, and it may be too free,
growth, is to increase the number of branches. Already
too strong and too numerous, the untaught pruner cuts
them back in winter and thinks he has done well. He
has done the best he possibly could for insuring a forest
of fruitless growths to be again cut back at the end of
another season. The man who so acts is a preventer
not a producer of fruit. What, then, is the proper routine ?
When a fruit tree is first planted it has only a few
long thin branches. As we want more, and these
sturdier, the originals are cat back, removing about two-
thirds of their length, the end bud left pointing outwards
on the upper side of the branch. This is for inducing
the tree to "open out," and prevent a crowded, bush-like
head. It must be remembered that in digging up trees,
however carefully, more than two-thirds of the fibres, or
feeding roots, are left behind, therefore the branches are
shortened correspondingly. When this is done, well
rooted and carefully planted trees increase the number of
their branches the first season, and these are stronger
and better than the new growths could be from the
originals if these had not been shortened. At the second
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 465
autumn or winter pruning small cross growths must be
cut out, and the ends of the main branches again
shortened, about half or less, as may be suggested in
view of the symmetry of the trees. The effect of this
will be to strengthen the base of each branch, and also lead
to a further increase in the number of growths, sufficient
in all probability for the framework of the tree. All the
cultivator who seeks fruit has then to do is to prevent
side growths from the mains crowding the tree, by
rubbing some of them out in spring if numerous, and
shortening the rest to five or six leaves in summer, but
not the ends of the main branches. The effect of this is
to admit the full and free action of light and air on every
leaf, and each leaf then does its duty in purifying the
crude sap and storing nutrient matter in the stems. On
these blossom buds then form naturally ; but it is
impossible they can do so if a dense thicket of growths
crowd the trees in summer for no other purpose than to
be cut out in winter. That senseless and much too
common practice should cease.
When good crops of fruit form the main object and
shape of trees is secondary, pruning should be practically
limited to thinning out the branches in summer when in
full leaf, not shortening them but taking them clean out,
so that the rays of the sun can pass between those
remaining, and shine, so to say, right through the trees.
Then will fruit spurs form from the base to the extremity
of the branches, and, weather permitting, full crops of
fruit follow. Pruning then, resolves itself into a question
of shortening the young branches the first and second
year for producing the requisite number of a sturdy
character, then letting these extend, and preventing
too many springing from them to crowd the trees in
summer. It is on the thin disposal of the branches of
2 H
466 LAND :
trees that their fruitfulness depends, so far as this can
depend on the action of the pruner. And what does
thin disposal mean? It means, to put the matter in a
form which cannot be misunderstood, that the branches of
all fruit trees ought to be far enough apart to enable the
owner to pass his hat between them, in most places,
without breaking a spur, for obviously, this could not be
done low down, where the forking of the growths com-
mences. If a person prefer some fancifully-shaped trees
he may be left to produce them in his own way, and if
he understand the theory and practice of pruning he
may have also good crops of fruit, not otherwise. When
trees grow too luxuriantly for the formation of blossom
buds, shortening some of the strong descending roots is
the only method of checking their grossness.
Preventing the crowding of bush fruits by summer
pruning is equally as important as with the larger kinds.
Then in winter the snags of red and white currants
can be cut back to within an inch of their base, and the
ends of the branches shortened to six or eight inches;
but black currants must be thinned only, as the best
fruit is borne on the thinly disposed wood of the
previous summer ; and it is the same with peaches,
nectarines and Morello cherries ; therefore with these
spurring must not be resorted to. Gooseberries bear both
on old spurs and young wood, therefore some of the old
weakly branches may be removed to afford room for a
convenient young shoot to remain its full length, the
remainder of the young shoots being cut back to a
cluster of buds on the older stems. A gooseberry bush
is not properly pruned if the hand cannot be passed
between the growths without being scratched with the
spines. Raspberries should have the old canes cut out
as soon as convenient after the fruit is gathered, and the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 467
young canes will ripen better and bear more fruit. The
overcrowding of the summer growths ought to be pre-
vented by drawing some of them out when about six
inches high, so that the remainder stand well clear of
each other. When raspberry canes are planted they
should be cut down to within a foot of the ground for
inducing good summer growths from the base, and the
regular autumn bearing, or October raspberries, must
have the whole of the canes cut down to the ground in
winter, and the resulting summer growths well thinned
in good time. It is hoped that these instructions on
pruning are sufficiently plain to enable the inexperienced
to comprehend them, and to profitably prune their own
bushes and trees.
VARIETIES OF FRUITS.
Two cardinal errors have been made in the past, and
have led to much disappointment and the low average
value of British fruit, especially apples. Error one is the
habit, much too freely indulged in, of raising trees from
pips or seeds and growing them into bearing. This is
not only a time-wasting process, but nine-tenths of the
seedlings possess no commercial value. Yet they are
retained, and consequently most of the trees so raised in
orchards bear little beyond worthless trash. Error two
is the planting of by far too many varieties for yielding
a good supply of saleable fruit. If fifty or a hundred
trees are planted in as many varieties, a large number
will be of small value, and there can be no uniformity in
the produce for market. A number of trees of half a
dozen varieties would give far better results. For home
use, in the gardens of the affluent, collections of fruits are
appropriate, interesting, and instructive : but growing for
468 LAND :
market is wholly different, and large bulks in few varieties
form the right method to adopt. The names of American
apples that are sold in this country in thousands of tons
may be counted on the fingers. The selections to be
given will, therefore, be small yet useful, the trees yield-
ing good crops of marketable fruit in a reasonable time
rather than sparse crops possessing some peculiarity in
flavour. Moreover, some good apples, such as the
Blenheim Pippin, are usually too slow in bearing, and a
few highly flavoured sorts like Ribston Pippin, canker,
while others which afford very large fruit, such as Gloria
Mundi and Emperor Alexander, are either shy bearers
or the fruit is light. Several of the richest pears require
to be grown against walls, especially in cold districts ;
some of the most luscious plums do not bear freely ; and
the sweetest cherries are the first to be attacked by
birds, which, when they are many, and the trees few,
devour far more than their share of the crops.
APPLES. The apple is fairly entitled to the distinction
of being regarded as the most serviceable fruit of
temperate climes. Fourteen hundred varieties were
exhibited at the National Apple Congress, held in the
gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1883.
Some of the largest and most handsome apples are not
the most profitable to grow, and the habits of the trees
have to be considered in the choice of varieties for
specified purposes. Some have a spread of branches
more than twenty feet, while others are naturally com-
pact in growth. These latter would obviously be as
unsuited for large orchard standards as the former would
for dwarf bushes, though the stocks on which the
varieties are established exert an influence on all. Crab
stocks promote free growth, and therefore are employed
for standards ; while paradise stocks, owing to their
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 469
naturally dwarf habit, restrict growth, and incite early
productiveness, being thus suitable for bush trees.
In the following selections the season of use is indicated :
Tall standards for planting twenty -Jive to thirty feet
apart Culinary varieties: (i) Keswick Codlin, hardy,
summer; (2) Lord Grosvenor, large, summer; (3)
Ecklinville, valuable, autumn and winter ; (4) Warner's
King, fine, autumn and winter ; (5) Beauty of Kent,
handsome, autumn and winter ; (6) Golden Noble, hand-
some, autumn and winter ; (7) Mere de Menage, highly
coloured, winter ; (8) Alfriston, fine, winter and spring ;
(9) New Northern Greening, free, hardy, winter and
spring; (10) The Sandringham, large, good, winter
and spring; (n) Bramley's Seedling, valuable, hardy,
winter and spring 5(12) Dumelow's Seedling, free bearer,
brisk, winter and spring, prone to canker in some soils.
For a limited selection, Nos. 2, 3, 4, 9, 10 and 1 1 may
be chosen; and several trees each of Nos. 2, 3 and n
have yielded profitable crops. Dessert varieties. -Duchess
of Oldenburg, striped, good also for cooking, hardy,
free, summer ; Quarrenden, free, highly coloured,
summer and autumn ; Worcester Pearmain, richly coloured,
autumn ; King of the Pippins, hardy, free, autumn and
winter ; Wormsley Pippin, good also for cooking, autumn ;
Reinette de Canada, good also for cooking, large, winter
and spring ; Blenheim Pippin, good also for cooking,
but slow in arriving at a bearing state.
Medium-sized standards for planting eighteen feet
apart Culinary. (i) Early Julyan, summer; (2)
Domino, summer ; (3) Potts' Seedling, summer and early
autumn, good for suburban gardens ; (4) Stirling Castle,
autumn, an abundant bearer, good for small gardens ;
(5) New Hawthornden, fine, autumn ; (6) Cox's Pomona,
autumn; (7) Newton Wonder, winter and spring; (8)
470 LAND :
Small's Admirable, winter and spring ; (9) Betty Geeson,
winter and spring, free; (10) Bismarck, fine colour,
winter and spring ; (i i) Beauty of Hants, a compact form
of the Blenheim, good also for table; (12) Lane's Prince
Albert, free, valuable, winter and spring. For a limited
selection Nos. 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 12 may be chosen, and
several trees each of Nos. 3, 4 and 12 have afforded
profitable crops. Dessert varieties : Mr. Gladstone,
early summer, to be eaten off the tree ; Irish Peach, late
summer, good ; Yellow Ingestrie, autumn ; Claygate
Pearmain, winter ; Cox's Orange Pippin, winter the
best of all dessert apples ; Court Pendu Plat, spring.
Bushes for growing nine to twelve feet apart on
dwarfing stocks. Any or all those named for medium-
sized standards, with, as culinary varieties, Manks'
Codlin, Carlisle Codlin, Lord Suffield, Yorkshire Beauty,
Cellini, Golden Spire, Frogmore Prolific, Peasgood's
Nonesuch, Gascoigne's Seedling, Queen Caroline, The
Sandringham, Seaton House, Newton Wonder, Bramley's
Seedling ; and as Dessert, Red Astrachan, Beauty of
Bath, Williams' Favourite, Benoni, American Mother,
Fearn's Pippin, Ribston Pippin, but prone to canker,
Mannington Pearmain, Baxter's Pearmain, Scarlet
Nonpareil, Braddick's Nonpareil, Lord Burghley and
Sturmer Pippin.
All the varieties named are of proved merit, and if
any fail through soil peculiarities, it is wise to cut them
down and graft with varieties that are found to give the
most satisfaction a practice that is not nearly so general
as its merits demand.
PEARS. Though the pear is the prince of hardy dessert
fruits it is much less useful than the apple. The following
varieties may be grown on bushes (mainly on quince
stocks), except in cold localities or exposed positions :
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 4/1
(i) Summer Doyenne (Doyenne d'Ete), the earliest pear,
small, a favourite at garden parties, and sells freely in
good markets ; (2) Williams' Bon Chretien ; (3) Beurre
d'Amanlis ; (4) Beurre Superfin ; (5) Beurre Hardy ;
(6) Marie Louise, on pear stock ; (7) Marechal de Cour ;
(8) Louise Bonne of Jersey ; (9) Pitmaston Duchess,
large, profitable on the pear stock; (10) Durondeau ;
(n) Doyenne du Cornice; (12) Emile d'Heyst. Good
later varieties for walls are Glou Morgeau, Josephine
d'Malines, Winter Nelis and Bergamotte Esperen. The
varieties named will afford a supply of fruit for nine
months. For a limited selection, Nos. 2, 4, 7, 8, 9 and 1 1
may be chosen, with any one or more of the late varieties
for walls. As orchard standards Jargonelle, Hessle and
Rivers' Fertility are as reliable as any, and Catillac is
one of the best of stewing pears.
PLUMS. These rank next to apples in usefulness.
Mr. Rivers, an extensive grower, and the raiser of many
varieties, finds Rivers' Prolific, the Czar, Oullins' Golden,
Cox's Emperor and Monarch the most profitable at
Sawbridg worth, Herts. The late Archdeacon Lea, after
trying fifty-one varieties for several years in Worcester-
shire, recommended Rivers' Prolific, Victoria, Pershore,
Diamond, and Pond's Seedling for productiveness. The
last-named is one of the largest and the Victoria one of the
most reliable bearers. Three richly-flavoured plums for
dessert are Belgian Purple, Denniston's Superb, and
Rivers' Transparent Gage. Damsons : Crittenden,
small, an early and abundant bearer. The Prune,
large, and Bradley 's King, a fine new variety.
CHERRIES. For eating : Early Rivers, Elton, Arch-
duke, Black Bigarreau and Black Eagle. For cooking :
Kentish and Morello, very useful, and birds leave them till
the last.
47 2 LAND :
GOOSEBERRIES. For gathering green : Keepsake, or
Berry's Early Kent, Whinham's Industry, Crown Bob
and Whitesmith. For preserving ripe : Warrington.
For eating ripe : Early Sulphur and Whitesmith, white ;
Red Champage and Warrington, red.
CURRANTS. Red Dutch and Victoria, or Raby Castle,
red ; Black Naples and Lee's Prolific, black ; and White
Dutch.
RASPBERRIES. -- Carter's Prolific, Superlative and
Rivers' Hornet, for summer; October Red, for autumn;
Sweet Yellow Antwerp, for dessert.
BLACKBERRIES OR BRAMBLES. For training up old
walls, trellises, or arching over walks, the parsley-leaved
brambles bear large clusters of fine fruit in October.
The planting and cultivation is similar to that indicated
for raspberries in the earlier part of this article, but the
plants require thrice the space. Hedges may be formed
on stout trelliswork.
STRAWBERRIES. Noble, large, early, but lacking in
quality, sells well ; Vicomtesse Hericart de Thury,
early, hardy, and productive ; Sir Joseph Paxton, the
most extensively grown of all, and President, midseason ;
Waterloo and Frogmore Pine, good late varieties. For high
quality, British Queen and Dr. Hogg. The three most
serviceable are Sir Joseph Paxton, Vicomtesse Hericart
de Thury, and President. Plant eighteen inches apart
in rows thirty inches asunder, as soon as strong, well-
rooted runners can be obtained in the summer or
autumn, in deep yet firm fertile soil, covering the surface
with manure to decay in position.
OTHER HARDY FRUITS FOR SPECIAL POSITIONS. For
warm, sunny walls : early Moorpark or Hemskerk
apricots; brown Turkey or White Marseilles figs; Hale's
Early, Rivers' Early York, Dymond and Sea Eagle
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 473
peaches ; Lord Napier and Stan wick Elrurge nectarines ;
Black Cluster and Chasselas Vibert-grafes. For open
situations : Lambert's filbert and Pearson's Prolific nuts ;
Pear-shaped quince; Royal Medlar and Large Black
mulberry.
The above selections of fruits are reduced mainly
from the author's list as prepared for the Worshipful
Company of Fruiterers, also from the Royal Horti-
cultural Society's " Selections for Cottagers," as prepared
by the fruit committee of that society ; and the enumera-
tion includes the best and most serviceable varieties of
the different kinds that are grown in this country.
J. WRIGHT.
471 LAND
CHAPTER L.
FRUIT GROWING.
BY PRINCIPAL BOND,
Director of the Horticultural College : Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society.
" THIRTY years ago," said an old man to the writer, in
the spring of 1890 "Thirty years ago there was nothing
but woodland in this district for miles, right away to the
south, past the village of C , now it has all been
cleared by the fruit growers. Ah, when I was a boy the
corn farmers had all the money in these parts, but they
have almost all gone, and the fruit growers seem to reign
in their stead ; why there's Tom D and his brother,
whom I have seen many a time hoeing with their father
in that field yonder, one's worth thirty thousand and the
other more than that, all made out of fruit " and so the old
man chatted on, furnishing evidence that those who had
been able to vary and develop their farming with the
changing, progressive times, had no reason to complain,
as so many have been heard to do of late years that
farming doesn't pay.
Now, the men referred to above had began in a small
way, with very little capital, and gradually adding acre to
acre and field to field, had become large landholders, and
in some instances landowners. Success has attended
similar operations in other parts of England, and such
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 475
satisfactory results becoming known, a cry in favour of
Fruit Growing has been raised, and many are considering
the advisability of embarking in the industry. This
chapter will, therefore, be devoted to giving information
which has been gathered from experience and is calculated
to guide intending growers ; also to assist those already
engaged in agriculture who, during this period of tran-
sition, may be asking, "What shall we do with our
land?"
Since England has become the great trading and
banking centre of the world, people have too often been
led to suppose that it doesn't matter very much what we
do with our land ; so many sources of income have been
opened up on all sides that men have lost sight of the
fact that the land is still the most important factor of our
national wealth and well-being, and that not only does
the annual revenue of the country vary by millions with
a good or bad use of the land, but that in various ways
the happiness aye, the very lives of the people are
affected thereby.
What then can we do with our land? The public
mind is just now more open (than it has been for many
years) to the reception of new ideas concerning this
question, great responsibility therefore rests with all who
venture to give advice on the subject.
Bearing this in mind, the writer, whilst advocating an
extension of fruit growing, would point out that no in-
variable rule can be laid down. It must always be
necessary to grow such animal and vegetable productions
as may best suit the soil, climate, means of transit, market
and other local conditions, taking care to bring to one's
aid a knowledge of science and the constant study of the
various developments of one's environments and the
world's activities.
476 LAND :
Although fruit growing is being profitably conducted
as a distinct industry, attention is here directed to it as
an adjunct to mixed farming rather than as a substitute
for it. It would be idle to suppose that fruit growing
can prove a panacea for all the ills of the farmer, but it
may aid him greatly in his perplexity.
A glance at the Board of Agriculture's invaluable
statistics will show that the importation of such fruit as
can be grown in this country is small in comparison with
the foreign supplies of corn, cattle, dairy produce, etc.
It may be argued from this fact that the foreigner is not
so well able to compete with us in fruit as in other
produce, he has not so large a surplus to spare, it costs
more for freight, and is more liable to loss and waste in
transit.
Enormous quantities of strawberries and other soft
fruits are now grown in England for immediate con-
sumption, and growers need not fear foreign competition
in this, as such fruits cannot be put on our markets from
abroad in sufficiently good condition. Free trade and
the foreign bounty system having provided us with cheap
sugar, England has become the world's jam factory,
very large and increasing demands upon fruit growers
for supplies arising also from this source.
Some may say, u Yes ; but the supply will soon be
greater than the demand." Many thought so twenty
years ago, but the demand has gone on increasing more
rapidly than the supply ; and as growers, by improved
methods, are able to place fruit on the markets at
reduced rates, a larger and practically unlimited con-
sumption is induced.
It is still difficult, even when there is a plethora in
the markets, to obtain soft fruits in some parts of London,
and in many districts in England it is impossible to do so.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 4/7
During a brief glut in strawberries last season, the
writer was only obtaining a shilling per peck of twelve
pounds, but on the same day, two persons in London
told him of having had to pay tenpence and a shilling
per pound punnet. Here let us notice the great need
for increased facilities in distribution the question is a
difficult one, but cries loudly for solution. The arrange-
ments lately made by the Great Eastern Railway Com-
pany for the delivery of produce is certainly a step in the
right direction, and growers should be quick to avail
themselves of the advantage offered. Reduced rates
and better arrangements for the transmission of small
consignments should also be sought at the hands
of other railway companies and by the General Post
Office.
Whilst referring to markets, it may be well to
mention that many large growers obtain a considerable
increase in their returns by selling their own produce, or
by deputing a son or trusted employe to act as salesman,
and smaller growers might often, with advantage, adopt
a similar plan by co-operating.
In taking up land for fruit growing, it is advisable to
secure the freehold, particularly in the case of small
holdings, but rather than be handicapped by insufficiency
of working capital through an expenditure on purchase,
it is better to become a tenant, if a suitable lease can be
arranged.
The undermentioned table, drawn up by Mr. Cecil
H. Hooper, at the Horticultural College, Kent, may be
taken as a reliable guide in deciding what tenure is
desirable for various kinds of fruits. Many who are able
to rent land at thirty shillings or forty shillings per acre,
consider that, with a twenty-one years' lease, they do
better than by purchasing the land. One must, however,
478
LAND
be guided by what land is obtainable, its price, rental,
tenure, and the capital at command.
i >
Life of
g 'i s
Period of
Y;_ i j
Price
Gross
Approximate.
the
Plant.
I 1 ! 1
best pro-
duction.
ield
per acre.
per ton,
1889.
return
per acre.
Strawberry
Years.
5
Years.
2nd
Years.
3rd
Tons.
2 to 5
s. d.
21 O O
s. d.
42 o o
Raspberry
10
3rd
6th
3 to 4
23 o o
70 o o
Gooseberry
12
4th
7th
3
8 10 o
25 o o
Red Currant
15
3rd
7th
2
15 o o
30 o o
Black Currant
15
3rd
7th
3 to 4
25 o o
75 o o
Plum (Standard) .
40
loth
1 5th
7
16 o o
112 O O
Cherry
4
loth
1 5th
4
25 o o
IOO O O
Apple
50
7th
1 5th
6
10
60 o o
Pear
50
1 2th
20th
2
IO O O
20 o o
Apple (dwarf)
20
5 th
1 8th
Pear
20
5 th
loth
Plum
20
roth
I2th
Cherry ,,
20
7 th
I2th
Whatever opinion may prevail with regard to large
or small holdings (the writer's opinion is that there must
always be room for both, according to the various con-
ditions already alluded to) there can be no doubt that
fruit growing for profit may be successfully conducted on
a large or a small scale. It is an industry which lends
itself to inextensive work as do few other occupations.
There is always a special market for high class fruit,
and it is surprising what a large sum per acre may be
realised for such ; it is therefore possible for a small
grower to concentrate his skilful labour upon a very
limited area, with remunerative results. Small growers
should, however, aim at producing other necessaries for
home consumption, and this surely will apply to all small
holdings, thus providing as far as possible for home
requirements. In comparing the incomes of farmers
with those derived from other sources, this provision is
generally overlooked.
Fruit growing may also be profitably carried on by
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 479
professional men and others having spare time ; an ac-
quaintance of the writer (a medical man) obtained a
considerable addition to his income by growing choice
fruits, his wife and daughters deriving much pleasure
from the assistance they were able to render. Fruit
growing, whether under glass or outdoor, may undoubtedly
be regarded as a suitable occupation for women, as a
special business or in conjunction with home duties.
It should be observed that profit or loss in fruit
cultivation depends greatly upon the care and interest of
the workers, and this points to the industry as one
specially calculated to succeed under a system of co-
operation, or more correctly speaking, profit sharing.
For the sake of order and the convenience of our
readers we have so far dealt principally with economic
principles relating to fruit growing, but having endeavoured
to show why fruit should be grown, it may be well to
proceed to explain how it may be profitably cultivated,
although for obvious reasons my readers must be referred
to other publications for cultural instruction.
In selecting a farm or small holding one should try
to get near a railway station, canal, port, or other means
of communication, the cost of cartage will otherwise be
excessive ; proximity to market has also to be considered,
though at present fruit is often sent from Kent to
Liverpool, Manchester, and similar long distances ; it is,
perhaps, more important to have access to some large
centre, whence stable manure can be readily obtained, for
if the grower knows nothing of the chemistry of the soil
he had better rely upon stable manure and some such
stimulant as nitrate of soda.
Except in woodland which has been lately cleared
fruit can seldom be profitably grown without liberal
supplies of fertilizers, and these should as a rule be
480 LAND :
applied so that the trees or plants get assistance after the
fruit has set.
When you have obtained your crop do not leave
strawberry plants, for instance, to struggle with weeds
and exhaustion ; having made their effort they need care
and cultivation whilst the flower buds for next season's
crop are forming.
Do not neglect bees, they can be kept at compar-
atively small cost or trouble, give^good returns and
ensure fertility by completing the pollenation of the fruit
blossoms.
The time cannot be far distant when local systems of
sewage distributions will have to be taken into considera-
tion in selecting a site for a fruit farm. Thinking men
and women are beginning to wonder why rivers are
polluted and towns filled with disease in order that an
immense waste may be perpetuated.
Rising ground, with a southern aspect, is generally
to be preferred for fruit growing, but this is by no means
a sine qua non if shelter from cold and prevailing
winds can be obtained by means of plantations or other-
wise. Avoid, if possible, low lying districts and valleys
where frosts are apt to hang about.
In deciding what to plant be guided at first by local
conditions ; ascertain what is most in demand and what is
thriving best neighbouring gardens and hedgerows
generally afford some indication. If engaged in mixed
farming, and if it be necessary to take into consideration
the rotation of the crops, one may reckon on strawberry
plants, which last about five years, and raspberry, about
ten years, giving the quickest returns. Gooseberry trees,
with an average life of twelve years, seldom fail to prove
very remunerative as the fruit sells at good prices picked
green, and a second market awaits it if allowed to ripen.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 481
In growing hardy fruit the fact that trees on the dwarfing
(or paradise) stock give much quicker returns than those
on the free (crab) stock should be borne in mind.
If depending upon the London market, plant the
earliest varieties of apples which will crop well, as the
later varieties have to compete with large importations
of Canadian, American, and French apples,
Unless land has good natural drainage a chalk or
gravel subsoil or is thoroughly drained artificially, do
not attempt to grow fruit upon it. A fruit farm in Mid
Kent was given up two or three years ago, the trees
cankered and nothing seemed to thrive ; another farmer
took it, and in two years has obtained most satisfactory
results. " You had only to put your spade down a few
inches to find out what was the matter," he said; "the
ground all wet and soppy just where the fibrous roots
wanted making comfortable. Fruit trees are like children,
you must keep their feet warm ; I put in plenty of tile
drains and now no trees could be doing better." Here
we have two practical farmers, one failing for the want of,
another succeeding because he possesses, the knowledge
of a certain principle.
It is to be hoped that the rising generation will not
be allowed to go forth to their work of cultivating the
soil without a knowledge, however elementary, of
scientific principles.
The principles which underlie agriculture and horti-
culture are identical, and must be sought in chemistry
and other sciences. By example, chemistry tells us how
oxygen operates by coming into contact with various
bodies, and we learn that to grow fruit successfully we
must observe this principle by keeping our soils open,
and allowing sufficient space around our trees and crops
for oxidation.
21
482 LAND I
From physics we learn the law of capillary attraction,
and this we must observe by keeping the surface of the
soil well stirred by hoe, break, or other implement, thus
in dry seasons preventing moisture from passing upwards
and being carried off by evaporation. Chemistry here
again comes in and informs us of the advantage derived
from the broken ground leaving more surface exposed to
atmospheric influences.
Similarly in all the sciences, We discover certain
principles which become unfailing guides to us in our
work.
Although many do and many will succeed in fruit
growing, as in other industries, by availing themselves of
the traditions of their calling, by keen observation, a
natural shrewdness and perseverance, it will be readily
understood how such would excel if aided by a knowledge
of principles.
Fungoid growths and the attacks of insect pests form
an element in agriculture and horticulture which has
now to be reckoned with in a way not thought of a few
years ago. Whether imported from other parts of the
world by increased intercommunication, or brought
about by growing on a larger scale, these new conditions
call for special knowledge of entomology, etc. Thus
increasing claims are continually being made on the
intelligence and scientific knowledge of our future
growers.
In this connection the desirability, the necessity of
training the most intelligent, the most gifted of our sons
in fruit growing and other agricultural pursuits may be
urged.
The cultivation of the land calls for the exercise of
the highest qualities in man, and no pursuit offers
greater opportunities for an honourable and useful
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 483
career. Do not let it be supposed that there are not
many doing with their might all that willing hands, brave
hearts, and intelligent minds find to do on the land, but
we want more, many more of such. It is time that the
cultivation of the land ranked with the learned pro-
fessions, not only in the minds of those who are qualified
by special knowledge and experience to form an opinion
on the subject, but with all who have the responsibility
of giving direction to the minds of those who are
deciding upon their life's work.
How little the importance of this consideration is
realised at our seats of learning, is shown by the fact
that a chair of agriculture founded at Oxford, has an
existence now only in name, and that a proposal lately
made to give agriculture a place its right place at
Cambridge, has called forth the protest that "the
University has Imperial duties to fulfil, and therefore
should not be hampered by provincial work."
Has agriculture then no relation to " Imperial duties " ?
Many of us believe that neither England nor any other
country has any more important " Imperial " interest than
agriculture ; and when this fact is recognized at our
Universities ; when our political economists realize what
vast possibilities agriculture still has in store for the
world ; when our financiers, weary of wasting their
millions or rather the millions of others in foreign
securities (sic) and worthless investments, more of our
children will go forth to subdue the earth in this and
other climes.
These may confidently expect to enjoy a happier,
brighter, and more useful existence than denizens of
cities who too often can only earn a livelihood at the
expense of less successful competitors, whilst the fruit-
grower, the producer, whatever his difficulties and dis-
484 LAND I
appointments, has always the satisfaction of reaping his
benefits from mother earth, and not necessarily at the
cost of his fellows, however many may join with him in
adding to the wealth of nations, by engaging in the most
independent calling in the world.
ARTHUR HARPER BOND.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 485
CHAPTER LI.
FRUIT DRYING AND EVAPORATION.
BY THE REV. V. H. MOYLE, M.A., F.R.H.S.,
Vicar of Askampstead, Berks ; Member of the Council of the Swanley Horticultural
College ; Vice- President of the Berks, and also of the Wilts, Bee Keepers' Association ;
and Sole Medallist for Honey and Wax Applications at the Health Exhibition^ 1884,
and many other places, 1885-90, and '<?/.
IN these days when attention is being increasingly drawn
to the great need of developing and expanding every
possible industry we can in Great Britain and Ireland,
possibly it is because so very few comparatively know
of the process that so few seem to take interest in the
way of preserving substances for future use by evaporation.
All of our readers have seen in grocers' shops, and
doubtless often tasted the dried Normandy pippins which
our sapient cooks know so well how to make use of in many
a tasty dish, but I would like to know why these Nor-
mandy pippins and the currants and raisins from abroad,
which we so readily consume in our cakes and puddings,
and otherwise, should " rule the roast " ? The foreigner
again ! Is no effort to be made in this line, except by our
Norfolk cousins, with their delightful " Norfolk biffins " ?
Now, what are Norfolk biffins, and how made ? Simply
Norfolk apples with the cores taken out, put then on a
wooden board, with another layer of wood and apples
above them, and yet another and another series above
them, and subjected to the slow partial drying air of a
feeble oven, and thus dried and pressed into their shape
486 LAND :
at the same time, and so packed carefully in neatly
papered boxes for sale. What is there to hinder the
extension of this idea ? Nothing whatever. The fol-
lowing, in addition to apples, can be dried and kept for
future use at home, or sold to others cheaper than Nor-
mandy pippins, and yet at a good profit, of course in a
larger apparatus than the ordinary oven, if done on a
large scale, with a view to expanded business, viz pears,
apricots, nectarines, strawberries, raspberries, cherries,
blackberries, whortleberries, cranberries, gooseberries,
currants, grapes, plums, quinces, peas, beans, potatoes,
pumpkins, tomatoes, and very many others.
The usual process of preserving affords to us delicious
jams, and calls into requisition the cooking and preserving
powers of many of the fair sex ; and this is well, for a
young lady who cannot add to the pleasures of her
domestic circle by not being able to do such things, has
something yet to learn ; but the process of evaporating
fruit and vegetables, and so preserving them wholesale,
with but little fire and no sugar, is worth considering.
And how is it done ? Well, thus : By means of the
machine or apparatus named the " American (Waynes-
boro') Evaporator," of the American Manufacturing
Company, which are made in different sizes and numbers.
The fruit farmer who grows the fruit, and with his own
help evaporates it, or superintends the business, can
place upon the market a product of his farm worth more
per pound, on an average, than anything he sells wool
only excepted at a comparatively small outlay of
money. Not unfrequently, when there happens to be a
glut of fruit on the market, much fruit is absolutely
thrown away destroyed, or simply used as manure,
whereas if this same fruit were dried and kept until the
scarcer times and seasons came round again, this would
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 487
be obviated. Well, in these " Evaporators," after the
fruit has been carefully gathered, and if needed, care-
fully wiped, it is placed on the suitable trays of the
" Evaporator," according to number, and subjected to
heat. The first heat being the greatest, and each tray
or group subsequently entered moves the previous one
forward into a lower temperature, which advantages are
secured and continued throughout. No steaming,
cooking, or retrograde process becomes possible, so
perfect indeed is the active circulation of dry air over,
under and through each line of trays, that any tray taken
from any portion of the trunk of the machine at any time
after being in the Evaporator ten minutes (the article),
will be found to be perfectly dry on the outside to sight
or touch, although the process of complete evaporation
may be but one-fourth or one-half finished.
When the time has elapsed for the complete evapora-
tion or drying of the different articles, they necessarily
occupy a very much smaller space than when inserted on
the trays, and should then be carefully packed suitably
away for sale or use when required. To use them if
required in a dry state as currants, raisins, etc., of
course they are ready at once, but if required with the
fruity pulpy part again swollen with juice, the various
fruits or vegetables, etc., thus dried must be soaked in
plain water for a time, dependent on the character of the
fruit or vegetable, and it absorbs a great deal of the
water which is acted on by the dried air, and again
moistened juices in the article, and is ready for use in
almost its pristine condition. The canning of fruits for
home or foreign consumption does not equal this process.
The expenses of canning are very heavy, and the trouble
of opening the cans also not slight. Again commercially
the advantages of evaporating over canning is great, for
488 LAND :
in these days of high freights and low prices the item of
freight is serious. For instance take a bushel of peaches
and ''can" them, and at the same time "evaporate" a
corresponding quantity of the same fruit. The difference
in bulk and measurement will be found to be marvellous,
for while it will take about a dozen large sized cans to
contain the former, the product of the latter the eva-
porated peaches may be contained in a small box
about six inches square. For a reverse proof, steep the
evaporated fruit in clean fresh water for a few hours
(i.e. rehydrate] and it will be discovered that an equal
number of cans will not contain it. The power of being
able to sell at a fair price, instead of at a sacrifice to
prevent loss, is a feature commending itself to the pro-
ducers of fruit all the world over. The farmer who
makes his grass into hay and sells it as such controls
prices and markets to which his green crop would
have been lost, and the same rule holds good in its
fullest terms as to evaporated versiis fresh fruits ; and
thus, to our fruit growers, is opened an avenue for
profit and success which, if followed up, will lead to a
vast and practically boundless field for improvement
in our dried fruits and vegetables, hops, berries and
nuts ; and by this process of desiccation Commissariats
can thus provide means for a constant supply of fresh
provisions, fruit and vegetables, especially for troops when
on field service, where reduced transport is necessary.
To shipowners, ship masters, and others in like manner
facilities are offered for supplies of fresh provisions to
crews, whether at sea or in harbour, and as a means of
preserving fruits, vegetables, etc., when cruising between
various ports on ship board. Large schools, hospitals,
asylums, gaols, factories, clubs, charitable and other in-
stitutions alike also have a means of desiccation and
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 489
preservation thus open to them, needing only intelligent
application to ensure success. Market, truck and other
gardeners find Evaporators invaluable as " save-alls," for
by their use much valuable fruit, vegetables, etc. (which
otherwise are lost or sold at a sacrifice to prevent total
loss), may be saved, dried, and sold at a profit. This
" Evaporator" is made in various sizes. No. o is for
family use and very small operations only. No. i larger.
Xo. 2 (size nine and a-half feet long twenty-eight inches
wide), has twenty-two trays, capacity ten to twelve
bushels of apples per day ; can be set up in a few
minutes ; burns wood, coal or coke ; height, six feet.
No, 3 does fifty bushels of apples a day.
Try it, is my advice.
V. H. MOYLE.
490 LAND :
CHAPTER LIT.
THE PROFITABLE UTILIZATION OF HILL SLOPES
AND WASTE LANDS IN ENGLAND.
BY SAMPSON MORGAN, F.G.L.,
Editor of the " Hortictdtural Times'" 1 ; Hon. Sec. of the National Fruit Growers'
League; Author of "How to Make the Most of the Land" ; " The Secret of Fertility" ;
" What Ireland really Needs" etc.
IN calculating the areas that are suitable for development
throughout the United Kingdom, we are at once brought
face to face with the fact that a very considerable portion
consists of what is usually termed unproductive or waste
land, on account either of the hilly nature or impoverished
condition of the soil.
In many counties there is hardly an extensive estate
that can be found which does not contain within its borders
some land of the nature I describe, and it is not too much
to say, with regard to private land alone, that there are
hundreds of thousands of acres which, for centuries, on
account of the popular belief of their barrenness, have
been unproductive of an ounce of fruit or an ear of corn.
In this article I am desired, not so much to ask
whether such land can be utilized, or whether it can
possibly be made to pay, but to show, nay, demonstrate
beyond doubt, that some of these hundreds of thousands
of unproductive acres may be profitably utilized, and that
by the introduction of an intelligent system of culture,
they may be made the medium of producing at home
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 49 1
some of the fruit and food products which at present are
sent us by the foreign growers.
* It is here necessary for me to define what I mean by
the term " waste land." From an agricultural point of
view it means land such as we have by the mile in the
form of hills and valleys at Chobham Common in Surrey.
In fact the waste common lands of this county may
very appropriately be referred to as being the most
comprehensive illustration of what is meant by the above
description.
If ever there was " waste land " in England we have
it here, and having been brought up on one of these
solitary hill slopes, living for years in the midst of a vast
expanse of idle and unproductive acres, on a ten acre fruit
farm nestling under the shadow of one of the highest
hills in this county, with its model farm house, which, on
account of its elevated position, could be seen from the
country roads around Guiidford, nearly ten miles away, I
am in an exceptionally favourable position to deal in a
practical and comprehensive manner with a question
which is undoubtedly of paramount importance to the
English landowner.
Generally speaking, the soil of the Surrey slopes and
hills consists of a very light sand, shallow in some parts,
deeper in others, but in most cases lying upon a subsoil
of gravel, forming in the majority of cases a hard and
almost impervious pan, which has first of all to be broken
through before the land can be made fit for cultivation.
Of course I need hardly say that such a soil is looked
upon by the local agriculturist as being totally useless,
hence for ages it has remained in the same state as we
find it to-day unproductive of anything save the peat
that is cut from its surface, and the fir trees which spring
up in profusion and flourish to perfection midst tangled
492 LAND :
masses of wild heather and gorse which cover the hills
and valleys as thick as grass.
Now to prove that such waste, hilly land as I refer to
may be utilized in a very profitable manner, in spite of
local opinion, I will refer to a case independent of my
own although the crops that were raised on my ten acre
holding, which when taken in hand was a fir wood, were
of the most lucrative nature to show what can be done
under improved systems of culture.
Five years before I had taken up my abode on the
Surrey hills, a retired London tailor had bought fifteen
acres of the same land, of which he had ten acres laid
down with fruit.
After this was done, he and his wife and one regular
man kept the place in order without any other help,
except during busy seasons. I need scarcely add that
in a few years he obtained regular and profitable yields
of fruit, which met a ready sale at Aldershot, every peck
in fact being disposed of there.
The weight of the crops was extraordinary ; the fruit
itself was clean and very fine, and he was enabled to
make money in fruit-growing on the proverbial waste and
barren land of the Surrey hills.
I anticipate the objection first, that high winds on
hill slopes would be fatal to fruit culture ; and secondly,
that the dry nature of the soil on the light waste lands
referred to would prevent the adoption of such a system.
To the first, I reply, that by the medium of the dwarf
instead of the tall standard tree, and the protection of a
bank of earth on the top of which a hedge is planted by
making which we secure a ditch for surplus rains we are
enabled to meet the difficulty referred to ; and secondly,
I assert that perfect and thorough drainage is positively
essential to successful fruit culture.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 493
I am now referring to sloping areas of land in
elevated localities, and not to steep hills, which I am to
deal with later on.
Further, the successful operations of the party
previously mentioned places the suitability of the system
beyond dispute.
If I am asked to mention crops, I would point out
that on both fruit farms were raised the finest straw-
berries, raspberries, currants, apples, pears, plums, also
asparagus, marrows, peas, beans, potatoes, spinach, and
various other products that could be grown in the open
air.
In all these cases I can testify from personal
experience as to the results that were secured. I might
here mention that the farmers of the district never dream
of raising in their best fields anything except the usual
round of root crops and corn.
Intensive or petit culture is the panacea for which
I plead, and the advantages that may be derived from
the introduction of improved systems are evidenced in
the case of a Mr. Rogers, near Petworth, in Sussex, a
tenant under a twenty-one years lease, on the estate of
Lord Leconfield, whose little fruit and nursery plantation
I have inspected, and which proves in the most striking
manner what can be done with the land in this country.
Originally, Mr. Rogers was a carter at Deptford, and
in due course, without any agricultural knowledge what-
ever, found himself at an insignificant Sussex village,
surrounded by the most beautiful scenery in England.
His first start, I believe, was with a cottage and one
or two acres of land, which he cultivated with his brother.
Industrious and energetic to a degree, steady and
economical, he worked on and on, until at last when I
visited his holding he held about five acres in all, had
494 LAND :
erected five glass-houses, mostly with his own hands, and
had one of the most perfect little nurseries I have ever
seen.
Pressed as to the acquirement of his horticultural
knowledge, he informed me he had obtained the whole
of his information from an old gardening book, by the
aid of which he had been enabled to unlock a good many
of the secrets of " the Art that doth mend Nature."
The productive nature of this little place is seen at a
glance when we learn that it finds occupation and a living
for five workers regularly, besides which, Mr. Rogers and
his brother have kept themselves and their two families,
of sixteen all told, from this little fruit farm, and have a
banking account besides.
He propagates all kinds of nursery stock including
fruit trees, for the district, and his miniature orchard is
planted with apple, pear, plum and nut trees. The trees
are planted in rows, first a half standard tree, then a
pyramid tree, with bush fruits between all.
Where available he raises in the land between the
rows of trees, early potatoes, strawberries, violets, etc.,
and I am convinced that he thus obtains from one acre
more in money value than the neighbouring farmers do
from twenty acres at least.
The specimens of fruit raised are of high quality ; at
my suggestion he sent some of his cobnuts to a London
market, for which he received one shilling per pound.
His nut trees are unusually prolific.
From personal experience I do not hesitate to assert
that this little fruit farm is as productive and profitable,
acre for acre, as those worked by the petits cultivateiirs
of France or the Channel Island growers.
I am pleased to acknowledge that the credit of having
come across this nursery is due to Thomas Bayley
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 4
Potter, M.P., whilst investigating the claims and pos-
sibilities of an extension of fruit culture in this country,
and at whose personal request I paid the visit referred to.
With reference to the utilization of hill slopes, I would
first of all suggest that the one great difficulty to face is,
that naturally throughout the summer, they suffer from
the want of moisture, simply because in the winter the
snows and rains, instead of sinking into the soil, are
carried away down the slopes and sides to the valleys
beneath.
If this one point can be practically remedied then
there can be no reason why many of the enormous ranges of
hills, where the surface soil is sufficient or available,
should not be made as productive, in a monetary sense,
as the plains, primarily because they enable us from their
physical structure to secure, what I am such an advocate
of in agriculture, a thorough system of drainage.
With regard to the evil to be remedied I contend that
the application of my system outlined in the "Secret of
Fertility," which was published in December, creating a
great sensation in the horticultural world will enable us
to hold the winter rains in check, so that in summer the
plants or trees will be enabled by the medium of capillary
attraction, to obtain all the moisture they need.
The plan suggested is as follows, and as a matter of
fact is by no means new. By terracing the hill slopes we
get ample space for cultivation. Such spaces and terraces
may be seen at the sides of many of our railway stations,
and we have ample room on every terrace for a row of
fruit trees or anything else that may be desired.
When the terraces are being made, I propose that the
soil of the terrace be dug out, say to a depth of three feet,
that in the bottom of the trench, stones or brick rubbish
be shot in to the depth of twelve or fifteen inches, and
496 LAND :
that when the soil is replaced, we have a system which
will retain the rains as they descend in winter, and hold
sufficient quantity in reserve for the summer droughts.
The expense incurred is necessary only once in a
lifetime, and the system will effectually meet the difficulty
we are dealing with, and enable us to render fertile miles
and miles of ranges of hills, which at present are as
unproductive as they were when the Romans invaded
the country.
I claim no originality for the utilization of hill slopes
and sides by terrace cultivation. I simply advocate the
introduction of the system in England. Fruit culture
was in existence years before I inaugurated the fruit
growing movement, which I have so persistently and at
last successfully, brought about under my improved system
of culture for profit.
I have experimented with, and put these systems to
the test, and the results secured are the best value of their
practicability.
In the East for centuries the hill sides were studded
with fruit trees of every kind, which were cultivated
under the system I advise. Egypt was said to be " a
dry and thirsty land," but it was rendered one of the
most fruitful by terrace culture. The Vale of Eschol,
once famous for its vines, was cultivated by the same
method.
" Bare and stony as are the hill sides," says Canon
Tristram, " not an inch of space is lost. Terraces, where
the soil is not rocky, support the soil, vineyards still
cling to the lower slopes, olive, mulberry, almond, fig and
pomegranate trees, fill every available cranny to the very
crest."
With further reference to the development of waste
common lands, I am able to prove that with energy and
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 497
intelligence, they can be made productive from the
case of Mr. Boddy, of Cornwall, and his one-and-a-half
acres at the Land's End.
Previously, Mr. Boddy had taken up land in Canada,
but in spite of energy and skill, was obliged to return,
and settling in Cornwall, eventually obtained one-and-a-
half acres of what was then w r aste common land, yet in
due time he was able to assert that he could get more
from his one-and-a-half acres at home, than he could
from one hundred and sixty acres in Canada.
On this small holding of waste land he has brought
up a large family, and from glass-houses built with his
own hands, he has raised grapes which have obtained
commendatory messages from Her Majesty the Queen
and the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. The grapes I
have seen and tasted. The berries were very large,
well coloured, and of exquisite flavour, and quantities
are now sent regularly to order to all parts of the
country.
Generally speaking, with regard to soil, I find that
much of the soil of what is termed our waste land is
quite equal to that of the Channel Islands. Besides
which I am convinced that many of the fields I have
passed through, especially in the Vale parish of Guernsey,
would at first be designated poor soil by the majority of
English farmers.
The soil is not everything. With stony and light
soils the Channel Island growers have by intelligence
and skill made their productive little islands famous all
the world over for the quality and quantity of their
productions.
By the same means, by the utilization of the same
methods, the same results can be secured at home, and
if this article will in any way contribute to such a satis-
2 K
498 LAND :
factory end, then these efforts, which are but to interest
all classes in the development of the nation's acres, will
not have been put forth in vain.
The arguments on which my remarks on the
profitable utilization of hill slopes and waste lands in
England are based, derive especial force from the
illustrations I have given of the practical success secured
by individual effort alone, unaided by exceptional
circumstances in any shape or form, and if the landowners
of this country, cognisant of the possibilities of the
future, will but emulate the action of the landowners of
the eighteenth century, a great move would soon be
made on behalf of a restoration of that prosperity in the
rural districts, for which the past century was justly famed.
SAMPSON MORGAN.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 499
CHAPTER LIII.
HERBS, ETC., AND HERB CULTURE.
BY THE REV. V. H. MOYLE, M.A., F.R.H.S.,
Vicar of Ashampstead, Berks ; Member of the Cmincil of the Swanley Horticulture.
College ; Vice- President of the Berks, and also of the Wilts, Bee Keepers' Association ;
and Sole Medallist for Honey and Wax Applications at the Health Exhibition, 1884,
and many other places, 1885-90, and '97.
IT is much to be regretted that the question of herbs
and herb culture is so little attended to in this country.
Enormous quantities of herbs that might be grown here
are annually imported from abroad, not only by the whole-
sale chemists and druggists for medicinal purposes, but
also by others for commercial and culinary objects, and
there are many dishes which to completely prepare the
cJief de cuisine wants his herbs for, as well as the hotel
keeper his borage to make good " claret cup," and the
perfumer his lavender, etc.
Many herbs may be grown in spaces between fruit
trees, and on spare pieces of ground not available for
other crops. The chief supply of herbs for distillation
and drying purposes is grown at Mitcham, in Surrey,
and in Hertfordshire ; indeed there are probably within
thirty miles of London upwards of one thousand acres of
land devoted to herb culture. Nearly all herbs are
bunched and sold when ready, and taking up, as they do,
little room, they travel to market or warehouse along
with other things, and are in some seasons very remu-
500 LAND :
nerative, and when dried, as mentioned in the chapter I
have written on Fruit Evaporation, can be kept in still
smaller compass. Let me mention some herbs. Aniseed,
cultivated in the south of Europe, and also in our gardens.
Its seeds have an aromatic odour, and a warm taste, de-
pending on the volatile oil existing in the envelope of
the seed. Anthemis nobilis or camomile, employed in
medicine, extensively grown at Mitcham, many acres there
of land being laid out in its cultivation. In March old,
worn-out plantations are broken up, and the plants
divided into small rooted pieces. These are planted in
well-prepared ground in rows two feet apart each way.
The intervening spaces being cropped with esculents,
lettuces, etc., which can be quickly got off the ground.
It is not, however, an uncommon practice to plant
camomile plants as thickly again as those just men-
tioned, and afterwards to thin them out to the required
distance asunder. As the blooms expand they are
picked off by women, who receive a penny or three
half-pence per pound for gathering them, a process which
is continued as long as sufficient flowers are produced to
be remunerative. When gathered, the flowers are laid
out in a shady but airy place to dry, after which they are
put into canvas or paper bags for sale. The single
flowered is preferable to the double, as the odour and
taste reside not in the white petals but in the disk or
tubular florets, which are larger in the single flowers.
For the threadworms which often trouble children and
even adults, an injection of warm camomile water is
invaluable.
CARDAMINE, OR CUCKOO FLOWER. An annual,
flowering early in the spring ; an anti-scorbutic.
BORAGE. Excellent for bees, and used by hotel
keepers for making claret-cup. Grown in temporary
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 5<DI
frames out of doors, for supply during autumn and winter,
when the weather is sufficiently mild to admit of the
plants being exposed without injury.
CARRAWAY (Carum Carui). These seeds are chiefly
imported from Germany, but are also cultivated in large
quantities in this country. The second year's seeds are
the best.
CENTAURY {Erythrcea Centaurium.) - r Yhis small
herbaceous annual is officinal.
SAFFRON (Cotchicum Autumnole)* Grown in this
country, and largely used in curry powder, and in Devon-
shire and Cornwall to colour cakes with. The parts of
this plant which possess active properties are the flowers,
the seeds, and the ccrm ; the two latter officinal. The
history of this plant is curious. The conmis that is to
say, the swollen base of the plant, improperly called the
bulb sends up in the autumn a delicate purple flower,
quite naked and free from leaves. This flower soon
perishes, and the seed vessel beneath it remains under
ground all the winter, but makes its appearance with the
leaves early in the spring. When the seed is ripe, the
cormus from which it proceeded is exhausted, and forms
a second cormus, which goes through the same process
of sending up a flower in the autumn. The time, there-
fore, to dig up the cormus is about the end of July, when
it is fully formed, but before it has sent up the flower.
When the cormus is good it should strike a blue colour
on rubbing it with a little distilled vinegar and tincture
of guiacum. Saffron is much used for its specific action
in rheumatic and gouty ailments.
SPEARMINT AND PEPPERMINT. These are largely
grown, both for distillation and drying, particularly the
latter, near Mitcham. Many acres are occupied by it.
The roots are planted in the first place one foot apart
5<D2 LAND :
each way, and at the end of the two following seasons it
is ploughed in, and afterwards kept clear of weeds by
constantly hoeing. In August the green stems are cut
and taken to the distillery. The culture of spearmint
is largely found in market gardens round Fulham,
Gunnersbury, and Isleworth. The dampest piece of
ground is usually selected for mint if it is to be a
permanent plantation. The roots are planted in rows
one foot apart, and the space between them is inter-
cropped during the first season, but afterwards the
ground becomes such a mass of roots that intercropping
is impossible. During the pea season enormous
quantities of green mint are sent to London, and early
in the spring when mint sauce is in demand, some
growers devote large ranges of glass pits to its culture.
Mr. Elliot, of Fulham, has several long ranges of heated
pits, which are planted with mint roots in succession, to
yield a good supply from early in the year until green
mint becomes plentiful out of doors. During severe
winters this crop is a fairly remunerative one, but in
mild seasons it sometimes happens that it can be had out
of doors as soon as the last pit comes into use, and then
the time and labour of growing it under cover are lost.
SAGE. This is not in such general demand in a
green state as mint. At Mitcham large areas of land
are devoted to its culture, and new plantations are
frequently being made, it being considered under
favourable circumstances a fairly remunerative crop.
Both the red and green leaved kinds are grown. Young
plants are obtained by dividing the old roots in spring.
They are inserted in rows from one foot to two feet
apart each way, after which, if they continue in a
thriving condition, no further attention is paid to them
until late in the summer, when the stalks are all cut off,
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 503
tied in bunches, and sold. When blanks occur in the
rows through the plants becoming sickly, the whole
plantation is broken up and replanted.
Thyme. The green and golden leaved varieties of
thyme are grown in spare places by many market
gardeners and by some growers. The latter kind is
considered the best, because it grows better than
common thyme.
WHITE POPPIES (fiapaver album\ are grown at
Mitcham on rather a ]arge scale. The seed is sown in
rows two feet apart in spring ; when up, if necessary, the
plants are thinned out a little, and the ground is kept
free from weeds, but beyond these operations no other
attention is paid to them until August when their seeds
are ripe. The heads or capsules are then carefully
gathered, placed in bags and disposed of to chemists and
herbalists. In India the heads are very large and
scored in slits and the juice flowing therefrom is collected
very remuneratively.
LIQUORICE (Glycirrhiza Glabra). This is not so ex-
tensively grown as formerly, which is much to be regretted,
but sometimes the expense incurred in its cultivation
renders it a not very remunerative crop. Still here again
we find at Mitcham large tracts of land devoted to it.
Ground intended to be planted with liquorice is heavily
manured, trenched, and thrown up in winter in rough
ridges. In the spring following, the ridges are levelled
and the ground is marked off into drills three feet apart
and four inches deep. In these the sets (consisting of
small pieces of the old root stems, each containing an
eye or two) are planted. During the first year and a
half after planting, the ground is intercropped with
lettuces, coleworts, etc., but after that the Liquorice
requires all the room. In the autumn of each year the
504 LAND I
matured stems are cut off close to the soil and the ground
between the rows is forked over, and if need be, manured.
The crop is usually lifted in the end of the third
season after planting, and the labour and expense incurred
in this work are great and therefore growers seldom lift
Liquorice themselves but sell it as it stands, leaving the
purchaser to harvest it. In order to extract the roots,
which penetrate deeply, it is necessary to dig out a deep
trench close alongside of the first row and then by the
aid of steel forks or ropes the roots are extracted. If the
roots be not required for use at once they are stored
away in sand or earth pits like carrot, beet, and other
root crops.
DANDELION (Leontodon Taraxacum), This is not
grown to any great extent, although in the spring it may
be seen in the market in a blanched state, in the form of
small plants with their roots attached. It is sown in
beds, and blanched by being covered up for a few weeks
previous to being dug up. Many use it in salads. There
is a wide field for energy in the adoption of systems like
those of the market gardeners at Vangirand and other
places near Paris, of growing early herbs and vegetables,
under bell glasses and frames and lights. English
producers surely might supply the large towns with
herbs and salad plants, grown under glass, and later on
in the season, out of doors more cheaply and certainly
in a more fresh condition than the French gardeners.
The root, which is the officinal part, is fusiform, internally
white and covered with a brown cuticle. The recent
full grown root is the part used chiefly medicinally, and
should be raised in the autumn. It is aperient, and
diuretic, and has long been used on the Continent as a
remedy in jaundice, dropsy, hepatic obstructions and
some cutaneous diseases.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 505
Space forbids me referring other than nominally to
COLTSFOOT ( Tussilago farfara), VALERIAN ( Valeriana
officinalis), THORN APPLE (Datura stramoni2im), every
part of which possesses medicinal properties.
MUSTARD (Sinapis nigra), RUE (Ruta graveoleus),
a native of the South of Europe, but now becoming
more known in gardens in this country. When recent
this herb has a strong unpleasant smell and bitter taste,
and by distillation yields a pungent essential oil.
HYSSOP FENNEL, WILD CUCUMBER (Mormordia
elateriiiui). -The fruit of the wild cucumber should
be gathered for medical use in September, just before
it is ripe ; it should then be sprinkled with water ; each
cucumber cut through longitudinally, and the clear juice
which runs from it strained through a sieve. When this
is allowed to stand some hours it deposits a sediment,
which when collected and dried between folds of muslin,
constitutes the elaterium of the shops. British e later ium
is the most powerful. French elaterium is much weaker.
V. H. MOYLE.
506 LAND
CHAPTER LIV.
HOW CAN FARMING BE MADE PROFITABLE.
[BY FINLAY DUN, F.R.C.V.S.
Member of the Royal Agricultural Society of 'England ', and the Highland Agricidtural
Society^ Scotland; Author of "American Farming and Food" "Landlords and
Tenants in Ireland" " Veterinary Medicines, their Actions and Uses"
THERE is no royal road to profitable farming, no uni-
versal panacea for extracting gold from the mother earth.
Neither Acts of Parliament, nor fiscal regulations can do
much to improve British agriculture. British farmers
labour under no disabilities ; they have now in the main
free hand to make the best of their holdings. Nowhere
in the wide world, unless perhaps in some parts of China,
has the land been brought into more favourable conditions
for yielding the fullest returns, and nowhere are larger
acreable returns produced. Landlords generally have
added fifty to hundred per cent, to the prairie value of
their estates. The land has been rendered fit for profit-
able farming, by enclosures, fences, suitable farm build-
ings, labourers' cottages, the making of roads, drainage,
and in other ways. In these substantial permanent im-
provements, landlords throughout England and Scotland,
have borne the major part of the outlay ; but a greal deal
has besides, been done by the co-operation industry,
and also by the outlay of the tenantry. Some districts
in Great Britain, and more in Ireland, still, however,
stand in need of those permanent improvements which
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 507
are essential for profitable farming. British agriculturists,
although their lands are certainly better equipped than
those of most other countries, and although they extract
from their acreage large returns of food, both for man
and beast, during the last twenty years, have found their
profits generally reduced, the cost of production has in-
creased, while the prices of the staple articles of produce
have diminished. With keen competition and quick
cheap transport by land and sea the price of com-
modities in general use is unlikely to be advanced ; but
farmers' pro tits may still be substantially helped by
increasing the acreable yield, and lessening its relative
cost of production.
Like many other departments of industry, farming to
be profitably pursued now requires more judgment,
industry, and special knowledge, than ever it did. Success
depends mainly upon individual effort and capacity.
One man prospers where others signally fail. Farming
is not the easy rule of thumb trade it was once popu-
larly represented to be, which the fool of the family
might lazily pursue in a happy-go-lucky dilletante fashion,
and realize, nevertheless, ten per cent, annual return on
his invested capital. The man who now prosecutes
farming successfully must know his business thoroughly,
and attend to it systematically in its practical, scientific,
and commercial relations. He ought to have a tolerably
extended range of knowledge. He should understand
the characters of the soils he tills, the methods of growth
of the plants he cultivates, the nature and management
of the animals he rears or feeds, the composition and
special uses of the food to be furnished alike to plants
and animals. He who rears the living plant from earth
and air, and manufactures vegetable into animal food,
must need have education, not only practical but
508 LAND :
technical, and his success, as well as his rational interest
in his vocation, will be greatly increased by the training
of his observant faculties, and by the acquisition of some
knowledge of the sciences which bear upon agriculture.
A wise departure has recently been made in this
direction by giving instruction in the principles of
agriculture in rural and middle class schools, and in
university extension lectures, and by teaching approved
dairy management in convenient localities.
To secure profitable farming, besides brains, technical
training, industry and thrift, adequate capital is a sine qua
non. The want of it is sadly evident in many districts of
Great Britain, in most parts of Ireland, and indeed
throughout the world. While wealth is freely attracted
to other industries, how comes it that agriculture is
frequently starved for want of means ? The explanation
is not far to seek. Many farmers have been hard hit
by such seasons as 1879, and by a series of years of
low prices, and are making an uphill fight with con-
siderably less than half the acreable capital which they
could profitably employ. Costly credit has to be got
from landlord, cattle salesman, or corn or manure
merchant ; purchases are not effected in the best markets ;
forced sales have to be made to obtain ready money.
Other farmers, although possessing capital, are chary in
laying it out. From various causes they have been
unsuccessful ; their outlays may have been unpractical,
or unduly extravagant ; they may have failed to adapt
their proceedings to altered circumstances ; their labour
and manure bills may have been unduly cut down.
Having lost money they fear to lose more, and grudge
the expenditure needful for the profitable conduct of
their business. But assuredly as the farm becomes
impoverished, so also does the farmer. Indeed, more
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 509
capital than formerly is needed to farm profitably in
Great Britain. Much must be put into the land if
much is to be got out of it. If full returns are to be
obtained there must be judicious expenditure, not only
of the sweat of the brow, but of plant food. Even the
best of land must have its fertility recuperated at com-
paratively short intervals. Herds and flocks cannot in
this country be economically reared and fattened without
the use of concentrated food, much of which has to be
purchased. This intensive system of farming the only
one which can generally be counted on to pay necessi-
tates the occupier expending capital ranging from a
minimum of five pounds per acre on poor subjects, to
five times that amount on highly-cultivated, first-class
land. This needful capital will doubtless be invested in
farming so soon as there is evidence that it will yield fair
returns. Such assurance is gradually accumulating. In
every part of the country there is better demand for farms
than there was five years ago. Farmers generally are in
better spirits and more hopeful. In most districts the
numbers increase of those who are holding their own, or
making some headway. Antiquated local practices are
being accommodated to altered conditions. Practical
men declare that, in suitable circumstances, wheat may
be grown in England without loss at thirty-five shillings
a quarter, and especially when the straw is saleable at
thirty shillings a ton. There is money to be made by
rearing either cattle or sheep, provided they are good
specimens of sorts, suitable for the locality, and the
management is judicious. Many farmers on grass in
summer and in stalls or yards in winter, fatten cattle
and sheep, home-bred or carefully bought, at a profit
which, on an average of seasons, ranges from fifteen
shillings to twenty shillings an acre. Such results, at-
510 LAND:
tained by hundreds of capable, skilful managers, should
become more universal.
What sort of farming, it is sometimes asked, affords
the best prospect of good returns ? Soil, situation,
markets, as well as the capital and capabilities of the
farmer, must be taken into account in answering such
a question. Notwithstanding relatively high rent and
taxes, the best land is generally the cheapest. Recent
bad times have not materially reduced the rental, either
of high-class arable or grass lands. Farms adapted for
the rearing and feeding of cattle and sheep afford the
best prospect of paying their way. Their desirability is
increased if the drainage, fencing and roads are in good
order, the water supply abundant, and the buildings ade-
quate and suitable. In this northern fickle climate shelter
and shedding for stock are essential. Ample shedding is
especially needful, not only for the health of cattle, but
for economising food and litter, and for the conservation
of manure. The old fashioned open yards, sometimes
with scarcely an apology for a shed, are unsuitable for the
profitable rearing or feeding of cattle. On heavy land
the winter feeding of sheep is sometimes economically
carried out in properly constructed sheltered yards, which
can be erected cheaply and temporarily in convenient
situations. Land of indifferent quality thin, weak,
uncertain or troublesome and costly to labour requires
much care and skill to prevent its swallowing up capital.
The rental of such subjects during the past twelve or
fifteen years has fallen thirty to forty per cent., and even
greater depreciation has overtaken land which has been
allowed to become poor and foul, some of it being offered
rent free for one or more years.
A good deal of land in various districts of England
and in many parts of Ireland, although fairly good, has
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 511
never been properly worked or sufficiently manured, and
accordingly has never produced the returns it should have
done ; such lands under skilful management usually can be
made to pay. Nearly all soils are grateful for judicious,
generous treatment. Liberal dressings of bones or other
manure frequently so help impoverished pastures that
profitable improvement ocqurs alike in the quantity and
quality of the produce. A couple of years good farming
not only increases the quantity but raises the quality of
the crops grown. The best farmed land is always the
earliest an important consideration in late districts.
British farms, it has been urged, have become too
large for profitable occupation, and their subdivision, it is
said, would secure bigger returns, more employment, and
greater happiness to greater numbers. Those who make
such allegations do not appear to be aware that trust-
worthy statistics demonstrate that the average size of
farms in England is only sixty acres, that thirty per cent,
are five acres and under, that fourth-fifths are only
fifty acres, and that not one in a hundred is over five
hundred acres. Large farms say of two hundred acres
and upwards, as compared with smaller farms, certainly
attract proportionately more capital, enterprise and
technical skill, produce more cheaply 'the staple com-
modities of grain, meat and wool, furnish the larger amount
of employment, grow the best stock, and secure the
greatest acreable returns. Profit, however, depends as
already indicated more on the capability and capital of
the farmer than on the acreage he occupies. The indus-
trious small holder who toils twelve or fifteen hours per
day and has besides the help of a thrifty wife and growing
family, generally succeeds, especially if his holding is
mainly grass, and notably if he has some other vocation
to fill up spare time, and bring in some ready money.
512 LAND:
Thus the village carrier, blacksmith or carpenter usually
does his small farm well and makes it answer. These
small holders, moreover, with advantage produce at a
minimum cost relatively large amounts of poultry, eggs,
pigs, milk and butter articles which have generally
maintained their value, are frequently disposed of direct to
the consumer, and also bring quick returns.
Land owned by the occupier should theoretically be
thoroughly well-farmed and thus made the best of, and
some philanthropists accordingly urge that if agriculturists
and especially the smaller occupiers, throughout the
British Islands became the proprietors of their holdings
that the produce might be doubled. In order, however,
to place them in this enviable position they would require
not only the capital sunk in the purchase of the farm,
and which seldom yields the present owner more than
three per cent., but also the capital needful to maintain
and work the holding. The impetus which ownership gives
to profitable farming is apt to be over-estimated. Land
farmed by owners whether in large or small lots, whether
in England, Ireland, or America, is by no means con-
spicuous for its superior management, indeed a good deal
of it is badly farmed. In France, where the land is
largely owned in small lots by hard-working husbandmen,
the acreable produce of grain and meat is much less than
that obtained from the rented lands of Great Britain, and
although these owners and their families work harder than
British agricultural labourers, they are not as well fed,
clothed, or housed, while, moreover, in many instances
they have been compelled to mortgage their holdings to
the money lenders.
The reduced prices of agricultural produce and the
consequent shrinkage of farming profits have affected
materially the relations between landlord and tenant.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 513
During the past ten years changes of tenants have been
greatly more frequent than formerly. Rents have fallen
twenty to forty per cent. Leases, which in the north of
England and throughout Scotland extended to nineteen or
twenty-one years, are not appreciated as they have been.
I n view of the recent manifold changes which have overtaken
farming, many sensible men object to bind themselves by
fixed terms for a long series of years, and prefer to hold
under conditions based on the principles of the " Agricul-
tural Holdings Act," and terminable on two, sometimes
three years' notice on either side. In this connection it may
be stated that although the " Agricultural Holdings Act"
has not worked as smoothly and beneficially as was
expected, it has legalised British tenants' claims for
unexhausted improvements, and hence encourages the
way-going tenant to farm liberally to his own profit as
well as that of the man who follows him.
Agreements between landlord and tenant are not
always wisely framed. Freedom of action is sometimes
hampered, and profits minimised by antiquated and
senseless restrictions in regard to cropping and sale of
produce. Tenants are still sometimes bound down to
particular systems of rotation, which may have had
sufficient justification before purchased manures and
feeding stuffs were procurable, but which are inconsistent
with the great aim of modern farming, namely, to extract
the greatest profitable return from the soil. One white
crop following another is frequently prohibited, although
on good land in high condition the finest quality of
barley is frequently grown after wheat. A limitation is
sometimes put on the area to be planted with potatoes,
although it is notorious that a profitable potato crop
cannot be grown unless the land is thoroughly worked
and well manured. In some agreements the sale of
2L
514 LAND:
milk and cheese is prohibited on the plea that it is
an impoverishing practice. The sale of hay, straw
and roots is still sometimes forbidden, although they
can frequently be disposed of at more than double
their value for home consumption, thus leaving a hand-
some margin after returning to the soil full manurial
equivalents. While the landlord's interest must be
properly safeguarded from depreciation, and definite
arrangements made regarding the way-going tenants'
cropping and sales of straw, hay and roots, unnecessary
restrictions are detrimental, not only to the tenant, but
also to the landlord and the community.
In making farming pay, it is very essential that the
capabilities of the holding be practically considered, and
that it be used for the purposes for which it is adapted,
on account of situation, altitude, soil, and markets.
Serious losses have resulted from neglect of this rather
obvious condition. Wheat is sometimes grown on cold,
poor uplands, where twenty-five bushels is a full crop,
and where hardy varieties of oats or barley would be
greatly more successful. Potatoes are planted on heavy
clays, or thin oolites ; mangolds are attempted in the
north of England and in Scotland, where swedes are
much more remunerative ; while conversely in drier,
warmer localities in the southern and midland counties
of England swedes are persisted with under conditions
where mangold would be more suitable, or where greater
success results from the substitution of sainfoin, lucerne,
or other fodder crops. Grass lands are not always used
to the best advantage ; sheep are sometimes run on low-
lying, soft, or coarse, rough herbage, more adapted for
cattle ; young stock are grazed on land w^hich might
feed, while more frequently feeding is attempted on
pastures better adapted for dairying or rearing.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 515
But while not attemping results beyond his reach,
the farmer should endeavour to diversify his production.
All his eggs should not be in one basket. Grain growing
alone cannot now be expected to pay in this country,
and its area accordingly must be limited to soils and
situations where fairly good returns can be realised.
The costly root cultivation on many holdings may more-
over be profitably reduced, relatively fuller returns if
possible obtained from the restricted area, and a larger
breadth of suitable forage crops grown, as they generally
can be, at less cost, labour, and risk. One or more
descriptions of live stock suited to the locality must be
reared or fed. Whether it shall be dairying, rearing, or
feeding of cattle, raising fat lambs, a breeding or a dry
flock, or a combination of several of these departments,
must depend upon soil, climate, premises, and also to
some extent, as already indicated, on the capital and taste
of the occupier.
Some farmers have benefited themselves and the
community by breeding superior pedigree stock, but this
is necessarily a comparatively limited department of agri-
culture, requiring special judgment, taste, capital, and
patience. The resources of the farmer both in England
and Scotland have been supplemented by rearing stout,
serviceable cart horses, for which there is an ever in-
creasing demand. On most farms one or more brood mares
may profitably be kept. On an average of years good
returns have been got from cattle liberally reared, while
two-year-old beef is almost invariably marketed with
satisfactory profit. Dairy farming has been greatly
developed and extended during the last twenty years,
but despite the admirable mechanical appliances intro-
duced, it nevertheless still requires a great deal of
constant, competent labour. It has paid best where the
516 LAND:
dairyman with his wife and family have devoted them-
selves heartily to the work, and especially where the
milk sweet or separated has been disposed of direct to the
consumer. When tenpence per gallon was obtainable for
milk placed on the railroad, good profits were realised,
but these have been considerably reduced since increasing
competition has brought the wholesale price of summer
milk down to sevenpence per gallon. Butter and cheese
making now rank as scientific arts, and demand for their
profitable conduct special training and skill, sound method,
immaculate cleanliness, and the intelligent use of modern
appliances. The quality of dairy produce as well as the
accruing profit will doubtless in the future be improved
by the more general adoption of the factory system.
On suitable land in the neighbourhood of the great
industrial centres, many farmers during the last two
decades have gone in more or less extensively for
market gardening, and occasionally for fruit growing;
and where this has been done with judgment and
system, profitable returns have been made. Authentic
cases are recorded of upwards of fifty pounds sterling per
acre being realised from early potatoes, cabbage, peas,
strawberries and plums. Unfortunately, such handsome
returns cannot, however, be counted on in every locality
or in every season. The capital invested, as well as the
labour employed in such culture has been quadrupled,
but proportionally large returns have generally been
obtained, and in competent hands such intensive farming
has proved profitable.
The recent extension of vegetable and fruit growing
by farmers has not only yielded direct profits, but has,
moreover, enforced the salutary lesson that all plants to
be cultivated successfully must be adequately nourished,
and the land kept free of weeds.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 517
Notable amongst the measures recently adopted to
render British farming profitable has been the restriction of
the arable acreage by sowing out land to permanent grass,
or by allowing the grass seeds in the rotation to remain
down for several years. The agricultural returns for
Great Britain for 1891 give 16,433,850 acres in per-
manent pasture, exclusive of unenclosed mountain and
heath, and 4,716,582 acres as grass under rotation,
including clover and sainfoin. Comparing these figures
with the averages for the five years from 1871 to 1875,
it appears that in less than twenty years there has been
an increase in great Britain of 3,550,338 acres of
permanent pasture and 327,676 acres of grasses under
rotation. This represents a large saving of costly
manual and horse labour, and also some reduction in
the manure bills. The statistics further testify that
concurrently with this extended grass area there has
been an increase of a million of cattle, and no appreciable
diminution in the number of sheep. The herds and
flocks, especially when receiving cake or corn, profitably
fertilise the pastures, and if these after a few years are
broken up, the land is friable, easily worked, com-
paratively clean, and yields at a minimum of cost a
succession of good crops.
Economy has of late years been effected in the use of
the costly root crops by cutting and pulping, mixing them
with cut dry food, and restricting their allowance both for
cattle and sheep, proportionally increasing the dry fodder
and supplementing with cake, corn, and other concentrated
foods. On most well managed clay lands, in most parts
of England, the area devoted to roots has thus gradually
been reduced in some instances almost to zero, summer
fodder crops suitable to the locality having been substituted.
Instead of diminishing, this system has increased the
5 1 8 LAND :
number of cattle, and occasionally of sheep reared and
fed. Indeed, in Essex and some other counties even
dairying is successfully conducted without roots, the winter
food of the cows and young stock consisting of hay and
straw from various fodder crops chopped, mixed \vith
meal, and moistened with hot water or with treacle and
water. The nutritive value of such a dietary is adapted
to the requirements of different classes of stock by the
judicious addition of varying quantities of cakes or corn.
Such procedure should be more widely adopted.
The profits of farming can seldom be reaped in large
instalments, they have to be patiently waited for while
crops and live stock grow ; they are earned mainly by
comparatively small savings. The cost of production
must be carefully considered, and the strictest economy
compatible with efficiency practised. The labour bills
have nearly doubled during the last forty years ; on mixed
and arable holdings they absorb from one-fifth to one-
third of the gross earnings, and it requires much personal
supervision and tact to make the most both of hand and
horse labour. The best results are secured where the
work is systematically arranged, kept well up to time, and
where piece work properly looked after is adopted. In
farming, as in most other affairs, the laggard is liable to
come to grief. Properly kept accounts are essential on
all considerable holdings. Without them it is impossible
to determine which departments pay and which do not.
Care must be taken to select suitable and first-class
seeds, and to secure proper changes of seed. With
farming, as with other produce, the best of its kind
commands the highest price, and almost invariably
yields the fullest profits. Antiquated, clumsy, inefficient
implements should be superseded by lighter modern
efficient equipments. In selling and buying cattle farmers
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 519
have been subjected to considerable disadvantage and
frequent loss by estimating their weight from appearance
and handling. But this guess work is liable to err to the
amount of five to ten per cent. The accurate value of
the beast should be ascertained by the use of the weigh-
ing machine, which should form part of the equipment of
every considerable farm, while small holders would find
it to their advantage to have such machines erected at
convenient centres. The successful manager makes the
best of everything. There is indeed scarcely anything on
a farm which cannot be utilised. The so-called refuse of
the dairy and the barn, even the road scrapings and the
hedge trimmings should be conserved. More advantage
in many localities might be taken of the refuse of towns,
gas works and other manufactories. It is essential,
however, to avoid having rubbish and refuse taken over
at fancy prices. Agriculturists suffer serious losses from
inferior and adulterated manures and feeding stuffs, and
should buy no such articles without having a guarantee
of quality and condition.
In conclusion it may be briefly stated that agriculture
prosecuted profitably must be adapted to varying local
conditions. No procrustean principle can be widely appli-
cable. The successful man must exercise judgment and
practical skill, must attend to multifarious details, and
have every department of his work done economically,
timeously and systematically.
FINLAY DUN.
52O LAND I
CHAPTER LV.
WHAT AN ACRE OF LAND CAN PRODUCE.
BY JOHN WALKER,
Author of" The Cow and Calf," " The Sheep and the Lamb." " Farming to Profit in
Modern Times," "Cattle: Their Management in Dairy, Field, and Stall " "The
Botfly of the Ox, Its Destruction," etc.
IN treating upon this subject, as indeed upon all others I
contribute to this book, I write from actual experience.
In this chapter is given a rotation of crops so that profits
be not reckoned from one year's produce but from a
general average. Many acres may be treated as profit-
ably as one acre upon my system, if capital, energy and
fertile and suitable land be cultivated.
FIRST YEAR. Dress heavily with stable manure or
crude night soil, say at the rate of twenty tons per acre,
upon the approach of winter. Spread the manure and
plough it in deeply and leave the ground to profit from
frost and air until the following March. Then plough
again, taking care that the share brings the manure to the
surface. Work the ground into a fine tilth and upon the
first favourable chance plant early potatoes on the flat.
Choose tubers that only run to short haulm, such as Ash
Leaf Kidneys, or Myatt's Prolific. At Christmas the
seed potatoes should be arranged crown upwards in a large
light, dry room. Passages must be left here and there
between the sets so that a covering can be put on in case
of frost. If, however, the room be protected by thick
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 521
walls only the most severe frost will be likely to damage
the tubers. By the beginning of April strong green shoots
or chits will be found on the potatoes and then planting
may commence. Convey the sets carefully to the plot
and plant them in rows thirty inches apart and from ten
to twelve inches apart in the rows. It is important that
the chits be placed upwards and not bruised ; to avoid
this, considerable care is needed. The green chits of
some sets will peep through the surface as soon as
planted. Weed and mould up the crop in the ordinary
manner with the exception that narrow strips of soil
be left just midway between the rows. About the middle
of June drill swedes down these strips and cover the seed
lightly. Raise the potatoes carefully when ready for
market, so that the swedes are not damaged with mould,
yet in a measure moulded up. The swedes should be
singled, weeded, and raised in proper season. Thus
two valuable crops are grown in one season.
SECOND YEAR. Plough the land as soon as the roots
are raised, and drill wheat as soon as a drill will work
freely. Hoe, harrow, and roll the ground at spring, and
reap and harvest in common order. A heavy yield of
both wheat and straw is usually reaped after a well-
manured potato and swede crop, so that although wheat
makes but a low figure now-a-days the heavy yield tells
up and the straw is valuable.
THIRD YEAR. Manure and plant the plot again with
potatoes and swedes as advised for first year, and pay
particular attention to weeding so as to keep the land clean.
FOURTH YEAR. By this time the land will be too
rich for wheat, therefore oats should be sown. The
ground should be deeply winter ploughed, re-ploughed,
and worked to a fine tilth at spring, and oats sown between
Lady Day and All Fools' Day. The best quality of
522
LAND : .
white oats should be chosen and drilled rather thinly, say
three and a half bushels per acre, lest they produce over
much straw and fall before ripening. Harvest the crop in
the usual way, and if there be any couch or other trouble-
some weeds, such as docks, on the oat ley, fork out and
burn them.
Land may be worked in the above manner for any
number of years, and in most parts of the country, for I
have not advised the culture of crops that call for quick
sale, so there is no need to rent dear land adjacent to
towns. In a climate so variable as our own, and in a
country where prices of labour change so frequently,
profits vary immensely. But I am justified in saying that
sufficient money can be made to allow English land to be
farmed so profitably as to enable agriculturists to meet all
costs and make a livelihood, with a little to spare, taking
an average of ten years. To do this, however, land must
be worked on modern principles, to wit, some such system
as I advise. It is very regrettable, I may say, wrong,
that so much land in a thickly populated country like
England should be thrown out of cultivation, leading to
poverty amongst all associated with it. Appended see
figures giving probable costs and returns.
FIRST YEAR (POTATOES AND SWEDES).
COSTS.
Potatoes (two ploughings)
Manuring ...
Planting, weeding,
moulding
and
5. (1. S: d.
140
500
Swedes Drilling, weeding
and singling
Seed Potatoes
Swede seed
Raising and marketing
s wed es an d potatoes . . .
Rents, rates, &c
i 7 6
2 10 O
O 2 O
7 ii 6
o 12 6
2 12 O
300
2 O O
RETURNS.
Probable yields
Potatoes, loo bushels
(Solbs.)at 33. ... 15 o o
Swedes, 12 tons, at
143. per ton ... 8 8 o
16 o
8 o
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 523
SECOND YEAR (WHEAT).
COSTS. RETURNS.
s. d. s. d. s. d.
Ploughing 015 o 4&qrs. Wheat at 345... 820
Drilling, harrowing, roll- Straw 2 o o
ing, and weeding ... o 13 6
i 8 6
Seed o 15 o
Harvesting, &c. ... ... I 10 o
250
Rent, rates, &c 200
13 6 ;io 2 o
THIRD YEAR (POTATOES AND SWEDES).
COSTS. RETURNS.
s. d. s. d.
Same as first year ... ... ... 15 16 o Same as first year ... 23 8 o
FOURTH YEAR (OATS).
COSTS. RETURNS.
s. d. s. d. s. d.
Two ploughings I 6 o 5 qrs. Oats, at 255. ...650
Harrowing, drilling, roll- Straw ...200
ing, and weeding ... o 12 o
i 18 o
Seed o 15 o
Harvesting ... ... i 10 o
250
Rent, rates, &c. ... ... 200
^630 ;8 5 o
JOHN WALKER.
524 LAND
CHAPTER LVI.
THE IMPORTANCE OE COMBINATION AMONGST
FARMERS.
BY T. PENN GASKELL, M. Inst. C.E.
DURING the last few years much attention has deservedly
been given to the improvement of the position of the
cultivator of the soil ; and there can be little doubt that
the more the subject is discussed and the more the
British farmer has his attention drawn to the arts and
devices by which his foreign competitor tries to displace
him in his own markets, the better will he be fitted to
hold his own.
In one respect our foreign competitors have an
advantage in that there are merchants and traders who
come to their doors and buy up their produce for ship-
ment to other countries, whereas here, each producer acts
independently, and in the case particularly of perishable
articles, finds there is no ready outlet for their disposal to
advantage.
This is the age of combinations, or "rings," and it is
believed that much might be done by applying the
principle either on a large or small scale to farming. In
some trades competition is so keen that the formation of
a combination amongst the various members cannot be
carried out except at great risk, but farming has this
peculiarity, that the markets are so wide and extensive
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 525
there is in reality little if any competition amongst
neighbours. It is clear, therefore, there being practically
no great conflicting interests, there need be nothing to
prevent farmers forming themselves for a common end
into local or even into wider combinations.
The writer is of opinion that in order to make farm-
ing, especially small farming, pay, it is necessary to bring
the producer and the consumer closer together, and this
he believes can best be effected by the establishment of
stores in large towns for the sale of meat, poultry, milk,
butter, eggs, fruit, etc. It is well known that, notwith-
standing these articles command a good and ready retail
sale, and often at exorbitant prices, for some reason or
other, generally but a small share of the money realised
finds its way into the pockets of the producer, although
his time and energy devoted to their growth far exceed
those of all the other parties who share in their distribu-
tion put together.
Through the kindness of a friend, the writer has
been furnished with some particulars regarding the
results of sending fruit from Kent for sale at Co vent
Garden, and he will give a few instances to show how
important to the grower it is to get, if possible, into
closer contact with the consumer. Apples and pears,
which would sell readily in the shops, even in cheap
neighbourhoods, at from twopence to threepence per
pound, fetched at Covent Garden, on the average,
three shillings per sieve, of fifty-six pounds ; the cost of
carriage being sixpence per sieve, and the expenses
and commission of the salesman sixpence per sieve, so
that the grower only obtained two shillings per sieve, or
less than a halfpenny per pound. Damsons, which are
retailed in the shops at about three-halfpence or two-
pence per pound, when sold at Covent Garden, realised
526 LAND I
two shillings and ninepence per sieve, the carriage being
sixpence and the salesman's commission and expenses
sixpence per sieve, so that one shilling and ninepence
per sieve was left to the grower, or only three-eighths of a
penny per pound. In the case of milk, butter, poultry and
eggs, the position of the producer is better than that of
the .fruit grower, but the middleman and the retailer,
even in these cases, get the lion's share of the profits.
In the case of milk, as a rule, the farmer gets only about
one-third of the retail price in London.
To remedy these defects, the writer would recommend
the establishment in central and populous neighbourhoods
of stores for the direct distribution of agricultural pro-
duce, without sending such produce to the recognised
central markets, such as Smithfield and Covent Garden.
It is evident that if the consignment were made direct to
the depot, without having to be sent to a market to be
sold to a retailer and again conveyed to another desti-
nation before it came into contact with the consumer, an
enormous expense would be saved. There would be
another great advantage in the plan proposed, and that
would be in avoiding the possibility of a glut from too
much produce being sent for sale at a time. The
manager of each store could tell very nearly from his
experience, the commodities he would be likely to sell
each day, and therefore no more would be sent than he
ordered. On the other hand, no doubt there would be
in the case of fruit and vegetables, the drawback that at
certain times of the year the English supplies would be
deficient; but even in this case, there would be no reason
why, in order to make the stores profitable, foreign fruit
should not be purchased and retailed.
As regards the methods by which such stores, as are
here advocated, should be established, no doubt much
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 527
may be learnt from a consideration of the way business
is carried on by such prosperous establishments as the
Civil Service Supply Association, and the Army and
Navy Co-operative Society. However, in the case in
point, the raison d'etre of such institutions as are now
suggested would not be for the consumer only, but
equally for the producer. The great London stores here
mentioned have been formed with a comparatively small
amount of share capital, which has been supplemented
partly by borrowed money and partly by the enormous
accumulated profits, but there can be no question that
the present value of these concerns represents many times
the original cost of their establishment.
The writer's idea is that as near as possible to the
goods termini of the southern railway companies, would
be the most suitable places for the establishment of such
stores as he would like to see formed, until the system
could be profitably extended to other parts of the
Metropolis. Land in the localities of Bricklayers Arms,
Blackfriars, and Nine Elms, is comparatively cheap,
whilst the neighbourhoods being thickly populated, there
is no doubt that there would be a ready sale for all kinds of
produce. As regards raising the necessary capital, it
would probably be advisable to proceed in a tentative
way, and commence by small establishments, which
might be increased as necessity arose. Supposing for
instance a company were formed with a capital of five
thousand pounds. Premises would then be taken in a
suitable position for both the cheap conveyance of
produce from the country, and its retail to a large
population. The directors of the company would appoint
a good manager and agents, and would enter into
arrangements with a certain number of farmers for the
supply of produce. The objects to be sought would of
528 LAND I
course be to make all arrangements, as far as possible,
mutually advantageous, and there is no way in which this
end can so well be achieved as by the introduction of the
principle of co-operation. None of the large London
stores are really co-operative, for the bulk of the goods
are bought by ticket holders, who take no share whatever
in the profits. In the stores now advocated it should be
the object to introduce true co-operation, by fixing a
certain share of the profits to be paid as dividend to the
shareholders, and dividing the remainder amongst the
producers and purchasers of the articles sold.
For the sake of explanation we will suppose that the
paid-up capital of the company is five thousand pounds,
and that it is agreed that the first charge on all profits
shall be the payment of six per cent, per annum interest
on such capital. We will again suppose that at the end
of the year the net profit, after paying all expenses,
amounts to one thousand five hundred pounds. Then,
as just now stated, six per cent, of five thousand pounds or
three hundred pounds would first of all be taken for
interest on capital, leaving one thousand two hundred
pounds to be disposed of, and this sum might probably
be fairly divided into three equal parts of four hundred
pounds each, one part going to the shareholders for
further interest or the formation of a reserve fund,
another part being returned to the farmers, who have
sold produce to the company, in direct proportion to
their respective sales, and the other part divided amongst
the customers also in proportion to their respective
purchases. Of course each farmer, whose produce was
bought, and each customer who purchased goods, would
receive certain tokens, which would be produced when
the annual division of profits was made, as it would be
impossible for the company to keep a register of all
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 529
transactions with the individual names. However, the
trouble to the farmers and customers of keeping the
necessary proofs of their transactions would no doubt
be comparatively slight, and would cause little in-
convenience either to them or the company.
A division of the profits of the stores in the way
suggested, should offer great inducements to all parties
to make the business a profitable one. There would
also be the advantage that, although the company would
have to arrange with the farmers as to the wholesale
prices, and would have to fix retail prices that would be
acceptable to customers, all parties would know that any
inequality, or apparently unsatisfactory bargain made in
the first place, would to a great extent be rectified when
the annual division of profits took place,
Farming for so many years has been under a cloud,
and the profits, owing to bad seasons and low prices,
have been so unsatisfactory, that it probably might be
difficult for farmers to obtain the necessary combination
amongst their own class to carry on stores for the sale of
their produce ; and, therefore, in all probability if such
societies are to be started and carried on with success,
the initiative will probably have to be made by other
parties. However, in a business dealing with perishable
goods, a great deal can be done with very little money,
for as the goods are sold almost as soon as bought, the
working capital required is exceedingly smaH in propor-
tion to the turnover. Moreover, as the margin is so
great between the retail price of many of the articles
that would be dealt in and the actual cost of bringing
such things to market, it is evident that if the profits of
the middleman and retailer could be divided in the way
proposed, all the parties concerned would be greatly
benefited.
2M
53O LAND :
If the growers could get remunerative prices, there
can be no doubt small farming would receive a great
encouragement ; and in order to show the room for the
extension of such industry in the United Kingdom, it
may be useful to give from the Custom House returns,
the amount and value of various produce imported during
the year 1890 from foreign countries and British Posses-
sions, and which might equally well have been raised in
this country. The importation of butter, exclusive of
margarine, amounted to 2,027,717 hundredweights, of
the value of ,10,598,848 ; of cheese, 2,144,074 hundred-
weights, of the value of ,4,975,134; of eggs, 10,291,246
great hundreds, of the value of ,3,428,806 ; of rabbits,
143,645 hundredweights, of the value of ,398,110; of
poultry, of the (estimated) value of ,300,000 ; of potatoes,
1,940,100 hundredweights, of the value of ,714,257 ; of
raw onions, 3,871,195 hundredweights, of the value of
,724,020 ; of other raw vegetables, of the value of
,773,590; of raw apples, 2,574,957 hundredweights, of
the value of ^786,072 ; of other raw fruit (exclusive of
nuts, almonds, oranges and lemons), 3,574,957 hundred-
weights, of the value of .1,806,81 1, and of honey, 25,286
hundredweights, of the value of ,41,321. We thus
imported last year (estimating the weight of the articles
where it is not stated in the Government returns) about
19,000,000 hundredweights, or nearly a million tons of
the above mentioned produce, the estimated value of
which was ,24,546,969.
These figures will show the room there is in this
country for increasing our production of such articles.
A considerable portion of these food stuffs can be pro-
duced on limited areas of land ; and therefore although
the extent of the United Kingdom is comparatively
small, this fact need not prevent our raising a far larger
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 531
amount of such things than we now do. It must be
evident that if 'petite culture could be made more profitable
here, and the advantages of having a practically unlimited
demand at home ought to afford the means to our farmers,
notwithstanding any climatic drawbacks, of defying foreign
competition, an enormous development would soon be
shown. The fact too that by substituting stores for the
middlemen, it would be possible to greatly lessen the price
to the consumer, whilst adding to the profits of the
grower, would tend to increase the demand concurrently
with the supply ; and therefore be a benefit to the whole
country.
The writer would like on this occasion to draw
attention to a matter touching the necessity of farmers
combining together, in order that their influence in
matters affecting their class and the country generally
may be more widely felt. The awful famine which is
now afflicting Russia, must call to the minds of us all the
position in which we should be if for any reason our food
supply were cut off for a lengthened period. For the
matter of this we may consider how would practically
most of the civilised world have been placed, if the
harvests of North America had been this year a com-
parative failure, instead of, as was providentially the case,
most exceptionally abundant ?
In order that we should in some measure, at any rate,
be prepared in future to meet such calamities, or even as
a step of ordinary precaution in time of war, it appears
to the writer that the farmers of this country should urge
on the Government the importance of buying up every
year so much grain to be stored as national property and
only to be used in case of necessity. In one way, if such
a step were taken, it would be unnecessary to spend the
same amount on the Navy, as if we had a larger amount
532 LAND :
of food in the country, it would not be of so much im-
portance to keep the control of the ocean highways. To
show the position we should be in at present if our foreign
food supply were cut off, it may be useful to give our impor-
tations for the year 1890. In addition to the articles
already mentioned, we obtained from abroad fresh and salt
meat, including bacon and hams (but not including living
animals or preserved meats), 9,373,45 1 hundredweights, of
the value of i 8,800,237 ; and cereals and pulses, including
flour and meal, 142,893,787 hundredweights, of the value
of ^49,576,067. If we take, then, the whole of the food
stuffs which we annually import to supplement our own
produce, we shall find that they amount to over
eight million tons, and that their estimated value is over
ninety millions sterling. However, in case of foreign
supplies being cut off, it is probable that for at least a
year no great hardship would be felt if there were means
at hand to supply the usual amount of cereals. It is the
writer's opinion that in order to adequately protect
ourselves against future emergencies, the Government
should gradually (say in the course of ten or twenty
years) accumulate fifty million pounds worth of grain in
this country, only to be used in time of necessity. The
annual burden which this step would involve would only
mean eventually a halfpenny in the pound income tax ;
for, of course the principal sum might fairly be raised by
loan ; and this additional liability to the nation would be
amply compensated by the feeling of security engen-
dered by such a public insurance against the danger of
famine.
We have Biblical authority for the fact that Joseph
in seven years stored a supply of food in Egypt for
seven other years, so that surely it would require no
great effort for England in ten or twenty years to collect
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 533
less than one year's supply. If the step here proposed
were adopted, there would be many indirect advantages
to the farmers and the public generally. It would, of
course, be advisable in years of plenty to make a larger
provision for the future than in years of scarcity, and
this would tend to equalise prices. Then, again, the
Government would each year be able to part with a
considerable portion of former years' accumulations, and
purchase in their place fresh supplies, thus placing at the
disposal of the community old corn, which is far better
for milling purpose3 than new corn.
Probably the best way of carrying out the principle of
establishing national granaries would be by the employ-
ment of Government officers who would visit the various
parts of the country after harvest and buy up a certain
amount of new corn after it was stacked. Of course,
only such corn would be bought as was harvested in
suitable condition and stacked properly, so that it would
suffer no deterioration from weather or vermin. At the
same time that new corn was bought it would be possible
to dispose of, possibly to some extent in exchange, a
certain portion of the corn bought in former years; of
course, however, it being understood that the annual
increment in stock would be. maintained.
The writer is not aware that this idea has been
before broached (certainly he has not heard of it) ;
but it appears to him that it is a suggestion well
worth the attention of our public men, but there can be
little doubt that all questions involving the expenditure
of public funds are never likely to be earnestly solved by
Parliament, until forced on its attention by public opinion.
For this reason it is to be hoped that the matter will be
put before the Government by the combined action of
our farmers, as it is a matter which would add greatly
534
to the public security, whilst no doubt it would confer
indirect benefit on a class who perhaps more than any
others, through their many misfortunes in recent years,
are deserving of sympathy and support.
T. PENN GASKELL.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 535
CHAPTER LVII.
CATTLE.
BY FINLAY DUN, F.R.C.V.S.,
Member of The Royal Agricultural Society of England, and The Highland
Agricultural Society, Scotland; Author of " American Farming and Food,"
"Landlords and Tenants in Ireland," " Veterinary Medicines, their Actions
and Uses."
THE cattle of the United Kingdom represent the largest
amount of capital invested in any one department of the
farm. During the last fifty years, notwithstanding the
prevalence of contagious disorders, and the restrictions
needful to hold them in check, and the greatly augmented
importations of foreign live stock and dead meat, the home
herds have steadily increased. Their rearing and feeding
have generally paid better than corn growing, notably
since 1850. The statistical returns for 1891 present the
following bovine enumeration :
England ... ... ... ... 4,870,215
Wales 759,39
Scotland ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 1,223,297
Ireland 4,448,477
Isle of Man ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 22,633
Channel Islands I9>755
Total, United Kingdom 11,343,686
This cattle census is thus classified :
Cows or heifers in milk or in calf ... ... ... ... 4,117,707
Two years old and above ... ... ... 2,473,808
Under two years old... ... ... ... ... ... 4,752,171
Total 11,343,686
536 LAND:
The importance of these herds, alike to the farmer
and the community, may be more fully realised by
indicating the annual amount and value of the chief
products obtained from them, based upon an estimate of
farm produce prepared in 1888 by the late James Howard
of Bedford.
One-fourth of the total cattle of this country, including
calves (2,835,921), it is estimated, are annually
slaughtered, weighing on an average 6 cwts., and
valued at 15 per head 42,538,815
2,835,921 hides, at 175. ... ... ... ... ... 2,400,532
600,000,000 gallons milk, at 7d. per gallon ... ... 17,500,000
2,000,000 cwts. butter, at is. per Ib. ... ... ... 11,200,000
2,800,000 cwts. cheese, at 5d. per Ib 6,533,333
80,172,680
This is a handsome annual return from the cattle depart-
ment of British farming. It constitutes about seven-
elevenths of the total annual farm receipts. It is several
millions sterling in excess of the totals realised from all
the grain and green crops with the produce of hay, hops,
orchards and market gardens thrown in. Sheep and pigs
together annually contribute about forty-five million
pounds sterling to the receipts.
The animals which yield this revenue are of a very
diversified character. Judicious selection of native and
imported varieties have produced types of cattle specially
suitable for feeding on pasture, and in the house, for
dairying under different conditions, and yielding full returns
whether of milk, butter or cheese. Youatt and other
chroniclers describe the cattle found in earlier times in
various districts of this country. A notable semiferal
variety, creamy white, with black muzzle and rather large
spreading horns, has been preserved for several hundred
years at Chillingham Castle, Northumberland, and at
Chatelherault Park, Hamilton. The blood-red Devons
for several centuries occupied Devonshire and the adjacent
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 537
counties. In West-Somerset were red cattle, sheeted
with white, some of which still survive. Wales had several
distinct varieties black, red, or brindled and the
Glamorganshire, to which the Farmer King, George III.
was partial, were distributed over most of the western
and mid-western counties, were subsequently crossed
with Longhorns, and, more recently, generally and per-
sistently with Shorthorns. Leicestershire, Derbyshire,
and Yorkshire, with their more abundant pasturage, grazed
larger beasts, many of them useful in the dairy. The
dun-coloured Suffolks were also prized for milk. The
chestnut-red Sussex were serviceable for draught purposes,
and after many years of comparative neglect, by judicious
selection and infusion, apparently of Devon and Hereford
strains, have, during forty years, taken a good position
both in the summer and winter show yards.
The Longhorns early last century were recorded to be
robust, big of frame, the oxen powerful for draught, the
cows good at the pail. They were greatly improved by
Bakewell of Dishley, and Fowler of Rollright, Oxford-
shire, who, a hundred years ago, sold bulls at prices
ranging from fifty pounds to two hundred and fifty pounds
sterling, and at his sale in 1791 sold six females at an
average of one hundred and sixty-five pounds sterling,
his herd of fifty producing four thousand two hundred
and eighty-nine pounds sterling. Another breeder, Mr.
Princeps, is stated to have been offered two thousand
pounds for twenty Longhorned cows, and had an ox
slaughtered at four years old which is recorded to have
weighed three thousand four hundred and seventy-two
pounds, exclusive of three hundred and fifty pounds of
tallow and a hide of one hundred and seventy-seven
pounds. A few Longhorned herds are still preserved
in Warwickshire and Staffordshire.
538 LAND :
The Devons, one of the oldest of English breeds,
have maintained, and indeed increased their reputation.
Their symmetry, quality and early maturity were im-
proved by such breeders as Quartley and Davy, and
more recently by Mr. George Turner and Mr. Walter
Farthing. Her Majesty has raised them successfully at
the Flemish Farm, Windsor. The small smart North
Devons are reputed the purest ; they well deserve the
designation of multum in parvo, but they render good
account of food, and time, and well-grazed or house-fed,
the three-year old steers scale one thousand five hundred
or one thousand six hundred pounds live weight, and
readily yield sixty per cent, of prime beef. Picked speci-
mens have been champions both at Bingley Hall and
Smithfield, and the Devon three-year old prize ox was
in this proud position at the Islington show in December,
1891. Many of the cows of the larger breed in the
southern parts of the country are good milkers, and yield
an annual average profit of ^10 to ,12.
Herefordshire, from records dated 1627, appears to
have had a breed of " well conditioned cattle," which are
stated to have been further improved by crosses with the
Flemish, whence it is believed have been derived the
characteristic white face and markings which have
o
distinguished Herefords for a hundred and fifty years.
Reds predominate, the dark reds are preferred, but grays
and whites occasionally occur. The " white faces " have
always been remarkable for size and substance. Like
other breeds during the last fifty years they have acquired
compactness and style, their meat is more evenly distri-
buted, they mature earlier. The first prize bull at the
Oxford Royal, in 1839, weighed thirty-five hundred-
weights. For fifty-three years from the foundation of
the Smithfield Club until 1851, Herefords had gained
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 539
two hundred and seven bullock prizes, while the Short-
horns only had one hundred and seventy-four. Like
their rivals they have been bought at handsome figures
for America and the Colonies. In Wyoming, United
States America, I have seen a herd of upwards of a
hundred pedigree Herefords imported and native, as good
as could be collected in the calf land of the breed.
America produced in 1880 her "Hereford Record,"
based upon the English Hereford Herd Book, started in
1846.
The Teeswater and other Durham breeds had acquired
more than a local celebrity a hundred years ago, and from
there the Stephensons, Brothers Collings, the Maynards
and other breeders made careful selection and impressed
the type they sought by in breeding. These Durham
cattle presently became known as Shorthorns, in contra-
distinction to the Longhorns which they have since
displaced. Thomas Bates, the Brothers Booth, and other
good judges, have further fixed and improved the type,
symmetry, style, early maturity and aptitude to fatten,
while some strains have also had their dairy capabilities
cultivated.
Coates' Shorthorn Herd Book was published in 1822 ;
for a time was issued every second year, and since 1874
has appeared annually. The thirty-seventh volume,
published September, 1891, brings the recorded number
of bulls to sixty-two thousand and sixty-two ; of these
eight thousand four hundred and thirty-four are entered
in this volume with three thousand nine hundred and
twenty cows and their produce. The Shorthorn Society,
founded in 1872, now numbers one thousand one hundred
and thirty members. Since the Royal Agricultural
Society's first show at Oxford in 1839, the breed has
been numerously and successfully exhibited not only at
54-O LAND :
the National but at other gatherings. It has taken a
large share of champion prizes at Bingley Hall, Smith-
field, and other fat shows. Its reputation at home has
brought buyers from every cattle-breeding country in the
world. First class pedigree animals have commanded
high prices. At the New York Mill sale, in 1873, Earl
Bective gave seven thousand guineas for a Duchess. At
Lord Dunmore's sale in 1875, Lord Fitzhardinge bought
the two-year-old Duke of Connaught for ^4500, and Mr.
Larking the four-year-old third Duke of Hillhurst for
^3000. In 1878 the Hon. M. H. Cochrane realised eight
thousand four hundred guineas for two American bred
Duchess heifers. Shorthorns reached their highest figures
about 1877 and 1878, and owing chiefly to their wider dis-
tribution and multiplication have since been bought at
more moderate prices. Five consecutive sales of the
late Duke of Devonshire's herd, at Holker, aptly illustrate
the growing competition for crack Shorthorns, and the
prices they have recently realised.
Year. Head sold. Average. Total of Sale.
s. d. s. d.
1871 ... 43 ... 240 13 10 ... 10,349 17 o
1874 ... 43 ... 383 13 3 ... 16,497 I 2
1878 ... 30 ... 664 i 10 ... 19,922 14 o
1883 ... 45 ... 167 3 o ... 7,524 6 o
1889 ... 38 ... 104 13 o ... 3,981 12 o
At the 1878 sale, nine Oxfords brought an average of
^1636 53., and three bulls averaged ^1333 ios. Apart
from these great sales, for ten years pedigree cattle to the
value of two thousand pounds have annually been
privately sold at Holker. Equally large returns have
been obtained by the private sales and bull-lettings at
Warlaby and Killerby. At the spring sales at Birmingham
and elsewhere, hundreds of well descended and serviceable
Shorthorn bulls have annually been purchased by British
and foreign breeders at prices ranging from thirty to
three hundred guineas.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 541
Carefully bred for upwards of a hundred years most
Shorthorn strains have a notable prepotency. They leave
their mark on all other breeds. They have been widely
used to improve the native cattle, not only in this country
but throughout the world. They readily adapt them-
selves to varying environments. They have crossed out
of existence some of the older sorts both in Great Britain
and Ireland, more than doubling the value of the pro-
duce. For many years upwards of two-thirds of the
cattle in the Metropolitan markets have been Shorthorn
or Shorthorn crosses. Nine-tenths of the cattle of
Ireland partake of the "red, white and roan." Although
Hereford and polled Angus have their admirers in
America and the Australian Colonies, seven-eighths of the
cattle in these countries are of Shorthorn descent. The
breed is not only the most widely used for the production
of beef, but many strains have also had their dairy
capabilities cultivated. The cows in most of the English
dairy districts and those furnishing milk to most of the
large towns are of Shorthorn descent. I know of dairies
of twenty to thirty Shorthorn cows in which the average
yield of milk for the season ranges from eight hundred
to eight hundred and fifty gallons per head. They have
the double merit of milking well for eight or nine months
and subsequently forming a good carcase of beef.
The Norfolk and Suffolk polls received their designa-
tion some forty years ago, and although not so large
as Shorthorns and Herefords, are hardy good reds,
reputed to feed on poorer pastures, generally better
dairy than beef cattle, and steadily gaining in public
estimation.
Scotland has several useful distinctive breeds. The
West Highlanders, black, red, dun or brindled, are
striking and picturesque animals not only on their
54 2 LAND :
northern hills and moors but in many English pastures
and parks. They have earned honours alike in Scotch and
English summer and winter show yards. The oxen cheaply
raised on poor pastures, and in climates where a less
hardy race could not live, are usually fattened when four or
five, and produce the finest quality of beef. The
Aberdeen or polled Angus are notable beef producers,
well adapted for house or yard feeding, remarkable for
their massive, deep, wide, well proportioned carcase
evenly clothed with flesh. The pure breed and the
admirable crosses with the Shorthorn bull have gained
many premier prizes at the great shows. The polled
Galloways have most of the good characters of the Angus,
are admirably suited for the moist climate of the south-
west of Scotland and north-west of England, and are
fair milkers and good beef cattle. The Ayrshires, first
cultivated in the northern portion of the county bearing
their name, have had more than a local celebrity for two
hundred years. They are black and brown with white
markings, but fashion now favours the brown and white.
Like all the well established breeds the lineage of the
best strains is recorded ; a herd book was issued in 1878,
and the last volume gives the entries of upwards of two
thousand bulls and seven thousand cows. The cows
have the typical formation of good dairy animals, they
are well spread behind and narrow but deep forwards ;
the udder is large, well moulded, and the teats large.
Relatively to the food consumed they produce more milk
than any other animal, and maintain their yield fairly for
nine or ten months. A good Ayrshire will produce
during the season, six hundred gallons of milk which will
make two hundred and thirty pounds of butter or five
hundredweight of high class cheese. Numerous dairies
numbering twenty to fifty cows, average per head five
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 543
hundred and fifty to six hundred gallons of milk in
the year.
The Channel Islands have long been famous for their
dairy cows. The beautiful deer-like Jerseys are prized
for the richness of their milk, and where well cared for
yield from five to six pounds of butter a week. The
larger Guernseys are wonderful milkers, some good ones
giving twenty-four quarts at two consecutive milkings.
These Channel Islanders, as well as the Ayrshires and the
dairy Shorthorns, have no difficulty in complying with
the requirements which constitute a good cow, namely,
yielding per day at least twenty-five pounds of milk which
shall contain twelve per cent, of solids and three per cent,
butter fat. The Kerrys and Dexter Kerrys are the only
surviving Irish breeds ; are small, ornamental, generally
black, sometimes red or blue-grey, particularly hardy,
and good milkers.
Cattle breeding in Great Britain is chiefly prosecuted
on pasture rather than on arable lands, on soils of second
quality, and on broken and upland holdings rather than
on the richer alluvial plains, on small rather than on large
farms, on the western and moister rather than on the
eastern drier and arable portions of the island. A larger
acreage and a greater number of persons are employed
in breeding than in feeding. Ireland, with her large pro-
portion of grass land, breeds more than she feeds. The
better descriptions of well-reared young cattle are always
readily saleable. Indeed in most seasons the home and
Irish supplies are inadequate to the demand, and pro-
mising young animals realise good returns relatively to
their weight, and to the outlay expended upon them.
The wild or unimproved cow rears only her own off-
spring, but much more must be done on the successful
breeding farm. The cows calve during the earlier spring
544 LAND :
months and besides her own calf each must rear one or
two more. Only the best of well-got calves pay to rear.
They should be sired by a thorough-bred bull of good
stamp and quality. Common rough thriftless brutes are
unprofitable either to rear or to feed ; a calf worth from
forty shillings to fifty shillings when dropped is vastly
cheaper than a nondescript at twenty shillings. Unless in
exceptional cases, as with pedigreed stock, or two-year-old
heifers with their first produce, calves are most economi-
cally hand-reared. They receive thrice daily about a
pint of new milk for the first week, when the allowance is
gradually increased until they have five or six quarts
daily. When six weeks old the thriving calves should
have separated milk gradually substituted for the new
milk, and given along with warm oatmeal and linseed
gruel, the mixture being at a temperature of 70 Fahren-
heit. They will shortly begin to pick clover, grass or hay.
When the best is to be made of time, the calf should also
early learn to lick oatmeal and eat a few finely crushed
oats and linseed cake, and when they are four months old
they will readily clear up a pound of each. When they
can do so, they may be safely weaned. Supposing the
calf has been bought at birth at fifty shillings, his cost
for milk, grass, meal, and attendance will have added
another fifty shillings to his cost when weaned. A further
2 should graze him and continue his cake and corn until
he goes into winter quarters early in October. It is a greaj;
mistake to keep calves at grass after it has begun to lose its
succulence and nutritive value, and the weather becomes
cold.
They are wintered in yards or boxes, not more than six
or eight being together, are fed on roots and fodder cut,
mixed and allowed to lie for twelve to twenty-four hours
before being served out. A little long hay is given once
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 545
a day. The amount of concentrated food must depend
upon circumstances. Heifers reserved for breeding, and
steers which are to be summered on pasture of second
quality, and which will not be finished until they
are two and three-quarters to three years old, will be
well grown if they receive along with roots and fodder
about three pounds daily of crushed linseed cake, or of
equal quantities of cake and crushed oats. This will add
about 2 to their winter bill for roots and straw, but the
cost of the bulky food will thereby be considerably
economised, and should average about 4. per head.
This upbringing may be thought extravagant for year-
lings, which at May Day would thus cost 1$ per head.
It would be unjustifiable for common-bred, undersized
stock, for youngsters intended to clear the bents amongst
sheep or graze second-class pastures without further help
from concentrated food ; but well-bred yearlings that
have never lost their calf's flesh, or suffered from the
checks which too frequently impair thriving, will be as
big as many two-year olds, and within a year will make
a better carcase of beef at less cost than older animals
which have not received continuous, systematic liberal
treatment. It does seem penny-wise, pound-foolish to
grudge the growing young animal a liberal dietary
during the period when his assimilative powers are
most active, and when he yields the largest returns, and
can add nearly two pounds daily to his live weight.
The daily dole of a few pounds of concentrated food,
which saves costly roots and hay, ensures thriving and
health, and, moreover, enables capital to be turned over
eight months or a year earlier.
On many farms, especially in arable districts and
where two-year-old beef is systematically made, the
yearlings are not turned out ; their green fodder is
2N
546 LAND :
brought to them ; the beef making proceeds from birth
until twenty to twenty-six months, when the steers
produce a hundred to a hundred and twenty Smithfield
stones of the primest beef, not overloaded with fat. The
profits earned on this baby beef manufacture range from
3 to 6 per head.
The larger more highly rented arable holdings are used
more for feeding than rearing. As compared with fifty
years ago three to four times the weight of beef is disposed
of. On many farms, formerly exclusively devoted to
breeding, the home grown stock and a still larger number
of purchased cattle are fed and marketed fat when two and
a-half to three years old. In many districts both in England
and Scotland breeding has been almost entirely discon-
tinued on the various pleas that it is increasingly difficult
to get people to give the proper attention which young
stock require, that the risks of disease and accident are
greater, while capital is not so quickly turned.
At Norwich Hill, York, Falkirk Tryst, or other of the
great spring or autumn sales, from Irish droves or at the
sales of Canadian shipments the store stock are bought.
Ireland annually furnishes British feeders with about
three hundred and fifty thousand to four hundred
thousand head, while during the last three years the
Canadian consignments have averaged annually ninety
thousand head, three-fourths of which are finished in
British yards or stalls. When the spring grass has made
an early and promising start, or the supplies of winter
provender are plentiful, the demand for store cattle is
brisk, and the animals purchased when sold several
months later, are apt to leave meagre returns. Instead
of realising six to seven shillings a week of enhanced
value, more than half their cost has to be put to the
credit of manure. The prudent manager, who has pasture
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 547
to stock at May Day, begins to buy his stores towards
Christmas, and continues during the winter, as opportunity
offers, and bad weather depresses prices, to fill his own
premises, or board his purchases in his neighbours' straw
yards. Obviously the best time to buy is when the
majority desire to sell.
Two-year-old steers in arable districts usually have
straw ad libitum and about fifty-six pounds of roots daily,
given whole, sliced, or finely cut, and when thus reduced
they are usually mixed with chaff or chop. Larger
allowances of roots are unnecessary nay wasteful. With
such restricted allowance of roots, two-year-olds will eat
sixteen pounds to twenty pounds of dry fodder daily. A
daily meal of three pounds or four pounds of cake or
grain improves both the cattle and the manure. Such a
dietary represents a cost of five shillings to six shillings
per week, and good two-year-old cattle thus fed, comfort-
ably quartered and properly attended to, should gain
eight pounds to twelve pounds live weight per week.
On pastures, whether permanent or sown down in
rotation, a fair bite of grass is ready for cattle about ist
to toth May. One to two acres, according to herbage
and size of beast, is requisite for summering. Enviable
is the man who has land capable of feeding a beast and a
sheep per acre. Cakes and grain obtainable at lower
prices during recent years have been advantageously used
on all except the very best feeding lands. These are
profitably stocked with superior cattle in forward condition,
and which can be marketed as opportunity offers during
the summer and autumn, while the bigger, rougher, and
slower beasts are finished later in boxes, yards or stalls.
The competent manager both in summer and winter
endeavours to graduate the dietary for the different
classes of his stock ; the second rate pastures and plainer
548 LAND I
fare helped, if need be, by a daily meal of concentrated
food, keep the youngsters steadily growing ; an occasional
transfer to a pasture that has been freshened by a month's
rest is helpful where it can be secured ; in order that the
best may be made both of cattle and food the nutritive
value and fattening properties of the dietary must be
progressively increased.
The cattle business during the last fifty years has
undergone considerable changes. Two animals are
reared where one was formerly. From most feeding
farms three or four times the weight of beef is
marketed, the produce frequently averaging from ^3
to ^5 P er acre. The yield of dairy produce has
increased five-fold. The premises and shelter for cattle
have been greatly improved on most well-managed
estates, but many farmers are still seriously handicapped
by inadequate accommodation for their animals. Where
landlords cannot be got to erect substantial permanent
buildings, the tenant would generally find it to his profit
to put up temporary structures. Fewer animals are
starved, stripped of flesh, and rendered more or less
permanently thriftless by being wintered on the pastures
or on poor straw in unshedded yards. Systematic pro-
vision of better and more varied winter food is generally
made, and is economised by cutting the roots as well as
a considerable portion of the fodder. Cheap imported
concentrated foods are more widely used as adjuncts
both in winter and summer. The great agricultural
breeding shows, the winter fat stock exhibitions, dairy
competitions and herd books, have instructed the farmer
on many matters connected with breeding and feeding.
Carefully selected pedigree sires of various breeds,
possessing hereditary prepotency, have been widely dis-
tributed, improving symmetry, quality and early maturity.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 549
One of the most promising helps to further progress
and profit is undoubtedly the extended use of the
weighing machine. This instrument will solve many
problems connected with rearing and feeding. Periodical
weighings say once a month, inform the owner of the
progress of different breeds and ages of cattle, under
different conditions and different methods of feeding.
The most economic meat - making beasts are thus
discovered, while any faults of management are detected
and remedied before they do serious damage. The
steelyard would readily settle such a debatable question
as the relative beef producing capabilities and profit of
Canadian cattle, three to four years old, bought say, at
three shillings and sixpence per stone of fourteen pounds
live weight, as compared with well-reared home beasts
of half their age, worth say, four shillings per stone.
Systematic weighings furnish also sound data for framing
suitable dietaries for animals at different stages of growth,
and used for different purposes.
Scientific experiments and the sensible practice of
weighing prize fat animals, and subsequently applying the
block test of weighing the dead carcase and appraising
the quality of the meat, have furnished the important
information that during the first year of bovine life picked
animals of the best breeds and crosses average a daily
increase of two pounds per head. This is about one-
third more than can be made during any subsequent year.
The production of each pound of live weight in the
yearling has been estimated by an American expert,
taking American food values, to cost about a penny
three-farthings, while each pound of increment in the two-
year old is stated to cost fourpence per pound, and in
the three-year old sixpence-halfpenny per pound. Such
estimates enforce the economy of early feeding. Similar
550 LAND :
observations on growing and feeding cattle in this country
would be of inestimable practical value. For several
years Mr. Me Jannet, Stirlingshire, has urged the advisa-
bility of using the weigh-bridge to determine the actual
weight of cattle, whether fat or stores, purchased or sold.
Experienced practical men carefully handling fat beasts
frequently under, or over, estimate their weight and con-
sequently their value to the extent occasionally of three
and even five per cent. The appearance of store beasts
is even more deceptive. Graziers buying by eye and
hand several lots of young cattle, and weighing them on
reaching home, are sometimes surprised, and not a little
annoyed, to find that they have paid from say three
shillings to four shillings and ninepence per stone of
fourteen pounds live weight for animals of very similar
quality and capabilities. In estimating the value of his
fat cattle by handling or even by measurement the feeder
frequently is at fault ; he accordingly sometimes refuses
an offer which he should have closed with, or more
frequently takes several pounds per head less than the
weight of his animals would have justified his accepting.
The weigh-bridge prevents such losses. It can be put
up for about five pounds and on a feeding farm of a
hundred acres should more than pay itself in a year.
Very wisely the Board of Agriculture has appended to
the " Market and Fairs Act " clauses enjoining that at
all principal centres of the cattle trade after ist January,
1892, weigh-bridges shall be fixed, and official statistics
published of the live weights and prices of all classes of
stock.
FINLAY DUN.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 551
CHAPTER LVIII.
HORSES.
BY JOHN WALKER,
Author of " The Cow and Calf" " The Sheep and the Lamb,'' 1 " Farming to Profit
in Modern Times," "Cattle: Their Management in Dairy, Field, and Stall"
" The Botfly of the Ox, Its Destruction" etc.
THER"E has been more improvement made in agricultural
horses in Britain within the last two decades than for a
century previously. This improved state of the equine
race may be chiefly attributed to three things, i. Many
agricultural shows have given breeders chances to exhibit
for premiums offered to the best animals. 2. To the Cart
Horse Stud Book, which is even now doing great good,
giving breeders a key to all the best blood in existence.
3. Briskness in trade, which improves the demand for
working horses, more particularly the sort known as dray
horses. Prices realised have been so satisfactory that
farmers have put new spirit and energy into the work
of horse raising. There are three representative breeds
of cart horses Shires and Suffolks in England, and
Clydesdales in Scotland.
SHIRE HORSES stand first in value not only at home
but in all horse-breeding districts on the globe where
heavy draught horses are used to any extent. Their
immense size, power and handsome appearance justly
place them at the head of the equine race for laborious
work. Before the breed was improved Shires were too
552 LAND:
slow about their work, carrying overmuch lumber, but
the improved breeds have all the power of the former
race, with great activity and powers of endurance.
Farmers find a good sale for their best horses among
such firms as railway companies, brewers and carriers of
heavy goods ; horses for such work must be sufficiently
powerful to move heavy loads. Weight must be opposed
to weight, or such ponderous loads would never be put
into motion. Powerful shoulders, short backs, well
developed loins, with tolerably long hind quarters, and well
ribbed up, roundish barrels should be supported by big
buttocks and forearms, and flat bony legs t The feet
must be sound beyond doubt, lest heavy work upon paving
stones cause one or other lamenesses to which the com-
plicated structure of the feet renders them so prone.
Breeding high-class Shire horses is becoming more
popular employment year by year, and that not only
by farmers but by country gentlemen.
SUFFOLK HORSES are highly esteemed in the eastern
counties, and justly so, for the work for which they are
mostly used. Land in those districts is generally of a
light nature, so the active Suffolk breed gets over the
ploughing, carting and other work far more rapidly than
could the more powerful Shires of the Midlands. Suffolk
horses are upstanding, clean legged, active, good tem-
pered, steady workers, with robust constitutions. Indeed
they possess many qualities of the light horses from
which they originate, with the power of the waggon
horse. They are excellent slaves for cultivating land,
and most useful for light town work. There is one fault
in Suffolks, viz., lack of bone in the legs, and between
knee and pastern the bone is too round. No legs thus
constructed will endure hard road work so well as the
flat legs so developed in Shires. Albeit for such work
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 553
as is found on farms in the eastern counties, the native
home of this famous breed, no horses in existence can be
found lo surpass them in usefulness.
CLYDESDALE HORSES are the pride of Scotland, and
are greatly in demand in foreign lands. They are in
Scotland what Shires are in England. They are grand-
looking animals, quick about their work, and unsurpassed
for agricultural work on the banks of the Clyde, where
farmers are justly proud of their teams, and make high
prices of their best horses when at maturity. The chief
fault of the breed is lack of carcase, which subtracts from
their endurance. The fault is not seen in alj Clydesdales,
but there is no doubt about its existence in many of
them. They are much used for dray work, but where
very heavy loads have to be moved, they have to give
place to the more powerful Shires of England. I know
full well that there is great jealousy between English
and Scotch breeders, but as I have bred and worked the
different breeds under my own especial care, I can speak
without fear of correction. I do not for one moment
desire to disparage either sort, for each are near per-
fection for the work which is mostly required of them.
BREEDING HORSES may be profitably conducted on
most farms in the kingdom where there is sufficient
range of pasturage. High-class land is not needed. So
long as foals are well cared for during the first year,
there need be little expense or trouble afterwards.
Sound sires of proper stamp mated with corresponding
mares are pretty sure to produce good stock ; still, there
is scarcely a lameness to which the horse is subject but
is hereditary, notably so curbs, spavins, sidebones, con-
tracted feet, and defects in the wind. It is wise if
practicable to look further back than to the dam and
sire, as defects might not be developed in the first
554 LAND:
generation, yet be shown in the second or third. The
greatest difficulty about breeding horses to a profit is
avoiding lameness and disease, and this is so with nags
as well as cart horses. Judgment is needed in mating
horses. As near perfect make as possible should be
looked for in both sire and dam, and good make be held
in preference to size, although the larger horses are the
better, so long as they be of good stamp. Mares ought
not to be bred from until they are four years old,
although sires may be used a year or two earlier. The
less brood mares show signs of hard work the better,
and breeding should cease as soon as any decline in the
constitution is observed. Finally horse breeding is not
work for "'prenticed" hands, but if conducted in a proper
manner proves both interesting and remunerative, for
there seems no limit to the demands for good cart
horses, either at home or abroad ; but second-rate, or
unsound ones, are not much use. Indeed, profits go
with quality and not with quantity.
JOHN WALKER.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 555
CHAPTER LIX.
SHEEP.
BY JOHN WALKER,
Author of " The Cow and Calf? " The Sheep and the Lamb," "Farming to Profit
in Modern Times? "Cattle: Their Management in Dairy, Field, and Stall?
" The Botfly of the Ox, Its Destruction? etc.
SHEEP FARMING throughout the United Kingdom is far
away the most profitable occupation associated with land.
Indeed, sheep have never failed to give good returns
except in times of plagues such as the fluke disease,
which fortunately seldom occurs. There is no need for
an acre of fertile land in the country to go out of culti-
vation while sheep grazing pays so well. One or other
breeds are adapted to different soils, so all that is needed
is energy, capital, and judgment. to make this branch of
farming a success. Even the wild mountainous districts
of Scotland answer well for horned Scotch sheep, the
meagre swards on the Welsh mountains give feed for the
ovine animals named after the district where they are
bred, the scant herbage on the Down lands of England
fatten the hardy little Southdowns, while the rich lands
of Lincolnshire, Cambridge, and the Midland counties
are capable of raising and fattening such flocks as
Longwools, Shropshires, Hampshires, and Oxfordshire
Downs. Many of the animals are as well adapted for
arable as pasture land, so that isolated parts of the country
lying remote from railways or towns are profitable for
556 LAND:
sheep farming. It has been truly written in ancient
records that " sheep tread with golden feet," for they
improve all land that they run over, and many farmers of
arable land would get on much better than they do if
they increased their flocks. It is a deplorable sight for
practical farmers to pass over many parts of the kingdom,
and observe the vast spaces of land thrown up to the
fowls of the air that might well raise numberless flocks
of sheep to supply our markets, and thus find the public
in wholesome meat and at the same time stop the influx
of foreign animals.
Sheep farming is one of the most pleasant occupations
I know. It is the "beau ideal" of employment for a
country gentleman. A few good shepherds and helps,
with some faithful dogs, are sufficient ito take care of
thousands of sheep. Labourers are difficult to get on
arable land, but in raising ovine flocks one is not troubled
with the paucity of hands. The greatest curse to British
farming has been allowing unprofitable arable land to
tumble into pasture, or rather weed beds, instead of
thoroughly cleaning, seeding down, and grazing it with
sheep. It is surely a happy state of things for one who
has invested in land to find that it is year by year becoming
enriched by ovine flocks, while the latter are profitable to a
degree. There is no fear that the business will be over
done, for, with the ever increasing population and improve-
ment in trade, the demand for mutton will always 'be
brisk ; such meat being the favourite diet of all classes.
PROFITS FROM SHEEP ARE MANIFOLD, i. In the meat,
whether from fat lambs, ripe wethers and theaves, or
from well-made-up ewes after they have brought several
lots of lambs. There is no easier way of making rent
than by breeding store sheep for market. Many a year,
during long experience in farming, I have found prolific
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 557
ewes to pay as much per head in a year as horned cattle
have for summering, yet they do not cost anything
approaching as much in food and attention. 2. The
wool. It is true this commodity does not sell so well as
in years gone by ; possibly there may be an improvement
in markets by-and-by. Be this as it may, wool at its
lowest gives from five shillings to ten shillings per head,
and sells at a time of the year when not much is being
made off the farm otherwise. 3. As to the golden feet.
Wherever sheep tread they improve the land. There
are vast quantities of arable land which is so light, or
hover, as Scotchmen term it, that would bear no crops
were it not for consolidation given by the trampling of
sheep. Then there is the excreta from the animals, both
solid and fluid, that proves a rich manuring. Folding
sheep on arable land has been greatly neglected of late.
Several decades ago sheep were folded on summer
fallows every night at sunset thus the fields got a rich
manuring. This practice is thought to be robbing
" Peter to pay Paul," by feeding arable land at the
expense of grass. This by no means follows, for there
are often rich pasture fields made rich chiefly by sheep
grazing that w r ould do just as well without the droppings
which are so useful to poor arable land. In farming to
profit all these things must be looked to, and then the
arable and pasture lands of England will soon display a
more fruitful appearance. Still, it really appears that a
new race of cultivators of the soil must in many instances
be employed, for to trundle down old ruts will not do at
any price. In my opinion, sheep in the future will hold
a much more prominent position on the farm than they
have held in the past.
BREEDING SHEEP. I am a great advocate for
breeding rather than purchasing flocks to fatten off
558 LAND :
wherever land is adapted to the purpose. One gets
such an increase in the fall of lambs, that it is all selling"
out and no buying in. Such breeds as most of the
Downs bring more than half twins, and the ewes do
their lambs right well, providing they get some extra food
before grass comes. On fairly good land single lambs
may be got off fat to the butcher early in summer, which
gives the ewes a chance to get fat in the prevailing year.
Twins can be profitably kept for stores, the males for
fattening after being shorn once, while the females can be
brought into the flock to take the place of full-mouthed
sheep that need culling. Young sound healthy rams
should be used to equally healthy ewes, and the first
signs of disease in either should be a warning to sell
them off as soon as possible.
JOHN WALKER.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 559
CHAPTER LX.
RABBITS: THEIR CULTURE AND USES.
BY THE REV. V. H. MOYLE, M.A., F.R.H.S.,
Vicar of Ashampstead, Berks; Member of the Council of the Swanley Horticultural
College ; Vice- President of the Berks, and also of the Wilts, Bee Keepers' Association ;
and Sole Medallist for Honey and Wax Applications at the Health Exhibition, 1884,
and many other places, 1885-90, and '91.
ALTHOUGH the wild rabbit abounds in this country and
has become a perfect scourge in Australia, there are still
great needs of an increase in the supply of tame rabbits
in our land as an article of food for our towns and
cities, where they are so much in demand that the
continent has to supply our shortcomings in the matter,
much to our discredit.
I will not refer to the published statistics of the
Board of Trade herein, but urge on my fellow country-
men to remedy this deficiency. As an old rabbit keeper
myself, at one time having five hundred does of different
kinds, each in her own hutch, and having long
supplied London and other customers with " bunnies,"
living and dead, both fancy and common, I know some-
thing of rabbit culture, and am glad here for the public
good to narrate some of my experiences. I found a ready
sale for good rabbits all the year round, and especially
for the "tames" when the "wilds" were not in season.
The rabbits (tame) best known in this country are :
(i.) The Giant of Flanders, which reaches as much
as sixteen pounds sometimes, and even more.
560 LAND :
(n.) The Patagonian (so called because of its size),
originally a French rabbit and large, with large head and
broad across the eyes, which are full and large, and set
wide apart. The ears are longer and broader, and less
erect than the next.
(in.) The Belgian Hare, so called because originally
from Belgium, and in the ticking of its fur resembling the
hare. It is not a hybrid, as some imagine, between the
hare and the rabbit. The Belgian Hare is being
increasingly appreciated in this country, as its real value
for culinary purposes is becoming better known.
(iv.) The Silver Grey rabbit (originally from the
East), is now in high estimation among fanciers for its
neat appearance and soft glossy fur, and there are large
warrens of Silver Greys in this country, as their skins
fetch as much as their carcases.
(v.) The Angora, with long hair and wool of two
lengths, the length varying with the strain, white, black,
grey, fawn, slate, and blue. Ladies' pets.
(vi.) Himalayan (really Chinese), with black nose,
tail, and feet, and white body. Not a large rabbit,
generally from six to eight pounds.
(vn.) Dutch (the dwarf rabbit), body of any self
colour, a white ring round the neck, white streak up
the face. Excellent foster mothers, very affectionate and
docile, but no cowards. A three-pound specimen has
been seen to make a bold attack upon a fourteen-pound
Patagonian when defending its young.
Fanciers in this country affect the Lop- Eared rabbit
a good deal, but as the mode of producing long lop ears
is simply diabolical cruelty I dwell not on its species.
Other fanciers' sorts are Silver Creams, Silver Browns,
Siberians, Polish.
For culinary purposes, in my estimation, taking
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 561
weight and quality into account and my experience is
large I would place
(i.) Giant of Flanders.
(n.) Patagonian resembles a turkey's flesh, especi-
ally if before killing fed with a little thyme.
(HI.) Belgian Hare very great favourite with cooks.
(iv.) Common English Tame good eating when
properly fed.
Silver Grey and Angora are small for culinary
purposes, as also, Himalayan, and the Dutch very smalL
But rabbits are useful not merely for culinary
purposes, but as their fur and wool and hair is a covering
to them, so likewise they are capable of being worked
up into various articles of use and comfort for their
masters and mistresses. The skin and fur of the Flemish
Giant, the Patagonian, and the Belgian Hare are worked
up into mock seal-skin by the furriers ; the skin and
fur of the Himalayan into mock ermine; that of the
Silver Grey into mock chinchilla for trimmings for
ladies' and children's dresses ; that of the Angora into
muffs and cuffs and comforters of an expensive and
luxuriously warm description. The skins of rabbits are
used when bereft of their fur for many purposes, the glue
and size makers getting the pelts ; and lately Mr. Sennett,
of Blackfriars, Borough, has introduced a useful applica-
tion of the ends of rabbit fur for filling cushions, pillows,
mattresses, sofas and chairs called " Sennett down,'*
which is deliciously soft.
A French gentleman many years ago lost nearly all
his money, and in order to recover some means founded,
near Aix, a regular Angora breeding and farming village,
where some hundreds of Angora rabbits were daily tended
to, and regularly two or three times a week combed by
women or girls carefully, as this process tends to improve
2 O
562 LAND I
their coats and also lengthen them, and the wool so
combed is spun by the women into various articles of
utility and comfort and fetch high prices.
Many writers have described their ways of keeping
tame rabbits, and depicted very expensive hutches. I
will describe what I found economical and useful with
my five hundred does, viz., five hundred large sized bacon
boxes cost one shilling each at the bacon merchants,
and being made of hard American wood were not easily
gnawed by " bunny," and being also salted, cured him of
a tendency to overmuch gnawing, whilst benefiting him
with its saline. Three bacon boxes were placed one on
top of the other, with halves of brick at each of the four
corners for them to rest on. No. i hutch nearest the
ground, this placed on four (part) bricks was tilted a
little to the back, so that the moisture ran back, along
the back at bottom were bored some holes for droppings
and urine to fall through into a long wooden trough
below. No. 2 was set on No. i, and No. 3 on No. 2.
Each tilted an inch or so further back, and so no drain-
age ran out at the front as is the disgusting case in some
dirty rabbitries, but at the back, and all the droppings
and urine were put daily as manure on some clay ground
I had, and wonderfully large strawberries were produced
thereon. There was no partition in the hutch for breeding
purposes. When the does' time for parturition came
they were supplied well with fern or coarse hay a few
days before, and they made their nest in which part they
liked, and had then a piece of canvas dropped over the
greater part of the front of the hutch. The front was of
small mesh wire to keep out rats and mice, and half of
the front was occupied with a wire door in a wooden
frame, with a quarter of the length on each side also
wired. Leather hinges and wood catches completed an
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 563
excellent hutch, which, when whitewashed internally and
painted green on the front externally, presented a very
neat and seemly appearance at the average cost of three
shillings, and not, as many visitors thought, thirty
shillings.
The practice of putting all sized rabbits in small tea
chests is cruel in the extreme. The rabbit often enjoys
a frolic and a romp. How can it do this when cramped
in a little tiny box ? Rabbits are fond of nibbling, and
will eat almost any vegetable food or grain or hay ; but
it is well in a rabbit farm to feed them three times a day
with just enoiigh and no waste. } udgment must be used
herein and common sense. Does with young require
more. In summer comfrey, chicory, dandelion, cauli-
flower leaves (rescued from the cook's contribution to the
pig tub), vetches, sowthistle, hogweed, plantain, clover,
are all good, with a little hay, and, as a treat now and
then and to fatten, some oats. In winter, roots, swedes,
mangold wurzel, turnip, carrot, beetroot, whatever is
going. Some unfortunate rabbits are doomed by their
youthful owners to nothing but bran and cabbage, their
only change being cabbage and bran. Barley meal or
pollard occasionally are good. Rabbits, like ourselves,
like change of food.
I kept my five hundred rabbits in hutches in a very
large yard to keep off dogs coverings only over the
ranges of hutches and they were always healthy and
vigorous, enjoyed the air and sun, and passed through
several most severe winters. Rabbits' diseases are not
numerous if kept as described, but if neglected and left
in a filthy state in confined air and cramped hutches,
soon suffer as we should. When attacked with disease
see to the matter promptly. Prevention is better than
cure.
564 LAND:
(i.) SNUFFLES. A kind of consumption with cold is one
disease, running at the nose, which, if left unattended to,
eventually becomes of a thick and glutinous character,
injuring breathing. The best thing to do is to separate
the animal at once from the others, put it in the hospital
(a warm place), keep it warm, feed it well a few boiled
potatoes with some salt ; barley meal mixed into a paste
and given warm is beneficial. Carrots, too, now are good.
As medicine, put some crushed carraway seed or powder
on a spoon enough to cover a three-penny piece hold
up the rabbit strongly with your left hand by the ears and
quickly insert the powder by the side of his mouth.
(n.) EARGUM. Caused by a minute mite burrowing
in the ear and creating therein an obstruction which gets
all waxed up, Take this carefully out with small nippers
and pour in a little olive oil, and, if a bad case, with a
little sulphur added thereto. Feed well.
(in.) PARALYSIS generally attacks the hind-quarters,
caused by damp in a small hutch. Give three grains of
camphor, two grains of sulphate of iron in a little liquorice
and treacle, as a pill, every other day. Apply along the
spine a little turpentine, well rubbed in twice a week.
Keep rabbit warm with nutritious food. Attack lasts
from six to ten days.
(iv.) POT BELLY. Peculiar to young rabbits from six
weeks to six months caused by hutch being too small,,
and not enough dry food. Never give a rabbit wet green
food at any time. For pot belly or dropsy give plenty
of room to run about, and dry food, barley, oats, leaves of
oak tree dried, parsley, thyme, or ivy leaves if the rabbit
will eat them.
(v.) DISEASED LIVER. This complaint is difficult to
cure ; is caused by a small parasite called a " fluke "
which attaches itself to the liver and rots it. If the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 565
rabbit is of little value it had better be killed at once, but
if a valuable one to attempt the cure is worth a trial.
Treatment, three drachms nitre powder, two drachms of
ginger in powder, quarter pound common salt, three pints
boiling water poured over these and when luke-warm add
three ounces of rectified spirits of turpentine and agitate
thoroughly teaspoonful early each morning, an hour
before the rabbit is fed, repeated three times at intervals
of four days. Shake mixture well before giving it.
(vi.) CONSTIPATION. Rabbit needs green food also a
little salts and carraway.
(vn.) DIARRHCEA. Give dry food and acorns, a
little ground cinnamon in new milk is good. The dung
of the rabbit being in the form of a pill it is easy to detect
either constipation or diarrhoea in any valuable rabbit.
(Yin.) MANGE. Treat with sprinkling of flowers of
sulphur on parts affected, and give judiciously green
food.
There are other diseases, but these are the chief.
Rabbitries must be kept dry, clean and sweet. Sawdust
is very useful in the alleys and backs of hutches, being
absorbent. On the Continent, to fatten rabbits and
better keep them loose in numbers castration is largely
used. Rabbit warrens, under certain conditions, pay and
yield large profits to several owners in Great Britain.
These should be in a dry not clay soil.
The prices of good fancy rabbits are high, and help
largely to make up the good margin of profit on syste-
matic and economic rabbit culture. I have often had
five pounds for specially good rabbits, but the main item
of the profit is from the regular supply sold weekly, and
the more this is done directly to the consumer the better.
V. H. MOYLE.
566 LAND :
CHAPTER LXI.
BEE PRODUCTS (HONEY AND WAX AND THEIR
APPLICATIONS).
BY THE REV. V. H. MOYLE, M.A., F.R.H.S.,
Vicar of Ashampstead, Berks y Member of the Council of the Swanley Horticultural
College ; Vice- President of the Berks, and also of the Wilts ; Bee Keepers* Association ;
and Sole Medallist for Honey and Wax Applications at the Health Exhibition, 1884,
and many other places, 1885-90, and '91.
THE pages of this book being devoted to showing what
may be made of the land, it may not be amiss to show
also what can be done with the products of the " little
busy bee," for every well-ordered farm and garden has
its apiary, and our fathers, perhaps, generally esteemed
the bees' products higher than we do. I will not here
dwell on the valuable medicinal properties of "apic acid,"
prepared from the poison bag of the bee, a homoeopathic
bottle of which is now before me, as the very idea of a
bee sting is dreadful to some folk, but I will pass at
once to consider several of the applications of honey and
wax, and why I have given some time to their uses.
Being a bee-keeper, and whilst acting as Honorary
Secretary to the Berkshire Bee Keepers' Association some
years ago, I often lectured on bees and bee-keeping, and
many were induced through my lectures to begin bee-
keeping. It occurred to me that it would help on
" apiculture" if I exhibited at the Health Exhibition
some of the applications of honey and wax which I have
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 567
been instrumental in getting made by eminent manu-
facturers and others. There was no class in that ex-
hibition's catalogue for goods wherein honey or wax were
mentioned, but my exhibit attracted so much kindly
notice from the judges, and also the general public, that
a special certificate and silver medal was awarded to me
as a pioneer of progress in this direction, and subse-
quently, at a great number of other exhibitions in
England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, similar
honours have been awarded me for similar exhibits. I
desire to draw the attention of my countrymen to the
advantages of bee-keeping, because the products thereof
can be so variously utilized.
" Honey as a food," as an eminent German says, "is
second to none, on account of its great solubility in the
blood, its power of providing for the heating of the body,
and the maintenance of life. I strongly recommend it
as food for children, especially for those who are growing
quickly, since it provides an easily digested food, and
changes their pale faces and languid condition to rude
health, It is also useful to the aged, from its heat-giving
properties. Do you wish to enjoy a green old age ?
Eat daily the most precious food of the ancients milk
and honey. Break some bread in a cup with milk and
pure honey. This is the most healthy, the most nourish-
ing, and the most refreshing breakfast."
Now the quality of the honey consumed is very
important, as there are many spurious forms introduced
from Switzerland and America, and this spurious honey
has in many cases caused a prejudice against the real thing.
Mr. Otto Hehner, Honorary Secretary to the Society
of Public Analysts, and Analyst to the British Bee-
keepers' Association, etc., etc., makes the following state-
ment : " Out of thirty-nine samples of honey purchased
568 LAND :
from retail dealers, twenty-six being avowedly English,
nine American, and four Swiss, twenty-four of the
English samples were genuine, and two (which I have
good reason to believe of American origin) were
adulterated with corn syrup ; of the nine American
samples seven were adulterated, and of the four Swiss
samples not one was gemiine"
The English public seems as yet to prefer honey
derived, nominally, from Alpine herbs, but practically from
potatoes and sulphuric acid, and from mythical Californian
bee farms, to that collected from English hedgerows and
meadows and gardens.
Again, a well-known writer on this subject tells us
that "When the English public have learnt to understand
that the granulation of honey is a test of its purity,
English honey must have the preference to that imported,
which is usually mixed with glucose (corn syrup) osten-
sibly to prevent its granulation. In no country is honey
produced that can excel that gathered in England."
The head master of a public school has said, " I can
strongly recommend the use of pure English honey.
My boys, and I have more than sixty in my house alone,
are particularly fond of honey, and there is no better food
for them. One of my children has derived manifest
benefit from the constant use of it."
I am glad to say the imports of foreign and spurious
honey are decreasing and the export of British honey
increasing, and I have laboured hard to promote this
state of things and also the increased use of honey and
wax in various ways. Pure British honey, containing as
it does the best saccharine element, of necessity affords
the best saccharine portion to many high-class kinds of
confectionery, preserves, medical preparations, beverages,
etc. Honey, derived from the Hebrew ghoneg, literally
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 569
means i; delight." It is a common expression "Honey
is a luxury," but honey should rather be regarded as food
in one of its most concentrated forms. True it does not
add to the growth of muscle as does beef-steak, but it
does impart other properties no less necessary to health
and vigorous physical and intellectual action, and to the
business man, mental force, a sweet disposition, and a
bright intellect, if used regularly. One pound of honey
will go as far as two pounds of butter.
Knowing well from classic literature how much the
ancients used pure honey in various ways, it occurred to
me, with a view to promote the increased production and
sale of pure honey, to try in these modern times to get
several leading firms to make various specialities of theirs
with honey as the saccharine element, and I exhibited
very many samples of these at the Health Exhibition, in
1884, and elsewhere since most successfully, and have
had some imitators also.
Messrs. Huntleyand Palmer, Reading Honey Drop
Biscuits.
Mr. J. Cross, Reading Corn and Honey Food
especially food for children.
Messrs. Cadbury, Birmingham Honey Cremes and
Honey Nougat Pistache.
Messrs. Fry & Sons, Bristol Pure British Honey
Chocolate Creams ; ditto in tablets.
Messrs. Clarke, Nickolls & Coombes British Honey
Caramels.
Mr. Ward, Kensington Honey Whole Meal Bread.
Mr. Skuse, Praed Street, London Honey Herbal
Tablets.
Messrs. Field, Lambeth British Honey Soap.
Messrs. Tunbridge and Wright, Reading Quillaia
and Honey Dentifrice Water, Honey Chap Ointment,
570 LAND :
Honey Water Perfume, Honey and Glycerine Ointment,
Honey Paste for Skin, Honey Dog Medicine, Honey
Drink for Horses and Cattle, Honey Flip, Honey Sooth-
ing Syrup, and a host of other preparations by different
manufacturers of specialities, beverages, etc.
Fruits can be most advantageously preserved in
honey, and are simply delicious. Honey vinegar is most
admirable for its refined tartness. Honey noyau, honey
currant wine, metheglin-mead, honey liquorice, honey
tea cakes, Hamburg honey cake, honey apple cake,
honey fruit cake, honey sponge cake, honey lemon cake,
and many others are among those delicacies with honey
which all ladies wishing to make dainty dishes to place
before their guests will do well to acquaint themselves
with, and I will gladly supply any subscriber to " LAND "
with a number of such receipts too numerous to mention
here which when made up they will pronounce superb,
and by making and using and distributing help on our
land's resources.
Wax, too, can be applied to a great number of uses.
Wax candles (fine bees'- wax candles) are not, unfor-
tunately, so much used as formerly, save in churches ;
but for furniture polishes, for dubbin for boots, for dental
surgery and modelling purposes, as well as artistic uses,
it is most serviceable, and the " waxing of the thread "
has by no means gone out, nor has sealing wax passed
away in toto in these days of gummed envelopes. I
have mentioned only a few of the many uses to which
these two products of the bee can be applied, but these
alone are sufficient to show that there is ample room for
" apiculture " on our land, and for sale of and use of their
productions.
V. H. MOYLE.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
CHAPTER LXII.
POULTRY FARMING.
BY C. F. DOWSETT, F.S.I.,
Author of various Articles on Land and House Properties ; "Striking Events in
Irish History " ; 6r.
SPEAKING from an experience of several years, derived
from a knowledge of farmers in various counties, I
venture, in a very friendly spirit, to remark that there
exists amongst them great ignorance on the subject of
poultry farming.
On farm after farm, I have inspected the poultry
houses and found them dirty either not ventilated, or
too exposed to the weather, and generally most ill
adapted to the requirements of successful poultry
farming : the perches being often mere sticks, which,
for heavy birds, are sufficient to produce malformation.
Cleanliness is of primary importance ; the floor should
be hard, so that it can be swept daily, and the arrange-
ment of the perches should be such as that the droppings,
which, of course, occur principally at night, can be easily
collected. Some years ago, I made a careful and very
profitable study of Mr. Lewis Wright's book on poultry,
published by Messrs. Cassell, and had a poultry house
built on the principle he laid down for heavy
birds, which is inexpensive and singularly simple. A
nest of laying divisions on the ground were covered
by a broad board, extending about six inches beyond
57 2 LAND :
the uprights of the nests ; above this board (about six
inches) was a scaffold pole, on which the large Brahmas
roosted. The necessity for a scaffold pole is seen in the
size of the bird's foot, and the short distance from the
ground in the bird's bulk. This board was kept strewn
with ashes, and the droppings, of course, mingled with
them, so that the excrement of fifty or a hundred birds
could be raked off in the morning into a box kept for
the purpose in one minute ; and this excrement is worth
from three to seven shillings a hundredweight, according
to the market for it. With smaller light high-flying birds,
such as the Hamburg, Spanish, Houdan, Polands, and
even Dorkings, much smaller perches are requisite, and
should be placed higher from the ground, but they can,
with a little contrivance, be so placed as that the droppings
shall be easily collected and not defile the house, much
less the laying nests. Without a strict observance of
cleanliness, poultry cannot be healthy, and, if not healthy,
cannot be profitable stock. The coal ashes answer a
double purpose, not only to promote cleanliness by licking
up the droppings, but they destroy fleas : where the
birds' feathers are often full of ash-dust, fleas cannot live.
I once employed a man who, with his wife, had managed
a poultry farm, but they resigned it for the reason that
they were plagued with fleas upon their persons. Another
situation on a poultry farm was offered them, which they
declined for this reason ; when the owner observed to
them that he had not a single flea in all his poultry, and
the reason was that he kept ashes in the poultry house
and ashes in a dry shed for their bath ; for, be it remem-
bered, poultry take their daily bath in dust as a pigeon
does in water ; and when they wallow in the. dust,
shaking it through their feathers, they cleanse themselves
from the impurities of insect life. I always kept lime in
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 573
one corner of the poultry house, and the natural move-
ments of the birds caused a thin dust of lime occasionally
to arise, and this mingled with their feathers and was a
double preservative of cleanliness. When a rat made
his appearance I took care to fill his hole with lime, and
I found rats would never work through lime.
I have seen poultry houses which had not apparently
been cleansed for months, and the effluvia was simply
dangerous to the health of any living creature, and under
such circumstances it is just impossible to farm poultry
with success.
A poultry house, too, should be warm to breed with
profit. Chickens must be hatched so as to be ready for
the market as table birds in March or April, and com-
mence laying in December, when eggs are dear.
A very common fault, I have found, is to sit the birds
in a dry place, a box, basket, unused manger, loft, or such
place, and the result often is, that many of the chicks do
not hatch out, the reason being that the moisture of the
egg becomes so dried that the poor little chick is
thoroughly glued to the shell. Sitting nests should
always be upon the natural earth, so that the heat from
the hen's body should draw up the moisture to the eggs,
as is the case with them in their natural condition. I
have often sprinkled my eggs with luke-warm water with
advantage.
Plenty of really clean water is a necessary requirement
to profitable poultry farming.
Upon a farm much less may be said of food than in
confined runs, because the birds have a wide range, and
often a wide selection of food in summer ; but eggs are
wanted when they fetch the highest price in the market,
and this is when the ground is often covered with snow
or crusted by frost. Food then should always be given
574 LAND :
soft in the morning and hard at night, because in the
morning it should be as soon as possible got into the
system, while at night it should be retained in the crop,
so that the system can feed upon it all night. I always
gave my birds a hot breakfast in winter. Spratt's food put
into a bucket with boiling water added, and left (say
twenty minutes) to swell, is a capital breakfast, especially
in confined runs, for it contains particles of meat and
oyster shell the latter or lime of some kind is necessary
to the bird for the formation of the egg-shell. In very
cold weather I have added pepper. At night Indian
corn, barley, buckwheat, or other grain.
In confined runs it must ever be borne in mind that
poultry must have daily, green food, fresh water, a dry
bath, and perfect cleanliness ; if these conditions cannot
be observed poultry ought not to be kept.
An important feature of success is to get rid of the
old birds in the autumn and replace with those hatched
in March or April, and always to buy from healthy stock.
Some of the old-fashioned Surrey fowls, commonly
called barn-door fowls, are as profitable, I believe, as
any for eggs. I always preferred a cross between a dark
Brahma and a grey Dorking ; they lay fine eggs, are
splendid table birds, and are very tame, being easily
handled. Houdans are capital birds ; they lay large eggs
and have fine flesh.
A common fault in confined runs is over-feeding.
If birds do not run readily and pick up the food given,
it shows that they do not want it, and food should never
be allowed to lie about the ground. A great stimulant
to egg-producing is flesh horse flesh, etc. On farms in
the spring, the snails and slugs excite the laying properties.
On some farms the variety of food obtainable by the
birds is so abundant that they want little feeding ; but
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 575
birds are often over-fed in summer and starved in winter,
and thus few eggs are produced, and what are produced
from starved birds contain less nitrogen. Food should
be changed. Buckwheat stimulates the production of
eggs, and is much used in France. If more careful
attention were given to poultry farming we should secure
the large profit which we now pay to our French neigh-
bours for this delicious and valuable article of food.
As a "hobby" poultry-keeping is both interesting
and profitable, and as an investment it ought to be highly
remunerative if conducted on scientific principles. It is
a standing rebuke to our intelligence and our enterprise
that millions of eggs are annually imported into England
from the Continent of Europe.
C. F. DOWSETT.
576 LAND
CHAPTER LXIII.
FRONTAGES TO OCEANS AND RIVERS.
BY CHARLES E. CURTIS, F.S.I., F.S.S.,
Professor of Forest Economy, Field Engineering, and General Estate Management at
the College of Agriculture, Doivnton, Salisbury ; Member of the American Academy
of Political and Social Science ; Consulting Forester to the Right Honourable Lord
O'Neill, Shanes Castle, Antrim, Ireland; Author of " Estate Management"
3rd edition (Field Office], "Practical Forestry" (Office of Land Agents' Record},.
''Principles of Forestry" (R.A. Society 's Journal], " Valuation of Property
(Corporeal and Incorporeal)" etc.
A VOLUME could be written upon the subject of this
chapter, but the object is rather to show how frontages
to seas and rivers may enhance the value of land than to
set out in full detail all the rights and privileges of
riparian and coast owners. The subject is full of intense
interest to both the owners of such land and the frequenters
of our coast-line. At the present time, when the pressure
of mental and bodily labour leads all classes who can afford
it to spend a few weeks each year on the coast or river
banks, there is not unlikely to occur a friction between
the owners and the public. The former, having rights,
become more exacting as the public pressure in the form
of trespass increases ; and the determination to uphold
public privileges as against the claims of owners has now
become the rule rather than the exception. What private
persons could not do, combination effects. All this tends
to bring into importance the subject of sea and river
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 577
frontages, which has been allowed to slumber more or
less for many generations. The youths of the present
day push their boats, canoes, and sailing crafts into the
broads, estuaries, rivers, and private waters, and rouse
the ire of the owner of the soil, who is apt to forget the
existence of this public pressure which is working silently
but surely in restricting ancient individual rights.
In the case of Great Britain and Ireland there is
naturally a great proportion of land bordering on the
coast-line, so that the interests are somewhat wide-
spread. A sea boundary naturally carries with it many-
privileges and advantages, though it is possible, of
course, that disadvantages may sometimes attach. The
balance is undoubtedly in favour of a sea frontage,
whether we look upon it from a social or an economic
aspect. With such an uncertain boundary the question
naturally arises, What is the limit ? Prima facie the fore-
shore is the property of the Crown the term " foreshore "
applies to the shore between high and low water, and an
owner abutting upon it must show title before he can
exercise the rights of ownership upon it. t: High water,"
however, is no definite term, as it varies greatly- Twice a
year, for example, at the periods of the equinox March
and September the tides are abnormally high, and in
many cases the sea may encroach over large areas ; the
spring tides, which occur twice every month, often cover
a large area ; and the ordinary tides, which occur twice
daily, may be considered normal. It has been held that
the owner of the adjoining land may claim to the line
of ordinary high water. This renders it possible for
every owner of land to determine his own boundary,
subject, of course, to infractions of this normal condition.
These we find in the gradual encroachment of the sea,
exemplified by the submerged forests, caused by subsi-
2 P
578 LAND :
dence of the land, and raised beaches which show
elevation of the land ; landslips, too, often change the
outline of the coast. But these changes, though recent
to the geologist, are remote to the present generation,
and only occasionally affect the question of ownership.
Instances of raised beaches are found on the coasts of
Cornwall, Devonshire, Somersetshire, and Northumber-
land, and buried forests are found in Devonshire,
Somersetshire, and other parts of the coast. Landslips
occur mostly where the greensand forms the boundary
line, and this is manifest upon the north coast of Ireland.
Between Larne and Glenarm the road hugs the coast,
and upon this men have constantly to be employed in
clearing away the obstructions caused by the constant
slipping of the gault clay.
At the mouths of rivers, too, a change of coast-line
constantly occurs through silting up, and in some parts
of the coast, notably the mouth of the H umber, this is
artificially carried out by what is known as warping,
which will be presently referred to as one of the advan-
tages of a coast-line boundary.
For the purposes of this chapter, however, our coast-
line may be looked upon as determined by the line of
seaweed which is thrown up by the ordinary high tide ;
this line, in point of fact, being a contour line.
Now, what privileges and rights attach to this
peculiar frontage ? They may be divided into two
classes, the social or personal, and the economic. The
first appeals to the enjoyment arising from fishing,
fowling, bathing, boating, yachting, and scenery, and to
that charm which cannot be conveyed in words. The
latter appeals to the power of warping, sea-weed deposits,
saltings, carriage of material and produce, uniform and
constant wind-power, and to the possibility of the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 579
creation of a seaside resort with building privileges and
advantages.
o
The combination of these two classes must bring
about an increased demand, and thereby be the means of
increasing the capital value of the land. It may, in fact,
be looked upon as an "unearned increment"; but
perhaps the term '' inherent capability of the soil " may
more correctly attach to it. This inherent capability
may be largely developed by artificial means. The value
attaching, nevertheless, will be greatly influenced by
local circumstances that is, by site and aspect, natural
shelter, safe and deep waters for mooring, good anchoring
bottom, a rock bottom for fishing, sands for bathing,
presence of sea- weed for manure, cover for wild fowl,
adaptation to oyster cultivation, beauty of coast-line, and
so forth. It is clear that all these advantages are not
likely to be found at one and the same place, and that
in many instances they will be counterbalanced by
disadvantages ; but under any circumstance, the advan-
tages may be enhanced and the disadvantages minimised
by wise and judicious action on the part of the owner.
In some places upon the coast will be found large
areas of arid sands, yielding nothing to the landowner,
and to reclaim these is a matter of great expense and
doubtful profit. Nevertheless, there are means of
bringing these sands into cultivation, which it may be
well to draw attention to. Sometimes when the coast is
open to strong winds, and the sand is fine, the sands
shift and move, in the form of dunes, landwards. Large
areas have been covered in this way ; the inhabitants
have had to retreat, and much damage has been done.
The greatest difficulty has been experienced, and an
enormous outlay incurred in checking this encroachment
of sand ; but success has attended the efforts. Turn, for
580 LAND I
example, to the dunesbetween Bayonne and La Tremblade.
Here in some cases the dunes have attained a height of
over two hundred feet, with, of course, a gentle inclina-
tion to the sea ; they run in parallel and continuous
lines and in accordance with the form of coast-line. By
means which it is not here necessary to dwell upon, but
which are within the powers of ordinary landowners,
this shifting has been stayed, and what was once an arid
desert is now a prosperous district, yielding a large
supply of resin from the cluster pine, and employing a
large population. It mast, of course, be evident that
if the sand shifts, the so-called litterol dune must be
first fixed and afterwards maintained, and this can be
done in various ways, but chiefly by sowing grasses with
creeping roots. Inside this dune and the same applies
to fixed sands the ground may be stocked with trees,
when organic matter from the fall of leaf will soon be
added to the sand, and fertility will take the place of
sterility. The best trees for the litterol or outside dune,
is the cluster pine -pinus pinaster ; and on the land side
the Scotch and Austrian pines may be planted. The
cluster pine throws down a long tap-root and feeble
lateral roots, which, however, develop vigorous vertical
fibres. This peculiar development of root and fibre fits
it for our sandy sea-shores.
Turn now to riparian boundaries. What has been
advanced in favour of a sea frontage is applicable to that
of a river, at least so far as they can apply. The boundary,
prima facie, is the middle of the stream ; that is, the pro-
prietor of each bank is the proprietor of half the land
covered by the stream, there being no property in the
water. All having a right of access may use flowing
water. The right they possess, however, is only a
reasonable right, and they cannot deprive others of an
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 581
equal right by diminishing the supply or diverting the
stream. It is not necessary here to dwell upon the laws
which govern these matters, as no doubt they will be
treated of in another chapter ; but it may be briefly
stated that a riparian owner has a natural right,
incident to the property, to have the stream flow
to him in its natural state. He may make any use
of it he pleases, provided he does not thereby tres-
pass on the rights of the proprietors above or below
him.
Now, a river frontage confers many privileges upon
the owner, privileges which bear directly upon the value
of the property. Among these are, as before stated,
boating, bathing, fishing, carriage of produce, fowling,
the power of irrigation, the power of driving turbines,
rams, wheels, and for purposes of mills. In some rivers,
too (but not many), there is the presence of what is
locally called "warp," which is mud in a fine state. This
may be, by artificial means, turned aside and allowed
to remain until the warp has been deposited, when it
is let off and fresh water turned in. By this means
new agricultural areas have been created, which, when
organic matter has accumulated, become rich and
valuable.
Then there is the osier, the salix viminalis, which may
be planted on the banks or moist spots, and which becomes
under good management a most profitable crop. On such
lands, too, if not too wet, the poplars, willows, and other
trees which enjoy a cold bottom may be planted. The
reed forms in some places a crop of considerable value,
and the water-cress has been the means, under good
cultivation, of conferring fortune upon many worthy men.
Last, but not least, is the benefit conferred upon our hill
farms by the presence of water-meadows. In some places
582 LAND I
where the water-meadow system extends over a large
area the farms which border upon the river front are
so laid off as to secure to each a fair proportion.
They, of course, suffer to some extent by the shape
of the farm rendered necessary to secure this, but the
value of the meadow is so great that this drawback is
forgotten.
As a set-off, of course, there is in some cases the
liability to floods, but this is by no means general, and it
may often be met by concerted action. In fact this is
one of those matters which may be met by wise legis-
lation ; the difficulty lies in the apportionment of the
cost, for the dry uplands naturally object to pay a share
upon the plea that they will not benefit, they do not
recognise the fact that they contribute their quota of the
water.
It must be admitted that sea and river frontages confer
advantages both to the owners of property and their
tenants, and of course to the public, so far as they have
access. On the coast of Ireland the collection of seaweed
has for a long period been an industry which has con-
ferred a great benefit upon the people. The tenants on
the coast exercise the right of collecting that which is
deposited upon their share of the frontage, which seems
to have been allotted by custom. This is collected after
storms and hung upon wooden frames to dry ; in the
summer it is burned and the ash sold to firms in Glasgow
and elsewhere. Iodine, however, is now obtained from
other sources, so that the industry, though still existent,
is waning. This is only one instance of a frontage right
to tenants. We might extend this to the development of
watering places, to the building of piers, quays, break-
waters, esplanades, marinas, villas, hotels, and such like,
but it would be travelling beyond the purposes of the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 583
chapter. Sufficient has been said to show the value of
ocean and river frontages, whether they are apparent or
latent, and owners and would-be purchasers of land will
do well to thoroughly and wisely investigate the privileges
and rights which they possess, with a view to their
development.
CHARLES E. CURTIS.
LAND I
CHAPTER LXIV.
FORESTRY.
BY CHARLES E. CURTIS, F.S.I., F.S.S.,
Professor of Forest Economy, Field Engineering, and General Estate Management at
the College of Agriculture^ Downton, Salisbury; Member of the American Academy
of Political and Social Science ; Consulting Forester to the Right Honoiirable Lord
O'Neill, Shanes Castle, Antrim, Ireland; Aitthor of "Estate Management"
3rd edition ("Field" Office}, "Practical Forestry" (Office of "Land Agents'
Record"), "Principles of Forestry" (R. A. Society's Journal), " Valuation of
Property (Corporeal and Incorporeal)," etc.
THE term "forestry" carries with it a sense of sylvan
beauty, accompanied with magnitude, but it is in this
country a somewhat misapplied term. We have not
those extensive tracts of woodland which we find in
many parts of Europe, and to which the word "forest" is
truly applied. True, we have the New Forest, the
Forest of Dean, Savernake, and extensive tracts in
Scotland, but even these are small compared with the
vast areas in France, Germany, Austria, and Russia.
Nevertheless, " forestry" conveys a meaning which it is
impossible to misunderstand, and there seems no other
single word capable of taking its place. In Great
Britain and Ireland we have areas of woodland of
various sizes belonging to various owners, all, more
or less, under a different form of management, and it
is impossible to grasp any true principle from the various
forms employed. This is not to be wondered at when
we consider that each individual owner has his own ideas
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 585
as to method. There is no State control, no expression
of public feeling to influence the conduct of the owners.
Years ago previous to 1840 public feeling was greatly
exercised in the matter, for the supply of oak was failing,
and fear was entertained with regard to the Navy, but
iron came into use for shipbuilding, and public feeling
was at once allayed. Since this, little notice has been
taken of home forestry, and owners have drifted into a
species of managem'ent which suits their own purposes
and ends. Our woodlands have been looked upon as
capital kept in reserve, and heavy demands have been
made upon them to meet periods of difficulty and depres-
sion. The idea of managing them with a view to a
regular and uniform yearly income has seldom been
entertained, and only recently has this view presented
itself to the landowners of England. It is owing to this
that we find in so many instances, as we walk through
wood after wood, so few good trees left to mature. We
find, as it were, the culls left, and the grand timber still
in full vigour either marked for felling or already felled
to meet the requirements of the owner. Instructions
have been given probably to prepare for an auction, a
certain sum being required, and trees have been marked
to meet this, little or no regard having been paid to the
future. Only recently we walked through woods, and
found trees marked so recklessly that had the instructions
not been recalled, not a tree of value would have been
left. Again, we asked an agent of a large property what
his annual returns were for timber ; mentioning a high
figure, we asked if this could be maintained. The
answer was that it could not, and that it must cease
at an early period, but necessity had no law or to this
effect. That under good management a wood may yield
from three to five per cent, per annum upon its capital
586 LAND :
value does not seem at present to enter the mind of the
forester. To draw upon the woodlands to a greater
extent than this is to draw upon capital.
The long period of agricultural depression has induced
landowners to turn their attention to their woods and
plantations, and we have no doubt now entered upon a new
era of forestry, which willjin time materially affect the
quantity and quality of our home-grown timber. The
area is increasing, and the ancient woodlands are more
carefully preserved, and those areas so long mismanaged
are now being restored.
Many who live in towns and who know little of the
true economy of forestry who, in fact, look upon our
beautiful woodland tracts as the resort of pheasants and
rabbits consider them very beautiful and well managed,
and the presence of large areas presents a charm which
tends to maintain the value of our landed estates, quite
apart from the intrinsic value of the timber. If our
landowners would consider the indirect value of their
woodlands, and bear in mind that their presence adds
materially to the value of their whole estate, they would
exercise greater care and preserve more completely both
the area and the quality of the timber.
There are, too, large tracts which will not under
present circumstances pay the owner to cultivate, and no
tenant can be found to invest his small capital in such
land. There is therefore no return, and certain constant
expenditure renders the ownership of such land a burden
rather than an enjoyment. The question therefore pre-
sents itself, Will it pay to plant ? Too often this has
been done without that knowledge of forestry which is
so essential, and the result has been disappointment and
loss, whereas if this had been more fully considered the
result might have been different.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 587
There seems a prevalent idea that waste land may
be planted, and if planted, that the usual mixture of trees
may be adopted. Consequently we have plantations
wretched in appearance, and holding out no hope of
future success. Rabbits are allowed to increase, and the
whole becomes a failure. Now if the soil were examined,
the site and aspect considered, and trees chosen which are
adapted to these various conditions, we should probably
see success instead of failure. The old idea that larch will
grow anywhere is, perhaps, the greatest of all sources of
loss. It is the one tree which requires good soil, an
airy site, and a sunny aspect that is, if a larch worthy of
the name is required. Scaffold poles may, no doubt, be
grown upon poor lands, but not large timber. It is not
sufficiently known that soil has a great effect upon the
quality of timber. On some soils, even if we succeed in
growing a tree of good girth and height, the timber is
found dry and of poor quality. This is especially marked
in the Scotch pine and the larch, and the true forester
can read the external indications like a book. This can
come, however, only by observation, and much has been
done when the spirit of observation has been awakened.
This power of observation, too, is of great importance
in cases of disease. There are indications which present
themselves to the keen observer which may readily
escape the ordinary passer by.
It is well to know if the plantations have been attacked
by any of the various enemies which prey upon the
various trees of which they consist. It is not easy after
the trees have left the nursery to combat any of those
attacks, and often the most careful management will fail
to protect them ; but, nevertheless, good forestry will
often ward off what might otherwise result in total
destruction. Over-crowded plantations, choked drains,
588 LAND :
the collection of litter and rubbish, all tend to disease.
Under these circumstances the stems are constantly damp,
and the various spores of fungi find a suitable nursery,
the lateral branches die, and foliage is lost ; the tap-roots
decay and cause injury to the heart- wood ; and the trees
become generally enfeebled, and are unable to resist the
attack to which they are subjected. On the other hand,
early and judicious thinning, attention to drains, the
periodical clearing away of rubbish, tend to ample foliage,
a dry bark, and a free growth. The trees are healthy,
and the disease, though severe, is often successfully
resisted.
" Disease " is a term often incorrectly applied, for
many of the ills to which trees are subject arise from
causes which cannot be called disease. When trees pass
the period of maturity, whether this arises from sheer old
age or from causes which bring about pre-maturity, the
effecc is that of disease, though the cause is natural.
In well-managed woodland there should be no decay
from age, for this is waste. Before trees reach this period
they should be felled and realised, for, for this purpose
have they been grown.
This "permissive waste" in timber is, perhaps, one of
the greatest sources of loss to the landowner. It is a
loss not apparent and therefore is borne with indifference,
but nevertheless it is a substantial one. There is an in-
herent feeling in landowners difficult to overcome, that
certain tracts of woodland must not be reduced in area,
and to secure this trees are allowed to live on long after
they have ceased to be of value to the merchant.
Isolated oaks and other large trees, beautiful in them-
selves, are for appearance sake permitted to remain,
although they are rapidly deteriorating in value. This of
course must be, for otherwise much of the sylvan beauty
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 589
would be lost, but this preservation does not apply to areas
of woodland, and no such waste should be permitted.
The planting of trees may be for commercial pur-
poses, for shelter, or for ornament. Whether for one or
the other, the principles of forestry should be applied.
The object in each case is the same, viz., to obtain the
best trees of the kinds chosen which can be grown in
our climate. Too often this is forgotten and the trees
are planted under circumstances which render a perfect
growth impossible. The usual false step is over-crowding
in the first instance, and postponement of thinning until
too late. The evil arising from this is evident in each
case, for in the first instance the trees become weak and
overdrawn. In the case of shelter, a mass of feeble trees
has to do imperfectly what one well-grown tree would
better perform ; and in the case of ornamental planting,
the very object is defeated at the outset, for symmetry
and beauty are lost when the tree loses its character.
The term "forestry" applies chiefly to the management
of large tracts, but it is not altogether a misapplied term
in the case of street planting and the planting of private
and public gardens. Much has been done of late to
beautify our streets and open spaces, but there is still
room for improvement. The skilled observer learnt an
important lesson last year (1891) a year which will be
remembered as one of the most disastrous during the
decade for the limes, sycamores, and horse-chestnuts
suffered greatly from the wind and rain, and became
defoliated long before the usual period ; but the poplars
and planes suffered in no way, their foliage remaining
perfect up to the end of the season. Especially is this
the case with the Italian poplar, than which there is no
better tree for street planting, except, perhaps, that it
reaches maturity at too early a period.
590 LAND :
There is, and always will be, a great demand for
foreign timber, and under present circumstances home
timber cannot compete with it. This is because the
foreign timber is fully matured and has grown under
favourable conditions, unlike our own, which has either
been felled in its infancy or after maturity has been
passed. The timber merchant knows well that our
ordinary home-grown produce is unfitted for many im-
portant purposes, and buys chiefly to meet a local demand,
or for the few well-defined purposes which it is fitted for.
If the foreign supplies were to cease we could not find in
our woods the class of timber which is needed. To some
extent this may be met by the spread of the true prin-
ciples of forestry, but under the most approved rules and
principles we cannot expect perfection. The chief reason
is that private individuals cannot be expected to allow
their trees to reach a perfect growth. States alone can
achieve this. Under no circumstances, therefore, can we
become a timber-growing nation, but we may, nevertheless,
do much to improve both the quality and quantity of our
timber supply. The matter rests with the landowners,
and until they recognise this the teaching of forestry will
avail but little.
There is one link almost entirely missing in our
system, and that is the natural reproduction of trees.
True, in many cases blanks become filled up by the
germination and growth of self-deposited seeds, but this
natural planting meets with no encouragement. In
France and Germany it is the keystone of the success
which they so justly enjoy. This power of natural re-
production is not simply permitted, it is encouraged and
promoted, so that there is a regular rotation of a set
period. This natural power is, of course, aided where
necessary by planting, and temporary nurseries are made
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 59 1
in the various blocks to which the forester has access for
this purpose. It is, of course, impossible in one short
chapter to do more than draw attention to the advantages
to be gained by this procedure, but the subject is im-
portant, and much will be gained by a close study of the
French and German methods.
As an instance of this we may point to the fact that
many of the new plantations of Scotch pine upon our
poor heath-lands have proved total or partial failures ;
and yet on the lee-side of old plantations upon the same
class of land the seeds which have been blown over germ-
inate and grow freely. Thus nature will often perform
successfully what to the forester is impossible.
So long as the love of field sports and the love of
sylvan and rural beauty are inherent in us, so long will
the presence of trees be a necessity, and the landowner
who plants wisely will do more to increase the capital
value of his estate than he who expends large sums on
doubtful agricultural improvements.
CHARLES E. CURTIS.
59 2 LAND :
CHAPTER LXV.
ARBORICULTURE.
BY COMPTON READE,
Author of " Take care whom yoti Trust," etc.
" YE fair ancestral trees, so great and good!" Alas,
that the pious sentiment of the Elizabethan should have
become out of date in the Victorian era. For what
in the range of phenomena equals in majesty and
grace these princes of the vegetable kingdom ? The
Tubney Elm, the twin Caroline giants in the grove of
Magdalen, the King's Acre Elm in Herefordshire, the
hollow Oak of Scot's Common on the Chilterns not to
omit the Burnham Beeches, the Boscobel Oak, and the
exquisite beeches hard by Rufus' Stone in the New
Forest ; surely these, and such as these, should inspire
reverence ! What would Chevening be if divested of
the glory of its gnarled and knotted yews, whose birthday
might perhaps be referred to the Norman period ? Rob
Oxford of her Christ Church Walk that superb avenue-
Cambridge of the leafy softness that lends such supreme
grace to her " Backs," and these almce matres of ours
would sink to the level of commonplace. And if what
are termed ornamental trees be admittedly treasures,
why not the wold, the wood, the shawe I decline
to employ that silliest of hunting cant, the modern word,
spinny ? One can hardly realise the complexion of
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 593
that mind which can acquire gratification from the
destruction of a tree, a divine work of art, built slowly,
like Cologne Cathedral, in the long course of centuries.
Granted that people exist to whom destructiveness is the
keenest luxury. I have heard a Kentish rustic declare
that he never enjoyed anything so much as killing a fat
bullock, and a gentleman farmer admit that he pre-
served rabbits, not for their value, but for the pleasure
(sic) of shooting them. To those capable of appreciating
the untold value of the mighty gift of life, such sentiments
must appear astounding ; scarcely more so, however,
than the corresponding craze for felling trees, those
things of beauty which an hour may lay low, but which
half a century alone can raise to maturity ; which, if
allowed their few feet of soil, would gladden the eyes of
generations yet unborn. To my mind, nothing seems
so sorrowful as the downfall of a noble tree. It suggests
the largest argument in favour of pessimism ; a cruel
kismet ; omnia vanitas ! the ultimate triumph of evil ;
the death of the beautiful, and of hope.
Old England, the merry England of our ancestors,
must have been a paradise of greenery. In Pendale,
where now vast forests of chimneys belch forth eternal
filth, there ranged for miles a noble forest. Shakespeare,
with his particular penchant for poaching, may have
tracked the fallow deer those red brutes had not then
been invented over the glades, all green and gold, of the
Broomy hamlet, now metamorphosed into Birmingham.
One is ready, perhaps, to admit that the transformation of
Arcadia into Ironopolis may be a natural and inevitable
evolution, and if in the fulness of time it should be the
destiny of the whole country to be merged in the City of
London, it would be wisdom to accept such a conclusion
as resulting from the progressive multiplication of the
2Q
594 LAND :
species. Not having come to that yet, England being
neither all Pendale and Birmingham, nor absorbed totally
in the kingdom of Cockaigne, one may be allowed to
break a lance in favour of the poor trees. An illustrious
statesman occupies, unfortunately, the opposite pole, and
would seem by his example to have sanctioned the abuse
of the axe. Politics, however, do not enter into the
argument, for the sin of tree-slaughter lies also at the
door of Mr. Gladstone's political adversaries, who,
frankly, ought to have known better.
In short, this age has been one of wanton disregard
for the divine right of trees. Agricultural depression,
followed by a heavy drop in rents, has compelled many
a squire doubtless often with a pang of honourable
remorse to sacrifice the beauty of his estate. High
farming too has made itself responsible for a crusade
against growing timber, and impoverished landlords of
late have bowed submissively to each and all of their
tenants' irrational demands. To crown all, a Con-
servative Government -proh pudor ! forced through
Parliament a bill for the demolition of hedges. I say
demolition, since the levelling of hedges to two feet has
utterly ruined the hawthorn stocks, besides wrecking the
picturesque loveliness of our old English lanes. A more
shameful piece of tyranny than that bill never was
enacted, its sole motive being to render hunting easier
for three-legged quadrupeds and incompetent horsemen.
Between them they have done their utmost to debase
the incomparable landscapes of our native land. This,
however, in an age of utility will appear a very venial
offence, since it treads on the corns only of poets,
painters, and such feeble folk. We will therefore shift
our ground, and inquire whether the reduction of our
national timber-crop to put it in the vulgarest of terms
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 595
be really advantageous to owner, occupier, or the
nation itself, whose collective interests may be assumed
to over-ride those of either party ? A Philistine icono-
clasm, however blind to the uses of beauty, will yield to
considerations of profit, and revolt from the notion of
loss. In this country, whatever we are, we must bow
before the sceptre of business. It is our ultima ratio.
Is it true, then, that a bare and naked land pays ?
There is a certain school of faddists, composed mainly
of gentry who have spent their lives in cities and derive
their ideas of rural problems from the properties of the
stage, who mentally endue milkmaids with Watteau
costumes, and dress every rustic promiscuously in
velveteen. These philanthropists have invented a theory
that agriculture is neither a science nor an art, but an
intuition, and one capable of indefinite development
without capital, even under the most impossible con-
ditions. Rushing furiously upon statistics, they have
learnt that an enormous tract of land within these four
seas is not under cultivation, and they vault in conse-
quence to the conclusion that the remedy for urban
congestion is to plant out the unemployed on these un-
cultivated spots. We may imagine these congested ones
armed with a spade and endeavouring to delve the Black
Mountains or the Essex Marshes, struggling with the
flint stones of the chalk hills, or breaking their backs over
the mineral clay of the Clevelands. Solvuntztr tabula
risu. The thing is the hugest joke ! But the left wing
of these faddists sinks philanthropy in pure spite. It
casts its jaundiced eyes abroad, and perceives that certain
beati possidentes own parks superbly timbered, and broad
woodlands and underwoods. That these favoured few
should hold so proud a vantage-ground over their fellows
strikes your envious faddist blind with rage, and he
596 LAND :
shrieks aloud for these lands to be ploughed up and
uglified. It may not be very likely that the roar of the
faddist will pull down the fabric of society, but I may
venture to inform this most splenetic of levellers, that
whereas, like himself, I am not privileged to own these
beautiful places of the world, they add indefinitely to the
content of my small life. I can feast my eyes upon their
charms as appreciatively as the gentry who hold them in
fee simple. I honour and reverence them even more than
they. They are dear to me, not because I have a life
interest in them, but simply because they exist and form
the noblest testimony to the omnipresent grace of Nature.
At the same time, in defence of these my idols, I am
able to urge that your faddist is at least as much a fool
as a brute. His lines are not those of business, but of
sheer waste.
Ten years ago, in a remarkable speech delivered on
the Liberal side, Lord Derby boldly declared, not only
that all the available land of England was cultivated up
to the hilt, but that there are tens of thousands of acres
under cultivation which had far better be afforested.
This witness is true. I myself some years ago let a
small farm in the county of Durham at an average of
seven shillings per acre. Low as the rental was, the
tenant could not farm at a profit. Now, had the bulk of
that farm there was one grass meadow worth preserving
been planted with underwood, it would have yielded a
rental value about double that paid, not out of profit but
out of capital, by my tenant. True, I should have had
to wait ten years for my money, but a certain bonus once
in a decade must be preferable to a paltry income, with
the probability of impoverished land being thrown on
the owner's hands with tithe and rates to pay. That was
stiff, cold, mineral clay, and I cannot envy the enthusiastic
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 597
rustic who might be persuaded by a faddist to try and
cultivate it by spade husbandry. On one occasion I
tried to handle a spade thereupon, and after ten minutes
collapsed, utterly exhausted. The hinds of that county
regard a clay-garden in the light of a turnpike road, and
construct their own cabbage beds entirely of road siftings
two spades deep. If your faddist bade them dig a field
for wheat, or even for potatoes, they would relegate him
to the nearest lunatic asylum. Human muscles would
fail to perform so miraculous a feat.
As a matter of fact the impervious clays which form
the staple of the north-east of England are singularly
ill-fitted for any sylvan growth apart from underwood,
for except in dingles and low valleys they refuse to
bring forest trees to maturity. At present underwood is
much underrated as a paying product, yet it is easily
planted, easily cut, easily carried. If only it could be
converted into small bundles of firewood on the spot, as
they turn the legs of chairs in the beechwoods of the
Chilterns, the profit would be enhanced in spite of
oppressive railway rates. London alone is spending
eight hundred pounds per diem in firewood, purchased
from the Norwegian and American. Why should the vast
aggregate this item indicates be sent abroad, when our
own land aye, our own once cultivated lands now out of
cultivation might produce every penny of it? Moreover,
the exhaustion of forests is proceeding with suicidal
rapidity, and in another fifty years we shall have to grow
our own firewood, or dispense with that product alto-
gether. The real bar to the planting of underwood
must be sought in the impecuniosity of landlords. They
cannot afford to plant nor to wait for a return. It is
all an affair of from hand to mouth, just as in the west
country, when an apple tree falls, the gap remains in
598 LAND I
the orchard. Its owner cannot really afford to plant
a successor.
In particular soils there is also an opening for suitable
growths. Thus, the marsh invites the withy, which
matures phenomenally, and yields a splendid return.
Many a valueless acre overcrowded with flint stones,
would yield a profit if planted with blackheart cherries.
Above all, those bare hedgerows, the delight of the
model farmer, which expose the stock to the scourging
wind, would be redeemed from ugliness and inutility if
dotted with fruit trees, especially to the north and east.
I shall be told that roadside fruit would be pilfered, and
that the roots would impoverish the soil, besides warding
off the wind an agency of Nature which the farmer
believes in far more than in the precious sun. As regards
petty larceny, growers on the Continent protect them-
selves by combination, and it might be so here ; as for
the roots of fruit trees, they suck the subsoil, not the
soil, as is evidenced by the lush grass in an orchard.
But there is another cause why fruit has got to be
ignored tree-fruit particularly except in cider countries,
where they utilize it for local intoxication.
Our system of distribution for all produce is bad i.e.,
against the grower, against the public, and for the middle-
man. But in the case of fruit it is worse than bad
ridiculous. We want fruit exchanges at given centres.
We want a market wherein a quoted price can be obtained.
I myself in this year of grace sold a large batch of Bon
Chretien pears, worth twopence a piece to the London
purchaser, at four shillings per hundredweight, whereof
one shilling went for picking, and one shilling for
carriage, giving me a net profit of two shillings per
hundredweight, or about thirty shillings per acre of
well grown trees. This is far from remunerative,
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 599
but I had the satisfaction of knowing that two or three
big profits were grasped out of my pears, which, by-the-
by, were quite the finest I have grown. It seems
strange that the fruit grower in the South of France
should command his price in the London market, whereas
the fruit grower down in the shires has to sell at a loss.
Here, again, we are subsidising -the foreigner to our
detriment.
To sum up, the tree, forest, underwood, fruit, has to
protract the struggle for existence against very adverse
conditions. His best friend, the squire, groans under
the exactions of mortgagees, and has got to be very
much a genteel pauper. The farmer is too indifferent,
too prejudiced, too hampered by the absence of a fruit
market to care for fruit trees, and withal deems forest
trees his deadliest foes, albeit their sheltering limbs
have saved him many a lamb. The doctrinaire fancies
that by making England a treeless wilderness, he will
introduce a millennium. It is the artist alone who loves
the forest and the bosky brake, and his word goes for
nothing ; yet, if philosophy be correct in her supposition
that Nature made nothing in vain, the trees of the wood
and the trees of the orchard both have their proper
place in the economy of things, and to obliterate them
is to disturb the natural balance. For my own part, I
believe that they are not merely superlatively beautiful
which weighs most with me but also incomparably
useful as commercial products which weighs less, except,
of course, when I happen to be a vendor. There
remains one more consideration which commonly has
been omitted from the calculation altogether, viz., that an
ugly country is a poor and deserted country, and a
lovely country a rich and coveted one. Thus it was the
trees, not the nasty waters, that changed Tunbridge
6oo LAND :
Wells from a remote Kentish Tempe to the Baden
Baden of England. First in Brinsup, then at Rydall,
Wordsworth sought a Vallombrosa. Our greatest states-
man, William Pitt, was wont to solace himself after a
spell of the cares of office amid the supreme silence of
Lord Stanhope's Kentish woods. Among the Chiltern
Beeches Charles Reade learnt the art of fiction ; in the
solitudes of the grand demesne of Cobham, Dickens
thought out his magic fantoccini. To the woods, Millais
and Vicat Cole have paid an immortal tribute ; to them
also Shakespeare and Milton. Well may the prayer
arise from every soul that loves England, not for
her commerce, not for her empire, not for her shekels
or her ships, but for her own sweet self, " Woodman,
spare that tree," for at the existing rate of destruction
there will soon be no tree left to spare.
COMPTON READE.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 6oi
C H AFTER LXVI.
CEREALS.
BY JOHN WALKER,
luthorof" The Cow and Calf" " The Sheep and the Lamb? " Farming to Profit in
Modern Times? " Cattle: Their Management in Dairy, Field, and Stall? " The
Botfly of the Ox y Its Destitution? etc.
CEREALS of the farm comprise wheat, barley, oats, rye
and maize, known in farming parlance as white straw
crops. I have only space to treat briefly upon the three
former, which can be grown profitably on all fertile land
in England, notwithstanding the many statements to the
contrary. It is owing to losses on other crops in rota-
tions that farming proves unremunerative. If land is
worked upon an improved method, so as to leave out
unpaying crops as far as practicable, due regard being
paid to give variety of crops so as not to impoverish the
soil, there need not be any tolerably fertile farms going
a begging. After farming extensively for three decades,
I find that many agriculturists make two fatal errors.
1. They repeat white straw crops too frequently, thus
impoverishing soil to such an extent that only middling
harvests are reaped, resulting in loss instead of gain.
2. They discard cereal crops and put land down into
permanent pasture which is unsuited to such a purpose.
There are certain soils of clayey nature highly adapted
for arable purposes, which may be seeded down occa-
sionally for one or two years, but which give no profitable
6O2 LAND :
herbage after the second year, as the higher classes ot
plants are not indigenous to the soil therefore, die out,
leaving only innutritious herbage, and very little of that.
WHEAT draws hardly upon soil, hence it should only
be grown once in a rotation. Other crops can be culti-
vated to give fields a rest, notably clovers and mixed
grasses, and on free working soil, roots, neither of which
impoverish land for wheat. Good seed is essential to
produce abundant yields, and this is a feature in corn
growing which has been carelessly overlooked by many
farmers. Taking the whole country over, a large percentage
of the seed sown is devoured by birds or creature pests
in the soil, while mildew alone in wet late seasons
reduces crops to half their normal yield. It is folly to
allow good seed to be devoured by insect pests and
diseases. Why then are not these enemies dealt with by
a strong hand ? It is practicable to well-nigh exter-
minate living pests, and mildew might be in a large
measure prevented. Acts of Parliament will be passed
in this connection by-and-by, so that failure in crops
will be seldom seen. Now, one scarcely passes half a
dozen fields without noticing a failure. When the
o
great depression occurred in land the soil was culti-
vated in a careless manner, so that weeds often
crowded out cultivated crops, impoverished the land,
and caused eventually more cost in labour than if fields
had been kept clean. There are lots of uncultivated
farms in this country perfectly adapted to wheat growing
that may at present be bought for a mere nominal sum,
and which, if farmed on modern approved methods,
would, in a few years, be worth well nigh double cost
price. Corroborative of this I may point out the rise of
wheat in 1891, which shows that there is some limit to
foreign supplies and a good demand for English samples.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 603
I have given probable costs and returns of a wheat crop
in my chapter on " What an Acre of Land can Produce."
BARLEY is grown quite as profitably as wheat, and
should come once in a rotation. It flourishes best
on medium and light soils. It is in its favour that
land can be cleaned in spring before planting begins,
hence summer fallows are dispensed with, which is a
matter of great importance. Barley has held its price
through the long depression in farming better than any
other grain, for although there are foreign barleys brought
to our markets few of them are up to prime malting
quality, as much of the corn is thin and invariably badly
dressed. To ensure good crops of barley the soil must
be worked to a fine tilth, first-class seed must be sown,
and the ground be kept clean from weeds and
creature pests. Barley should become quite ripe before
harvested, so as to shorten the time of exposure in the
field. Only a clean, uniform sample is up to prime malt-
ing quality, and anything short of such quality does not
answer to grow.
OATS flourish best upon rich clays, loams and the
most fertile gravels. They are usually cultivated on
ground too rich for barley or wheat, and are well suited
to newly-broken up turf. There is much ground in this
country running as wild as the backwood lands of
America, which might well be brought into cultivation.
Here oats could be grown to perfection. Wherever
fields are allowed to go out of cultivation riches accu-
mulate in the soil especially adapted to feeding cereal
crops. Purchasers of lands, and indeed many farmers,
take it as a matter of course that neglected land is poor ;
this is not so. Rank weeds growing up and dying down
year after year enrich soil to a great degree. There are
three kinds of oats suited to our soils, viz., white potato
604 LAND :
oats, black tartarian and grey winter oats. Immense
yields of the two latter are grown on maiden soils, while
potato oats do well on land of medium richness. The
first thing to do on wild lands brought under cultivation
is to look well to the extermination of creature pests.
Gaslime is destructive to all insects in the soil, and as
ninety-nine per cent, of them are harmful to cultivated
crops, the so*oner land is rid of them the better. Oats
should be sown thickly, say four bushels per acre, be
well harrowed in, and the soil thoroughly consolidated
by repeated rollings.
JOHN WALKER.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 605
CHAPTER LXVII.
LEGUMES, ROOTS, AND VEGETABLES.
BY JOHN WALKER,
Author of " The Cow and Calf" " The Sheep and the Lamb," " Farming to Profit in
Modern Times" " Cattle: Their Management in Dairy, Field, and Stall" " The
Botfly of the Or, Its Destruction" etc.
THE above crops have been much over -looked of
late, especially the two latter. The principal legumes
of the farm consist of beans, peas and vetches. Growing
peas for picking green is now becoming an extensive
and profitable industry on land within touch of large
towns.
BEANS flourish on all kinds of soil excepting light
gravels and the poorest loams. They are not as profit-
able as cereals, but it is essential that they be brought
into the rotation to give change of cropping. They feed
upon different ingredients in the soil and air to cereals ;
hence while a field is growing beans it is accumulating
riches for crops of a different kind. The ancient Romans
fully understood how important it was to give change of
cropping, and Bentley's work of the present day well
defines the necessity of a well-arranged rotation. Still
we should not be tied to any hard and fast routine so
long as change of plants be given.
Beans ought only to be grown once in every second
rotation. Thus soil becomes rich in such root food as
606 LAND :
this legume requires. Therefore variety of cropping
saves manure to a certain extent, cuts off the food
supply and exterminates creature pests in the soil and
in the end gives heavy yields which alone pay in the
present day.
The ground should be dressed with farmyard dung
before Christmas for beans, be ploughed, not too deeply, as
soon as practicable after the manure is spread, and then
lie for a month or so until in a fit state for drilling.
Beans flourish much better when set in stale ground than
when a field is newly ploughed. It is a common error
not to give plants sufficient room to flourish. Rows
should be arranged from twelve to fourteen inches apart
and then two and a half bushels of prime seed per acre
will suffice. The crop ripens soon after wheat, and
should be cut with machines, tied into sheaves, stooked
and carted in when the straw is quite dry and the pods
are black. There are two species of farm beans,
commonly called winter and spring kinds. The former
are sown in autumn, and will withstand an ordinary
winter, but the latter are not sown until February
or March. The former have an advantage in not
suffering to any great extent from the attacks of
aphides which sometimes prove so destructive to spring
beans.
PEAS. Light gravels, all kinds of loams and chalky
soils suit peas, but strong clayey soils, known so well as
wheat and bean lands, are unkind for this pulse. They
need free working soil, such as gives a mouldy seed bed,
for the embryo rootlets only obtain sustenance from the
finest particles of soil, and owing to the sparse provision
of proper root food more failing crops of peas are seen
than in any other grain crop. There are three distinct
kinds of peas, and varieties of each kind. White peas
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 607
may be picked green for market, and are esteemed for
boiling for soups when harvested at maturity. Grey peas
are heavy croppers, but are not so profitable as white
kinds, as they neither answer for picking green nor for
boiling when ripe. The third kind is a variegated brown,
which comes to harvest very late, and is therefore adapted
to grow with beans, as the latter give it support. Immense
yields of beans and peas are grown by mixing the seed
and a large bulk of straw, which proves useful for cattle
food in winter. None of these pulse need so heavily
manuring as beans. White kinds should be drilled early in
February, about four bushels to the acre, and other kinds
in March, at the rate of three-and-a-half bushels. Give
a light harrowing to cover the seed, and after a few days
roll lightly if the surface is quite dry. As soon as the
plants are strong enough to allow of weeding give a
thorough deep hoeing, for peas will not allow of going
over a second time, as they begin to meet across the rows,
or shake hands, as farmers term it. Within a few miles
of large towns picking peas green pays well, as before
observed, but where land lies far from a good market,
crops pay better to harvest in the usual manner, as
the expense of conveying green pods to market is too
great.
VEGETABLES. 'A whole volume might well be given
on the growth of vegetables, but I have only space here
to touch briefly upon those which belong principally to
farm rather than garden culture. BEET can be grown on
all ground but clays. It is drilled in fine soil in March at
the rate of five pounds per acre. It should be weeded
and singled out in April or beginning of May. Sugar
is largely obtained from the crop, and where mills are
worked near the land good profits are made. It is also
grown largely for marketing purposes as a vegetable,
608 LAND :
being a favourite and wholesome dish among all classes.
CARROTS flourish on all deep rich soils. There are
three kinds grown on the farm the long reds, the
white Belgian, and the yellow fleshed. All these are
most valuable for stock, particularly for horses, dairy
cows and calves. Sick horses will relish carrots before
they can be induced to take any other food. They are
the only roots that impart a rich yellow colour to butter
in winter. For calves they prove the most healthful
dietary that can be given in winter. I have found a
good crop of carrots make half as much as the ground is
worth that they grew upon. They should be sown in
March, four pounds of seed to. the acre, be carefully
singled and weeded, and be raised before severe frost
comes on in late autumn. PARSNIPS are grown in much
the same way as carrots, and are a most nutritious and
wholesome vegetable. There is generally good demand
for best quality, either for human consumption or for
animal food, In the Channel Islands, the highly-famed
butter is attributable to cows being largely fed on
parsnips. These roots are proof against frost, so they
can be raised at leisure any time in early winter.
POTATOES are grown in all parts of the country where
soil is light or of a medium kind, and where land is in a
high state of cultivation and fertility. They love best
deep loam earth, the hollower the better. After trying
all kinds, I find none to surpass Magnum Bonums.
They are heavy yielders, and are in a great measure
proof against disease, and always meet with brisk sale. It
is true of late years prices for potatoes have been low, but
even with low prices, abundant yields have rendered
crops profitable. By bringing into use all mechanical
inventions, cost of culture is not nearly so high as it was
a few decades ago. Heavy moulding is advised, as the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 609
thicker soil lies over tubers the better they are protected
from disease, for the spores of the fungi falls from the
haulm to the tubers. If the latter are not well covered,
disease soon makes sad havoc in wet seasons.
JOHN WALKER.
2 R
6 io LAND:
CHAPTER L XVIII.
ENSILAGE.
BY JOHN WALKER,
Atithorof" The Coiv and Calf" " The Sheep and the Lamb" "-Fanning to Profit in
Modern Times" " Cattle: Their Management in Dairy, Field, and Stall" " The
Botfly of the Ox, Its Destruction," etc.
IT is singular that ensilage making has not grown more
popular than has been the case. True, thousands of
acres of green herbage is converted into ensilage year by
year, but it would be well if stacks were made on
every farm. I wrote my first report on ensilage making
ten years ago, and it was then looked upon by most prac-
tical farmers as a mad scheme. Albeit this method of
preserving crops for winter use is now proved to be very
profitable. Ensilage was made on the Continent of Europe
and in America many years before anyone dreamt of
trying the process here. In former days silos were
deemed necessary, but now it is found that green herbage
may be stacked in a simple rick without going to any
expense whatever in building apartments for storing the
grass.
A great advantage in making ensilage is that one is
quite independent of the weather. The wetter the
material is when stacked the better, as it presses more
easily wet than dry, and in pressure lies the chief
art of making. There are many seasons when half
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 6ll
the hay in the country is more or less damaged by rain,
at least it is so far damaged as not to make wholesome
diet. This loss might be saved if crops were converted
into ensilage instead of hay. A second advantage is,
that it leads to the practicability of again bringing stiff
clay land into cultivation, and that to a profit. Roots
cannot be grown on this kind of land, hence sheep and
cattle run short in winter of vegetable diet, which they
greatly need. Ensilage proves an excellent substitute
for roots, and is as nutritious, weight for weight, as a
Swedish turnip. Therefore whole breadths of clayey
arable land, which is unprofitable to crop in the old-
fashioned way, can now be seeded down for one or more
years, and the crops be mown and made into ensilage.
Thus farmers are enabled to run a large flock of breeding
ewes, the very best paying animals on the farm. A
third advantage is that there is not nearly the expense in
making ensilage as in making hay, and this is worthy of
especial attention now that labourers are few. The cost
of cutting, carting and stacking only comes to about
one shilling per ton, and from twelve to fifteen tons of
green material are got to the acre. Vetches cut the
largest bulk.
The best crops for silage are common meadow or
upland grasses, red clover, "seeds," trifolium incarnatum,
lucerne, sainfoin, rye grass, maize, and occasionally green
oats. The latter, however, are usually more valuable
for ripening off. Of course such crops as clover, seeds,
lucerne, rye grass, and sometimes meadow grass, may be
cut several times a year, for ensilage making may go on
any time in the year when herbage can be found. It is
a common error to use any kind of vegetable rubbish for
silage, as the better the material the more innutritious
the fodder made therefrom.
612 LAND:
The proper plan to make stacks is as follows :
Choose a piece of sound ground convenient for carting the
material to, and handy for, serving the fodder out to cattle
in winter. Rick bottoms may be raised with banks,
hassocks or clay ; cart the green herbage alongside the
ricks, and stack it as neatly as practicable. It is im-
portant to trample the outsides of stacks thoroughly, so
that the silage will settle inwards rather than bulge over
in the walls. It is advisable that the walls be built up
quite perpendicularly. A rick may either be built up in
one day or at several intervals. If left, pressure must
be put on at the rate of two hundredweight to the square
foot. In adding to the stack, weights must be taken off
and any damaged silage be put aside. The height of
rick will depend upon the quantity of material, strength
of hands, and space available in stack yard. No matter
how wet the herbage is so long as it is full of sap and
newly mown. If grass is cut for a day or so before
stacked, so as to wither in the sun, it makes sweet
ensilage, which is a more hay-like fodder than sour
ensilage. The latter is the more nutritious. There is
risk of damage in exposing grass in the field for sweet
ensilage, for material carted in wet after it has been
withered in the sun, makes worthless fodder.
Pressure in ensilage making as before observed is the
most important part of the work. Plenty of mechanical
presses are in the market which answer well. If a farmer
does not wish to go to the expense of buying a mechanical
press, any weighty material will answer his purpose, such
as bags or boxes of sand, earth, old iron. The pressure
should be kept on until the fodder is consumed. Ricks
must be kept dry.
Ensilage is wholesome food for cattle and sheep, but
is not good for cart horses in work, and is totally unfit for
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 613
nags doing fast work. As silage goes in very small
compass it is not wise to make stacks to contain less
than a hundred tons of green herbage, if two hundred
or even three hundred tons be put in each rick so
much the better, as the larger the bulk the less pro-
portion of waste in tops, bottoms, and outsides.
JOHN WALKER.
6 14 LAND
CHAPTER LXIX.
WATER-POWER MACHINERY.
BY GILBERT MURRAY, F.S.I.,
Author of practical articles in the Royal Agricultiiral Society's Journal, the Highland
Society's Journal, Colman's "-Cattle and Sheep of Great Britain" Morton's Hand-
books, "Farm Series," Stephen's " Book of the Farm," and most of the leading
periodical publications of the day ; Member of the Royal Agricultural Society of
England ; Life Member of the Highland Society ; Past President of the Midland
Valuers' Association ; Agricultural Examiner for the B.Sc. degree of the University
of Edinbtirgh; Winner of many prizes for reports and for designs of Farm Homesteads
and Labourers' Cottages ; Winner of the 100 prize offered by The Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for the best cattle truck with facilities for feeding
and watering in transit; Atithor of mimerous pamphlets on "Dairy Farming"
" Agricultural Depression" "The Shire Horse," "Agricultural Education" and
many other siibjccts.
WATER MOTORS are numerous and varied in construction.
Whether the source of the proposed power be a river, a
stream, or a storage reservoir, the first duty of the
engineer is to correctly ascertain the average available
quantity. There are various formula in use for the solution
of this problem. The quantity of cubic feet per minute
discharged over a notch-board one foot wide and one foot
deep, the velocity in feet per second being obtained, the
discharge in cubic feet per minute is found by multiplying
it by the area of the section in feet, and the product by
sixty, the flow of water in the stream having been cor-
rectly ascertained by experiment extending over a
considerable period. The minimum data having been
ascertained it then only remains to calculate whether this
will be sufficient for the power required ; if not, what
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 615
reservoir capacity will suffice to supplement the supply
during all seasons. The action in all hydraulic motors is
obtained by the fall of a volume of water from a higher
to a lower level, the function of such motors consists in
intercepting a portion of the moving force of the water
during its fall. The merits of the different motors depend
on the proportion the intercepted force bears to the
whole force of the water ; this percentage of the entire
force is known as the effective force. The usual measure
of effect is that of the horse-power as co-efficient of work
equal to the raising of thirty-three thousand pounds one
foot high per minute. It is not a difficult problem to deter-
mine what quantity of water descending through a known
space will be equal to a horse power ; the total fall of a
stream of water for power is the height of the surface of
the water in the reservoir above the level of the tail race ;
the force of the water or the effect which it produces is the
product of the weight of the water multiplied by the
total fall. A cubic foot of water, at a temperature of 55
Farenheit, weighs 62.5 Ibs. As a portion only of the
absolute power of the water can be intercepted and
utilised by the different motors in use, hence a deduction
must be made from the arbitrary to the efficient in accord-
ance with the efficient construction of the motor. The
varieties of motors more general in use are the Under-
shot, the Breast, the Overshot Wheel, and the Turbine.
In this calculation the arbitrary force is assumed to be
i.oo. In accordance with this calculation the Undershot
wheel will give an effective power of 0.350 ; the Breast
wheel will give 0.540; the Overshot wheel 0.610, and
the best class of Turbine 0.820. The conservation of
water, particularly in hilly districts, has a source of power,
and hence is susceptible of much more extensive
application than is generally supposed. A rainfall of
6i6 LAND:
two inches per annum on one square mile of surface
furnishes a discharge of nine cubic feet per minute ; a
rainfall of thirty inches places within easy reach a source
of power which we are apt to overlook. I look
upon water power as one of the most valuable
a landowner can possess. Minerals become exhausted
and there is no reproduction, but water retains its value
for all time. In level districts the difficulty to contend
with is backwater, and this is more particularly the case
with the water-wheel. The outlet becomes blocked, the
tail water accumulates, acting as a counterpoise, and
completely stops the wheel. To obviate this difficulty
in the case of an undershot wheel we had the floats
hung on pivots. Immediately each float reached the
lowest point and began to ascend, the weight of the tail
water pressing on the opposite side caused it to swing
back, thus freeing it from the back pressure. By
this means the wheel could be worked with the tail
water nearly up to the level of the head, the speed was
reduced, and consequently the effective power. The
water wheel was formerly largely used in Derbyshire
as a motor. In the Southern division of the county,
the slack gradients of the rivers seldom afforded a head
of more than eight feet. Cotton doubling and other
industries necessitating the employment of a large
number of hands were common. During the winter
months it was no uncommon occurrence for the mills to
stand still for days and even for a whole week at a stretch ;
the hands were thrown idle, and the whole business dis-
organised owing to the laxity of the owners of water
power at the time of the passing of the Factory Acts,
which does not admit of any lost time being worked up ;
hence, in some cases the tenants of water mills not
unfairly held this as sufficient grounds on which
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 617
to base a claim for a reduction of rent. In many
cases the difficulty has been met by the substitution
of turbines ; these have generally given the greatest
satisfaction. Within the last eight years turbines of an
aggregate of four hundred horse-power have taken the
place of water-wheels on the estates with which I am
connected ; they can be constructed to run in tail water
without loss of efficiency ; their small size, moderate or
high rate of speed, and regularity of motion, places the
turbine at the head of every other motor with which we
are acquainted. Like every other class of machines these
vary largely in construction and effective power. Tur-
bines are divided into two classes, those in which the
water acts entirely by impulse, and those in which the
water acts partly by pressure and partly by impulse.
The principal kinds of pressure turbines are the inward
flow, outward flow, and parallel flow ; in the former the
water enters the wheel on the outer and leaves it on the
inner circumference. In what is known as the Fourneyrow
the water enters the wheel on the inner and leaves it on
the outer circumference. The Jonval, or parallel flow
turbine, the water enters and leaves in a parallel direction
with the axis. In what is known as the American tur-
bine the water enters the wheel on the outside, passes
inwards, and discharges downwards. The Gerard, or
action turbine, differs in principle from others ; here the
water issues from the guide ports with the full velocity
due to the head pressure, and thus acts entirely by
impulse glides along the concave sides of the buckets
without coming into contact with the convex sides. One
great advantage this machine has over most others is
that it retains its efficiency when working as low as
quarter gate, or even less. This is a great advantage
where the water supply is a varying quantity. The
618 LAND :
adjustment is effected by a slide which opens or closes
one port on each side, so that any number of ports may
be open to suit the water supply or power requisite.
This slide, which will also entirely shut off the water, is
worked by a hand wheel attached to an index pillar,
which shows the number of ports open. This turbine,
which possesses many advantages, has this one drawback,
that, under ordinary conditions, the bottom of the wheel
must just be clear of the tail water in order to insure a
free discharge. To obviate this it is sometimes necessary
to lessen the head. The manufacturer, Mr. W. Gunther,
of Oldham, can, to some extent, obviate this difficulty.
We look upon electricity as the coming power. If we are
right in our surmise the use of turbines must extend for
the working of dynamos. Another improvement likely
to hasten the use of water power is the reduced cost of
constructing weirs for this purpose. Concrete is super-
seding the old-fashioned stone erections, which the first
flood frequently carried away. Now the entire weir,
when finished, is composed of a single block, which, if
skilfully constructed, will stand for ages.
GILBERT MURKAY.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 619
CHAPTER LXX.
LAND SURVEYING AND LEVELLING.
BY ROBERT RICH,
Diploma-Member and Prizeman of the Royal Agricultural Society, Member of the
Royal Agricultural College, Fellow and Examiner of the Surveyors' Institution.
WITHIN the very narrow limits allowed in this book for
these two- branches of the same subject, it is impossible
to do more than very briefly to summarise the main
principles on which the practices of Surveying and
Levelling are based.
The craft of measuring land was undoubtedly exer-
cised some centuries before the Christian era. Indeed,
so soon as proprietary rights in land were recognised,
some means of estimating and stating the comparative
areas of appropriated tracts must have existed. There
is real reason to believe that the exact art of measuring-
land had its genesis in Egypt, when it became necessary
to re-mark boundaries which had been set up by tax-
collectors and husbandmen in its fertile valley, but which
had been effaced by the annual overflowing of the
mighty Nile. Euclid, whose name has struck terror
into countless generations of schoolboys, more than that
of any other historic " tyrant," was in reality but a
gentle teacher of surveying. He was the first exact
and scientific surveyor of land, and he flourished about
the year 300 B.C. Out of his practice in re-marking
the obliterated boundaries of land, arose the celebrated
62O LAND I
school of mathematics which he founded, and those
" Elements " which ever since have formed the founda-
tion of every great mathematician's knowledge. Euclid
was undoubtedly the father of <f Geometry," the Greek
word signifying literally " land-surveying." It may be
worth adding that even King Ptolemy became one of
Euclid's pupils, and apparently a singularly stupid
student too, for the ordinarily-gifted prince reprimanded
his tutor for his own inability to learn geometry more
quickly than his common subjects ! The professor of
surveying was, however, no courtier, but courageously
" snubbed " his imperial pupil with the remark which
has ever since remained a household proverb throughout
the civilized world, " Sire, there is no royal road to
learning." Any one hearing this little anecdote of
Euclid for the first time, might think it worth while to
run through his Elements again, when he will find that
they are in the main directly or indirectly devoted to the
measurement of figured space.
An intending surveyor must have a good practical
knowledge of simple arithmetic, decimal fractions,
geometry and geometrical drawing, and should under-
stand logarithms and algebra.
In all cases, whether an area be that of a field,
parish, county, or country, the fundamental principle
upon which the whole practice of land surveying is
based is that of reducing that area to the dimensions of
a triangle or triangles. As we usually associate the
area of an enclosed space with "square measure," it may
be objected that the square rather than the triangle
should have been adopted as the unit of division. The
reason, however, for choosing the triangle, or, rather, the
reason why it is the only practicable unit of superficial
measurement, is the remarkable fact that it, alone of all
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 621
geometrical figures, is the one which cannot change its
form without changing the length of its enclosing
boundaries. Provided the length of a triangle's sides be
constant, its form is unalterable. This may easily be
demonstrated by drawing a triangle, each of whose sides
measures, say, six inches. Now, on trying to "plot"
another triangle of a different form, but with sides also
measuring six inches each, it will be found that an
absolute impossibility is being attempted. On the other
hand, if a square with a side of six inches be constructed,
it may readily be seen that such a figure could be pulled
without altering the length of its sides into an infinite
number of forms, each more or less resembling the out-
line of the conventional diamond. In like manner, the
line enclosing a circle may be compressed into countless
and still ^more varied shapes. Two other remarkable
properties of the triangle may also here be mentioned :
in proportion to the length of its boundary, it is the least
capacious of geometrical figures, and the sum of its
interior angles is invariably equal to two right angles.
It must not be assumed, however, that the adoption of
the triangle ensures accurate surveying, or that the
measurement of merely its three sides is sufficient
in practice correctly to draw the figure and to calculate
its area. For these latter purposes, a proof or tie line
touching the triangle should be added, and it may be
laid down and measured from any one of its angles to
the opposite side, or from one side to either of the other
sides. In computing the area of a plot of any size or
shape, the boundaries, however irregular they may be,
are reduced to a sufficient number of straight lines. Even
the arc, or circumference of a circle, is assumed to be the
boundary of a "polygon," a figure enclosed by an
infinite number of sides, each of which is a straight line.
622 LAND I
Though it may be objected that this arbitrary system of
reduction is not absolutely accurate, it is demonstrable
that, with reasonable care, any error so arising is so
infinitesimal that in practice it may be entirely disregarded.
Land is usually measured by means of the chain
alone or in conjunction with angle-measuring instruments
such as the theodolite, sextant and others. The theodolite
is, however, unnecessary for ordinary field-work, and, in
practice, it is mainly used for urban, maritime, mine,
railway or forest surveying, the measurement of
inaccessible distances and especially in the survey of
large areas, such as counties or countries. In these
cases a knowledge of trigonometry and logarithms is
essential, forming an extension of surveying beyond the
scope of these elementary notes. In the British
dominions, " Gunter's chain," so-called from having been
devised by Dr. Gunter, an eminent mathematician, is
used. Its length is the tenth of a furlong, and thus the
eightieth of a mile, or four poles, or twenty-two yards,
or sixty-six feet. This unit of lineal measurement was
adopted by Gunter in order that a rectangular space,
measuring one furlong, or ten chains, in length, by one
chain in width, should have an area of exactly one
imperial acre. As the chain is sixty-six feet long, but is
divided into one hundred links, it follows that each link
has a length of sixty-six hundredths of a foot or 7*92
inches,
The " Field-book " is a record made in the field of all
measurements ; other necessary memoranda, and sketches
relating to the work being done by the surveyor. These
entries are begun at the foot of the page, and are
continued upwards towards the top, thus following
upwards or onwards, as it were, in the direction of the
line being measured. Each page is usually divided into
ITS ATTRACTION'S AND RICHES. 623
three parts extending from the foot to the top. The
middle division is the narrowest, being merely wide
enough to contain the entries of distances as measured
on the chain line where, for instance, fences are crossed,
measurements to objects on either side of the chain are
made, and "stations," where two or more lines join or
intersect, are entered. In the wider column on each side
of the chainage entries, notes of the perpendicular
distances from the line of near objects necessary to be
taken into account, and called " offsets," sketches of
buildings, the direction of crossing or adjacent fences,
names and other descriptions are appended to the right
or left accordingly as they take place to the right or the
left of the chain. Instead of the middle column, it is
perhaps preferable to have merely one red-ink line
running up the middle of each page, on and across
which the chainage distances are entered. This one line
undoubtedly represents, better than the wider column,
the actual line measured on the ground, and it enables
fences and other features occurring thereon to be sketched
in with less distortion, and consequently with more facility
for future recognition and reference.
o
In surveying a considerable area, such as a parish or
large estate, the surveyor should commence by carefully
perambulating the tract, as he may thereby prevent a
faulty construction of main lines of measurement, and
may save himself the setting out and chaining of several
subsidiary lines. If he finds that the boundary encloses
as it often does a space approximating in form more or
less to that of the trapezium or other quadrilateral figure,
he should adopt the following system of six fundamental
lines. Of these, four should run as nearly as possible
alongside the four boundaries of the area, and should be
joined at their extremities. The other two should be
624
LAND :
diagonals connecting the four angles of the quadrilateral,
and intersecting each other, as nearly as may be, at right
angles, and in such a manner as to make their four sec-
tions approximate each other in length. One main
triangle is thus described and "tied" on each side of one
diagonal, and the accuracy of such two triangles may be
effectively checked by comparing the sum of their areas
with the collective area of the two main triangles de-
scribed on the other diagonal, for as the two former
triangles together occupy precisely the same space as the
two latter triangles together, it is obvious that the area
of the two former should coincide exactly with that of the
two latter.
A TABLE OF LINEAL MEASURES.
Links.
Feet.
Yards.
Poles.
Chains.
Furlongs.
25
I6J
5*
I
IOO
66
22
4
I
1000
660
22O
40
IO
I
8000
5280
1760
320
80
8
Mile.
A TABLE OF SQUARE MEASURES.
Sq. Links.
Sq. Feet.
Sq. Yards.
Sq. Poles.
Sq.Chains.i Roods.
Acres. | Sq. Mile.
625
IO,OOO
272*
4,35 6
J?
I
16
I
25,000
10,890
I,2IO
40
i
I
100,000
43,560
4,840
1 60
IO
4
I
64,000,000
27,878,400
3,097,600
102,400
6,400
2,560 640
I
From the above it will be seen that the imperial acre
contains one hundred thousand square links. If, therefore,
any area be found in square links, its acreage may be
ascertained by dividing the number of the latter denomina-
tion by one hundred thousand, a process instantaneously
performed by simply placing a decimal point so as to cut
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 625
off five places of decimals as there are five cyphers in
the divisor from the right. Any figures to the left
of such point are, of course, acres. The five decimals
may then be multiplied by four to reduce them to roods,
and five decimal places are again marked off from the
right, any figures to the left being roods. In turn, these
latter five decimals can be reduced to square poles if
multiplied by forty, and if a decimal point be inserted so
as to leave five places to the right of it, and square poles
to its left. The following example may perhaps explain
the above operation more clearly. The total area of the
triangles of a certain survey is found to be 24,392,500
square links. As we have seen, it is necessary to divide
this sum by one hundred thousand in order to determine
the acreage. This is done by cutting off five decimal
places from the right, the figures to the left being acres.
We have thus 243 acres, and a remaining decimal fraction
of an acre equal to "92500. Now on multiplying this
remainder by four, in order to find how many roods it
contains, we get the number 370000, after again
separating five places of decimals. The 3* of course
represents roods, and the remainder 70000, is the
fraction of a rood, which we in turn multiply by 40,
to ascertain its contents in poles. We obtain the
figures 2,800,000. On setting aside five decimal places
at the right, we have a whole number of 28 poles to the
left, and no decimal fraction remaining. The area in
question has therefore been found to be 243 acres,
3 roods, and 28 poles.
In the computation of areas, the triangle, being, of
course, the typic unit of division and measurement, it must
suffice to give here the general rule for finding the area
of that figure. This method is simple indeed, being
merely to multiply together the length of any one side
2S
626 LAND I
by half the perpendicular let fall thereon from the
opposite angle. Thus, the area of a triangle, whose
base measures 863 links, and whose perpendicular scales
690 links, may be found by multiplying 863 by 345,
being the half of 690, the result of which is 2*97735
square links. On marking off the five decimal places
and multiplying by four and then by forty, as demon-
stated in the last paragraph, we find the area of the
triangle to be 2 acres, 3 roods, and 36 poles, as we may
disregard the remaining decimal fraction '376. The
principle of this rule was simply and amply demonstrated
by Euclid in his Elements.
Having indicated some idea of the theory of Land-
Surveying, further reference as to the practice of the art
should be made to some practical treatise on the subject,
and with far greater advantage, to a thoroughly competent
surveyor.
LEVELLING may be described as a branch of land
surveying. The practice of the art is very simple, yet
it is difficult indeed to impart by means merely of a
text-book. No attempt will be made here to go beyond
some notes on the theory and means of levelling.
If our planet were a perfect sphere covered with
motionless water, absolutely unaffected by wind or tide,
the surface of such water would be what the surveyor
would define as level. In other words, that surface
would consist of an infinite number of level lines in every
direction, all of which would intersect the radii, drawn
from the centre of the earth, at equal distances from
such centre, and at right angles to such radii.
For the purposes of the land-surveyor and engineer,
the practice of levelling may be said to consist in finding
the difference in level between any two spots, or between
any number of spots on the surface, or near the surface,.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND' RICHES. . 627
of the earth. Levelling instruments generally depend
for their effect on the action of gravity. The plumb-
line of the old-fashioned mason's level is, perhaps, the
simplest of these instruments. Spirit levels are now
more generally used, and their forms and appurtenances
vary considerably. An instrument, euphoniously called
" Gravatt's Dumpy Level," is the one most frequently
found in the hands of surveyors, and its essential parts
consist of a glass tube containing the air bubble in
spirit, a telescope immediately underneath, and with its
axis parallel with the axis of the spirit tube, parallel
plates below, with adjusting screws between them, and
a tripod on which the instrument is fixed and on which
it revolves. The telescope contains a diaphragm, across
which are stretched one horizontal and one or two
vertical webs or wires. When taking an observation
through this level, all observed objects are inverted, and
thus everything appears to be upside-down. In be-
ginning practice with the instrument, this inversion is
somewhat perplexing, but the observer soon ceases to
find it inconvenient.
For measuring the vertical differences in level, a
" Levelling Staff," about fifteen feet long and sub-
divided into feet, tenths and hundredths of a foot, is
used. This staff is read by the observer through the
telescope of the level, and the readings are duly noted
down in the " Level Book." One example of the
principle by which differences of level are determined
by the means described above must here suffice. If the
surveyor, on taking a sight through his telescope directed
towards the staff held perpendicularly on a certain spot,
observes that the horizontal wire cuts the staff at, say,
four feet, and that after the staff has been moved and
set up on another spot, the wire cuts it at, say, thirteen
628 LAND I ITS ''ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
feet, it is obvious that the latter spot is nine feet lower
than the former spot. For further information, recourse
should be had to text-books, and in order to obtain a
good practical knowledge of levelling, instruction in the
field should be procured from some qualified surveyor.
ROBERT RICH.
SECTION V.
LAND : ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 63!
CHAPTER LXXI.
THE HISTORY OF RIGHTS OF PROPERTY
IN LAND.
BY WOLSELEY P. EMERTON, D.C.L. OXON.,
Author of "Analysis and Abridgment of Adam Smith's ' Wealth of Nations'" ;
"Questions and Exercises in Political Economy" ; etc.
THE History of Rights of Property in Land has, like
other studies of the past, been investigated by two
methods : ( i )* The metaphysical, which commencing
with the assumption of certain general principles of
human nature, supposed to be already known, and with
men's notions upon certain facts goes on to the conse-
cutive order of those notions in point of time,t and (2)
* Although these do not precisely coincide with the deductive and inductive
methods, yet the metaphysical generally attracts those minds which are inclined to
deduction, and the historical, those minds which are inclined to induction. On the
question whether political economy is a deductive or an inductive science, see my
Abridgment of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," p. 6l, and the authorities
therein quoted.
t Perhaps the best instance of the successful application of the metaphysical
method is to be found in Cairn's "Slave Power" where the premises were very
simple and very easily verified. Ricardo's Theory of Rent is now generally rejected on
account of defective premises, an exceptional having been by its author mistaken for
a normal state of things. On account of the facility it affords for plausibly justifying
the illusions of prejudice, the metaphysical method has always been a favourite, e.g.*
the Irish famine was by one party attributed to the improvidence of the Celtic race,
and by another to the tyranny of landlords. Those who studied economical facts
and the history of economics pointed out that the famine was almost equally severe in
Belgium, where landlords were not very numerous, and where all from the Duke of
Arenberg to the peasant endeavoured to save half their incomes, showing also that
the real cause is to be found in the fact that any population that subsists on the
cheapest food, whether its motive for so doing be indolence or thrift, is always in
danger of famine.
632 LAND I
The historical method which traces the actual course of
the facts in order of time, from trustworthy, and if
possible from contemporary testimony, and derives its
notions of the sequence of events, as well as of the
events themselves, from a cautious generalisation of
' <^>
those facts.
It is now the fashion to employ the term " meta-
physical," so far at least as practical matters are
concerned, as a term of contempt, and to exalt the
study of facts and figures, though, at the same time,
few facts are more manifest than are the great sacrifices
which men have made, and the zeal with which men
will strive to make facts coincide with their notions
of what is or what ought to be, or at least to prevent
facts from too rudely dispelling the pleasing delusion.*
Ideas have thus an enormous influence upon action,
and in order that they may have this influence, it
is by no means necessary that they should be per-
fectly clear and distinct, f The idea of political
equality, spurning alike all notion of obedience and
all notion of protection due from one private citizen
to another may easily, unless the state of facts coin-
cide with the idea, make the political equal a social
* A good example of this weakness is to be found in the reluctance with which
the biographers of Charlemagne gave up the romance of the pseudo Turpin for the
authentic narrative of Eginbard, and a more recent example in the popular substi-
tution of the mythical for the real Wallace and Bruce by ardent Scotch patriots and
romantic English ladies. The resolution of the House of Commons that bank notes
were esteemed equal to coin of the realm, and the bitter attacks made upon Lord
King when he refuted their absurd doctrine by the practical sarcasm of demanding
payment in gold or silver coin of full weight from all his debtors, affords another
example of the same weakness in a graver matter.
t Many shout lustily for " Free Church, Free Schools," without noticing that the
word ' ' free " is used in opposite senses in the two phrases, meaning in the case of
" Free Church," support at the expense of members and freedom from control by the
State, and in the case of " Free School," freedom from all expense to scholars and
absolute control by the State.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 633
serf,* and the notion of free contract between those
who are nominally equals may, under certain social con-
ditions, bring about a relation differing little from the
status of master and slave. Private rights may, in this
case, easily develop into public powers, and indeed the
owner of all the soil of a country could not well be any-
thing else than a despot of that country, the penalties
which he can enforce being both greater and more
certain than those which are at the command of the
nominal political chief. f
Such an origin of the power of commanding others is
of comparatively late date, and although there is nothing
to prevent those who are in possession of the power of
commanding the necessaries, conveniences, and amuse-
ments of life and of the faculty of communicating that
power to others from exercising great influence over their
less fortunate neighbours (after the fashion of the Tartar
Khans, the true Shepherd Kings of Central Asia), yet
until this is done by means not of the animal but of the
vegetable world, requiring as a condition precedent
tolerably settled habitations, such power can hardly be
said to owe its origin to, or to have any connection with,
anything approaching land ownership. The evidence of
language shows (in accordance with the sagacious con-
jecture of the old writers), that the pastoral had preceded
the agricultural condition, and if the chief cereals owe
* This is dwelt upon at some length and with great ingenuity by Henry George,
who, in his " Progress and Poverty," declares that Americans endure a law of
contract which makes one man as much the serf of another, as though serfdom were
legally established.
t This was curiously exemplified within living memory in the case of the owner
of the Island of Rathlin, on the north coast of Ireland, who used to punish delinquents
by exiling them to " the continent of Ireland." We here find a landlord, simply in
virtue of his civil powers as landlord, virtually exercising the " High Justice." In
the ancient classification, exile was always reckoned a " capital punishment."
634 LAND I
their origin to Mesopotamia we need not wonder that their
names in the chief Indo-Germanic languages have little
resemblance to each other. If it be alleged that in
Greece and Italy the possession of cattle and not the
possession of land formed the basis and standard of all
private property, the reason is to be sought in the fact
that agriculture was at first conducted on a system of
joint possession.* The legendary King I talus is said to
have turned the Italians from pastoral to agricultural
life, and the story shrewdly connects with the change
the origin of Italian legislation ; law, agriculture, and the
founding of cities being closely associated among Greeks
and Italians alike, so that the very Temple was the point
of intersection of the lines of the land-measurer, and the
boundary of the city traced by the plough, a recognition
of the fact that the community was dependent upon agri-
culture. So intensely did the cultivators cling to their
fields and homesteads that though the Romans lost many
battles they scarcely ever in making peace ceded Roman
soil, and the legends show that even petty agriculture
was not thought to disgrace the noblest families. But
though the greater portion of Roman land was cultivated
in early times by those whom we should call peasant
proprietors, yet the prominence given to the Equites in
the Servian constitution shows that there must have been
many who held land to a much larger extent than the
traditional two or seven jugera, and the metayer system or
11 stock and land lease" was probably not unknown. But
as it was long before the system of middlemen was heard
of, and still longer before it became common, the great
* A similar state of things prevailed in Ireland, perhaps late in the middle ages,
the " Senchus Mor " evidently regarding the act of " receiving stock " (i.e. accepting
cattle for stocking purposes) from another and not the holding of land as the real act
of vassalage.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 635
Italian proprietor found himself not much less fettered to
the land than were smaller men, a state of things which
remained unaltered so long as agriculture was dominant
whilst slaves were scarce ; a state of things which had
passed away when even so staunch a representative of the
old school as was Cato the Censor found himself com-
pelled to place the good, indifferent, and bad feeding of
cattle above agriculture, whilst even in agriculture his
descending scale of returns to be expected from (i) Vine-
yard, (2) Vegetable garden, (3) Osier copse (a sort of
subsidiary to the culture of the vine), (4) Olive plantation,
(5) Meadow yielding hay, (6) Corn-fields, (7) Copse,
(8) Wood for felling, (9) Oak forest for cattle forage ;
shows that nothing but the pecuniary profit of the land-
owner was supposed to be kept in view by any private
person.*
Cato, indeed, is more interesting to an English
farmer than a writer on the rural economy of modern
Italy, as his list of plants to be cultivated more closely
resembles our own. Rye was not, indeed, then grown,
whilst oats were considered as a mere weed, but on the
other hand potatoes and tomatoes like the aloe are
notoriously American ; the citron is a fruit of the later
empire, and the introduction of the orange is due to the
Moors ; rice is not earlier than the fifteenth century, and
maize comes after Colombus ; the buffalo was a mere
curiosity long afterwards ; and silk was thought to be a
fine wool scraped from the mulberry tree.
In Cato's time large landed proprietors appear to have
become such rather by means of many small than by
* We cannot call the vineyard the deer forest of these times, because the vine-
yard requires much more, and the deer forest much less labour than the cornfields.
But the principle in both cases is the same, the profit of the proprietor, not the
welfare of the State.
636 LAND I
a few extensive estates, and the Censor takes as his normal
area two hundred and forty jugera (say one hundred
and seventy acres), but assumes that as the cultivation
becomes more laborious the area of the farm will be
smaller, till in the case of the nine, one hundred jugera
becomes the rule.*
As a rule the proprietor superintended his estates,
not managing them in person, but appearing from time
to time to give orders, see to their execution, and audit
the accounts of his servants. t The model steward is
described by Cato as an exact and diligent man, often
putting his hand to work of every sort, but never
working himself weary like a slave. { His accounts were
expected to be kept in the most accurate manner, and
with the greatest minuteness, and, indeed, in matters of
" :: " Metayer tenures were not unknown, but they were exceptional, and looked
upon as makeshifts, the lease first assuming real importance when the Roman
capitalists began to acquire transmarine possessions on a great scale. In these, as
there could be no full private proprietorship (the State itself being owner), the
capitalist himself could be no more than a tenant. The result of this under the
Empire is notorious, and gives no good augury of the results of State-ownership.
Cato allows 100 sheep to the farm of 240 jugera, but the proprietor often preferred to
let his winter pasture to a large sheepowner. An estate in pasture might, with
advantage, be indefinitely extended and ought never to be less than 800 jugera. As
to the quality of labour, an estate of 240 jugera with olive plantations was supposed
to require three ploughmen, five unskilled labourers, and three herdsmen. An estate
of ico jugera with nine plantations was supposed to require one ploughman, eleven
common slaves, and two herdsmen.
t As these were almost always slaves modern political economy would place
them under the head of capital, not under the head of labour. In unhealthy districts.
or during the pressure of harvest or vintage, freemen were sometimes hired in gangs,
and under similar circumstances the gang system has often reappeared in modern
times. The practice of employing children in this fashion in the eastern counties was
not suppressed without much difficulty, and between 1846 and 1860 gangs of Irishmen
were often employed in the repairs of the " levees " of the Mississippi because "slaves
were too valuable to be employed in such dangerous labour."
+ In former days advances of money had practically reduced the small freeholder
to the position of a mere steward of his creditor, but now the money lender of the
capital appeared ("adapting himself to the environment ") as the owner of industrial
plantations.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 637
book-keeping no nation has ever equalled the Romans.*
Those possessions which were precarious in name were
seldom precarious in fact, and thus the Romans would
as a rule improve.f
Agriculture in its most rudimentary stage supposes
ownership of the land at least in the interval between the
labours of the plough and those of the sickle, and at the
same time total non-user of land in the midst of a dense
population is not likely to be tolerated, and in this respect
the latest stages of development often prevent instances
of reversion to the earliest. J
It is true that our connection in any practical sense
with the modes of cultivation and modes of thought in
vogue among the Romans may not at first sight seem
very close, and some may be tempted to regard all such
studies as fitted rather to occupy antiquaries than to
afford useful lessons to practical men. But those who
argue thus forget that the civil law of the Romans
affords the most valuable illustration possible of the
historical progress which has led up to the modern
conception of landed property and the rights of the
landowner, a result due not only to the direct and
* Under similar circumstances similar accuracy in book-keeping revives at about
1260 in England. Sometimes it has been proposed to revive it by law. A book
published in Germany in 1805, by P. von Arnim, proposes to look upon the farmer as
a State official who should "cultivate whatever he believed in conscience, or what the
State declared to be most necessary, whilst all new purchasers of land should be
subjected to an examination in order to ascertain whether they are rich and noble
enough to act in this way.
t The principal military fiefs in Turkey were and are held on a different system,
and revert to the State on the death of the beneficiary. Hence the Turkish owner of
such a fief builds as little as possible, and when one of his walls threatens to fall,
keeps it standing by means of props, or if it actually fall, simply contents himself with
fewer rooms in his house.
t In ancient Germany land not tilled for many years might be occupied by the
first person who would cultivate it. So in Persia, after the Mongolian devastations,
about the beginning of the I4th century. Theodosus and Valentinian decreed that
the " Agrodeserte" should after two years cultivation belong to the possessor.
638 LAND I
conscious adoption of the civil law, so frequent in
modern codes, but also to the undying tradition of the
Jus Feudale (which has been aptly described as a com-
pound of barbarian usage with Roman law), having for
its main subject status as established by contract ; a
reversal of the ordinary course of events (which usually
runs from status to contract), indicating the action of
some extraneous force, moral or physical. And quite
apart from any influence that would be recognised by
lawyers, there is a general resemblance in the gradual
development of the power of the individual over the land
under his control, till the position of the English land-
owner closely resembles that of the Roman Dominus ;
and though at first sight the difference between free and
slave labour may seem of vital importance, it is one
which, for our present purpose, tends to vanish, the sub-
stitution of horses and machinery for the free labourer
bringing to the landowner the immediate profit of the
slave gang without its ultimate evils. And this substitu-
tion tends to bring about in the labourer not only a strong
distaste for hard work, but also a feeling of degradation
to the level of a brute or a machine, when performing it,
and a consequent preference for mental over physical
labour. It is generally assumed that, as a necessary
consequence of all this, the position of a landowner on
any extensive scale, or indeed on any scale beyond that
sufficient to supply a single household, will become less
and less desirable, and that the right of the landowner
will be so much diminished, and his duties so much
increased that the ownership, of land, having become
onerous, will cease to attract. A study of the History of
Property in Land, and of the legal conceptions relating
thereto, might perhaps lead to a modification of this
opinion as of one resting on no sufficient grounds, but
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 639
merely the result of a hasty induction from a superficial
view of a few obvious facts.
That the progress of society is from status to contract
has since the publication of "Ancient Law" become a
commonplace, though the easy extension of the principle
in explaining the progress of contracts relating to rights
in or over land, viz., -That the general history of such
rights is an advance from the bilateral to the unilateral
contract seems to have attracted but very little attention.
I n an early stage of the rules regulating both these forms
of contract we find that neither party is able to substitute
another person for himself without the consent of the
other party to the contract. And this rule must always
prevail in all bilateral contracts, for each party has a
duty to perform ; and it would be a manifest injury to the
other if he were compelled to accept a substitute of whose
ability he might not be convinced. The relation of lord
and vassal in former times, and of master and servant at
the present day, afford good illustrations of this principle,
as both involve mutual rights and mutual duties ; and the
lord .could no more substitute another, and claim the
allegiance of the vassal for him without the consent of
the latter, than the tenant could substitute another for
himself in the performance of the feudal duties without
the consent of the lord.* And when the last remnant
of this doctrine of attornment was destroyed by the Act
of Anne, the change amounted to an acknowledgment
in theory of a truth which the artifices of conveyances
* It is a truism to say that men are always much more apt to think of their
rights than of their duties, and the singular course taken by the whole school of the
co-called " Utilitarians," James Mill, Austin, etc., in selecting rights as the basis of
a legal classification of rights and duties, is probably due to this fact. They did not
notice, or, at least, did not pay due attention to those duties which have no corres-
ponding rights (hence called absolute duties), and consequently have no place in a
classification depending on rights.
640 LAND I
had long established in practice, viz., That the landlord
had legal rights but no legal duties.* Nor does the
state of things brought about by recent legislation in
Ireland, furnish any real exception to this steady
progression from the bilateral to the unilateral contract.
For although the landlord's rights have been curtailed,
no fresh positive duties have been imposed on him. On
the contrary one of the favourite arguments against
such legislation has been the assertion that the landlord,
feeling himself wronged by the attempt to give legal
force to a duty which had become merely moral, would
in all probability make the legal the boundary of the
moral obligation, and finding his powers reduced to little
more than the powers of a rent charger, would limit his
functions to the mere reception of rent.
It would indeed be vain to contend that a tenant
when he is granted Fixity of Tenure, Fair Rent, and Free
Sale, is in a position differing essentially from that of the
debtor whose creditor may at pleasure alienate the right
of action for the debt, whilst the debtor on his part may
arrange that another person shall assume his liability
without any consent given on the part of the creditor, a
system seen in its full perfection in the case of negotiable
instruments. t And in this case property in land has
merely followed a course similar to that in which movable
property had already run its career.
During the middle ages in England much the greater
part of a man's landed property was either totally inalien-
* This legal result has, of course, been much masked by the mode in which the
moral duties of the landlord towards the tenant have been enforced by public opinion.
t Among the Romans absolute freedom in the sale of debts was recognised and
allowed by the Constitution of Alexander Severus, in A.D. 224, without any know-
ledge or consent on the part of the debtor, and this has ever since been the general
mercantile law of Europe, and also the law of Scotland as far as we can trace it. It
was otherwise in England until our own time, " negotiable instruments" being with
us an exception to the ordinary rule.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 64!
able or required many difficult formalities for its alienation.
All holders of land were closely connected by contract,
and everyone (excepting the Lord Paramount and the
Tenant Para vail) was in a state of double contract both
with those above and with those below, and no one could
change his position or alienate his property by the
substitution of a stranger for himself without the consent
of the other parties to the contract. But in process of
time the relation of lord and vassal changed from a
bilateral contract, in which there were rights and duties
on both sides, to the simple relation of the modern land-
lord and tenant, where there is merely a right on the one
side to demand rent and a duty on the other side to pay
it. So that by these changes (whatever theoretical
pedantry may still have asserted),* estates in land were
gradually removed from the category of property in
contract to that of property in dominion.!
The so-called "encroachments of the landlord " are
thus seen to be developments in the case of immovable
property of a general tendency, which had long arrived
at its full results in the case of movables, and, in fact,
to be an instance of evolution. And, as usual, in such
cases the tendency continues powerful in spite of all
attempts to restrain it. For, although the legislation
diminishing the powers of the landlord over the tenant
may operate with great seventy upon particular
individuals, it does not in any way injure landlords as a
class, or. in the long run, lessen their influence, but
merely changes its form. In all highly civilised and
progressive countries the circulation of landed property
* That no subject can "own"' land in England, but at most "hold" in fee
simple was once a reality but is now little more than a quibble.
t An Act of Anne, said to have been drawn by Lord Somers, thus bears a
close analog)- to the constitution of Alexander Severus. Both gave a final sanction
to practices already established.
2 T
642 LAND :
is tolerably rapid ; and if a landed estate be sold after the
selling value has been diminished by ''tenant right," the
purchaser may fairly look upon the lands as having two
owners, viz., the landlord and the tenant, and may, in
order to obtain full dominion over the land, buy up both
the rights of the landlord and those of the tenant ; and
although it may be doubted whether the purchaser will
have to give for both these more or less than he would
have given for the full rights and powers of the landlord
under the old system, no one can well doubt that if such
a purchase is effected, and the new owner gives up the
plan of letting the land to tenant farmers in favour of
cultivation by means of his steward and bailiffs, he would
be far more free, not only from legal control, but also
from the moral control of public opinion than the former
proprietor had ever been. For, as the steward and the
bailiff would be servants liable to dismissal at a month's
notice,* their master's power over them would be far
greater than the power of any landlord, and it is as easy
to ascertain the political principles of a servant before
engaging him as any other portion of his qualifications.
And whilst both law and public opinion have over and
over again interfered to protect the tenant against the
very words and intention of his contract,! no such inter-
* When legislation has interfered at all it has usually interfered to shorten the
term of hiring. Nor has a servant ever been allowed any tenant right in the cottage
he was permitted to occupy.
f It is not a little remarkable that almost all legislation for the protection of
tenants, which has been rendered necessary by the real or supposed tyranny of
landlords, punishes or restrains those landlords most who least require restraint or
deserve punishment. In Ireland, for example, those landlords who had cleared their
estates, without remorse, of all those who were unprofitable, and substituting sheep and
cattle for men, ruled over herdsmen instead of taking rent from cultivators, were
unaffected by any legislation as to tenant right, for the simple reason that they had no
tenants, and where men whose conduct in a moral point of view had been according
to current notions of morality so bad escaped without legislative interference, what
interference has any landholder to dread if he adapt his mode of profit-making to the
changed conditions of his time ?
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 643
ference is to be apprehended in the case of domestic
servants, among whom stewards and bailiffs are far from
being the most popular. And experience has shown that
no protection against any legislative tendency to prevent
the owner of the soil from exercising full power over
those who superintend its actual cultivation, is so good
as this.
To break through an established usage is no doubt
always difficult, and often unpopular, though the mode
in which such changes are regarded generally depends
much less upon the nature of the acts done than upon
the manner in which they are done,* " adaptability to
environment " and " unscrupulous time-serving " often
differing much less in deed than in thought, especially
In the point of view from which impartial spectators
regard the progress of society.
And in the past too the landowner has been fortunate
as till within the last few years his security steadily rose
in value, t As well put by the late Professor Rogers,
" If one capitalist in the reign of Queen Anne invested
his savings in the public funds to the amount of ,100,000,
and another laid out ,100,000 in the purchase of land,
each would probably have received some ,6000 a year
from the investment. But if the same property is held
at the present clay, each by the descendant of those
ancestors, the former would be receiving about ,2500
a year, and the latter about ,"60,000 a year." To this
it may no doubt be objected that although landed
* Thus Lord Bacon proposed to conquer Nature by serving her, and seems to
have looked upon the whims of a royal virago, or a royal pedant, in the light of
natural laws. And the present popularity of the Darwinian hypothesis and of the
historical method, look in the same direction.
f The law also has grown more favourable to him. Once he was left to the
perilous remedy of distraint when the law relating to a contiact debt was exceedingly
severe. But now this landlord has both remedies, and it has even been proposed to
strengthen the remedies whilst somewhat diminishing the rights.
644 LAND :
property was a good source, both of income and of con-
sideration in the past, yet at the present time it is much
otherwise ; and incomes derived from land which were
twenty years ago thought as secure as any incomes could
possibly be, are now most grievously reduced, so that in
the wheat lands of Essex, for example, net rent has been
brought very low, and the selling value has been brought
down to little more than a fourth. But it must be re-
membered that if the value of wheat land situated on
strong clay has diminished at an unprecedented rate
during the last quarter of a century, such a diminution
is merely a case of a phenomenon very commonly
observed, viz., that every business has its vicissitudes,
and that in every branch of business in which the rise
in the rate of profit is an extraordinarily rapid rise, so
also in that business we must expect occasionally an
extraordinarily rapid fall. In the case of land there has
evidently been a steady rise in rent, varied only by
occasional fluctuations, ever since the latter part of the
Middle Ages, Between 1270 and 1870 the average
money rental of corn land has risen from 80 to 120
times,* whilst the rent of natural meadow land has not
risen more than about 1 2 times.
* This has been due chiefly to agricultural improvements, which have much
diminished the cost of obtaining the crop. But this has been almost inoperative in the
case of meadow land, where the cost of obtaining the crop was (allowance being
made for the fall in value of the precious metals) almost the same six centuries ago as
it now is. During a large portion of the Middle Ages England had practically a
monopoly of wool, due to the fact that England was the sole source of supply, as
England alone possessed country districts in which property was sufficiently secure
for the safety of large flocks of sheep. Elsewhere so helpless an animal would have
needed the protection of stone walls. Hence the hatred for the sheep-stealer which
long prevailed in England, since he was felt by all classes as a dangerous enemy, who-
might nevertheless be extern inated by sharp laws sharply administered, or sometimes
without any very strict regard for legal ceremonies. Within living memory the
horse-stealer was regarded in the sams light in Texas. Crime which affects the mass-
of the population is always treated in this way, whilst it is long before highway-
robbery (which chiefly affects the rich) produces similar feelings of enmity.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 645
Between 1670 and 1870 agricultural rents rose on an
average from six to nine times. In the period of the
long war, 1792-1815, there was an extraordinary rise in
rents (estimated in gold), followed by an extraordinary
revulsion, though rents seem not to have fallen back to
the level of 1/92.
Between 1853 and 1873 farmers' rents had increased
(according to Mr. James Howard's calculation) by 26 \
per cent. And no man can reasonably expect such a
process to go on without fluctuations. Fluctuations
have before occurred in the direction of a fall at the
latter end of the seventeenth century, and in the direction
of a rise at the end of the eighteenth, and as rents are
"paid out of profits,"* anything which diminishes the
profits of the farmer will in the long run diminish the
rent of the landlord, and the sooner it does so the better
for both parties. For if rent be not paid out of profits
it will be paid out of capital, and it is much easier to
destroy an industry than to create one. It is not a little
strange that although there were many men still living
in the period 1853-73 who could remember the events of
1792-1815, landowners in general fell into a similar error
in both cases. They supposed that rents depended on
prices instead of depending upon profits, and expected a
rise to be permanent which could in its own nature be
but temporary.
And hence the condition of the landowner perhaps
deserves, and certainly will receive, less sympathy than that
of the holders of canal shares or turnpike trusts, who were,
in many cases, ruined by the introduction of railroads, as
X . man was a worse friend to the landowner than Ricardo. His " Theory of
Rent " owed its plausibility to the wholly exceptional circumstances of Ricardo's
time (see my " Questions and Exercises in Political Economy," p. 28, seq.
This dictum that rent depends on price seemed to make the landowner a public
enemy. Prices are no more than useful data for determining profits.
646 LAND I
they fell owing to a rivalry which the ablest among them
could scarcely have anticipated, whilst the landowner has
fallen into error with all the means of arriving at the truth
within his reach. But this is so far from leading us to
despair of the fortune of land that it is rather a ground
of hope, as the loss has arisen, not from an inevitable
and irrevocable change in the state of affairs external to
the business, but chiefly from intellectual mistakes on the
part of both landlord and tenant, so that when these
errors have been rectified we may reasonably expect a
marked change for the better.
The faults of the landowner have been, in this
century, indolence and inattention to his business. The
country squire of 1685, described by Macaulay as one
who " examined samples of grain, handled pigs, and
made bargains over a tankard with drovers and hop-
merchants," was no doubt rough and coarse enough, but
the chief business of his life was the care of his property;
and as men grew more enlightened during the eighteenth
century this habit remained, and it was to the zeal and
diligence of the country gentry during that period that
we owe, if not most of the discoveries in agriculture
o
and cattle breeding, at least their practical and intelligent
application. The country gentry had their reward in a
vast increase of rent, though between the Restoration
and the reign of George III. the price of both bread and
meat fell considerably. For their price did not diminish
nearly so fast as did the cost of production, a result
brought about partly by good seasons and partly by
improved methods, so that a much larger margin of profit
remained, and (as rent is paid out of profits) a large
margin for the payment of rent.* And this conduct on
* The average rent on the Belvoir estate in 1689 was 3s. 6d. per acre. In 1853
it was 365. 8cl. But wheat was on an average dearer in 1689 than in 1853.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 647
the part of the landowners was merely an instance of
the general habits of the day. The manufacturer lived
close to his factory, and the shopkeeper over his shop.
Farmers' wives and daughters looked after the dairy,
and thought more of eggs and butter than of the piano
and lawn tennis. Land was regarded more and more as
a food manufactory in the commercial, and less and less
as a mode of linking together the various orders of
society in the feudal sense.* But no sooner was the
revolution accomplished by which the ideal landlord
became a sort of master manufacturer of corn and fat
cattle, with dependent farmers for overseers and labourers
for workmen, than men began to draw very disagreeable
comparisons between the indulgence of the old, and the
rapacity of the new school of landlords. The latter were
accused, with some truth, of loving large farms and
11 close" parishes, and thinking more of money than of
men. In other words they were blamed for conducting
their affairs in a commercial spirit, in the commercial
and materialistic eighteenth century (which, in this
respect, presents many analogies with the fifteenth),
though, at the same time, a manufacturer would have been
laughed at had he employed an unnecessary number
of overseers or an unnecessary number of workmen, out
of philanthropic consideration for either class.
But the age being an eminently practical one, these
sentimental views seem to have produced but little effect,
and the man who made two blades of grass grow where but
one had grown before, was generally lauded as a public
benefactor. Arthur Young, indeed, regards a penal rise
in rent as the only mode of getting rid of an idle or
ignorant tenant, and severely blames those landlords (too
* If such a system is consistently carried out, agriculture becomes simply a case
of the application of the capitalist system to the soil.
648 LAND I
often styled " good ") who, from indolence or feeble good
nature allowed rents to remain as they had long been, and
thus took away from the tenant a powerful inducement
to improve.
The effect of all this has been aggravated by the
general carelessness of modern Englishmen in the matter
of account-keeping, and to this a curious parallel may
be found in the legal and economic history of the
Romans. In the early times the book-keeping of
" bonus paterfamilias " was perfect, and even in the
days of Cicero, not to keep fairly good accounts was
regarded as a proof of extraordinary neglect and a
strong presumption of dishonesty ; but under the early
empire, the good old custom had begun to fall into
disuse, and the contract " Literis " into neglect. Similarly
in the England of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
farming accounts were kept with accuracy and minute-
ness*, and the consumption of produce on the farm is
debited as exactly to the gross receipts of agriculture, as
were the purchases. And numerous allusions in the
" Laws " of Arthur Young, indicate a general practice
on the part of both landowners and farmers, of taking
stock annually of their position, and of carefully noting
* Although the items are perfectly well set down in the medioeval accounts, the
addition and substraction are very inaccurately done. This seems to be due to the
employment of the Roman numerals, which although well adapted to mere memoranda
do not afford much assistance to numerical operations. The custom of minute
account-keeping does not seem to have come till about 1257, before which date no
accounts of private estates are known to exist. As might be expected none have
survived but those of the lord who seems generally to have had in his hands about
half the manor. Like the Roman paterfamilias the steward made rough daily notes of
receipts and expenditure, and from these notes (of which some survive) the roll (like
the family ledger of the Romans) was engrossed. Everything is noted from the
jeceipts of the manor court down to a chicken, the acreage sown, the seed required
for the purpose, and the live and dead stock on the farm given with all losses and
allowances ; and then the audit having been completed, the quittance was admitted
and the bailiff began to register for the next year's balance sheet.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 649
the gains and losses of the year or of the special crop.
But at the present day few farmers keep accounts that
are better than mere memorandum books, and never
even think of balancing them. And the statements of
o
the officials of the Court of Bankruptcy induce a belief
that similar neglect is general among small tradesmen.
Both landowners and farmers have in this way been
ignorant of their true financial position, and the one. has
demanded and the other undertaken to pay a rent which
both would have seen to be ruinous had they kept
accurate accounts, and consequently injurious to the
interests of both. But the landlord having in his hands
the power of ousting the tenant (at a cost to the latter of
not less than ten per cent.), and the tenant, from the
lack of accurate accounts, thinking a rise of perhaps
two shillings and sixpence per acre a less evil than
dispossession, has too often consented to a rent which
not merely absorbed his profits but encroached on his
capital. The great rise in rent during the eighteenth
century was not wrung from the necessities of the tenant
by the absorption of all beyond a mere subsistence,
but slowly, laboriously and honestly earned by the
landlord, whose exertions to improve cultivation were
indefatigable. The seasons were, as a rule, good and prices
extraordinarily low. Even the most improving tenant
farmers, such as the famous Bakewell, generally con-
fined themselves to the improvement of the breeds of
cattle and sheep, and the art of bringing stock to
perfection, a pursuit in which they could keep a large
part of the result of their skill and care for themselves
and secure themselves from all risk of having their rent
" raised on their own improvements."* But the landlord
* The fear of such a proceeding is especially hostile to fruit culture. No man
will plant trees which may at any moment become the full property of his landlord
unless an enhanced rent be paid.
650 LAND I
who can do what he pleases on his own ground, and who
is guided by enlightened self-interest is under no such
restraint, and accordingly we find that at least twice in
the course of English History, great landowners have
conferred incalculable benefits upon English rural
economy. These periods in their full strength lasted
from about 1260 to 1350, and again from 1730 to 1780.
In the former case the process was seriously interrupted
by the ravages of the Black Death, which disorganised
the labour market, and in the latter by the enormous
rise in agricultural prices at the latter end of the
eighteenth century.
A model landlord at the former date is to be found in
Roger Bigod, the great Earl of Norfolk, the traditional
hero who dared to bandy words with Edward I., and not
only cultivated his English estates according to the best
lights of his time under his own personal superintendence,
but also introduced the English system upon his Irish
estates. From such men the English farmer learned
much.* He was exceedingly prosperous throughout the
wars of the Roses, in which the aristocracy committed
suicide, though all Bigod's zeal and skill could not make
up for the absence of winter roots and artificial grasses,
which were then unknown, whilst the rotation of crops
was not thought of. On the other hand, in the eighteenth
century the chief feature of the new agriculture consisted
in the change which it made in the rotation of crops, in
the substitution of roots, especially the turnip, for bare
fallows, and in the careful hoeing and weeding of the root
* The peasant freeholders and copyholders having before them an example in
the mode of cultivation pursued on the lord's estate, profited by his successes and
failures. And in addition to this the lord guaranteed the king's peace that is, the
continuity of the farmer's industry free from the risk of brigandage. The whole
doctrine of express and implied, of lineal and collateral, warranty points in the same
direction.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 65 I
crop, by feeding on which at leisure sheep fertilised the
soil.* No men ever earned their money more fairly than
the English landlords earned the great rise in rent during
the eighteenth century, and it is unfortunate that the great
rise of prices consequent upo^i bad seasons towards its
close, and the artificial famine of the Corn Laws, coupled
with an erroneous theory of rent, led their successors to
take a very different course.
The testimony of Adam Smith shows that Scottish
agriculture was for a long time inferior to English, and
although in his day rapidly improving, had not yet over-
taken the South, where this zeal for improvement and
personal superintendence on the part of the landowner, had
begun to flag before the " Wealth of Nations" was published,
whilst the motives for the consolidation of farms were still
increasing in vigour. 1 1 seemed manifest that experimental
agriculture could not be carried on (if it were to be a
o V
matter of business and not of fancy) except on a large
scale and with abundant capital, and that machinery and
its economics could not be adapted to agriculture unless
an adequate area were given for their use. And looked
at from a business and not from a sentimental point of
view, it was plain that by the consolidation of farms the
position of the landowner would be improved, and that
the regular and permanent charges imposed upon him by
custom would be lessened. A farm of eight hundred
acres requires much less outlay in buildings and repairs
* The farming books of Lord Lovell (afterwards Lord Leicester), who practised
the new agriculture in 1730, have been preserved, and the late Professor Rogers
made a careful examination of them. He describes them as a monument of diligence,
as Lord Lovell "grew corn, was the butcher of the neighbourhood, maltster, brick-
burner, and lime-burner. He superintended the whole farm, checked all the
accounts, examined every item, and after making a reasonable deduction from his
profits for rent, paying his workmen good wages (for the time), and making con-
siderable improvements on the estate by marling a portion of it, declares a profit of
over 36 per cent, on his first year's expenditure."
652 LAND:
than ten farms of eighty acres each, and this was felt all
the more keenly owing to the heavy excises then levied
on almost all articles used in building and repairs. But
it was too often forgotten that the larger the farm the
smaller the number of farmers who have sufficient capital
to stock and work it, and that the small farmer's family
is likely to give much more personal labour to the farm
than the family of a large farmer, whose members would
be apt to despise the occupation by which they lived.
And the value of the farmer's own labour is very great.
He works more diligently on his own account than any
of his labourers will w r ork for him, and so effective is his
eye for small economics that we often find the friends of the
labourer with an amusing sort of simplicity complain of
the hard and strict dealing of the small farmer towards
those w r hom he employs. And the proportion of the
produce which the small farmer and his family (who are
generally assistants in his labours) consume is far greater
than that which a large holder consumes, and this portion
of his earnings is hardly at all mulcted by the middleman.
Many labourers, who have had allotments of land to
the extent of two or three acres, and have cultivated these
with their own hands, state that every day's labour has
been worth ten shillings to them, not for the sale of the
produce, but for the maintenance of their families, as they
thus save all the intermediate expenses of carnage,
markets, and agents. We must also be careful not to
confuse the system of large owners with the system of
large occupiers. Large owners are often envied, but
England has always been a country of large owners,
though not always of large occupiers. Most men look
upon the average outlay of their equals as an unavoidable
want, and save only to the extent to w r hich they possess
more than others of their class. If therefore evervone
ITS ATTRACTION'S AXD RICHES. 655
had an equal income few would think themselves in a
condition to save. A deterrent effect is thus exercised
on every economic venture, and yet no great progress is
possible where no venture is made.
WOLSELEY P. EMKRTON.
654 LAND :
CHAPTER LXXII.
LAND FROM A LIBERTY POINT OF VIEW.
BY AUBERON HERBERT.
I WANT to point out the dangers that lie in front of us as
regards Land. Almost everybody who approaches the
subject of land approaches it with some partial and one-
sided aim, either influenced by the interest of the landlord,
or the tenant, or the labourer, or intent upon some bit of
legal reform, or serving party objects and scrambling in
the political market for votes, or with some ill-considered
bias in favour of conferring upon either the local or central
government land-holding powers. All such one-sided and
partial methods of treating this great question are
bound to lead us wrong. Steering first in one direction
and then in another, under these varying impulses, we shall
be sure to involve ourselves in every kind of compli-
cation ; we shall run into officialism and expense ; we
shall weaken the healthy desire to possess land that
magical spring which can produce such great results ; and
we shall be constantly contradicting what we did yester-
day by what we do to-day. No better example of the
vagueness of our course and the confusion of our opinions
can be given than the Gladstone Irish Land Acts, painfully
building up dual ownership, and the Balfour Act, after a
slight interval, heroically reconstituting the single owner ;
or the Agricultural Compensation Act which was passed
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 655
a short while ago, and which did all that was possible to
stereotype the landlord system and to keep farms in their
present size and condition, and the loud declaration of
to-day from both parties that they are prepared to create
a class of small proprietors. What course then is the
true course to follow ? I reply, instead of these fitful
and spasmodic efforts, instead of yielding to every breeze
that blows, instead of trying to steer south by north, we
should try to know our own minds in the matter, try to
make carefully out the true principle of dealing with land,
and then consistently follow it. Now what is that true
principle? Here, as everywhere else, the eternal contrast
and the eternal choice present themselves. We must give
our allegiance either to the principle of freedom or of
restriction, of the self-guiding individual or the nursing
official, of Free Trade or of Protection.
Nowadays, restriction, officialism, and protection find
so many apologists that one may fairly claim to say if
only to relieve monotony a few words on behalf of Free
Trade. I want to urge, in this matter of land, that we
should allow the natural motives to act on men ; that we
should allow the natural rewards to produce their effects ;
that we should not take out of men's hands the charge of
their own interests ; that we should not undertake to
nurse first one body of citizens and then another body ;
that we should distrust our powers of prevision and
arrangement ; and should let our system of landholding
shape itself without let or hindrance in its own fashion
according to the ever-changing wants of our people.
But what is Free Trade ? The words come easily to
our lips. What do we exactly mean by it ? I will try to
explain.
Free Trade is generally taken to mean unrestricted
buying and selling, but its full meaning is not exhausted
656 LAND !
in those words. Justly understood, it is an expression of
what is perhaps the deepest moral truth which underlies,
social existence. Why should men buy and sell without
restriction ? The answer must be. Because the faculties
of each person belong to himself and not to somebody
else ; because each person has the right to use such
faculties to his own best advantage ; and because, there-
fore, we have no right to restrict the faculties of one
person, whoever he may be, for the advantage of another
person, whoever he may be, which worst of crimes is
unfortunately what is done every day, whenever politicians
or protectionists occupy themselves by building up systems
of interference and restrictions.
Now let us see how Free Trade affects the question of
land. As far as laws go, each person should have the
same equal liberty to acquire and enjoy land by the
exercise of his faculties ; each should be free to share in
the universal competition by which it is to be acquired.
Upon such exercise of faculties and liberty to acquire, no
restriction of any kind should be placed, in the interest
of any persons or any class, except such restrictions as
are necessarily involved in and spring out of this exercise
of faculties and this liberty of acquisition. To give
examples of what I mean : a natural, or necessarily
involved, restriction to the acquisition of land w r ould be
the prohibition that a man should move his neighbour's
landmarks by force or fraud, since the idea of force and
fraud (or the violent and fraudulent setting aside of
another person's consent), is opposed to the idea of
acquiring in a free market, where both persons concerned
consent to the transaction. The free market means the
common ground on which men met to exchange all
services and all forms of world-material, each acting in
his own right of doing the best that he can for himself in
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. . 657
the universal competition, and only restricted by the con-
dition that he is not to employ force and fraud, because
force and fraud are fatal to dealings which are based on
free consent on both sides. On the other hand, all the
restrictions that politicians love to impose, restrictions
favouring the buyer or the seller, limiting quantity, regu-
lating prices, establishing certain systems supposed to be
favourable to a special class, are all arbitrary and from a
moral point of view, immoral, since they are nothing more
nor less than limitations placed by the holders of power
upon a man's right to do the best that he can for himself.
The solution of the land problem, therefore, depends,
like the solution of every other industrial problem, in
finding out what system of buying and selling, of owning
and enjoying, allows men the freest scope to use their
faculties for their own advantage, neither deducting from
this freest scope anything that falls short, nor adding
anything which exceeds. Let me try to describe such a
system. It must allow men (i) To acquire all such
land as they can acquire in the open market; to possess
full powers of ownership over it; to make all such con-
tracts as they choose in reference to it during the term
of their own life ; to sell it in the same unrestricted way
as they have acquired it, and to devise it at death to
such person as they choose. All these powers are
necessary in order to make ownership perfect, and
to make land yield the fullest enjoyment to those who
own it.
(2) Such powers should apply to the living and not
to the dead. The living must not only rank before the
dead, but the dead must not in any way compete with
the living. It must be remembered that whatever
privileges are granted to the dead are taken at the
expense of the living, and conflict with our proposition
2U
658 LAND :
that we are to allow the freest exercise of faculties, for
with the faculties of the dead we are not concerned.
(3) State burdens are not to be placed on the land.
If it is mischievous to tax corn, it is far more mischievous
to tax land, which, by its nature, is so immediately asso-
ciated with the all-important questions of home, and a
man's independence of life. Nothing interferes so much
with the possibilities of human enjoyment of any object,
and the exercise of human energies, as the vague claims
of what we call the State. The State is an abstract body
which runs no risks, undergoes no labour, which neither
toils nor spins, but is ever stretching out greedy and
unsatisfied hands to seize a part of what the toil of the
individual has produced. Both the dead owner and the
State are abstractions much given to encroachment upon
the free individual, and both must be driven back within
their own territory. Nothing less than the complete
untaxed freehold, perfect in all its rights and enjoyments,
should be the goal of our efforts.
Let us now consider these conditions more exactly,
taking Nos. i and 2 together, (i and 2.) As we have
seen, the privileges of the dead are not to conflict with
the living, or, in other words, the liberty of the living is
not to be lessened by the interference of the dead. Let
us see where this principle carries us. In the first place,
does it forbid a man at death appointing his successor ?
I think not, for the following reasons : (a) It is not
by appointing a successor that the dead owner diminishes
human freedom, if such successor be given full rights of
o o
ownership, but by having the power to regulate the
action of the successor, (b) Once grant full ownership,
and there is no person who can be discovered with any
title at all to appoint except the dead owner. It is
ludicrous, on the face of it, that the successor should be
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 659
appointed by some person to whom the property did not
or does not belong. No arrangement could be more
topsy-turvy. Some writers have had the courage to
propose the State. But the State is simply a group of
these very persons to whom the property does not
belong, and who have, therefore, no locus standi in the
matter. The State, as we have seen, has neither toiled,
nor run risks in the matter ; the State, properly under-
stood, is only an association to protect individual rights ;
the State has no more claim to the heritage of the dead
man- unless it be the claim of fraud and force than the
English race has to the mountains of the moon, (c] There
being no other person in the field with any true moral
claim to appoint the successor, it must be looked on
as the right of the owner at death his last living act-
both because from a moral point of view there is no
other competitor in the field, and because it does not
diminish human ' liberty, but completes those rights of
perfect ownership which allow the freest exercise of
faculties over all forms of world-material.
It would be easy to pile up reasons of a secondary
nature. No more violent transition in human affairs
could be imagined than to allow a man to enjoy all
rights over a piece of land, to cultivate it, to turn it
into grass land, or plough land, or coppice, as he wills ;
to build on it, to lease it, to be absolute lord and master
of it during life ; and then to take from him the right of
naming who shall succeed to his labours. The violence
of such a transition \vould be fatal to that continuity of
effort and intention on which our civilisation rests.
A man labours, not simply for himself, but for those
dependent on him, and to intrude at the moment of
death anybody but those for whom he has laboured,
would make the most cruel break in the existence of the
66o LAND :
family life. Moreover as always happens such violent
and arbitrary interference would be met by evasion, and
the owner would effect the passage of the property during
his lifetime.
But it is one thing for the owner, at death, to appoint
his successor, and another for the owner, when dead, to
continue to regulate either the living man or the property
he holds. This is a dual ownership of a kind even
worse than those which Parliament invented, and one
which cannot in reason be justified. From the point
of view of liberty, the successor must stand in the same
position and enjoy the same perfect rights as the owner.
It is plain it must be so. How can the late owner
rightly continue to undertake the direction of any human
affairs? How can he rightly make conditions? How
can he himself having been a man in possession of
perfect rights create a successor with imperfect rights ?
To do so, means that so far as the rights of his successor
are imperfect, they are imperfect just because a certain
part of them are retained by the dead owner. That is
an altogether unreasonable condition of affairs, nearly as
unreasonable as the claim of the State to step in and to
appropriate, either a part, or the whole, when an owner
dies. The owner at his death may name his successor,
for he has a far better right to do so than anybody else ;
but his successor must be in all respects his own equal
in rights and powers. His successor must stand on the
same high level ; he must live under a system which
subjects all world-material to the freest use of faculties,
just as the first owner in his day has lived. We are con-
structing a world for the living and not for the dead, and
we cannot confiscate any of the rights of the living in
favour of the dead. The owner must leave in his place
a wholly free man, such as he himself was, and not a
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 66 1
partly free man, because forsooth he the owner wishes
to retain some of his privileges after death.
This principle points clearly to what a part of the
law should be as regards the ownership of land. B
should have full power to leave his land to C, or if he
prefers to D, but he should have no power to leave it to
D, or E, behind C. He should have no power to create
what the lawyers call tl estates in expectancy." At present
a man may leave his land, for example, to his eldest
son John, on John's death to his brother William, and
on William's death to any number of other human beings,
or he may charge the land with payments to be made to
certain persons. All this is continuing the control of the
dead hand over the affairs of the living, and is a wholly
illegitimate proceeding. It is creating imperfect owner-
ship. The living are left with imperfect rights of
ownership just because the dead man is allowed to
remain part owner. Every payment tacked on to the
land, every condition imposed, every succession (beyond
the first), directed by the deceased owner, is an en-
croachment upon the perfect ownership we have to
build up.
It may, of course, be objected that to deprive an
owner of the power of regulating successions in the case
of land would give him narrower powers than those
which he at present enjoys as regards money in the
funds, since, by certain legal arrangements, a man may
invest money in the funds, may allow A to enjoy the
interest during his life, then allow it to pass on to B,
after A's death, and to C, D, etc., after B's death.
But the proceeding here is equally illegitimate. It is
equally the projection of the dead into the affairs of the
living ; equally the confiscation of the rights of the living
in the interest of the dead.
662 LAND :
Of course this truer adjustment of right involves a
considerable change in our thoughts and customs. We
might still leave money for any charity or other purpose
that recommended itself to us, but the difference would
be that it would have to be left to B and C as individuals,
or to B and C as a society, to be administered as they,
now become the owners, think right. We should have no
power to inflict upon B and C conditions as regards such
administration. W"e might select out of the whole world
the man, or the society, which we thought the most trust-
worthy to carry on our own ideas, but once the property
had passed after death to such man or society, there
should be no power to complain on the dead man's behalf
that his wishes were not being respected. It would seem
wrong, I think, even to provide a remedy against fraudulent
perversion of funds by such persons.
An important distinction must be drawn between the
power of a man to charge property during his lifetime and
after his death. Some writers, seeing the mischief that
sometimes arises from placing charges of different kinds
upon land, have proposed to forbid, not only the power
of making a settlement of land to take effect after death,
but the power to create a mortgage during life. Such
proposals are generally based upon no principle at all,
and, therefore, would be sure to produce confusion.
Some writers are fond of saying that land must be ad-
ministered for the public good. There never was such a
deceptive phrase. It is simply the exaltation of the non-
owner at the expense of the owner, and the consequent
confusion of all human efforts and energies. What is
the public good ? Who shall ascertain or decide for us
what it is ? And when we have discovered the persons
who are able to ascertain and decide authoritatively this
most uncertain and most controvertible point, will
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 663
it not then be simpler to end the farce by turning the
owner out and let the non-owner administer for himself,
for the most perverse brain can hardly defend a system
where one set of persons is employed to administer not
in their own interest but in the interest of somebody
else.
Against the mortgage, there is therefore, from the
ground of reason, no true objection at least none which
under present circumstances we are called upon to
examine in this paper. A living owner must be free
to mortgage his property, during his lifetime, as deeply
and as many times over as he chooses. He is perfect
owner ; the thing is his ; he may charge it, encumber it
as he will during his own life ; but with his life all such
charges and encumbrances must come to their end, and
be satisfied. The property then cleanses itself. The
charges placed by A upon his estate must be met at his
death by a sale of the estate, or part of it, or in such
way as the successor can meet them, but as A's charges
placed upon the property they cannot continue. They
are the debts of a dead man, and as such must be paid
out of his estate. Of course if B, the successor, chooses
for his lifetime to re-enact these or any other charges,
he is free to do so, but it must be by an act of his own,
and not by the act of his predecessor, that such charges
can have validity.
Here comes another difficult question from the point
of view of liberty. A B marries. He wishes to settle his
estate upon his wife, if she survive him, with remainder
(i.e., rights of eventual succession) to the children. Can he
do so? The answer must be " No" ; but he should be
able to settle, I think, during life, a part of the property
upon his wife, and a part upon his children, because
such a power of making settlements seems made up
664 LAND :
of two legitimate exercises of power the dealing with
the thing that belongs to him during his life, and the
naming of his successor at death. What he cannot do
is to regulate the successions that are to take place after
his death. Whatever share he leaves to his wife he
must leave to her absolutely ; and it must depend on her
whether it devolves hereafter or not to the children.
It may be objected that much inconvenience might
follow such an application of the principle. A widow,
taking part of the family estate, might marry again and
leave the share she had received to the children of the
second marriage. It is quite true that there might be
such cases; but if we are to consider the practical risks of
both systems, the greater risks are to be found under the
present system. Where the wife, who enjoys the confi-
dence of her husband, survives, it is better that she
should have full power over the property she receives
from him. If any of the children grow up with characters
unfit to possess property, it is then in her power to do as
she thinks best. It is far better that the living hand
should guide than the dead hand.
I come now to the third point State burdens. If
we bear our principle in mind that land is to be treated
in such a way so as to extract the highest human enjoy-
ment from it, and to let it offer the highest reward to
human exertions it is plain that, just as we must not
deduct anything from the perfect rights of ownership,
so also we must not deduct anything from the return
which naturally flows from the industry and intelligence
of the owner. Human ingenuity has never devised
anything so fatal as the rate which rises with every
improvement made. So rude and so barbarous a con-
trivance is only to be compared to the methods which
prevailed in earlier centuries, and still prevail in certain
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 665
countries, of attacking wealth wherever it shows itself.
Consider how it works. A saving and industrious man
buys a plot of land, gets it into good order, benefits
not only himself but everybody at large by increasing
its fertility and the general yield of the country, and as
soon as he has done so, a penalty is. at once placed upon
his services by the increase of his rates. In a few years
he has saved enough to pull down the dilapidated cottage
which he bought with the land, and to replace it by a
neat and healthy building, and instantly the rate penalty
overtakes him, and leads him to inquire if in this world
of disappointments it is after all best to improve
one's condition. His neighbour, on the contrary, makes
no effort to mend matters. He lives on under the
shelter of old mud and rotting thatch, and is rewarded
for his apathy by his rates remaining unaltered. The
effect presently shows itself. Rates, under the modern
system of extravagant administration, tend everywhere
to rise, and there soon comes a time when both small and
big owners begin to question if improvements are worth
making when they certainly mean increased rates, and
do not at all certainly mean the interest of the money
expended on them. There are grave doubts in the present
day whether peasant proprietors can hold their own or not.
It would be rash to speak confidently in this matter, but
what can be said is, that in no country is the peasant
proprietor allowed a fair chance of existence. Wherever
he exists as a class, taxes are lumped upon him by the
beneficent State. No more extraordinary statement was
ever made by a responsible statesman than that which
was once reported to have been made by Prince Bismarck
some years ago. Being attacked on the subject of con-
scription, which, as it was stated, was driving the German
peasant out of the country, he complacently remarked
666 LAND :
as if taxes were imposed by the will of heaven, from
which there was no appeal that the active cause was less
conscription than the taxes which he had to pay. It is
the same in Italy and in France.
In addition to the direct taxes falling on the
French peasant he has to pay dear for an all-pervading
officialism. M. Leroy Beaulieu pointed out some years
ago in his " Science des Finances " (2nd edition), that
sales of very small properties when carried out under
orders of the Court were taxed higher than their value.
Thus, properties of a value under five hundred francs
were charged a hundred and twenty-three francs for
every hundred francs of value (p. 535, vol. i). At
the time Leroy Beaulieu wrote, it was proposed to
relieve the small proprietors of part of this crushing tax,
but Leroy Beaulieu pointed out that even after the relief
proposed, the official expenses in the case of a judicial
sale of properties, ranging from five hundred to a
thousand francs in value, would be from twenty to
twenty-five per cent. ; and he very fittingly christens the
proceeding as an act of State brigandage. He also tells
us that the legal costs upon ordinary sales of land, where
no Court intervenes, rise to the monstrous figure of ten
to twelve per cent, of the value of the property (p. 523,
vol i). The same thing was pointed out by the writer
of a pamphlet, " Experiences of an English buyer of land
in France " (Ridgway, 1876); he quotes the following
examples of the official expenses incurred in these
judicial sales. A property sold for seventeen hundred
francs incurred expenses amounting to one thousand nine
hundred francs (in addition to purchase-money) ; one sold
for one thousand two hundred and fifty francs, incurred as
expenses one thousand and fifty francs ; and one sold for
ten francs, incurred as expenses three hundred and twenty
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 667
francs ! ! These monstrous expenses are the natural
result of that officialism which seems spreading over the
world as a plague. The business of land purchase in
France is carried out by means of the notaries and
avoues, who divide the functions of our solicitor, and
have a strict monopoly in their callings. At all land
sales only the avoues are allowed to bid, the same avoue
often representing (misrepresenting?) two competing
buyers. As the judicial sales alluded to above take
place where minors are concerned, it is principally at the
expense of this unhappy class that these, the worst of
official excesses, take place. The writer of this pamphlet
tells us that in his own private purchases the lawyer's
bill amounted to ten per cent, of the purchase money
(including, I presume, stamp duties), a fact showing that
compulsory registration is of no value, where officialism
has taken strong root.
It may, of course, be replied that if the peasant is
heavily taxed in such countries, if he is sore-ridden by
officialism, still, he is generally protected by duties which
prevent the agricultural produce of other countries
coming into competition with his own crops. It is
probable that, after weights have been industriously tied
round all his limbs, protection acts as a cork, and, for
a time, just keeps his head above water. But it injures
him as well as helps him. Where he is protected, other
industries are also protected, and he is forced to buy
goods at enhanced prices, just as his own goods, at
enhanced prices, are forced on these others. Moreover,
the effect of all protection is to produce an intellectual
stagnation. If I can force my wares upon A and B,
there is no reason why I should seek to improve any
of the processes which I generally follow. One special
excellence of Free Trade lies in the moral tonic it
668 LAND :
administers to us all. It forces upon us the enquiring,
improving temper ; it enlarges our ideas ; it compels us to
recognise both the superiority of others and our own
shortcomings where these exist ; it thus breaks down that
national conceit which is so incapacitating ; it has no
mercy upon slovenly habits, and under its influence,
wherever there is sufficient manliness in us to apply its
lessons rightly, instead of sitting down to whine, "I we
spring to our feet and try to reverse the fight that has
gone against us.
But if land is not to be taxed, how about the
Chancellor of the Exchequer's revenue, and all the gilt
gingerbread which is provided for the nation out of
taxation ? I am not writing a paper on taxation, else I
might try to show that the mass of money taken from
us does far more harm than the usual Government
services do us good. Our present State system is much
like that of a doctor who bleeds his patient in the
morning, and in the afternoon tries to restore his strength
by administering powerful tonics. With this part of the
matter, however, I am not concerned here ;* all that I
want now to insist upon is, that if land is to be a blessing
to our people, we must relieve it from State burdens. At
present burdens are lumped upon land, and then people
wonder that not only in England do our labourers so
seldom make efforts to acquire land, and steadily desert
the agricultural districts, but even in a country like
France, where the love of land exists as a passion, the
stream sets in from country to town. The truth is that
* Of course you cannot free land or any other material of human energy if you
desire to be officially administered in innumerable relations of life. But whenever
the English people begin to balance carefully the good and the evil that result from
letting the House of Commons take and spend what it likes, they may be induced
definitely to place themselves on the side of free life, and free material, and dispense
with the officialism.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 669
everywhere the horrible army of tax collectors penalises
the possession of land. What we have to do is to make
war upon rates and taxes, provide easy methods for
redeeming tithe, and allow a man who acquires land to
feel he is quit of the official demand-note. The effect
upon human efforts would be very great. No doubt
land would rise in value, and the price paid for it would
be higher. But it is not a high price that discourages
buying. It is the sense of the yearly, and probably
increasing burden which never pauses or ceases, which
will have to be paid in old age as well as in youth, in
sickness as well as in health, in bad seasons as well as in
good. Free our people from that dread, and land will
smile to them as it never has smiled before.
Another important point remains. As we refuse to
allow any further creation of life estates in land and of
estates in expectancy, titles will gradually become simple.
But certain things should be done at once to improve
the present state of things. At present, under "The
Land Transfer Act of 1875 " (Edwards' Compendium of
Law of Property in Land, p. 315), land may be regis-
tered under three classes (i) An absolute title (except
against certain specified persons) ; (2) a qualified title ;
(3) a possessory title. Now this arrangement indicates
a hopeful way out of present difficulties. All compulsion
of landowners, or indeed of anybody else, who has not
committed a crime, is, by its nature, essentially bad. It
is necessarily slow, because of the friction it produces ; it
is necessarily expensive, because you must pay the prin-
cipal expenses of those on whom you force some change ;
it is necessarily cumbrous, because it has to treat widely-
differing cases under one system ; and it is also sure to
produce a crop of mistakes and complications, just
because it is not tentative in its methods. Instead of
670 LAND I
compulsion, our aim should be, whenever possible, to act
in the interest, and, as far as possible, with the con-
venience, of those concerned.
With this view, all owners should be invited to
register a possessory title immediately, and this possessory
title should be allowed, with as little delay as possible,
to ripen into a title of a higher order. After such a title
had lain upon the possessory register without challenge
for a certain number of years, it should become a qualified
title,* and, again, from a qualified title it should grow
into an absolute title. This ripening of title should take
place of itself, naturally, through the mere lapse of time,
but it might be quickened by certain action on the part
of owners. An owner might accompany his state-
ment of title with certain simple evidence, as, for
example, the declaration of persons from the locality
that he and his predecessors had been known as the
reputed owners over a space of years ; and local com-
missioners might be employed, at small expense, to
ascertain the bond fides of the possessory claim. In such
cases, the period of ripening necessary to convert a pos-
sessory title into a qualified title might be considerably
* " Qualified " and " absolute " might or might not be taken in the same sense in
which they are employed in the statute alluded to above. The case of property held
on trust for minors, presents special difficulties, but, by following the example already
set of recognising title as good against everybody but minors, an immense mass of
property might get a marketable title by a short process of ripening. In a certnin
number of years, the title should ripen against all persons except minors ; in so many
more years, against minors also. Estates in expectancy, where minors were not
concerned, would fall under different treatment. When everybody was being invited
to register their estates, the remainder-men may fairly be expected to look after their
interests and to register them ; but the life-estate-holder himself would be required to
register all estates in expectancy. Whether he did so or not, he would remain
responsible to the remainder-man for the value of the estate in expectancy, whatever
that might be deemed to be; though any sale (not fraudulent) made by the life-estate-
holder, whose title had ripened by lying on the register, should be valid. A plan to
get rid of the remainder-men is proposed further on.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 671
shortened. In addition, I would invite holders of estates
to submit to a central office, not their titles, for examina-
tion, but the circumstances of the examination made on
their behalf when they acquired the property. Should it
be found that such examination had been satisfactorily
made by competent persons the competent persons, if
necessary, receiving a moderate fee for attesting their
former opinion a qualified title should be given, which
should ripen into a title of a higher order. Very slight
expense under such a system need fall upon the Regis-
tration Office, and such expense could be met by
devoting, for a short time, such part of the land-tax as
was necessary for the purpose, or by a corresponding-
retrenchment of expenditure being made in some one
of the many possible directions which unfortunately
exist in profusion.
Another step should be taken. In order to get rid of
life estates which cannot be justified I would allow the
holder of the life-estate to buy out on a calculated basis,
the nature of which would require consideration, the
estates in expectancy, or allow those who were possessed
of these estates in expectancy to claim to be bought out,
a Special Court of one Judge, aided by experts, existing to
decide such cases, where those concerned could not come
to a voluntary agreement. I would not make such buy-
ings-out compulsory, where neither party desired it, but,
on the principle of do ut des, I would favour all volun-
tary arrangements between the owner-for-life and the
remainder-men by offering, where the circumstances
admitted of it, a guaranteed title (qualified or absolute as
the case might be) after a short interval of registration,
to those who agreed between themselves to extinguish
all estates in expectancy, and all charges extending
beyond the life of the owner. Further, as regards the
672 LAND !
owner, he must lose something of his present powers,
which are exaggerated as well as deficient. I would give
him no power of leasing, for any purpose, beyond either
the term of his own life or twenty-one years. Either of
such leases are consistent with the owner's real and
natural dominium, which consists of complete power over
the estate during his own life and the power of naming a
successor equal in powers to himself. But leases for fifty
years, or ninety -nine years, or longer periods, are not
reconcilable with this dominium. They are not on the
side of liberty, since they bind the living by arrangements
made by the dead. It is because the dominium of the
dead has been extended at the expense of the living
that our bad systems of building leases have grown up.
Believing that there is no true right in any man to grant
leases of ninety-nine years, or of periods extending far
beyond his own life, I incline to think that the principle
of leasehold enfranchisement is right and should be
carried out, with thoroughly equitable compensation to
the ground landlord at ruling market prices. At the same
time, I would repeal all laws insisting upon certain con-
tracts, as regards agricultural improvements, between
owner and occupier. They were simply created by the
weakness of politicians, and are thoroughly babyish in
character. Such contracts, like many other important
matters, must be left to the good sense of owner and
occupier. Under the present ridiculous system, we shall
get a new form of mortgage permanently attached to each
farm, and one which unfortunately may represent little or
no real value. Like every other form of permanent burden,
such payment is a serious disqualification as regards turning
land to its best uses. It tends to keep every farm stereo-
typed in its present condition, and to destroy that elastic
character which exists under Free Trade, allowing
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 673
each system, in its own time, readily to grow up and
replace other systems. We want perfect adaptability,
and this can only result from perfect ownership. No
man can speak authoritatively as to what system is most
fitted for the happiness of the people under our modern
changing circumstances. The play of free forces can
alone determine the question.
At the same time, we should remove every shadow
of favour shown to the landlord. It is very undesirable
that he should rank before other creditors. The power
of distress should be given up, and the landlord and
other creditors should stand on equal ground. It is
justly made a matter of complaint that a landlord can
seize building materials (in many cases still unpaid for
by the tenant) that have been used upon his land ; and
the truest plan seems to be that, either all articles
furnished on credit should be severally reclaimable by
those who furnished them, in which case a landlord, a
seed merchant, a manure merchant, an agricultural
implement maker, and others should all be able to seize
crops for the payment of debt, or that the assets of every
kind should be equally divided amongst all creditors.
At all events, there should be no preferences, though the
land itself should be very easily recoverable when rent
was in default.
To conclude, what we want is free land, in the sense
of free from State burdens, free from intricacies of title,
free from interferences of the dead hand and limitations
of ownership, free from State-made contracts, free from
partialities of all kinds, and able by virtue of its freedom
to reward him who acquires it with the full rights and
perfect enjoyment of complete ownership. The land
once freed in this fashion, the people's question would
settle itself in the one true and healthy way. Peasant
2X
674 LAND :
proprietorship, co-operative farming, the landlord system,
would all compete together, and human wants would
find as they always do where artificial complications
and entanglements are removed their truest method of
satisfaction.
AUBERON HERBERT.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 675
CHAPTER LXXIII.
FIRST PRINCIPLES OF A LANDLORD'S DUTY.
BY WILLIAM WOOD, Solicitor.
IN attempting to carry out the duty which the Editor of
this volume has assigned to me, of writing a short chapter
on this subject, it is obvious that a few of the more
prominent of a landlord's duties only can be delineated,
and that in broad outline. This is not the place for the
introduction of politics or debatable matters, and lest
any reader should fancy that he detects any political
heresies, let me say at the outset that I write from the
standpoint of modern conservatism. The duties of a
landlord are not easy. To produce a thoroughly
competent and enlightened landlord requires the
expenditure of time and pains. Common sense is an
indispensable equipment, but as Archbishop Whately
somewhere says, Everybody thinks that the affairs of
the world can be managed by common sense, always
excepting the particular business with which the thinker
is conversant. For instance, many a sailor thinks that
common sense will suffice for all things in the world
o
except the sailing of ships.
The first question for a landlord to settle is this,
Does he possess land for commercial purposes only
to get a percentage for capital invested, or is his avoca-
tion akin to that of the professions, in short, is he
essentially a shopkeeper or a gentleman ? A great writer
676 LAND :
has pointed out the essential difference between the
professions rightly considered and mere traders. Officers-
do not enter upon a fine calculation as to what duties
are the commercial equivalent of their pay. The better
class of men, at any rate the professions, constantly do
professional work where to suggest that the pay is a full-
equivalent would be an insult.
"Landlords," writes a practical landlord, who well
knows what he is writing about, (l are great benefactors
or the reverse. No one has so much power of doing good
as they have, and many of them do a great deal of good."
A landlord's duties are partly indicated by the fact
that he is necessarily brought into personal relations with
those from whom his income is derived ; in this respect he
is unlike the owner of consols or Stock Exchange invest-
ments. I remember a person who kept a conscience, and
whom I was advising about an investment,, objecting to
an investment in land on the ground that he might not
be able to afford to do justice to the claims of tenants
and others with whom he might be brought in contact.
And he was acting on right principles. I am certain that
it is not sufficiently recognised how great a benefactor a
good landlord (as such) is compared with the owner (as
such) of a corresponding value of property in consols ; and
good landlords, instead of being worried by socialistic
legislation, should have a free hand so that capitalists
who are prepared to do their duty as landlords should not
be scared off and induced to invest on the Stock Exchange.
Bad landlords are the enemy of landlords, and do
more harm to their order than all the effusions of
revolutionary demagogues put together. It will be
unnecessary to reiterate this platitude when landlords of
the better type cease to screen the black sheep.
A landlord of the right kind will,, of course, make a
'ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 677
fair bargain with his tenants. It is humiliating that as
late as 1882 the Duke of Richmond's Commission had to
report that tenants did not get fair compensation for
unexhausted improvements, and I know full well the
rankling sense of injustice that this sometimes occasioned.
And though an attempt has been made by the Agri-
cultural Holdings Act of 1883 to remedy this evil, there
are pitfalls under that Act into which tenants not
infrequently fall, as lawyers versed in the subject know
full well.
Old precedents of farm agreements are iniquitous if
rigorously pressed against a tenant It is to be feared
that some advisers still go on copying old forms which
ought to have been burnt ages ago forms which leave
out all reasonable protection for a tenant, and which were
the product of the misapplied energy of a succession of
draftsmen in Lincoln's Inn, intent on making the landlord
safe against every emergency, and which left the tenant
to the mercy of the landlord. The Duke of Richmond's
Commission emphasised the necessity for the abolition of
such forms, which, as the Commission said, have ceased
to be used on well managed estates, and which were
framed at a period when the conditions of agriculture
were different from those now present.
How are landlords going to deal with the claims of
the labouring classes on their estates? Every dictate
of right and prudence urges the imperative necessity of
those claims being boldly and voluntarily dealt with
before it is too late. If landlords do not do their duty,
history will have to record another lesson which ought to
have been sufficiently taught once for all by the French
Revolution. The landlord ought to be the leader of the
village. Fair play is not yet extinct in poor Hodge.
Is it unfair of him to say : Give me a small allotment
678 LAND :
near home on reasonable terms ? No sensible landlord
will wait for the exercise of compulsory powers, with
their train of friction and irritability. Is it unfair of Hodge
to say again : Give me a cottage with bedroom accommo-
dation, where a family can be brought up decently, and
with drains and repairs as well seen to as those of the
squire's stables ?
No right-minded landlord will unduly insist on the
monopoly which the possession of a whole parish con-
veys. As a moderate churchman, I may be forgiven for
deploring the unwisdom of some landlords in doing what
they miscall keeping out Dissent. Let the village black-
smith, who wants a "Little Bethel" in which to sing
Dr. Watts's hymns and listen to a village Bunyan, by all
means have a site for his conventicle. The Duke of
Westminster has set an example in this respect worthy
of imitation.
But I must close, and I w r ill do so by advising land-
lords who want to know what to do to imitate the best
examples of their order. Lord Tollemache has shown
what can be done, and how it can be done. I have not
touched on the landlord's duties as to the village
public-house ; but the public spirit of the Marquis of
Northampton in suppressing public- houses in Clerkenwell
the public spirit of Lord Wantage in showing how the
cure of village drinking, by a reformed public- house, lies
in the landlord's hands, is worthy of imitation. Land-
lords are on their trial they are at the parting of the
ways. Shall their answer to the village be, " Our fathers
chastised you with whips, and we will chastise you with
scorpions/' or will they listen to counsels of prudence
which point out the path of duty, which is the path of
safety?
WILLIAM WOOD.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 6/9
CHAPTER LXXIV.
DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LANDLORDS.
BY HENRY EVERSHED,
The well-known Author of vat ions articles, papers, and pamphlets on Agricultural
Crops, Stock, etc., in the "Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England"
the Agricultural Newspapers, Reviews, etc.
THE bulk of the land in the United Kingdom is farmed
by tenant occupiers, of whom there are, in Great Britain
alone, not less than five hundred and fifty thousand, and
the present movement in favour of small farms is increasing
the number. The landowners are the capitalists to whom
the soil belongs, with all that lies beneath it as well as all the
buildings and permanent works upon it. Nothing need
be said here of the general duties of the landowning class
as magistrates' and men of influence in their respective
neighbourhoods. It will suffice to speak of them as
administrators of the largest capital owned by any class
of the community, and as controlling, to a large extent,
the fortunes and the welfare of the whole of the farming
class beneath them, including the labourers, who are, by
virtue of their numbers, the most important. It is some-
times said that the interests of landlord and tenant are
identical, and in a certain sense that may be so. Good
and wise landlords are careful to secure the permanence
of their tenantry. On the other hand, by far the larger
portion of their land is let in yearly holdings and not on
lease, and when a landlord gives sudden notice to quit.
6So LAND :
without just cause, or when he contracts himself out of
the Agricultural Holdings Act in order to evade the
payment of compensation, the tenant who finds himself
supplanted, or victimized, or subject to the exaction of
increased rent, will hardly admit that his interest is
identical with that of the landlord. It happens at the
time when these lines are written that the tenantry in
some parts of South Wales are imploring landlords to
reduce rents, and since 1879 a general fall has been in
progress throughout the country. It is remarkable, how-
ever, that the adjustment of rents has taken place slowly.
Some years since, an Essex landlord professed to
manage his estate on what he called commercial principles.
Having made a large fortune as a manufacturer, he
purchased a considerable estate and let the farms at
rack rents, and as soon as the unfortunate occupiers had
taken root he sprung upon them at Lady Day notices to
quit at the following Michaelmas. His object was to
adjust the rents, and the tenants, one and all, submitted
to a legal robbery rather than suffer the loss which always
attends a sudden dismissal. The extreme unpopularity,
throughout his county, of a landlord who stoops to conduct
of this kind shows the abhorrence in which such a man
is justly held. It would be very advantageous to the
-country if such a landlord could be deprived of the
management of his estate on the principle enforced by
Lord Beaconsfield, who vested the tenure of property
on the fulfilment of duty, and whose own farm lettings,
and his "oven, tank and porch" to every cottage on the
bleak and water-wanting chalks of the Chilterns were a
great credit to a landowner of limited means.
Ten thousand cases mi^ht be found of landlords who
o
have taken undue advantage of the defenceless position
of a yearly tenant, and as many examples might be
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 68 1
given of tenants who, on entry, had ignored the maxim
caveat emptor. Still, the general conduct of landlords
can hardly have been unworthy, or the confidence reposed
in them as a class must have been seriously impaired.
Tenants are usually removable under conditions which
would prove disastrous to them, but the general custom
affords them a certain security, and compulsory changes
of tenancy are comparatively infrequent. It does not,
however, follow that the prevailing system is conducive to
good farming. On the contrary, it is the absence of
security which renders tenant farmers in spite of the
many compliments lavished upon them a dull, slow
class which never reads, which has systematically opposed
the education and advancement of the labourer, and
which, for fifty years past, since the introduction of arti-
ficial manures, has spent millions on adulterated articles,
the warnings of the Press and of the 1 great agricultural
societies having never reached its ear.
There are undoubtedly many intelligent men and
excellent agriculturists among tenant farmers, and it
was one of this class who lamented lately the ignorance
of landowners from a business point of view. Leaving
everything to their stewards, as most of them do, it follows
that the biggest business in the country, which is also the
most complicated and the most difficult that can fall to the
management of a ''statesman," is conducted by substitutes
who are in some cases ill-trained for their duties.
It has been often said by those who wish to defend
the existing management of estates that no other country
can vie with our own in the yield of its crops, and
that our farming is already the best in the world. No
doubt a wealthy and populous country must needs farm
well, but the point to be considered is not what is done
at present, but what might be done under an energetic
682 LAND :
and intelligent class of tenant farmers. It is notorious
that the capital employed in farming has been greatly
reduced in recent years, and there need be no hesitation
in asserting that, in order to attract fresh capital to
the cultivation of the soil, farmers must be offered
greater security in their holdings. To enable them to
reap what they have sown they must be allowed full
compensation for improvements, and greater freedom of
cultivation and sale, and until this is done the average
excellence of farming will be far below the standard it
would otherwise attain. If proof be needed that our
boasted farming falls far below the opportunities offered
by its excellent markets, one may point to the practice of
the best estates and to the teaching of the great national
society, the Royal Agricultural Society, composed as it is
of the elite of the landowners and tenant farmers of
England. The opinion of this great body cannot be
doubted when we find that the "Journal of the Royal
Agricultural Society of England " has constantly published,
during the past fifty years, reports of the best farming
of each county, while the same Society, each year, offers
handsome prizes for the best managed farms in the
districts visited by its annual show. Arthur Young's
41 Annals," the volumes issued by the Board of Agri-
culture, and Sir James Caird's " English Agriculture,"
1851, were all published for the purpose of raising the
average standard of farming, and the Royal Agricultural
Society and the other leading societies, notably the Bath
and West and Southern Counties, as well as the agri-
cultural and daily Press, are engaged in the same task.
Numerous examples of improvement might readily
be given. One of Lord Leicester's tenants, who converted
a poor sandy desert of twelve hundred acres into a garden,
expended on it, during an occupation of twenty-five years,
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 683
twenty thousand pounds in artificial manures, and forty
thousand pounds in oilcake, or fifty pounds sterling per acre ;
and the rabbit warrens of Lincoln Heath were reclaimed
by tenants of the same class, encouraged by landlords like
Lord Leicester, or his ancestor the first Earl of Leicester
(Mr. Coke), who gained a fine estate, which might still
be lying waste but for his superior knowledge and taste
for agriculture. The practical part of land improvement
has usually been conducted, and probably will continue to
be conducted, by tenantry, and it will be found, therefore,
on close consideration of the ways and means of improving
land, that the arrangement of just terms of compensation
for unexhausted improvements is the corner-stone of
successful landowning. As long ago as 1849, Sir Robert
Peel remarked in a letter to Mr. Mechi that " legislation
on these matters is very difficult. 5 ' But although more
than forty years have since elapsed, we have at present
only a Permissive Holdings Act, and the best existing
system is still that which works by prescription and by
the agency of an amicable understanding between land-
lord and tenant. To attract good tenants to say nothing
of good labourers it is all-important that a landlord should
understand landowning. It is true that some of the large
estates are managed by first-rate agents, but, however
conspicuous such exceptions may be, estates in general
are too small to employ superior stewards, and hence the
antiquated farm agreements, the illiberal covenants, and
the general mismanagement which underlies so many
grievances, and among them, that greatest of all, the
depopulation of the rural districts.
It is impossible in this short essay to refer to the
excellent organization and liberal management of some
of the larger estates, such as those of the Dukes of
Northumberland, Bedford, Devonshire and other noble-
684 LAND :
men and gentlemen, who, in several cases, are following
the illustrious example of their predecessors. Many of
the wealthier landlords are good landlords. But very
few of them conduct their business in the statesman-like
manner which these difficult times render desirable. The
late Lord Tollemache was enabled to bear off the palm
for successful management for reasons that are easily
explained. It was his good fortune to have undertaken
the management of his father's estate at a very early age,
and, besides his great experience, he possessed a fund of
common sense and a large heart, which led him to seek
his own happiness in that of others. Lord Tollemache
was not possessed of enormous wealth. His means were
moderate for his position, but for many years he set apart
a portion of his income for permanent improvements,
such as modern homesteads, cottages, draining and the
boneing of pastures, and this admirable method gave him
at length one of the best equipped estates in the country.
His lease notes and the liberal scale of compensation for
unexhausted improvements, together with his model
homesteads, enabled him to secure and to keep good
tenants ; and an enterprising, enlightened tenantry, be
it observed, are the best guarantee for a useful and con-
tented class of labourers. But Lord Tollemache had
himself studied the labourer closely. At an early
period, long before the advent of a Farm Labourers'
Union, he insisted, in opposition to his Suffolk tenants,
that plots of half an acre each should be offered to the
labourers. They have held these plots ever since, and
the only comment that need be made is that the " revolt
of the peasantry " in East Anglia ceased at his gates.
In Cheshire this excellent man and landlord offered the
labourers and the lesser tradesmen in the villages the
opportunity of keeping cows, and for many years about
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 685
three hundred and fifty such persons have kept a cow
each, the results having been advantageous to the
people, while the farmers have never wanted a plentiful
supply of labour.
A new epoch has commenced in the history of English
agriculture, owing to the improved education of the
labourer, and his growing discontent with country life.
The small wages he receives in the South of England
as compared with the North, with all the patronage of
the Lady Bountiful of the parish added to them, are not
sufficient to attract him. Without going into further
detail, it seems to the writer that it has become one of
the duties of landowners to study the labourer, to com-
prehend him and his needs, and the methods by which
he may be more firmly attached to the soil.
HENRY EVERSHED,
686 LAND :
CHAPTER LXXV.
REGISTRATION OF TITLE TO LAND.
BY S. A. SILLEM, BARRISTER-AT-LAW.
THE question of the Registration of Title to Land is one
which has now for many years occupied the attention
of those interested in the reform of the land laws. The
subject is one of great importance, inasmuch as an
effectual system of registration of title would undoubtedly
facilitate and cheapen the transfer of land, and would,
therefore, tend to make it a more marketable commodity
an end which parties of every shade of political opinion
agree to be in the last degree desirable. Unfortunately
the subject is one of extreme difficulty, and although
two measures (viz., the Land Transfer Acts of 1862
and 1875) have been passed with a view to securing
registration of title, and passed too, under the guidance
of such men as Lords Westbury and Cairns, no success
has attended the passing of these Acts, which have
hitherto remained practically dead letters.
It would be convenient before dealing with these
Acts to point out the evils which they were intended to
abolish. Foremost among these evils is the necessity
which exists of an examination of the title of a vendor
of land by a purchaser extending over a considerable
number of years. An abstract, or epitome, of the
vendor's title has to be delivered, the original deeds
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 687
have to be compared with the abstract, any births,
marriages, or deaths on which the title may depend
have to be proved, inquiries or " requisitions" have to
be made on any points which may require to be ex-
plained, and the exact nature of the vendor's interest
ascertained. Such an examination obviously is frequently
a matter of great expense. But the evil does not end
there, for should the purchaser having acquired the
estate desire at a later date to sell it, precisely the same
operation has to be again gone through by the second
purchaser, who must enter on an examination of the
title of the first purchaser, who has now become a vendor.
There are, too, the risks of the suppression by the vendor of
material deeds, which after the purchase of the property
by the purchaser maybe sprung upon him, and may then be
found to depreciate the value of the property, or even to
deprive him altogether of its enjoyment. The scheme,
therefore, of the Acts has been to have an official investi-
gation of the title of a landowner, whose name is then
entered on the register according to the nature of his title.
A purchaser then has to look at the register and nothing
but the register, and in dealing with the person whose
name appears thereon acquires a title according to the
nature of the registration. It is, perhaps, worth while
to point out the distinction between a registration of
title, such as has just been described, and a registration
of deeds. The latter form of registration (which exists
at the present time in the counties of Yorkshire and
Middlesex) is essentially different in character, the
various documents of title only being registered. A
purchaser, therefore, is still under the necessity and
subject to the expense of an examination of the deeds
of his vendor, and has himself to make out whether his
vendor is in a position to make a valid transfer to
688 LAND :
him of the estate. He is, however, protected to the
extent that (subject to the provisions of the various
Middlesex and Yorkshire Registration Acts) he is not
affected by any unregistered deed, and is not therefore
liable to be prejudiced in his estate by the production
of any deed, the existence of which was at the time he
made his purchase unknown to him.
The Land Transfer Act of 1862, commonly known
as Lord Westbury's Act, was the first measure passed
in England which created a registry of titles as distinct
from a registry of deeds or mere evidence of titles. This
Act having 'failed entirely to effect the reforms which it
was intended to carry out, was virtually repealed by
Lord Cairns' Land Transfer Act of 1875. Under Lord
Westbury's Act (as also under Lord Cairns' Act) the
application for registration of title was made a purely
voluntary act on the part of the person applying, and with
so little favour and confidence did the landowning class
regard its provisions that during the thirteen years in
which the Act remained in force only 410 applications
were made ; the number of applications during the last
three years of its existence dwindling down to seven,
five and four respectively. Under these circumstances
it will suffice to state but shortly its provisions, and the
reasons which led to its being ultimately superseded
by Lord Cairns' Act of 1875. The scheme of Lord
Westbury's Act was to enable application to be made for
registration by the owner of the fee simple, or persons
being collectively the owners of the fee simple or having
power of disposition over the fee simple. The main
object of the Act was to enable such persons to apply
for the registration of a title as indefeasible, and it was
provided that no title should be accepted as indefeasible
unless it should appear to be such as a court of equity
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 689
would hold to be a "valid marketable title" (Section 5).
Subject to any exception mentioned in the record of title
the persons named in the record were to be deemed abso-
lutely and indefeasibly entitled to the estate, free from
all rights whatsoever. It was, however, soon discovered
that a title absolute and indefeasible could be but rarely
obtained, and then only at great expense and after long
and tedious delay. In the case of land in settlement there
would be seldom any person or persons having the power
to apply for registration, and this had the effect of altogether
excluding large quantities of land from the operation of the
Act. Even where there was a person within the definition
of those entitled to apply for registration, great difficulty
was experienced in obtaining registration of a title which
should be indefeasible against all the world. In trans-
actions between a vendor and purchaser outside the Act, it
is not unusual for a purchaser where a defect in title appears
insignificant to run the risk of a claim being made upon
him in respect of that defect and to accept a conveyance.
Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that this is a matter of
every-day occurrence, and it is only in an infinitesimally
small number of cases that a purchaser suffers any loss from
incurring the risk. But it is one thing for a purchaser to
accept such a risk and another for an official ignoring the
defect, to register the purchaser's title as indefeasible, and
so to bar absolutely any person who might have a claim
under the defect. The officials at the Land Registry,
therefore, were obliged to act with a caution and delibera-
tion which threw serious impediments on the expeditious
alienation of land, and in a way that often resulted in the
imposition of heavy costs and expenses upon the party
applying for registration. The Act, moreover, contained
no provision by which any person entitled to any interest
in land could obtain compensation for loss of that interest
2 Y
690 LAND I
in case by error or fraud any other person were registered
as absolutely entitled in respect of the land. The absence
of some such provision no doubt increased the difficulty
of obtaining a registration of indefeasible title, a difficulty
which ultimately rendered necessary the superseding of
the Act by that of Lord Cairns.
The Land Transfer Act of Lord Cairns, which came
into force on the ist January, 1876, became an even
more conspicuous failure than had been the Act of
Lord Westbury, although considerable pains had been
taken to render registration of title more easy of attain-
ment. The Act, however, still remains in force, although
scarcely ever resorted to. This Act permits a person
who has contracted to buy a fee simple in land, or is
entitled to a fee simple at law or in equity, or is capable
of disposing for his own benefit of a fee simple, to apply
to the registrar to be registered, or to have registered
in his stead any nominee or nominees as proprietor of
the land, with an absolute or a possessory title only,
(Sect. 5.) It will be observed that only owners of the fee
are entitled to apply. As in the case of Lord Westbury's
Act, this has the effect of excluding from the register
large amounts of settled land, though to a great extent
this defect is now cured by the passing of the Settled
Land Act of 1882, under which a tenant for life of a
settlement can sell the fee with the concurrence of the
trustees. But the special feature of the 5th section is
the enabling of the applicant to apply for either an
absolute title or a possessory title only, and it is in a
great measure the presence of this feature which is
supposed to render the Act more deserving of success
than was that of Lord Westbury.
Dealing first with the question of title absolute, it is
evident that the Act was framed with a view to makino
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 69!
the obtaining of such a title more easy than was the case
under the previous Act. No fixed standard of title is
prescribed. It is provided (Sect. 6) that where an absolute
title is required the applicant shall not be registered as
proprietor of the fee simple until the title is approved by
the registrar. By Sect. 1 7, subs. 3, it is provided that if
the registrar is of opinion that the title is open to
objection, but is nevertheless a title the holding under
which will not be disturbed, he may approve of such
title. No doubt this subsection would tend in many
cases to facilitate the placing of a title on the register ;
but it would appear to be a most dangerous power to
place in the hands of a registrar when the conclusive
character of a title on the register is considered. It
is really tantamount to providing that if in the opinion
of the registrar a claimant is not likely to come forward
to make a claim the registrar may bar the claimant
of his claim. This provision may, no doubt, expedite
business at the office, but somewhat at the expense of
the safety of private interests. The effect of the first
registration of a person with an absolute title is to vest
in the person so registered an estate in fee simple,
subject to any registered incumbrances, and when the
person is not entitled for his own benefit to the land
as between himself and any persons claiming under
him, subject to any unregistered estates, rights, interests,
or equities to which such persons may be entitled.
(Sect. 7, subs. 3.) Subject as above, the land is free
from all other estates and interests whatsoever. It
will be observed that the Act fails to provide any
means by which persons can receive compensation if
deprived of any interest in land by any mistake or
fraud, although the risk of their being so deprived is
appreciable.
692 LAND !
A possessory title, for which a landowner may apply
as an alternative to an absolute title, is one presumably
intended to be applied for where it is evident to the person
applying that he cannot get a declaration of absolute
title. The applicant for such a title may be registered on
giving such evidence of title and serving such notices as
may be prescribed. If the applicant succeed in procuring
registration with a possessory title, the registration does
not prejudice any interest adverse to the title registered.
The intention evidently is that a person in possession
of land may obtain registration with a possessory title,
which lapse of time and the operation of the Statutes of
Limitation will ultimately develop into a good title.
The provision as to the serving of notices on (presumably)
the persons who may have an interest in the land cannot
have the effect of encouraging applications for a possessory
title. A man whose title depends in the main on possession
should usually avoid the publication of the fact, as it
might have the effect of apprising persons that they
have claims of which hitherto they were in ignorance.
It is therefore not easy to understand what inducement
is held out to a landowner to make him apply for a
possessory title, and thereby advertise the fact that he
knows his title is defective. Indeed, it is not improbable
that the key to the failure of the Act is the publicity to
which titles are exposed, whether the title sought be
absolute or possessory. On an official examination of
a title, due notice has to be given and opportunity
afforded to any persons desirous of objecting to come in
and state their objections, and the registrar is given
jurisdiction to hear and determine any such objection,
subject to appeal. It is not unreasonable that land-
owners should hesitate (unless they feel that their title is
-unimpeachable) to seek registration under the Act, and
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 693
so subject themselves to so formidable an ordeal. If
the objections prevail their estate is depreciated ; if
the objections fail, they have incurred heavy expense
and considerable anxiety only to find themselves where
they were, except for the somewhat indefinite advantage
of being registered. Probably no class is more alive (and
more properly alive) to the soundness of the adage which
enjoins us to let sleeping dogs lie than the landowning
class, and to this feeling can, no doubt, be attributed the
very small number of applications which have been
made under the Act.
Another objection urged against the Act is that the
proceedings in reference to unregistered interests in
registered estates is at once cumbersome and insufficient
to afford due protection to those interested. The Act
provides that only the registered proprietor shall be
entitled to transfer the land, but any person having the
power may create interests in the land in the same
manner as if the estate were unregistered. It is there-
fore provided that any person interested in any such un-
registered interests may protect the same from being
impaired by any act of the registered proprietor, by
entering on the register a caution. No dealing can
then take place with regard to the land until notice
has been served on the cautioner by the registrar.
If, after this notice is served, the cautioner takes no
notice for a certain number of days, the land may be
dealt with, and the interest of the cautioner barred. It
will be observed, therefore, that the security of the
unregistered interest depends simply and solely on the
due receipt, by the party entitled to it, of a letter. If
this letter miscarry, either by fraud or by the hundred
and one chances which every day cause the miscarriage
of letters, the party's interest in the land may vanish.
694 LAND :
Such a system can by no possibility be regarded as
satisfactory, and must inevitably tend to make such
interests a "risky" property, and therefore depreciate
their value.
Such then is an outline (necessarily brief and incom-
plete) of the provisions of the present Act, together with
some of the more important objections that have been
urged against them. To this should be added the fact
that experience shows that the costs of registration are
usually far in excess of those incidental to a transaction
between an ordinary vendor and purchaser. It has been
said, too, that much of the ill-success that has attended
the working of the Act is due to solicitors, who, as a class,
are against the Act, and that their hostility arises from
interested motives. No doubt if the ideal of the Act be
attained, and land become as easily transferable as consols,
a large and very lucrative part of their business would
slip away from them, and it must be admitted, therefore,
that they would be prejudiced by the Act succeeding. But
the persons most hostile to the provisions of the Act are
the landowners, and it must, in all fairness, be conceded
that their hostility is neither frivolous nor unreasonable.
The Bill, however, introduced into the House of Lords by
Lord Halsbury in 1889, should it become law (as it
may reasonably be expected to do in some form), will
remove many of the objections to the Act. It will not
be out of place to point out some of the important
features of this Bill, which are the following :
First, the rendering of an application for registra-
tion of title compulsory instead of merely permissive as
has heretofore been the case. Section II. of the Bill
provides that by Order in Council registration in any
district is to be compulsory, and Section III. provides
that when registration is made compulsory "a person
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 695
shall not acquire the legal estate in any freehold land in
the district until he is registered as owner of the land."
It is further provided that the title with which an owner
of freehold land is registered shall not be less than a
possessory title. The effect of this provision will be
that every purchaser after the Bill is put into force, as
an incident to acquiring complete ownership of his
property, must get his title registered. There is also a
provision under which persons who succeed to freehold
property on the death of any person will have to get on
the register. The result will, therefore, be that as
property changes hands, it will gradually be placed on
the register, so that in course of time registration of title
will become un fait accompli. Secondly : the Bill deals
more fully than does the Act of 1875 w i tn tne question
of possessory titles. There are provisions under which
persons with a possessory title may apply for an entry
in the register confirming their titles as absolute after
the expiration of five years from the date of the publication
of certain notices prescribed by the Bill. Thirdly: the
creation of an ''insurance fund ' is provided for by means
of the levy of a fee not exceeding a farthing in the
pound on the capital value of lands registered. This
insurance fund is designed to indemnify any person who
has suffered injury from loss of any interest in land
owing to the improper registration of any other person
in respect thereof. The Bill contains other provisions
which will, no doubt, expedite the process of obtaining
registration, but to which it will not be necessary to
refer here. If the Bill become law, registration can
no longer be avoided, but will be a question of time
only. The parties who first acquire land after the
coming into force of the Bill may, no doubt, be put to
some little extra trouble and expense, the benefit of
696 LAND :
which their successors an indeterminate body will
reap. It is therefore to be hoped that the scale of fees
incidental to an application for registration will be fixed
as low as is possible consistent with the efficient
administration of the scheme.
S. AUG. SILLEM.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 697
CHAPTER LXXVI.
THE SETTLEMENT AND ENTAIL OF LAND.
Bv S. A. SILLEM, BARRISTER-AT-LA.W.
A SETTLEMENT of land may be described with sufficient
accuracy for the purposes of this chapter as being any
instrument under which any land or any estate or interest
in land stands for the time being limited to or in trust
for any persons by way of succession. The term <l settle-
ment," therefore, in this chapter will include not merely
a settlement in its popular sense, but also any will the
provisions of which are of such a character as to effect a
settlement of land as above described. Settlements are
generally framed with the two-fold object of keeping the
settled land in the hands of the representatives of the
family as far as the rules of law will permit, and of
making some provision for the younger children of the
settler. With regard to the latter object it will, of
course, be remembered that freehold lands of inheri-
tance on the intestacy of the owner devolve on the eldest
son (subject to the widow's right of dower, if any) to
the exclusion of the younger children under what is
termed the law of primogeniture. In cases, therefore,
where a man's property largely consists of freehold
lands of inheritance the extreme importance of some
provisions being made by settlement in favour of the
younger children scarcely needs demonstration.
698 LAND :
Before dealing with the form in which settlements of
land are effected, it would be convenient to point out the
limitations which the law imposes on the power of an owner
of lands of inheritance to tie up or restrict the alienation
of those lands. The law always recognised the import-
ance, indeed the necessity, of allowing the landowner to
make all proper provisions for his family, and for that
purpose allowed him to carve out his property into
such estates, to make such limitations, and to create such
charges as would attain that object. At the same time
the law recognised the extreme public inconvenience
which would result were a man allowed to make his
lands inalienable by his heirs, With a view, therefore,
to limiting the power of a man to deal with his land to
the extent necessary to provide for his family, the Courts
adopted what is so well known as the u rule against
perpetuities." This rule (which is probably as ancient as
any in our law) is that no land can be tied up for a
longer period than the lives of living persons and 2 1 years
after their deaths. Thus a man may make the following
devise : His land to go to his son A for his life, and
after A's death to go to A ? s son (an unborn person) when
he attains 21 years. This limitation to A's son at 21
years is valid, because obviously he must attain that
age within 21 years of A's death (the period of any
possible gestation not being reckoned). But any attempt
to exceed that limit would be void, as, for instance, a
further limitation of the land to the unborn son of the
unborn son of A, inasmuch as the unborn son of the
unborn son of A need not necessarily be born within 2 1
years of the death of A. And on the same principle it
may be said generally, that any charge or provision
concerning the land to come into effect after the
expiration of 21 years from the death of some living
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 699
person is void. It should be observed, however, that the
law of entail was in early times an exception to the rule
against perpetuities. At the present time, however, it
can hardly be called an exception, for reasons which
will be found below in dealing, as it is now proposed to
do, with the question of entail.
The history of the law of entail, or, to use the
technical term, of "fee tails," is one not without interest
to the student of the growth of our law. It is the history
of a struggle between, on the one hand, the land-owning
class, anxious to preserve their estates in their families
in perpetuity, and, on the other hand, the judges, alive
to and anxious to avoid the social evils which would
result from the fettering of the free disposition of land.
A fee tail is an estate given to a man and the heirs of
his body. Mr. Joshua Williams, in his authoritative work
on the " Law of Real Property," thus describes its
characteristics : " This is such an estate as will, if left
to itself, descend on the decease of the first owner to
all his lawful issue. children, grandchildren, and more
remote descendants, so long as his posterity endures,
in a regular order and course of descent from one to
another ; and, on the other hand, if the first owner should
die without issue, his estate if left alone will then deter-
mine." After much conflict between Parliament (in early
times, it will be remembered, the monopoly of the land-
owning class) and the judges, the Statute 13 Edward I.,
cap. i., called De donis conditionalibus, was passed,
which declared that the will of the donor, according to
the form in the deed of gift manifestly expressed, should
be from thenceforth observed. From that time until the
reign of Edward IV. land settled in fee tail seems to
have descended from father to son, and to have been
practically inalienable. In the i2th Edward IV., how-
700 LAND :
ever, the Courts seem to have hit upon the ingenious
device of permitting a collusive action to be brought for
the recovery of land, in which they declared the land to
be no longer held in fee tail, and by this means enabled
the entail to be barred by the owner. This procedure,
which was cumbersome and technical to a degree, was
universally resorted to by persons desirous of barring
the. entail of their lands until 3 and 4 William IV., in
which year the Fines and Recoveries Abolition Act was
passed. It is upon this latter Act that our modern law
of entail depends. This Act has always been considered
as a very fine piece of Parliamentary drafting, though
necessarily its provisions are highly complex. To under-
stand the effect of the Act as regards the barring of
entails, it is necessary to bear in mind the two classes
of persons who have interests under an entail of land.
These are, firstly, the issue of the tenant-in-tail (i.e,
the owner of the fee tail), and, secondly, the persons
who are to take the estate on failure of the issue of the
tenant-in-tail.
Although it is obviously difficult in a few words to
state with accuracy the effect of a long Act of Parlia-
ment, the following statement it is believed summarizes
with sufficient correctness the effect of this Act : A
tenant-in-tail can now by executing and causing to be
enrolled in Chancery a disentailing deed, if he be in posses-
sion of the entailed land, bar his issue and those to take
in default of issue ; that is, he makes himself absolute
owner. If he be not in possession as if there be a prior
life estate in the land, and he be only tenant-in-tail in
remainder, the deed will be effective only to bar his issue,
not to bar the persons to take in default of issue, if,
however, he obtain the consent of the protector of the
settlement (usually the owner of the prior life estate), the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. ^ 7OI
deed is effective to bar all parties. It will now be
apparent that an estate tail is no longer a real exception
to the rule against perpetuities as stated above. For
although if a tenant-in-tail do nothing the estate will
descend from father to son in perpetuity, yet a tenant-in-
tail when he is in possession is really absolute owner
(subject only to his executing and enrolling a disentailing
deed), and can dispose of the property as he wishes.
The law of entail has always been an institution against
which the land law reformer has declaimed. But in
modern times the objection to be urged against entails is
not so much that they are mischievous as that they
are almost useless, since a tenant-in-tail is practically
absolute owner except in the case where not being
in possession he cannot obtain the consent of the
protector to the settlement to the barring of the entail,
a case of but rare occurrence. Lord Halsbury's Land
Transfer Bill, it may be remarked, proposed to abolish
entails by declaring in effect that expressions which would
have operated to create an estate tail should in future
operate to create an absolute estate.
An attempt having now been made to explain the
restrictions which the law imposes upon the fettering
and tying up of land, it is now proposed to sketch out
the method by which land is usually settled, and to point
out the positions which the parties interested under a
settlement hold relatively to one another. The form of
settlement now to be discussed is that usually adopted by
large landowners ; that is to say, by the class among
which the rule prevails of leaving their land to the eldest
son among which primogeniture exists as a matter of
custom. We will assume the settlement of the estate to
be made by will by a man leaving a widow, an eldest
son A, a bachelor, and other children. The testator
JO2 LAND :
desires to be succeeded in the estates by his eldest son,
but at the same time to make some provision for the
widow and the younger children. The testator would
commence his will by giving his land to certain trustees
for a term of five hundred years upon trusts thereafter
stated, and subject to this term he would provide that
his wife should be paid a rent charge per annum.
Subject to these provisions (which are incumbrances in*
favour of his wife and children, the effects of which are
hereafter explained) he devises his land to his son A for
his life, and after A's death the testator creates an entail
in favour of A's eldest son. In case of A's death without
issue, the testator gives a life interest to his (the testator's)
second son with, on the latter's death, an entail in favour
of his eldest son ; and in case of the failure of this last
provision the testator proceeds to his third son, and so
on till his family is exhausted, in which contingency he
probably leaves the estate to collaterals. Let us suppose
now that the testator being dead, A, his son, has entered
into possession of the land as tenant for life. He has
become what in popular language would be described as
the owner of the property. But his ownership is
subject to two paramount charges, namely, the term of
five hundred years vested in the trustees, and the rent
charge in favour of his mother.
The term of five hundred years vested in trustees
is for the purpose of raising a capital sum of money
to be a provision for the testator's younger children.
The trustees have power to raise the necessary amount
of money out of the rents, etc., of the estate, or even
by the sale or mortgage of the whole term. In practice
of course A would provide the interest or the capital
sum required, and to secure which the term is created.
Should he fail to do so, the trustees of the term, by
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
stepping in and disposing of it, can practically deprive
him of the whole estate. It is, therefore, obviously
A's interest to pay off the charge and so get rid of
the term which, thereupon, ceases to encumber the
property.
With regard to the rent charge in favour of A's mother,
it is necesary for him to pay annually the sum required.
If he fail to do so, his mother has various remedies open
to her. She has power to put a distress on the land in much
the same way that a landlord does in cases where his
rent falls into arrear. She has also power to enter into
possession of the land, and receive the income of it
until the arrears of her rent charge are satisfied. She
may, too, create a term of years in the land by the sale
or mortgage of which a sum sufficient to pay the annual
sum may be raised. It will be observed that these
provisions in favour of the wife and younger children
are a first charge on the land, over-riding the enjoy-
ment of it by the owner, so that the security generally
is excellent. Cases have, however, been known (and
more especially in Ireland) where the fall in the value
of land having been very heavy, such charges (which
are of fixed and definitive sums) have entirely absorbed
the value of the estate, the ownership having no pecuniary
value whatever. But such cases are extremely rare in
occurrence, and when they do occur are generally trace-
able to the improvident creation of a multiplicity of
charges by the persons who have been owners from time
to time. In point of fact land, as a subject of settlement,
from its very nature offers a security which no other
kind of property can afford.
The subject of the settlement of land has from the
time that private property in land has existed, always
been a question of interest to the politician, and many
704 LAND :
objections and limitations to the power of creating settle-
ments of land have been suggested. The two objections
which in modern times have most weight are, firstly,
that our system of settlements tends to mass the owner-
ship of large quantities of land in single hands, and
secondly, that these lands when under the control of
persons having under the settlement only limited interests
.are rendered impossible or at least difficult of alienation.
With regard to the first objection it must be re-
membered that the practice of leaving land to the eldest
son as is usual in settlements springs up not from law
but custom. The law does not say to the landowner
" You must settle your estate on your eldest son,"
though it is true it gives it to the eldest son if no
other disposition be made. It is the landowner who
says that " having the power to do as I like with
my land, I choose to follow a custom that has existed
for centuries, and give it to my eldest son." Nor
is it easy to suggest a remedy for this state of things,
short of compelling a sale or a parcelling out of the
property among the children at the death of the parent.
This would however be a somewhat violent interference
with the free disposition of property, and one which
would find but little favour in this country. It may be
mentioned that Lord Halsbury's Land Transfer Bill
proposed to abolish primogeniture in case of intestacy,
and provided that land should be divisible among the
same persons as if it were personal estate. It is possible
that if this provision became law (as it may with some
confidence be expected to do) it might effect a change
in the custom of primogeniture as now prevailing among
the land-owning class, and it cannot be said that this
result would be altogether unsatisfactory or unattended by
benefit to the community.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 705
\Yith regard to the second objection, namely, that the
effect of a settlement is to render lands impossible or
difficult of alienation, it may be said that in view of recent
legislation it has now been removed. There are roughly
speaking two classes of limited owner, namely, the tenant-
in-tail and the tenant-for-life. The tenant-in-tail has been
already dealt with, and it has been pointed out that when
in possession of the land he has practically absolute power
of disposition over it. The disability of the tenant-for-life
to part with the estate has been almost entirely removed
by the passing of Lord Cairns' Settled Land Act of 1882.
This most useful Act enables a tenant-for-life (and certain
other persons in an analogous position) to sell the settled
land and convey it free from all the limitations and incum-
brances of the settlement. The purchase-money is not,,
however, to be paid to him, but to certain trustees for the
purpose of the Settled Land Act, who deal with it in the
manner provided by the Act, any investments made with it.
following the same course of devolution as the land would
have done if not disposed of. This Act has been very
much resorted to by tenants-for-life, and large amounts of
land have changed hands under its provisions. All attempts
to evade its provisions, and to impose any incapacity to
sell on the tenant-for-life, have been frustrated. At the
present time it seems to be impossible (with few and
special exceptions) so to settle land that the person in
the enjoyment of it for the time being cannot, if so
minded, dispose of it as he will. The result seems to be
that while settled land is now as freely alienable as land
absolutely held, no violence is done to the provisions of
a settlement, the only effect of a sale being that the
settled property is converted from land into personalty.
This result is highly satisfactory, and removes what was
formerly the most serious objection to the settlement of
2 Z
706 LAND :
land. Indeed, it may now be claimed that the principles
of our law relating to the settlement of land are wise and
beneficial, and answer to the requirements of the
community.
S. AUG. SILLEM.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 707
CHAPTER LXXVII.
EASY TRANSFER OF LAND.
BY C. F. DOWSETT, F.S.L,
Author of various Articles on Land and House Properties; "Striking Events in
Irish History " ; etc.
To make land more readily marketable a more simple
method of transfer from vendor to purchaser is needed,
and to accomplish this the re-examination of title by each
successive purchaser would be unnecessary if the title
were once for all examined by a Government title
examiner, and then registered as either an absolutely
perfect title, or as a good [holding title, and in the latter
case the title would by effluxion of time grow into an
absolutely perfect or indefeasible title.
The cry for cheap land and cheap transfer of land
comes from the people, and therefore the people must
pay for it ; that is to say, if the means to effect it cause a
diminution of revenue, charges of taxation must be laid
on something else if necessary. The stamp duty of
ten shillings per cent, adds much to the cost of convey-
ance, and might be reduced to two shillings and sixpence
per cent., and even then the revenue would probably not
suffer, because, with this and other reforms, sales would
be quadrupled, so that the result would be the same, so
far as public revenue is concerned.
It is shown, in another chapter, that the workings of
the Acts of Lords Westbury and Cairns were failures
708 LAND :
because owners would not voluntarily incur the expense
of having their titles investigated and placed upon the
register.
It is necessary, therefore, to adopt a system of limited
compulsion, that is, that on every sale of land it should
be compulsory on the part of the vendor to submit his
title to a Government title examiner, so that it might be
registered, the purchaser to pay for his conveyance or
transfer ticket. If it were made compulsory on the part
of the purchaser to put the title on the register, the cost
thereof would prove a great hindrance to sales ; the
vendor can, if necessary, regulate his price to cover him
for any additional expense. The way to effect easy
transfers of land is to facilitate the method of conveyance
and the cost of conveyance.
It is a common remark of solicitors that no improve-
ment in the present system could be made, but so great
an authority as Lord Coleridge held a different opinion.
When presiding some years ago at a Congress of the Law
Amendment Society, his Lordship said : " I have never
been able to perceive the obstacle to applying to land
the system of transfer which answers so well when
applied to shipping; but as my learned brethren, one
and all, have declared that to be impossible, I had become
impressed with the belief that there must be something
wrpng in my intellect, as I failed to perceive the
impossibility. The remarkably clear and logical paper
which has been read by Sir Robert Torrens relieves me
from that painful impression, and the statistics of the
successful working of his system in Australia amounts to
demonstration ; so that the man who denies the practi-
cability of applying it might as well deny that two and
two make four."
Sir Robert Torrens described the system of regis-
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 709
tration in South Australia, in which the following
occurred :
" i. Titles being indefeasible, proprietors may invest capital in land,
secure against risk of deprivation and the no less harassing contingencies
of a Chancery suit ; mortgagees, having also no further occasion to look
to validity of title, may confine their attention to the adequacy of the
security. 2. A saving, amounting on the average to ninety per cent.,
or eighteen shillings in the pound sterling, has been effected in the cost
of transfers and other dealings, irrespective of the contingent liability to
further expenses resulting from suits at law and in equity, the grounds
of which are cut off by the alteration of tenure. 3. The procedure is so
simple as to be readily comprehended, so that men of ordinary education
may transact their own business. 4. Dealings in land are transacted as
expeditiously as dealings in merchandise or cattle, fifteen minutes being
the average time occupied in filling up the form and completing the
transaction.''
The late Mr. Joseph Kay, Q.C., in his collection
of letters on Land, thus described the registration of
titles in Belgium :
" There is in Belgium, as in all the countries under the French
law, an excellent system of registration, which, by enabling a buyer
to ascertain at once the exact state of the title to the land he wishes
to buy and of the claims upon it, renders the purchase very easy,
very expeditious, and very cheap. If anyone wishes to buy, he goes to
a notary, who obtains for him a copy of the exact state of the title
from the official entries in the registry office.
" The notary then prepares the deed of sale, which in all these
countries is very short and simple, as none of our complicated settle-
ments and arrangements are possible. This deed of sale is then signed
by the buyer, the seller, two witnesses, and the notary. The minute
or abstract of this deed is then taken to the office of the registrar,
who puts an abstract of it on his register. After this the registrar
transcribes the deed in full. The purchaser of the property who has
been the first to have his deed transcribed is the legal purchaser as
against all other subsequent buyers. There is, by these means, no
difficulty whatever in ascertaining the state of a title of a plot of
land at any moment. The whole transaction is very short and simple,
and the expenses are very small.
7io LAND:
" But registration would effect only a very partial good in England,
unless we had got rid of the landowners' power to make the laws
and complicated settlements, deeds, and wills which the law now
permits them to make."
Mr. Kay thus explained registration :
" The language sometimes used about registration shows that what
registration is, is not understood. Registration, no matter in what
country, is nothing more than a plan of keeping a public record of
any transfer or agreement affecting land, when such transfer or agree-
ment has been completed.
" The way in which it is worked is this : An office is open for a
given district. Books are kept there, in which each separate estate
has its page. Say that A is the owner of a field named Whiteacre,
and that B wants to buy. B goes to the office, examines the register,
and sees what agreements, mortgages, etc., etc., are in force affect-
ing Whiteacre. He then goes and makes his bargain with A. A
short agreement of sale is drawn up by their lawyers. It is taken
to the Registration Office, and if in -the meantime no other agree-
ment has been entered on the pages of the register, it is signed,
and an abstract or copy of it is entered in the registry book. The law
compels this to be done, by declaring that the agreement which is
first entered shall be in force prior to any other subsequently entered.
So that if B finds no mention of any other agreement of transfer
mentioned in the book, he knows that he may with perfect safety pass
over the purchase money and sign the agreement. The transfer of the
land is thus effected by the paper or parchment agreement.
"The entry in the public register is only to preserve public
evidence for any future purchaser or mortgagee of the exact state of
the documents which affect the property at any given moment. As
soon as the terms of the transfer are agreed on between buyer and
seller, the buyer is only too eager to register, lest any other transfer
or agreement should get precedence of, or prior effect to, his own ; and
in some countries the law renders the transfer or agreement invalid
until it has been registered.
" Thus in Scotland, where they appear to have a very efficient
and cheap system of land registiation, the law requires all writings affect-
ing land to be registered under the penalty of invalidity."
Mr. Kay referred to other parts of the Continent
thus .
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 7 1 'I
"Now, in Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Lombardy, the Tyrol,
Denmark, Norway, Belgium, France, and in a great part of Italy
and America the law does not allow the proprietor of land a power
of preventing his property from being sold after his own death. In all
these countries the old feudal system of primogeniture, entails, long
settlements, and intricate devises of land, invented in order to keep great
estates together, to preserve the great power of the feudal aristocracy,
and to prevent the lands getting into the hands of the shopkeeping
and peasant classes, have been, since the first French Revolution,
swept away.
" The conveyance of the land in these countries from man to man
is very simple and very cheap. Two causes contribute to produce this
result.
" i. The deeds of transfer are very short and simple.
" No man can subject his estate to the long settlements and singular
arrangements to which an English proprietor can subject his land;
he can only affect his land during his own lifetime. The consequence
is that it is not necessary to make provision in the deeds for so many
contingencies, nor for so many changes in the property, nor for such
long future arrangements as in England. The foreign deed does not
generally do more than convey away simply and briefly the whole of
the seller's interest, and does not, as is the case generally in England,
convey some limited interest in the land, and then make arrange-
ments how the rest of the interest in the land is to pass from hand to
hand for the next fifty or eighty years, and for all the contingencies
which may arise during that time.
"2. There is no need to expend any money in examining the title
of land in the foreign countries I have mentioned.
" In most of these countries there are in each of the provinces registra-
tion courts, where all the changes in the right to, or ownership of,
every parcel of land in the province is entered in a book under the
name or description of the land. No mortgage, lease, conveyance, or
writing affecting land is allowed by the laws of these countries to have
any validity unless it is entered in the books of the registration office of
the province in which the land is situated, so that a purchaser knows
that he can always easily without any expense and in a few minutes
discover what the state of the title of the land he thinks of buying is,
and he knows that no mortgage or other encumbrance which is not
copied in the registry book under the description of the piece of land
which he thinks of purchasing can turn up afterwards and affect his
land, since the law, as I have said before, does not allow any validity
7 T 2 LAND I
whatsoever to any writing affecting the land which is not registered
in its proper place in the registry books of the province in which the
land is situated."
An English barrister for whom I once had to sell an
estate he owned and occasionally occupied in France,
informed me that in purchasing his land he had to go
before a notary public, who prepared a short contract
called a compromis, which embodies the terms of sale.
The notary then searched the register, which is really all
the investigation of title necessary, and next day prepared
the conveyance, called the acte. Then the parties met by
appointment, the acte was read over to them, and being
approved, they signed, paid the purchase money, and the
transfer was complete, subject to the transaction being
registered, which was immediately afterwards done. The
notary's (or solicitor's) cost for this is very small, but the
Government takes the enormous sum out of the pocket
of the purchaser of tenper cent., thus making the transfer of
land in France more expensive than in England, where the
conveyance fee or stamp is only half per cent, (ten shillings),
and the legal costs would not amount to the other
nine and a half per cent. The French notary's conveyance
charges are sometimes included in the ten per cent.
The fees, however, vary in France, for in some depart-
ments the fee is only eight and a half per cent. There
are not registration offices in every town, but in certain
centres.
Sir Henry Cartwright, F.S.I., remarked during a dis-
cussion on the transfer of land at the Surveyors'
Institution, that the condition of land conveyance in the
Bahamas, when some years ago he held a judicial position
there, was one of interminable dispute between the land-
owners and those dealing with them. He and his friends
introduced a Bill which was passed into law establishing
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 713
a land registry for the whole Colony, and then property
was transferred swiftly and effectively.
Some years ago the New York Herald published an
article comparing the United States' complicated system
with the Torrens system, thus :
" Lately the Jumel property was cut up into one thousand three
hundred and eighty-three pieces or parcels of real estate and sold
at partition sale. There appears to have been about three hundred
purchasers at that sale, and no doubt each buyer, before he paid
his money, carefully employed a good lawyer to examine the title
to the lot or plot that he had bought ; so that three hundred lawyers
each of them carefully examined and went through the same work, viz.,
the old deeds and mortgages and records affecting the whole property
(for as it had never been cut up before, each had to examine the title of
the whole, no matter how small his parcel) and each of ihem searched
the same volumes of long lists of names, and picked out from the three
thousand five hundred volumes of deeds and mortgages in the New York
Registrar's office the same big, dusty volumes of writing, and lifted them
down and looked them through in all three hundred times the very
same labour.
" Evidently two hundred and ninety-nine times that labour was
thrown away done over and over again uselessly.
" And the clients, those buyers together, paid three hundred fees to
those lawyers (who each earned his money), but evidently two hundred
and ninety-nine of those fees were for repetitions of the very same
work.
" By and by, twenty years from now, instead of only three hundred
owners of those Jumel plots, the whole one thousand three hundred
and eighty-three lots will be sold and built upon, and one thousand
three hundred and eighty-three new purchasers will again pay one
thousand three hundred and eighty-three lawyers one thousand three
hundred and eighty-three fees for examining the same Jumel title ; only
the fees will be larger, for there will, by that time (at the present rate of
growth, and unless a remedy is soon applied) be fully ten thousand
big folio volumes in the new Hall of Records which the Legislature
has just authorized to be built in the city, and the whole one thousand
three hundred and eighty-three fees will be for mere repetitions of
labour, so far as the whole Jumel title is concerned, and will be
practically wasted.
714 LAND I
" The Torrens system differs from our own in this important respect,
that it is a register of title and not simply a register of deeds. Upon
each transfer or dealing with land taking place, the precise effect and
meaning of the instrument is finally and conclusively determined at the
time of its registration ; all evidence necessary is then required to be
produced, and there is once and for all an end of all questions as to its
validity. An indefeasible certificate is issued by a Government officer,
and on any new transfer the last certificate is cancelled and a new one
issued. If the officer whose duty it is to issue certificates issues one
to a person who is not entitled, and a transfer of it be made to an
innocent purchaser, the Government is liable in damages to the rightful
owner. To meet this liability a fund has been created by the payment of a
small fee for each transfer. In South Australia this fund amounts to
forty thousand pounds, while the total amount of all claims on it since the
Act came into operation seventeen years ago amount to only three
hundred pounds. It is impossible to deal with this subject or describe
the Torrens system in the short compass of a newspaper article. The
following brief statements will commend themselves to the public :
" i. The Torrens system of land transfer has been in successful
operation in Australia for the last twenty years.*
" 2. Under it land can be transferred at a tenth of the cost of our
system.
" 3. Under it purchasers have a title that is absolutely indefeasible.
" 4. Under it a transfer of land can be made as easily and quickly
as a transfer of Government or bank stock.
"5. The present system and the new one can exist side by side, it
being left to the owner's option to bring his land under the new
system. The new system was introduced into Australia in this way.
" 6. The Land Transfer Reform Association of New York strongly
advocates the introduction of the Torrens system, and it will certainly
be introduced there shortly. 7 '
A paper was read at the Surveyors' Institution on
April 6th, 1891, by Mr. C. Fortescue-Brickdale, of the
Chancery Bar, and Assisting Barrister to the Land
Registry, on " The present work of the Land Registry."
Mr. Brickdale related how that recently it had been his
duty to peruse the abstract of title to an estate which
* Sir Robert Torrens first started his registration system in South Australia in the
year 1857. C. F. D.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
715
comprised about six acres, and had been last sold for
five thousand pounds. The deeds covered 180 skins, that
is, it took the skins of 180 sheep to provide the informa-
tion concerning the title to this one small property of six
acres. Should this property be sold again, after a few
years, this labour might have to be repeated. Had
this title been registered, the transfer would have been
a very simple process. Mr. Brickdale suggests that
it would greatly benefit every owner of a free and unen-
cumbered fee-simple to register it at once with possessory
title. Every year would then bring the title nearer to
being permanently and absolutely indefeasible.
Mr. Brickdale gave the following list of costs :
EXPENSES OF FIRST REGISTRATION OF LAND.
The following table is an extract from a Parliamentary Return (H.C. 199,
Session 1890), with continuation down to 1st February, 1891, showing the total
costs, charges, and expenses of every kind incurred in the first registration of &
number of estates during the last two years. All the cases where such total
costs have been mentioned or are ascertainable are given. Cases where the
official fees only are known are not given.
POSSESSOEY TITLES.
ABSOLUTE TITLES.
Value.
Costs.
Value.
Costs.
1
4,000
s. d.
640
1
300
s. d.
10 13 11*
2
30,000
14 1 6*
2
3,000
12
3
2.000
560
3
3,000
14 18 &
4
27,000
12 9
4
3,000
13 6
5
40,000
16 13 6
5
5,000
27 10 3
6
50
12 6
6
1,375
18 10 0*
7
7,000
996*
7
6,000
17 15 11
8
15,000
9 18 0*
8
700
5 13 4t
9
600
1 12 5f
9
5,000
14 5 7
10
1,000
2 15 6f
10
40,000
52 19 3
11
3,390
536*
11
600
14 10 Of :
12
2,000
2 19
12
42,000
52 18 1 "
13
14,000
23 5
14
3,000
12 5 9
15
200,000
193 17 If
* Applicant furnished map.
f Special survey of the property included.
J Includes the expenses (except duty) of completion of a purchase.
Includes the expenses of enfranchising a copyhold estate.
II Exceptional costs owing to error on recent purchase.
7 1 6 LAND :
It will be noticed that the above list of costs refers
to both possessory and absolute titles, and owners who
purchased under good advice with a title commencing
forty years ago would probably have no difficulty,
Mr. Brickdale says, in obtaining an absolute title.
Mr. Brickdale complains of the apathy of landowners in
not registering their titles ; he charges them with ignor-
.ance, indolence, and timidity, and states that by using the
register, owners would add appreciably to the value of
their land, as it would be more saleable and more readily
marketable as security for loans; he referred to the
system of depositing deeds with a banker the banker
took the bundle, but he could not read them and if even
he had his solicitor by his side, the solicitor had not time
to read them thoroughly ; but if the title were registered,
this owner would simply have to produce his land
certificate, which would state the ownership quite clearly,
"besides which a section in the Act renders the deposit of
a land certificate of the same force and validity for the
purpose of an equitable security as the deposit of title
deeds in the old cumbersome way.
Mr. Brickdale states that any title that passes the
scrutiny of the Land Registry Office becomes (so far as the
title is concerned) as easily convertible as a bank note.
Mr. Brickdale gave also the following table :
EXPENSES OF DEALING WITH LAND AFTER REGISTRATION.
The following are specimens (selected at various values) of the fees payable
under the Act for Registration of Sales and Mortgages of Registered Land (for
further details see Fee Orders of 16th January, 1889):
Value. Fee.
s. d.
50 050
100 10
300 100
500 1 10
1,000 300
5,000 900
10,000 14
50,000 34
100,000 (or over) 59
For registration of transmissions on deaths and other dealings not for value,
.quarter fees only are charged, with a minimum fee of 5s. and a maximum fee of 10.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 717-
Some forms of transfer were also given whereby
estates when once on the Register can be conveyed in
a very few lines.
Mr. J. R. Adams, a well-known solicitor in the City
of London, read a paper before the Surveyors' Insti-
tution, on November 23rd, 1891, on "The Title to
Land ; its Registration and Transfer," in which he
pointed out that land sold by order of the High Court
of Chancery had. a marketable title, otherwise the Court
would not allow it to be sold, and yet when it was sold
there was no registration of title, and the labour and
expense of investigating the title had to be incurred by
each succeeding purchaser. The Court could, after being
assured that the title was a marketable one, sell in
such a way as to relieve a purchaser from the investi-
gation, and if the purchaser were compelled to place it
on thexRegister future owners would be saved a repetition
of the labour and expense of investigation.
Some few years ago Mr. W. J. Farrer stated in
evidence before a Select Committee of the House of
Commons on land titles and transfer, that three ladies
employed three different solicitors to transact some
business relating to landed property in which they were
jointly interested, and that though " the business was
exactly and precisely the same in each case'' the bill of
the first was taxed at ^17, that of the second at ,18,
that of the third at ^223.
Such an anomaly would not be possible now. The
Solicitors' Remuneration Act has decided the charges
which a purchaser of land has to pay.
The following scale shows the cost of purchasing
land, by which it will be seen that if an investor buys
,20,000 worth of land he actually has to pay more as a
bonus to the Government in stamp duty than he has to
7 i8
LAND I
pay to his solicitor for all the labour and responsibility of
investigating the title and making him secure as the legal
possessor of that which he has purchased. As the
amount increases, the difference increases too so that
on purchasing an estate of the value of .100,000, a
purchaser would have to pay his solicitor, for all his
labour and responsibility, ,295, whereas he would have
to pay the Government a bonus or stamp duty of ,500 !
The high rate of stamp duty is the more apparent
when compared with the duty on other transfers, thus:
On transferring .100,000 worth of consols no stamp
duty has to be paid ; on transferring ,100,000 worth of
Bank of England Stock a stamp duty has to be paid of
only seven shillings and nine pence ; but on transferring
,100,000 worth of land a stamp duty has to be paid of
Five Hundred pounds sterling!
COSTS OF PURCHASING LAND.
Purchase
Money.
Purchaser's Solicitors'
Charges.
Stamp Duty.
Under
- ^100
300
Under - po 10 o
it
3 00
500
I 10
500
7 10 o
2 10
ft
1,000
15 o o
99 5
99
1,500
20
7 10 o
99
2,000
25 o o
10
99
4,000
40 o o
20
99
8,000
60 o o
40 o o
99
20,000
95 o o
100 O
M
40,000
145 o o
,, 2OO O O
99
100,000
295 o o
,9 500 O
If the purchase is negotiated by a solicitor instead of an agent, he
is also entitled to charge i per cent, up to .3000, ios. per cent, on
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 719
the 4th and each subsequent ^1000 up to ^"10,000, and 55. per
cent for each subsequent ^1000 up to ^100,000.
Thus it will be seen that the reduced charges of
solicitors on the transfer of land do not form the hindrance
to sales which obtained when the former system of charg-
ing by items was in vogue.
As regards agents' charges I may remark that it is a
custom with some persons to draw a comparison between
the charges of solicitors and agents on selling land,
unfavourable to agents, but a little reflection will show
the two cases to be wholly dissimilar the comparison
should be made between the absolute charges of the one
and the other not as between the absolute charge of the
one and the risk charge of the other. By an absolute
charge I mean a charge which has to be paid in any case,
and by a risk charge, a charge which only has to be paid
in certain eventualities. When a solicitor is instructed
to prepare a conveyance of an estate, and when an agent
is instructed to prepare a valuation and report of an
estate, they each make an absolute or fixed charge ; these
charges have never, within my experience of over thirty-
years, been compared unfavourably ; but when a sale of
an estate is made then the charges of the solicitor and
the commission of the agent are sometimes compared
unfavourably, which is as thoughtless as it is unjust.
When an agent is asked to endeavour to find a purchaser
for an estate, he and his clerks often work for weeks and
months, and sometimes for years in an endeavour to effect
a sale ; the agent has to pay his clerks' salaries, maintain
his office, sustain the cost of journies, printing, and often
long and difficult negotiations in his efforts, and yet he
may never succeed ; and such unsuccessful records form
the continuous evidence of every agent's practice, so that
in cases where he does succeed it is ungenerous to grudge
720 LAND !
him the customary commission he has so well earned.
The difficulty is not in carrying out a transfer or a
valuation when a purchaser is found, but the difficulty is
to find the purchaser and arrange the price, etc. When
this is done the rest is comparatively simple. If vendors
and purchasers would come together to agent's offices
(as the agent takes them together to solicitors' offices),
the agent would be satisfied with a moderate fee instead
of a commission in arranging terms between them, but
the cost of maintaining an office to find purchasers, and
then to bring the requirements of vendors and purchasers
into harmony is the crux.
It is the distinction between an absolute and a risk
charge which has to be considered, and when this is done,
reasonable men cannot make unreasonable comparisons.
To ensure contentment, disperse the people from
too crowded centres, suppress agitation, add to develop-
ment of rural districts, and for other reasons, a wider
diffusion of land is desirable. But to bring this about
the transfer of land must be made more easy.
It may appear at first sight that so cheap and easy
a system of transfer as the Torrens system would
deprive conveyancing solicitors of a large part of their
income, but I do not believe that this would be the effect.
It would be some years before any very large part of the
titles of the country were registered, and generally
speaking it would be solicitors who would submit and
explain the titles to the Government title examiners,
and when the system became common there would
arise a considerable volume of business in a variety
of ways.
The necessity for a readier system of transfer is
not only on account of expense, but on account of the
intolerable delay which accompanies most transactions.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 721
If an owner sells or mortgages his property he has a
specific purpose in doing so ; it may be to acquire
another property which is in the market, or to pay off an
existing mortgage, or to give a son or a daughter a start
in life, or to meet some pressing liability, and as solicitors
often occupy not only weeks but months in carrying
through conveyances and mortgages, the public have
become discontented with a system which entails a
wearying suspense, increasing external costs in a variety
of ways, causing loss of opportunities of profitably
using the money, raising difficulties in negotiations with
those being treated with, and in case of meeting liabilities
the odium which attaches to a debtor through constant
excuses and delays.
A system which is cumbersome and vexatious should
in these days of general scientific advancement call forth
the acumen of some legal mind to bring about such a
change as the circumstances demand.
It may be that some restrictions should be enforced
as to some forms of the settlement of land. Modern
Radical reformers, who attack the just rights of owners,
are oftentimes violently coercive in their principles,
and coercion is contrary to that freedom which owners
of property should possess, but the question of some
restriction in some forms of settlement is, perhaps, a
necessary exception to the rule. I am not a lawyer,
however, and I cannot do more than draw attention to
the subject in the way I have done, trusting that some
competent person may be aroused to action in bringing
about some such system of registration of titles and of
easy transfer as is adopted net only in the new countries
of the Antipodes, but in the old countries of the Continent
of Europe.
C. F. DOWSETT.
722
LAND
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH
OF TITHES.
BY THE REV. THOMAS MOORE y M.A.,
Rector of All Hallows the Less, and Vicar of All Hallows the Great, Upper Thames
Street, E.G.; Author of '" The Englishman s Brief on behalf of his National Church,"
" The Case for Establishment stated" " The Established Church Question : How to
deal with It," " The Dead Hand in the Free Churches,'' " Tallis on Tithes ; Why
pay them?" "MoorJs Church Manuals "( series of three] (T) "State Control over
Church and Chapel" (2) " Church and Chapel Property" (3) " Parliamentary
Grants to Church and Chapel" " The Education Brief on behalf of Voluntary
Schools," " The Church the Educator of the English Nation," etc.
THE history of the origin and growth of tithes is a very
wide subject. It covers a large area of legislative, legal
and literary ground which ought to be surveyed in order
to secure for the subject an exhaustive discussion.
It may, however, suffice to say that the Church, from
the earliest times, enjoined upon her members the
observance of their religious duty in providing for her
organisations and ministries the means of permanent
support.
In recognition of that duty to devote to this object
the tenth of the produce of the soil, and, in, some cases,
even the tenth of the gain of personal employments, sug-
gested itself as not only being in accordance with God's
law in the Jewish Church, but as being in accordance
with the religious customs of various ancient nations.
To our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, when newly con-
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 723."
verted to the Christian Faith, the question would not
unnaturally suggest itself: ll Why should we Christians-
do less for our Church than the Jews did for theirs, or
less than the religious-minded heathen did for their
various idolatrous forms of religion " ? Thus the volun-
tary dedication of tithes to the use of the Christian
Church soon became a standing custom, and the custom,,
in course of time, became a part of the unwritten or
common law of the kingdom.
When the unwritten law and custom with reference
to tithes became a matter of doubt and contention, then,
and not till then -and solely and exclusively to meet this
emergency written law with reference to tithes became
necessary ; the written law, in such a case, not creating
tithes, nor laying down any new basis of a legislative or
legal character as the grounds of the obligation for the-
compulsory payment of tithes, nor prescribing what
things should be titheable, nor how the tithes should,
be collected, but simply removing alleged doubts as to
these matters, and further explaining and declaring what
the original basis of the obligation to pay tithes really
was, and setting forth at what times, in what proportions,
and in what manner they should be paid according tt>
ancient custom.
Thus the statute, the ist of Richard II., cap. i2 r
declares that tithes are "due of right and possession to
His (God's) Church" and the 5th of Henry IV., cap. 1 1,
describes them as " due as the law of holy Church
required" ; while as to things titheable, and with reference-
to the method of payment of tithes, the 27th of Henry
VIII., cap. 20, and the 3 2nd of Henry VIII., cap. 7, as well
as various other statutes referring to the ancient customs
of individual parishes, declare them to be payable not in
conformity to any prevalent uniform mode, but "according
724
LAND I
to the laudable usages and customs of the parish or other
place where the tithepayer dwelleth."
In not one of the ancient statutes on tithes is there a
single clause purporting to be the provision under which
and by which tithes were created.
Their previous existence in every case in which they
are mentioned is assumed.
In not one of the Acts is their payment declared to
rest solely upon a common law or statutable basis. In
every case their payment is primarily made to rest
upon the requirements of the law of God and of His
Church.
In not one of the statutes is the separate parochial
amounts and modes of payment of tithes declared to rest
upon a legislative basis. The legislative provisions of
each statute do but say that tithes shall be payable
according to the laudable differing customs of the parishes
in which such tithes arise.
It is plain, therefore, that these facts effectually dis-
prove and dispose of the assumptions of the alleged State
creation of tithes, or the alleged primary State prescription
of the obligation and manner of paying tithes ; and
further, that they are facts which are only consistent and
compatible with the voluntary private, manorial and
parochial origin of the whole tithe system.
SUMMARY OF STATUTE LAW AS TO TITHES.
Legislative enactments as to tithes were only rendered
necessary when misunderstandings arose between the
tithe payer and the tithe receiver as to the customary
amounts of tithes and methods of their payment which
prevailed in each parish in which the tithes arose, which
had been manorially and parochially originated and
acted upon, and had been sanctioned by centuries of
common law.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 725
We learn from the various statutes relative to tithes
that there were three principal sources whence the tithe
owner was liable to have his rights prejudiced as to his-
property in tithes.
First, from farmers who, on various pretences, tried
to evade the whole or partial payment of tithes.
Second, from religious houses which sought the
interference and authority of the Pope to have their lands
exempted from tithes. Such were the religious houses-
belonging to the Cistercian order.
Third, from the temporal courts, which at times
arbitrarily intervened in suits in the Church courts
between the tithe payer and tithe owner, with the object
of superseding the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts,
and of removing cases of trial in the matter of tithes from
them to its own jurisdiction.
By the Statute 5th Henry IV. cap. II., it was pro-
vided that farmers, and all manner of occupiers of
manors, lands, and tenements, were required to pay their
tithes, which were alleged to be "due as the law of holy
Ckiirck required"
The custom, which for a long time obtained in
England, of religious orders and houses resorting to
Rome to obtain exemption from payment of tithes, led to
repeated enactments, attaching heavy penalties to all who
did so.*
The basis of the payment of tithes was declared to be
not custom nor common law, nor the provisions nor the
prescriptions of statute law, but the fact that they were
"due of right and of possession" to the Church, and
that they were " due as the law of holy Church required,"
and were '' due unto God and holy Church. "f
* See 2 Henry IV., cap. iv. ; 7 Henry IV., cap. vi.
t See i Richard II., cap. xiv. ; 5 Henry IV., cap. xi. ; 27 Henry VIII., cap. xx.
726 LAND :
It is not set forth in any statute that, either as
to things titheable, or as to the mode of payment of
tithes, these particulars were to be regulated by any
statutable provisions or prescriptions ; but it is declared
that they were to be determined according to "the laudable
usages and customs of the parish or other place where
the tithe payer dwelleth or occupieth," and where such
tithes or duties "shall grow, arise, or be due."*
Lands of religious houses which, prior to their disso-
lution, were discharged from tithes, were so to remain
.after coming into possession of the king or other of his
subjects, f
Remedy for the recovery of tithes from those who
refused payment was to be sought only in the Ecclesiastical
courts. J
Every person who carried his corn or hay before
.setting out his tithe, or who hindered the parson from
removing the tithe due to him from the premises, rendered
himself thereby liable to pay the double value of the
tithe.
Tithe of cattle feeding on any waste or common land
of the parish to which it belonged was a matter of
uncertainty, and was to be paid to the tithe owner of the
parish in which the owner of the cattle dwelt. ||
All barren, heath, or waste lands, not having been
discharged from payment of tithe, but liable to be
titheable on cultivation, was, after a period of seven years'
reclamation and cultivation, to pay tithe for the corn and
hay growing thereupon.^"
* See 27 Henry VIII., cap. xx., sects. I and 2 ; 2 and 3 Edward VI., cap. xiii.
t See 31 Henry VIII., cap. xiii., sect. 21.
J See 32 Henry VIII., cap. vii., sect. 8.
See 2 and 3 Edward VI. , cap. xiii. , sect. 2.
|| See 2 and 3 Edward VI., cap. xiii., sect. 3.
^[ See 2 and 3 Edward VI.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 727
Merchants and handicraftsmen (but not labourers)
were to pay tithes on their clear profits in parishes or
places in which such was the custom.*
Dwellers in sea-board parishes, who, according to
laudable customs, were in the habit of paying tithes upon
fish, were to continue so to do.f
Tithes or customary payments in lieu of tithes upon
the rents of houses, though said not to be due of common
right, were of ancient custom paid in certain cities and
towns, as in Canterbury and London tor instance. J
An Act for the more easy recovery of small tithes
was passed in the reign of William III., and was made
perpetual in the reign of Queen Anne.
Persons claiming for their land exemption from tithes
were required to prove thirty years' previous exemption ;
and those claiming freedom for their land from a modus
in lieu of tithes were required to prove sixty years'
exemption. ||
COMMUTATION OF TITHES.
The purpose of the Commutation Act was not to
abolish but to "amend the laws relating to tithes"; it
was not to abolish the old tithes and bring in a new tithe
rent charge upon a new basis, but to build upon the old
basis of tithes an equitable tithe rent charge as a more
convenient system of payment. ^f
Parochial meetings were to be called, at which owners
of two -thirds in value might agree upon the sum to be
* See 2 and 3 Edward VI., sects. 7-10.
t See 2 and 3 Edward VI., sect. n.
^ See 2 and 3 Edward VI., sect. 12.
7 and 8 William III., cap. vi. ; 10 and n William III., cap. xv. 3 and 4
Anne, cap xviii., sect. i.
|| See 2 and 3 William IV., cap. c.
I See 6 and 7 William IV., cap. Ixxi., sect. I.
728 LAND I
paid to the tithe owners in lieu of tithes, which agreement
was to bind the whole parish.*
Lands not exceeding twenty acres might be assigned
to any ecclesiastical owner of tithes as a commutation
for the whole or equivalent part of the tithes due to him.f
As a basis for fixing and settling in any parish the
amount of future tithe rent charge, in lieu of tithes in
kind, the value of tithes was to be taken as or at their
value on the average of the last seven years . J
For the purposes of commutation, tithes were to be
valued without deductions for charges upon them in the
shape of parochial rates and parliamentary taxes.
Tithes of hop-grounds, fruit, and garden produce,
arising for the most part from lands in Kent and Sussex,
were to be valued according to their average value on
the last seven preceding years, and their value was to be
added to the other tithes of the parish. ||
Tithes were thus for the first time statutably divided
into ordinary and extraordinary charge. The extra-
ordinary tithe rent charge, including that on hops and
fruit, not being a new tithe nor an anomalous tithe, but a
tithe separately estimated and separately commuted,
because of the exceptionally valuable but uncertain
character of the crops. Extraordinary tithe was to cease
and determine with respect to all lands on which extra-
ordinary crops had ceased to be cultivated. *|[
[This extraordinary tithe rent charge within the last
few years has been commuted and greatly reduced in
amount by recent legislation, so that now it may be said
to be almost merged in the ordinary tithe rent charge.]
Arrangements might be made between the landlord
* Ibid., sect. 17 f Ibid., sect. 29. J Ibid., sect. 37.
Ibid., sect. 37. | ; Ibid., sect. 40.
T See 6 and 7 William IV., cap. Ixxi., sect. 40; sects. 40-42.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 729
and tenant by which if the tenant objected to pay the
tithe rent charge the landlord might pay it for him, and
if the tenant paid the tithe rent charge he might legally
deduct it from the landlord's rent, unless the subject of
the payment of the tithe rent charge had been a special
matter of agreement in the conditions of tenancy.*
In cases in which the tithe rent charge and the lands
charged therewith are settled to the same uses, the
tenant for life may cause the tithes to be merged in the
land, even though the land may be copyhold. t
On the tithe rent charge being merged in the land
out of which it arises, all charges existing upon such
tithe rent charge are to be transferred to the land itself.
It would be beside our object here to dwell upon the
serious losses to landowners, farmers, and the clergy
alike, arising out of the temporary but severe agricultural
depression. Great numbers of the clergy have in a
special manner been subjected to heavy losses and much
inconvenience and privation. In consequence of the
immense decrease which has taken place in the annual
value of their tithes, the increasing difficulties of their
collection, and the combinations which have been formed
by farmers in some districts to resist payment, the clergy
have been in many cases compelled under most painful
circumstances, to distrain upon the produce or stock found
upon the farms as the only method of obtaining their
just dues.
While our aim in this paper has been to trace the
origin and growth of tithes, and as far as is possible,
briefly to describe their history as they have existed and
have been paid as a first charge upon the produce of the
* Ibid., sect. 80.
t See i and 2 Victoria, cap. Ixiv., sects. 3 and 4.
730 LAND :
soil for religious purposes, from the earliest days of the
English Church and kingdom till the present time, it
may not be out of place to express an opinion that the
whole matter of the tithe rent charge seems to require
reconsideration and revision.
Through the disastrous revolutions which have taken
place in the market price of the produce of the land,
depreciating it to an alarming extent, and through the
consequently greatly reduced value of the land itself,
some readjustments in the matter of the tithe rent charge
seem to be called for in many cases, while legislative
provisions should be made furnishing easily available
facilities for their redemption. And we cannot but hope
that those who are responsible for providing such
readjustments to meet the greatly altered condition of
agriculture in the kingdom will be able to propose such
measures, founded upon such principles of justice and
equity, both to the tithe payer and the tithe owner, as
will give as much satisfaction to both parties as the
heavy losses, to which they both unfortunately must in
any case be subject, will allow.
THE TITHE ACT, 1891.
The Tithe Act of 1891 received the Royal Assent on
March 26th, 1891, and came into operation on the same
day. It owes its existence chiefly to agitations in Wales
against the payment of the tithe rent charge, and a pro-
longed series of organised violent disturbances which
were attendant upon attempts at distraint for the tithe
rent charge, the payment of which had been refused.
The following are some of the leading provisions of
this important measure :
The tithe rent charge is henceforward payable by the
owner of the lands out of which it arises, and on which
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 731
it is chargeable, and is no longer payable by the
occupier, and this notwithstanding any contract made and
entered into between the landowner and his tenant, and
existing and in force previously to the passing of the Act.
Any contract entered into in the future to evade the
provisions of the Act will be null and void.
[As between landlord and tenant, and in respect of
rent charge with which the landowner is chargeable
under this Act, and which the occupier of the land
previous to the Act had contracted to pay, the land-
owner will be entitled to demand the amount of the tithe
rent charge from the occupier, giving, however, a receipt
in which it shall be expressly stated that the sum thus
paid is in respect of tithe rent charge.
In case of refusal on the part of the occupier to pay
the tithe rent charge, the owner may recover by the
process of distress but not otherwise.]
The tithe owner has now to deal solely and exclu-
sively with the owner of the lands, and is to apply to
him for all future payments as they become due.
In case the tithe rent charge shall be in arrear for
not less than three months, the tithe owner may appeal
to the County Court, which Court shall order the sum
demanded or such part of such sum as shall be proved
to be due to be paid, with the costs, to the tithe owner.
The Court will carry out its order by appointing a
receiver of the rents and profits of the lands, who shall
have the same power as in any other case under the
jurisdiction of the Court.
The occupier of any land, who has contracted to
pay the tithe rent charge, and is in consequence thereof
liable under this Act to pay its amount to the land-
owner, may demand a hearing in the County Court,
before any such order of the Court can be made.
732 LAND :
But where the owner of the land is also the occupier,
the amount of tithe rent charge is to be recovered by
an officer of the Court by process of distraint, and in
case there is not property to distrain of value sufficient
to meet the claim, the tithe owner may proceed to take
possession of the lands liable for the charge, under the
provisions of the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836.
Rules have been formulated for the necessary service
on the landowner or land occupier, and provision is also
made, in case it cannot be ascertained who is the owner
of the lands in question, for the owner of the tithe rent
charge to take legal proceedings without being required
to name the landowner.
The Act in no case imposes personal liability for the
payment of the tithe rent charge, nor permits imprison-
ment for non-payment.
In case of land held rent free, or at a rent which is
not sufficient to cover the tithe rent charge, the Court
may direct that the order for recovery be executed as if
the occupier were the owner, giving, however, power to
the occupier to deduct any amount which he may thus
pay from moneys for which hereafter he may become
liable to the owner, together with interest at the rate of
four per cent.
Up to the date of the operation of this Act, tithe rent
charge could be assessed on, and rates recovered from the
occupier of any lands from which such tithe rent charge
issued. This is no longer the case. The tithe ow r ner
alone is now, in all circumstances, assessable on the tithe
rent charge.
But should the collector of the parochial rates satisfy
the County Court that he is unable to recover any rate
assessed upon the tithe rent charge from the owner
thereof, the Court, in such a case, may order the land-
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 733
owner to pay the tithe rent charge to the collector until
such time as the amount of the rate, with costs, is paid.
Hitherto it has been the law that, under all circum-
stances, the tithe rent charge was recoverable. But under
the present Act, in any case in which it is proved to the
satisfaction of the County Court that the tithe rent charge
exceeds two- thirds of the annual value of the land, the
Court may order the remission of the whole or part of
such tithe rent charge as may be equal to the excess
over and above the rent of the land, and the amount so
ordered to be remitted shall not be recoverable.
While it is beside our purpose in these pages to do
more than indicate the leading features of this Act as
we have briefly endeavoured to do, it may interest our
readers to learn that while the Act itself consists of twelve
Sections, the Rules and Orders supplemental to it, and
which regulate proceedings taken under it, amount to
fifty-eight, while the number of Forms rendered neces-
sary for all emergencies provided for by the Act is
thirty-five.
THOMAS MOORE.
734 LAND :
CHAPTER LXXIX.
LOCAL AND IMPERIAL ASSESSMENTS ON
LANDED PROPERTY.
BY A. DUDLEY CLARKE, F.S.I.,
i
Resident Agent for the Abberley Hall Estates, Worcestershire : formerly Agent for
the Blenheim Palace Estates, Oxfordshire; Silver Medallist of the Royal Agricitltural
Society of England ; Author of " Modern Farm Buildings" ("Observer'' Office,
}\'inchester), etc.
DURING a lengthy experience in various districts, I have
known many instances where owners and occupiers of
rural property have obtained considerable advantage by
the examination and readjustment of their assessments,
and as regards the income tax there are statutory
privileges, and recent concessions which have frequently
been overlooked or misunderstood, resulting in over
payment.
Where the principles of assessment are imperfectly
understood, taxpayers suffer because of their inability to
present their claims in a proper form, and they are also
entirely at the mercy of the committees and officials who
have the power to determine assessment values, some of
whom are anxious to be fair and just, while others err
from carelessness, ignorance, or harshness, as the case
may be.
It is very unpleasant for a taxpayer to feel that he
is paying more than his proper contribution, yet this
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 735
often occurs and continues, owing to the want of the
information necessary to obtain the remedy.
The object, therefore, in this chapter will be to
indicate as clearly as possible ever)* point which will
tend to minimise the outgoings on landed property for
poor rate, income tax and land tax purposes.
POOR RATE.
The contribution to local expenses collected under
the title of poor rate is understood, of course, to include
many expenses which have no connection with the
relief of the poor, and although it is a tax payable by the
occupiers of property, it is almost generally admitted to
be, in effect, a tax upon ownership indirectly levied. For
instance, in letting a farm, an intending tenant, after
ascertaining the rent, usually asks what the rates amount
to, and calculates the value of the occupation accordingly r
it being immaterial to him, if it is worth thirty shillings
per acre, whether the amount is paid entirely as rent or
partly in rent and partly in rates. Hence it is desirable
for owners of property to obtain a fair assessment for
their tenants as well as themselves, and further, as the
gross poor rate value is (or should be) the basis for the
assessment of land tax, which is a landlord's tax, as well'
as a guide to the income tax on property in hand,
additional inducement is furnished for so doing. Formerly
a landlord, or agent, or other person, would not be heard
by some assessment committees if he desired to appear
for a tenant who was not capable of conducting an appeal
to advantage, but this difficulty has recently been
removed by a decision in the High Court, which allows
a tenant to be represented by any person he may select
to appear on his behalf.
736 LAND :
Property is rateable to the poor on its net annual
value ; that is, it must be valued as it exists, according to
the use made of it ; and the net annual value is defined
to be the rent to be expected under a yearly tenancy after
deducting repairs, insurance, and other expenses, if any,
necessary to maintain the property in a state to command
the rent It is only the value of repairs done by the
landlord which can be deducted, and as regards the
"other expenses," they will include the expense of main-
taining sea walls and the like ; and it has been held in
the High Court* that an allowance ought to be made to
form a renewal fund for the reconstruction of buildings
specially liable to become unworthy by the effects of the
weather. In practice, however, it does not appear that
anything of this nature is allowed, at any rate not
directly so, although to some extent the extra and
sometimes liberal allowance made for repairs on
property which is old and expensive to maintain might
fairly be taken to contribute indirectly to an imaginary
renewal fund.
As tithe is now payable by the landlord out of rent
received, it will be a legal deduction, as well as the
repairs and insurance, to arrive at the net annual value.
If it is not so deducted, it will be assessed twice as the
lay or clerical owner is separately assessed upon it.
Before leaving the question of assessment, it may be
desirable to refer to several somewhat common errors
which occur in connection with it, as regards certain
descriptions of property. The rateable value sometimes
put upon woods will furnish one instance of excessive
assessment. Woodland, that is, land occupied by timber
only, to the exclusion of saleable underwoods, should be
* R. V. Wells, L.R., 2 Q.B. 542 ; S.B. and S. 607 ; 30 L.J.M.C. 109.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 737
rated as land in its natural and unimproved state ; and
as hills, hillsides, and all sorts of rough and unfertile
ground unsuited for agricultural purposes, are usually
devoted to timber, the unimproved value of such is often
taken for rating purposes at about three shillings per
acre ; yet I have known it to be, until appealed against
and reduced, as much as sixteen shillings. Any value
attached to them for sporting purposes should, however,
be added, where the owner retains this for his own use ;
but when sporting is let separately, there should be a
separate assessment made upon the tenant. Saleable
underwoods also are often assessed too high ; their
annual value to the poor race should not be calculated
beyond the sum which the crop would fetch if let to a
tenant who would pay the rates, attend to the drains and
keep up the fences. Thus, an acre of underwood which
takes ten years to grow, and is worth five pounds when
matured, yields a gross return of ten shillings per year ;
and if the rates amounted to one shilling per acre, and
the fencing and draining to two shillings and sixpence
per acre per annum, the net annual value to the poor
rate would be six shillings and sixpence.
Another frequent source of over assessment is in
regard to tithes, the owners of which should pay on the
amount which they are worth to let, as in the case of
farms and other property, less certain deductions. To
arrive at the rateable value, the annual value for the
current year should be taken, and deductions made for
the poor rates and property tax (Schedule B), for the
cost of c "Action incurred or estimated, and for a fair
average es and legal process, the rule being that
the amoi M be ascertained which a tenant may be
reasoi to pay from year to year for the
tither The proportion of first-fruits
3B
738 LAND :
and other ecclesiastical dues of the same nature may
also be deducted.
The appeal against excessive assessments to the
board of guardians can now be more effectually made
owing to the recent legal decision, previously referred to,,
whereby an appellant can now be represented by his
lawyer, or such other person as he may think can most
effectually present his claim. It is xveli known that many
appellants, owing to their ignorance of the law, have
failed to impress the justice of their claims upon the
members of the assessment committees, who are fre-
quently farmers totally ignorant of the principles of the
law they are administering, and the injustice attending
erroneous assessments has been allowed to continue in
consequence.
Occasionally assessment committees are led to refuse
reasonable applications for reductions by the persistent
action of one or two leading members who are interested
in keeping up the high figures. One instance of the
kind gave me an immense amount of trouble, in a union
of parishes where the two dominant members were
largely interested in house property in a small town
which formed part of the union in question, and where
I was desirous of obtaining fair assessments for a large
amount of agricultural property let to tenants who were
assessed from twenty to forty per cent, too high, and had
been so for some years. I found that this injustice
operated unfavourably upon the rents, and. when I
pleaded that the law required a readj fment of the
assessments, it was totally disregarded "it was not
until I was induced to become a guard' it at the
board, that I was successful in winnin majority
to dispense justice. The fact was, i* ulturai
properties were notoriously over assc
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 739
union, and it was seen by the guardians interested in the
house property in the town, that once reductions were
allowed, they would become extensive enough to materially
heighten the rate on the houses.
A fallacious doctrine I have often heard advanced as
a reason for not reducing excessive assessments is, that
if all the land in a parish is over assessed, no actual
injustice arises to individuals, because, if all the land was
reduced for assessment purposes, the rate in the pound
would be higher, and it would amount to the same thing.
If each parish had borne its own costs for relief of the
poor, and for other charges, this argument might have
succeeded ; but, bearing in mind that a very large in
fact, the greater proportion of money raised by the
rates in a parish is paid over to the common fund of the
union, the error of such a contention becomes apparent ;
and further, if the total rateable value of a parish is kept
up in excess of what it should be, there is a distinct loss
to the parish in the over payment which follows on its-
contributions to the county rate, the basis of which is
calculated for each parish on its total value.
INCOME TAX.
The tax collected under Schedule A is usually termed
the " landlords' property tax," and the tenant is bound
by law to pay it on the landlord's behalf, who is compelled
to allow it out of the next payment of rent, under a
penalty of fifty pounds ; but the tenant cannot claim more
than the amount payable on the actual rent, although he
may have paid on more. In like manner, persons paying
ground rent, interest, or annuity, as a charge on property,
can deduct therefrom the amount of tax on the same, and
the person refusing to allow the deduction is liable to a
penalty. , .
740 LAND :
Where premises are let to a tenant, the annual value
to Schedule A is understood to be the yearly rent of the
same (subject to the deductions named hereafter); but
this rent must be the full rent which the property will
bear, each party bearing their own lawful burdens in
respect of rates and taxes and other expenses. That is
to say, if a landlord pays, out of rent received, any parish
rates which by law are chargeable upon the occupier, the
same should be deducted from the rent to obtain the
annual value for income tax. But where a tenant pays,
in addition to the rent, any rates or taxes which by law
.are imposed on the landlord, the amount of these must be
.added to the rent. Therefore, if either party bears the
other's burdens, the rent, as defined for tax purposes, will
be destroyed, and must be adjusted accordingly for
.assessment.
Where premises are in the occupation of the owner, it
is usual for the income tax authorities to ascertain the
annual value by a reference to the gross value to the
poor rate, if this is made on the full annual value, and not
to accept a less sum.
Deductions are allowed from the rent, for the land
tax, tithe (which is now payable by the landlord), the
amount of any public drainage rate, and also for making
or repairing sea walls (this, on a twenty-one years'
average). These deductions should be made at the time
the returns of profits are given to the assessors, as if
omitted they cannot be afterwards claimed. Deductions
are also allowed off the rents received from charity lands
so far as they are applied to charitable purposes. An
abatement is allowed to be made for life insurance
premiums paid on an owners or his wife's account, and
the like for deferred annuities, for which purpose a form
of declaration is provided on the official form of return ;
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 741
but if not then deducted, repayment can be claimed for
one, two, or three years.
Relief to landlords on remissions of rent made to their
tenants has been allowed by the Treasury since 1880,
and any landlord having made or having agreed to make
a reduction of rent to a tenant of lands on account of
agricultural depression can claim repayment of the tax
I >aid on the amount of rent so remitted ; but the remittance
must be one of money, not of manures or the like. If he
allows the tenant the tax on the full rent he can claim
repayment for himself, or if the tenant bears the tax on
the sum remitted, the tenant can recover it. The claims
must be made within three years of the year of assess-
ment when made by the tenant, but it will be safer for
the landlord to make the claim annually as the Revenue
have demurred in the case when it has been deferred.
Owners of land, who are also occupiers thereof for
purposes of husbandry, are entitled to similar relief
under Schedule A as owners, if their farming profits are
not sufficient to provide a sum for rent. For this
purpose the appeal for relief must be made by giving
notice to the surveyor of taxes for the district within
three months of the end of the year of assessment.
The annual value of tithe rent charge, under the Act
for the Commutation of Tithes, can be somewhat reduced
in its assessment, owing to a recent decision in the Court
of Appeal (Stevens v. Bishop, in February, 1888). It
was held that they were to be assessed by the "general
rule " under which the annual value should be understood
to be the rack rent at which they were worth to be let
by the year, and consequently the cost of collection
would be one of the necessary expenses incurred by a
tenant if they were so let. In addition therefore to the
deductions which have been usually allowed, a sum for
742 LAND :
collection of tithe can be claimed when making the
declaration for assessment, and where any tithe-owner
has neglected to avail himself of the opportunity, he can
claim the allowances for three past years. From the
value of the tithe for the year of assessment, the usual
deductions referred to are the amount paid for poor rate
on the tithe for the previous year (which, when the rates
are high, amounts to a considerable sum, and has
frequently been lost sight of), the amount paid for
various clerical fees, and for the repairs and insurance
of chancels of churches on a seven years' average.
The tax on the occupation of lands collected under
Schedule B, although chiefly confined to farmers, is
charged on the occupation of all lands, and consequently
includes pleasure grounds and gardens, if their extent
justified assessment. Woods and plantations also are
assessable, and the annual value of these is ascertained
mainly in the same way as for Schedule A so much so
that a further description will not be necessary, except to
state that half the rent and tithe, less one-eighth, is taken
as the estimated value of the occupier's profit. There are,
however, exceptions in the case of nurseries and market
gardens, and lands occupied by cattle dealers and dairy-
men ; these can be assessed at a higher amount if the
rent principle does not afford a just estimate of the
profits.
When the profits of occupiers of land fall short of the
amount at which they have been assessed, relief can be
obtained by appealing to the local commissioners of the
tax by giving notice to the surveyor of taxes for the
district within three months of the end of the year of
assessment, when an abatement and repayment will be
allowed if the commissioners are satisfied. This privilege
has been very little understood or availed of, and had it
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 743
been otherwise the recent concession of allowing farmers to
declare their profits under Schedule D (the trade schedule),
which obviates the necessity of appeal, would hardly have
been so much needed. Until this concession was made
occupiers of land were bound to the statutory assessment
of their profits at half the rent, but now they have the
advantage of declaring their actual profits under Schedule
D on the basis of an average of the three previous years.
If their live stock varies very much from one year to
another this ought to be taken into account in calculating
the profits, but otherwise it is not necessary to do so.
If an occupier of land is assessed to the income tax,
as those are whose income, reckoned on half their rent, is
one hundred and fifty pounds or over, it should be borne
in mind that any remissions of rent on account of the agri-
cultural depression, which are the subject of a return of
tax to the landlord under Schedule A, will also operate in
respect of Schedule B to half the same amount, less one-
eighth. But the following example of assessments under
Schedules A and B will more clearly illustrate the principles
of assessments.
M is the tenant of a farm at three hundred and twenty
pounds a year. If the farm is free of land tax and tithe,
and the landlord and tenant each pay their own rates and
taxes, the assessment will be : Schedule A, three hundred
and twenty pounds ; Schedule B, three hundred and twenty
pounds. One-half of Schedule B will be one hundred and
sixty pounds, the amount on which the tenant's income is
reckoned for tax purposes. He cannot claim exemption,
the amount being over one hundred and fifty pounds ;
but he can claim the abatement of one hundred and
twenty pounds, and pay on an assessment of forty pounds,
provided that his income from all sources is under four
hundred pounds. In the same way the landlord could
744 LAND :
claim the abatement on the rent of three hundred and
twenty pounds if his total income was under four hundred
pounds.
N is the tenant of a farm at the same rent, but it is
subject to a land tax of ten pounds, and a tithe of twenty
pounds, and these two sums would be deducted from
Schedule A, making it two hundred and ninety pounds,
while Schedule B and the abatement would remain as
before.
O is the tenant of a farm exactly similar to the last,
but his landlord allowed him twenty per cent, on the
year's rent of three hundred and twenty pounds, which
would be sixty-four pounds. Presuming he had already
paid the tax on one-half of the three hundred and twenty-
pounds, he could claim repayment of tax on the sixty-four
pounds under Schedule A for his landlord, and under
Schedule B for himself. But, in addition to that, he will
find, on taking the sixty-four pounds returned to him off
the three hundred and twenty pounds, his assessment is
reduced to two hundred and fifty-six pounds, one-half of
which is one hundred and twenty-eight pounds, and con-
sequently the income is exempt altogether from payment
of the tax. Instead, therefore, of claiming repayment for
himself on the sixty-four pounds only, he can claim total
exemption, as his income from all sources (if he has no
other) will be under one hundred and fifty pounds, and
repayment of all the tax under Schedule B which he has
paid.
In a similar way, if a tenant or a landlord, whose total
income from all sources was over four hundred pounds,
had a percentage of rent returned or was successful in
appealing for a return of tax paid owing to a diminution
of farming profits, which would bring the income under
four hundred pounds, a claim for the abatement of one
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 745
hundred and twenty pounds which the law allows on such
incomes would follow.
LAND TAX.
In treating of the Land Tax from a practical point of
view, it is not necessary to enter upon the details of its
origin, which dates back to the time of Henry II., or to
the particulars of its assessment, until the time of its
being charged in its present form. As in the case of the
poor rate, it was at one time levied on personal as well
as real property ; but, after many alterations, it was made
a perpetual charge on land by the Act of 38 Geo. III.
(subject to redemption), when the sum of ,1,989,673
was the amount to be raised for England and Wales, and
^>47>954 f r Scotland. The quotas fixed by that Act
became a fixed charge, and have been levied ever since,
except where redemptions have been effected.
The tax should be levied on all lands, tenements,
quit rents, quarries, mines, mills, woods and underwoods,
tithes, and all other yearly profits issuing out of any
lands situate within the parish, with certain exemptions in
respect of charity lands and the Universities. The
assessment should be made yearly by an equal pound
rate on the annual value of the properties, and where the
collection is properly effected the gross poor rate value
is generally taken as the basis. The quota, or total
amount for each parish, cannot be altered, and it should
appear on the assessment, after which should follow a list
of the properties redeemed, with the respective amounts
attached. After these are deducted, the sum remaining
will be the net quota for assessment by an equal pound
rate on the properties not redeemed ; and any excess
collected is to be paid to the Bank of England, an account
74 6 LAND :
against each parish being kept at Somerset House.
When the amount against any parish reaches a certain
sum it will be applied to the redemption of a portion of
the tax. The occupiers are bound to pay the tax, and in
the absence of any agreement to the contrary they can
deduct the amount from the next payment of rent.
Where land is chargeable with chief rents, fee farm
rents, annuities, or rent charges (not being tithe rent
charges commuted under the Commutation Act), the
owners of the property are entitled to deduct land tax
at the same rate in the pound as it is assessed at. That
this deduction has been overlooked in many instances
there can be no doubt.
Such is the manner by which the law requires the
assessment of the tax to be made, but owing to a pre-
vailing idea that the tax on individual properties was a
fixed sum, and to the gross negligence of many of the
local authorities in permitting old assessments to be
recopied yearly for very many years, serious errors have
arisen resulting in considerable injustice. There is a
disposition now, however, on the part of the authorities
to remedy such forms of neglect, and very recently I
have been concerned in a case of the kind. It appeared
that a certain amount of property in the parish in question
had been redeemed, a total sum being deducted for it,
but each property was not particularized as the law
directs, and there was no proper assessment on an equal
rate. The commissioners, therefore, under the advice of
their clerk, made out an assessment of the whole of the
property in the parish, copying the names and yearly
gross values from the poor rate, thereby placing the
redeemed as well as the unredeemed properties on the
assessment. By doing this, the onus was placed upon
the persons interested to prove on appeal, if they could,
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 747
that their property had been redeemed. A good deal of
trouble and some expense, no doubt, resulted in searching
for certificates of redemption or other proofs, but it does
not appear that the authorities could have traced the
exonerated properties (some of them exonerated in 1798)
to their present owners. I was fortunate myself in being
able to produce the necessary certificates for most of the
property I was concerned in, but some of it yet is open to
doubt.
Owners of purely agricultural properties are the
persons who are most likely to be benefited by the
rectification of erroneous assessments, particularly if any
part of the parish abuts upon a populous centre where
land has been built upon and enhanced in value. It is not
difficult to understand how the advantage may arise.
As the quota for each parish is a fixed sum to be raised
by an equal rate, corresponding to the poor rate, it will
be evident that all land which is built upon, or otherwise
enhanced in value for rating purposes, must increase the
amount upon which the assessment is made and con-
sequently lower the amount of the rate. By the operation
of causes of this kind, I have known instances of great
reductions on agricultural properties when neglected
assessments have been put on a proper basis.
Any person feeling himself aggrieved by the assess-
ment made upon his property can appeal to the
Commissioners, and their decision is final. If he knows
that the property has been redeemed, and can produce
the certificate of redemption, the appeal will be an easy
matter, but if he merely believes that such is the case the
task will be more or less a troublesome one, if on looking
at the assessment he finds, as is very frequently the case,
that the redeemed properties are not scheduled on the
assessment as the law directs. This will necessitate an
748 LAND :
application for particulars to the chief office at Somerset
House, and when the information has been furnished, it
will sometimes be difficult to connect the names of the
owner and occupier of property, say, in 1798, with the
present ownership ; but parish registers sometimes afford
assistance of a useful kind.
If an appeal is considered necessary on the ground of
over assessment, which may be the case when a person
looks down the list at the sums appearing against pro-
perties that he knows the value of, and finds that the
charges are not made on an equal rate, but practically on
no proper system of rating at all, owing to the re-copying
of old assessments for perhaps fifty years, and to some of
the land being developed in value, the person aggrieved
must state these facts as his grounds of appeal. This
will probably bring about an assessment on a proper
basis, and the relief sought will be obtained. If not, and
should the local authorities seek to evade the trouble
connected with such a process, the tax must be paid if
the appeal is not successful ; but if a statement of the
case is laid before the Somerset House authorities, they
will put on the necessary pressure for a remedy by the
next year.
As to the advisability of redemption in any given
case, it will be obvious that before improving land, and
increasing its rateable value, it will be desirable to redeem
the tax. Railway companies almost invariably redeem
before the development of the land they purchase takes
place ; but I know of cases where the precaution has
been omitted, in which the tax of shillings has increased
to as many pounds. On the other hand, land which has
attained its full value by being built upon, or otherwise,
may get a reduction of the tax by the development of
other property in the parish, leading to the reduction of
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 749
the rate, in which case it would be advisable at least to
wait until this takes place.
The tax can be redeemed as well by those in
remainder or reversion as those in possession, and the
Settled Lands Act, 1880, allows of capital moneys arising
under the Act to be applied for the purpose. The price
originally fixed was so much Three per Cent. Stock as
would yield the amount of tax to be redeemed and one-
tenth more, but more recently a reduction has been made
by which the price is fixed at seventeen and a half
per cent, less than the dividend of amount of stock so
required, and the exact sum would, of course, be calculated
on the price of stock at the time the transaction was
made.
A. DUDLEY CLARKE.
SECTION VI
LAND I ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 753
CHAPTER LXXX.
APPLICATIONS OF ELECTRICITY TO
AGRICULTURE.
/
BY FREDERICK L. RAWSON,
Managing Director of Woodhouse and Rawson United, Limited ; Member of the
Institution of Electrical Engineers ; Member of the Society of Engineers ; Associate
, Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
THE present applications of electricity to purposes of
agriculture consist more in the uses to which it has been
put as a means of transmitting motive power, than in
any direct application of electricity, either to plants or to
the ground itself.
There are agriculturalists who have conducted careful
experimental trials, and who firmly believe that in the
near future the direct use of electricity as an aid to
growth will be very largely extended, while others con-
sider the experiments which have as yet been made do
not prove it to be useful in any way. Where judges
disagree, it is difficult to form a definite opinion. The
methods which have been tried, by which electricity may
aid or hasten vegetation, are these :
First. Exposing plants to the direct action of the
arc light, with a view of hastening growth, using the
rays from the lamp during the night-time, in addition to
exposing the plants to the sunlight during the day.
Second. Burying plates of zinc and copper in the
earth, joining them by a wire externally, and growing
754 LAND:
plants in the intervening space, thus exposing the latter to
the action of a weak constant electric current.
Third. Covering the plants with a network of wires
insulated from the ground, and charging the network
with a high pressure current obtained from a frictionaf
machine, thus placing the plants in a constant electrified
atmosphere.
Sir William Siemens in England, Mons. Specnew
in Russia, Mons. Barat in France, and Messrs. Rawson
and Bailey of Cornell University in America, have spent
much time in trying various modifications of these
methods. Judging from the results they have obtained,
it would seem to be quite feasible to hasten maturity
by keeping plants constantly exposed to the rays of
an arc lamp, but in most cases this is done at the expense
of the quality of the fruit or produce of the plant.
If plants are exposed to the rays of a powerful electric
lamp during the night, and then covered up and kept
in the dark during the day, it will be noticed that the
growth of the plant is enfeebled, and instead of the
green, healthy appearance we are wont to associate
with growing plants, we obtain lean, lank and sickly-
looking foliage, which plainly shows the unsuitability of
the use of the electric light alone. A curious point,
noticed by Sir William Siemens, was the fact that the
rays from a naked arc lamp withered the leaves of the
plant. Beneficial results may possibly follow its use
when the rays pass through glass before reaching it.
In some experiments carried out quite recently at
Cornell University in America, these results were con-
firmed, and the conclusion arrived at was, that the rays
from an arc lamp will force the growth of many different
kinds of plants, but at the cost of impairing their vitality.
Mons. Specnew, in Russia, has carried on experiments
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 755
by the second and third methods mentioned, and his
statements as to the yield of plants electrically treated
and plants untreated, placed under exactly similar
conditions in every other respect, favour the idea that an
increase of crop follows the use of electricity.
It is, however, in its use as a motive power that the
electric current is destined to prove of the greatest assist-
ance to the agriculturalist. The work which has already
been done in this direction is only an earnest of what
may be expected. The utilisation of waste power is one
of the most important economic questions of the day.
How to conserve and employ in the best manner the
vast stores of energy continually being given out by
the sun, and stored up in one way or another upon
the earth, is one great aim of the modern engineer. It
has been thought by some that waterfalls were made
more for ornament than for use ; probably, it has never
occurred to them to think out the similarity between a
coal field and a mountain lake. What is coal, viewed
from the engineer's standpoint, but an accumulator ?
Work was done upon it by the sun, ages and ages ago,
and placed under proper conditions, it is able to give out
again that energy in almost any desired form.
A mountain lake, in like manner, is an accumulator
of energy. Work was done upon the water, of which it is
composed, by the sun, in raising it from the sea level to
the clouds, in the form of vapour ; part of that energy
was given out again when the rain fell, but a portion
equivalent in amount to that required to raise it to that
height, is retained in the water, and by employing suitable
means, we may, as in the case of coal, use it in the way
which may appear most suitable to us.
It is now possible, by the use of electricity, to utilize
this power in other and more economical ways than by
756 LAND :
simply using the old-fashioned overshot waterwheel to
drive a mill placed close to the waterfall. Engineers
have been at work at perfecting waterwheels and turbines,
amongst the best known being the Pelton and Girard
types, which are now largely used for electrical purposes.
These motors are constructed to work at varying
speeds, and are usually coupled direct to dynamos
or electric current generators, machines which are
able in many cases to transform into electrical energy
ninety-four and ninety-five per cent, of the power used to
drive them.
A dynamo is a reversible machine, that is to say,
when caused by mechanical power to revolve, it produces
an electrical current, whilst if the reverse takes place,
and the electric current is passed through the dynamo
from an outside source, it will revolve and when con-
nected with other machinery, put that machinery in motion
and convert in some cases about eighty or ninety per cent,
of the electrical energy into mechanical power, as electricity
may be transmitted along copper cables for long dis-
tances with very little loss. We are able in this way to
transmit power from where it is not wanted to a distant
spot where it may be economically utilised. Not only
this, but by observing simple electrical rules in the
selection of the electrical pressure at which the power is
transmitted, and the kind of electrical motor used, we are
able to obtain a complete control over the speed at which
the motor works, either having the speed vary with the
work, running fast when it is light and slowing down as
it increases, or running at a steady speed, no matter how
the work done varies : this control of the motor speed
being essential for many kinds of work, and constituting
a feature of great utility in the electrical transmission of
power.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 757
Water power is used in many places as the motive
power for driving at a distance all kinds of agricultural
machinery. Threshing, chaff-cutting, and similar machines
may, of course, be operated at practically any distance
from the source of energy. It is the belief of the writer
that in the future many agricultural operations now
carried on by horse-power will be conducted by means of
a machine carrying an electro-motor and flexible cables
conveying the current. Ploughs have in many cases
been worked by electricity, trucks containing electro-
motors , being placed at each end of the furrow with a
chain attached to the plough, like the ordinary steam plough
arrangement. One of the best known instances is the
estate of the Marquis of Salisbury at Hatfield. There,
the water power on a distant part of the estate is utilized
at various points for different purposes, such as lighting the
house, pile driving, chaff cutting, threshing, and a variety
of other purposes. At Millas, in the Western Pyrenees, on
property belonging to Mr. Comille Gonzy, the power
generating from a neighbouring stream is converted into
electricity, and this current operates the motor for driving
grape crushing machines, works the pump for the vine-
yards, and supplies sufficient current to light one hundred
and eighty incandescent lamps used to illuminate the farm-
house and outbuildings ; doing all this at a very small cost
indeed. These instances, if we had space, might be
multiplied.
A windmill for years has been used as a very cheap
source of power both for pumping and for grinding of
corn. Mr. C. F. Brush has arranged in his garden at
Cleveland, Ohio, a windmill, which is used to drive a
dynamo, and produce electrical energy, which, stored in
accumulators until wanted, is sufficient to light one
hundred lamps in the house. While on this subject we
758. .LAND:
might mention that wind power is used at Cape de la
Hague, in France, to supply accumulators with electrical
energy for lighting the arc lamps used in the lighthouse.
Reverting again to more strictly agricultural topics,
we find that efforts have been made to usefully employ
electricity in the dairy, it having been ascertained that a
weak current may be used to expedite the separation of
the cream from the milk. It has been stated that it
is the formation of oxygen during thunder-storms by the
passage of the electric current which causes butter and other
liquids to turn sour, and also that the same effect may be
artificially produced by electric currents of high tension.
Imperfectly exhausted glowing incandescent lamps have
been immersed in barrels containing new wine to keep
the temperature at a point favourable for rapid fermenta-
tion, and numerous experiments, more or less successful,
have been made towards the improving in quality wines
and spirits by the passage of an electric current.
Some experimenters have tried to utilise the passage
of a low voltage alternating current as a means of killing
the spores which cause fermentation, and so furnishing a
means of fixing the age of any wine. There is risk,
however, in a case such as this, that the process of oxida-
tion which goes on would be carried too far, and finally
result in the alcohol itself being turned into acetic acid.
The above is a brief resume of a part of what has
been done up to the present in applying the electric
current to agricultural purposes.
FREDERICK L. RAWSON.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 759
CHAPTER LXXXI.
AGRICULTURAL GEOLOGY.
BY PROFESSOR PRIMROSE McCONXELL, B.Sc.
Author of" The Agricultural Notebook" and numerous other agricultural works ; High.
Soc. First Prizeman in Agricu'turc, Edinburgh University : Fellow of the Highland
and Agricultural Society of Scotland ; Member of the Royal Agricultural Society cf
England (by Exam.): Assistant Examiner, "Principles of Agriculttire," Science
and Art Department ; Lecturer on Agricultural Sciena to the Indian Civil Service
Students, Oxford University ; etc.
THE value of the study of geology to all those who have
to deal with land was much more fully realized by our
forefathers than by the present generation. Any one
who looks over the volumes of the first series of the
Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England,
will find many articles dealing with the subject scattered
through those pages, and showing that at one time there
was a considerable amount of interest taken in the
matter. The teachings of agricultural chemistry, which
q-ave more certain and immediate results useful to
farmers, however, seem to have overshadowed this
department of enquiry, so that the amount of information
accumulated appears to have been largely lost sight of.
I am of opinion, however, that there is no branch of
science of more use to those who farm or manage land
in any way than this, and purpose giving a short resume
of what is known already on the subject, and in what
way future progress should be made.
760 LAND :
The soil itself is, strictly speaking, a geological forma-
tion, and when we come to examine its composition, we
find that like a great many other formations it has
been made from the detritus or eroded material of older
rocks largely modified no doubt by vegetation and
other external agencies, but in the main taking its
characteristics from the original rock or rocks from which
the debris came. This is so much the case that I have
found that the one-inch Geological Survey Map is a sure
key to the character of the soils of any district, and
details are still more correct in those cases where there is
a six-inch Survey to be had. Further, in the "Drift"
series of maps now being issued, the colours represent
the actual soils and surface formations so accurately that
they are an absolutely safe guide to these ; though as over
a large part of Great Britain there are various accumula-
tions of " boulder clay," "glacial drift," and similar
deposits, covering up and masking the underlying solid
rock, and as the first series of the above-mentioned maps
took only cognisance of these " solid " rocks, it is argued
that they are misleading as to the soils.
The formation of the " boulder clay" and its
congeners has always been one of the vexed
questions debated by geologists, the curious point
about it being that while it is apparently the result
of ice action, either as glaciers, icebergs, or the water
accompanying these, and largely made up of trans-
ported material, yet it is still more largely composed of
the detritus of the subjacent rocks. This last is the
saving clause in favour of the agricultural value of even
the solid geology. I have been in the habit, for many
years, of correlating the soils of various districts to the
rocks underlying them, while travelling up and down.
The plan I have taken is to procure the one-inch geolo-
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 761
gical map of a given district, cut it up into little squares,
and fasten these on to the leaves of an ordinary notebook ;
this made the map portable, while it left space for notes.
Thus I have been able to make an intimate examination
of the geological character of many soils, and I have
been surprised, as well as gratified, to find how closely
the soils, the crops, the style of farming, and the general
characters of a district correspond, almost to a yard, to
the lines and colours on the map, and which I was often
able to predict before ever seeing the land. Even where
the "drift"' predominates, and one would expect to find
a divergence, the same rule applies very largely, and I
have been correct in my surmises as often as the weather
forecasts are correct, that is to say four times out of five.
It is impossible within the limits of an ordinary
chapter to go into any actual details relating to this
branch of the subject, so that a few outstanding gener-
alities must suffice. I take a few instances absolutely at
random. On the map a bright red patch indicates a
" boss " or hill of granite rock to the ordinary geological
student, but to the agricultural geologist it indicates a
very great deal more. I know that if I go to that part
of the country and make an actual investigation that I
will find the following state of matters. The country will
be a rugged, rocky, upland district, perhaps actual
mountain : on the higher and exposed parts there will be
no soil properly speaking, but only turf or peat, which is
in itself a special formation, and one of the latest of the
Tertiaries ; in the bottoms of the hollows and along the
streams the soil which has accumulated will be a plastic
clay, containing in some places a proportion of gritty-
sand, while circumscribed beds of sand and gravel will
appear in parts. Of arable farming there will be none,
or at most it will be confined to little patches on the sides
72 LAND :
of the streams and the lower slopes of the hill land. From
the exposed and high-lying nature of the district nothing
but oats or here can be grown, and even these of poor
quality. The live stock will be the principal feature, and
this will consist of sheep and young or store cattle,
allowed a free run there being comparatively few fences
and living almost in a state of nature. The vegetation
will be scanty, the trees limited to birch and pine. Now
take another contrasting formation let us say the New
Red Marl. The country in this case will be low-lying
and undulating no hills to speak of and no dead levels.
The soil will be a red clay stiffish to work, but fertile,
being really more or less marly in its nature. All
kinds of crops will be grown which suit that latitude, and
regular rotation farming will be adopted, with stock con-
fined within fences. The vegetation will be abundant,
and almost every kind of tree will thrive, but especially
oak and elm.
I could thus in the same way go through a whole
categorical description of each recognised formation, and
point out the outstanding agricultural features of each
without actually going to see them. But, someone may
say, you are only describing peculiarities of farming
which are known to us all independent of the geological
formations. This, I emphatically deny. If anyone can
select a district at random anywhere in the British Islands
and describe its agriculture, he must have an unusually
good personal knowledge of each district ; for my part, I
require the help of a map. But the usefulness of the
information does not stop here, for wherever on the
surface of the globe rocks appear with the same litho-
logical characters, then the soils formed therefrom will be
similar, the general appearance of the country will be
similar, and the farming will be similar, as far as a
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 763
difference of race of men, latitude and elevation will
allow.
It has been conceded by the majority of chemists
that the ordinary analysis of a soil is not always a sure
guide to a knowledge of its fertility, or of the manures
which ought to be supplied. This is due to the fact that
there is no indication of the way in which the various
bodies are combined. There 'may be a superabundance
of phosphoric acid for instance (a substance we require to
apply in manures) but if that is present as phosphate of
iron, or phosphate of alumina, its value is materially
reduced. The whole thing depends on the particular
combinations of the elements which compose the soil,
and therefore a true solution of the question of fertility
lies in a study of the mineralogy of soils. I am quite well
aware of the difficulties of this study, because if a parti-
cular ingredient of fertility, such as say phosphate of
lime is present, either dissolved through the soil or
precipitated after solution, it is practically impossible to
measure the amount. Under the microscope crystals
cannot be seen and measured and identified as in the
ordinary way in crystallography, but nevertheless it is in
a study of the minerals in the soil, and their "alteration
products " that we shall make future progress. To take
one solitary instance, it has been stated that the fertility
of the Upper Greensand soils is due to the presence of
glauconite, which is a silicate of iron and potash, and 1
feel certain that further research will disclose the fact
that other soils contain minerals which render them
fertile or the reverse.
But the subject of agricultural geology does not
concern itself merely with the surface soil which we
cultivate, and on which we grow crops. It is manifest
that in draining land we want to know something of the
764 LAND :
surface accumulations to a depth of four or, maybe, six
feet, as the occurrence of beds of clay, or sand, or gravel
regulates the depth and distance apart of the drains,
while the presence of rock or boulders near the surface
materially raises the cost.
Again, a knowledge of where to find gravel or metal
for roads, clay for bricks or pipes, sand for building, marl,
and so on, is often of great value. It may be argued
that the people who live on the land know these things
already, but that does not alter the fact that this knowledge
is geological, differing from the purely scientific in degree
only. In sinking for water it is of infinite value to under-
stand the order and superposition of the various formations
of a district. One cannot always foretell where water
will -be found, but they may know what places to avoid
in seeking for it.
Of the wider and more general uses of geology it is
outside the province of this chapter to treat of, but it may
just be mentioned in passing that to the owner who goes
prospecting for coal, ironstone, limestone, building stone,,
ores, and the hundred and one things which constitute
" mineral wealth," geological lore is of infinite value. The
bowels of the earth often contain fortunes for those who
can find out and make use of the hidden materials, while
fortunes are seldom made out of the soil.
But now enough has been said regarding the geolo-
gical characteristics of soils. It is not intended to give a
treatise on the subject, but only to point out the chief
features, the value to all who have to do with land, and
the lines along which future investigation is likely to
lead to the best results.
Now, let us investigate the influence which those
varied rocks have on the vegetation which grows above
them. That the soil has an immense influence on the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 765
crops is, of course, known by everybody in a general way.
A fertile soil will yield a good crop, and a poor soil will
not, and so on, but a closer enquiry will show us that
there is a great deal more than these general facts to be
met with. Oats, for instance, yield the best oatmeal
when grown on clay ; when grown on sandy soil in the
same neighbourhood, and which is equally fertile, they
may be very inferior. This is a fact well enough known
to all people who have been in the habit of using porridge
as a part of their daily food, and Professor Tanner, in an
article contributed to the Highland Society's Transactions,
some twelve years ago, showed that the gluten present
varied from one and a-half to nine per cent, in different
samples. On some formations, indeed, oats will scarcely
grow at all, as on the Oolitic sandstones for instance,
while the very colour is affected ; the grain grown on
Alluvium or warp-land taking on a darker colour than that
on other soils, such as the chalk.
Wheat requires a fairly good climate to ripen it, and
for this reason it is not grown in the Highlands of Scot-
land, but, nevertheless, we find it in some of the northern
counties where the climatic conditions are apparently the
same as the adjacent Highlands: a closer examination
shows us that it is the soils of the Old Red Sandstone
famous for their fertility and genial characteristics all the
world over which enable the wheat to thrive there.
The typical soil of this formation is permeable, and it is
warm ; permeable because it is of a sanely nature, and
warm because from its dark colour it readily absorbs the
heat from the sun, so that the warmth and dryness which
suit wheat are more easily obtained on such a soil as this
than on other kinds of soil situated under a similar climate.
Again in the case of grass or pasture the natural
vegetation of the land there are the same striking
766 LAND :
differences, due to the geological position of each district.
The pasturage of limestone hills, for instance, has long
been noted for its short, sweet nutritive character and
power to fatten sheep ; that on the Millstone Grit rocks
is the reverse in every way, though the latitude and
elevation are similar. In the same way the pastures on
some clay formations will keep a "bullock to the acre,"
and fatten him without cake. On other clays it will take
two acres, with cake in addition. There is no doubt
that these differences are directly due to the botanical
composition of each pasture ; but then the soil is at the
bottom of this, and I feel assured that when an examina-
tion of the natural pasture of typical formation soils is
made, that characteristic differences will be found, and
that said characteristics will remain constant on similar
soils similarly situated. Some seed firms, indeed, issue
mixtures of seeds which they profess to be specially
suitable to the soil of each formation, and I believe the
idea to be correct, though it may be doubted if they have
always hit on the right varieties.
As in the case of the variations of soils themselves, it
would be possible to go through a whole list of forma-
tions, and specify characteristics of crops due to each,
both as regards the kinds grown, the methods of
growing, the qualities of each kind, and even the after
disposal of them ; and this even from existing information,
while our knowledge is extending daily.
A few remarks may now be made about the live stock
of the farm. It was stated at the beginning of this
chapter that the nature of the geological formations of a
district influenced the farming of that district more than
any other factors, and this may be taken to include the
management of the live stock. Where the older and more
indurated rocks appear, there we have hills and uplands ;
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 767
and it almost seems superfluous to remark that we have
along with these the mountain breeds of horses, cattle,
and sheep. Likewise on the newer rocks we have corres-
ponding breeds, but we cannot effect a transposition without
producing very great changes in the animals themselves,
even in the first generation, in the matter of all those
characteristics which constitute a " breed "changes
which are of great financial moment to every farmer. It
may be urged that this is due to climate, but it is only a
step further towards "first causes" to show that climate
itself is largely a result of geological conditions. But
apart from this altogether, it has been noted how quickly
animals develop or degenerate when taken away from
the district where their particular breed has been evolved.
That these breeds have been developed is one of the
most striking proofs of the influence of peculiarities of soil.
The British Islands form a very small part of the
earth's surface not as much as some of the American
States yet within this area we find (counting extinct
varieties) something like twelve distinct breeds of horses,
twenty breeds of cattle, twenty-four of sheep, and about
a dozen of pigs. Differences of climate cannot account
for this, for a look at a climate chart will show that there
is wonderfully little variation between the average figures
of places south and places north ; the average winter is
as severe in the south of England as in the north of
Scotland, and the rainfall of the south-west as much as
that of the north-west, and so on. The only other factor
known to me which could influence the live stock is the
soil on which they live, and which varies more in Great
Britain than on any other equal area on the earth's surface
the geology of these Islands being an epitome of that
of the world. The work of selection and development
carried out by man has all been within the last century
768 LAND :
or so, but breeds were fixed entities long before that,
and what breeders have done is simply to accentuate
differences which existed before they interfered. If this
is true then the converse will also be true, that where
there is a wide stretch of a similar formation the live
stock there will be more or less similar. We find this
exemplified in Eastern Europe. From the Carpathians
to the Urals there is an immense stretch of country about
1500 miles across, which is more or less of a plain all the
way. Geologically the surface parts are of one formation
or one group of formations the Tertiary represented
principally by Alluvium, the famous " black earth " of
Russia being looked on as a deposit from an immense
lake. Over this great extent of country there is
practically but one breed of cattle -the white cattle of the
Russian steppes ; the " Sarmatian oxen " of the ancients,
and a lineal descendant of the Urns. Between the
varieties of this breed geographically a thousand miles
apart there is less difference than between the Short-
horn and the Longhorn in this country ; breeds which
originated in adjoining if not in the same counties. Even
if we take the underlying formations in Russia we find
the statement borne out. The Permian group takes its
name from the province of Perm in Eastern Russia, and
rocks of this class underlie an extent of country twice
as large as France.
Again, if this state of matters is true, another con-
verse will also be true. We have in the prairies of
America a region of land very similar to that of Eastern
Europe, and if dissimilarity of soil produced breeds, then
similarity must tend to wipe out differences, and all
breeds on the prairies ought thus gradually to revert back
or at most to two types of cattle- Bos urus and to one
B. longifrous. That this is the general tendency out
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 769
there is well enough known to American farmers, and in
the American farm papers there are always now and
again, articles and notices appearing to this effect. They
recognise the fact that it is only by the continual
importation of fresh pedigree blood from this country,
that the special characteristics of each breed can be kept
up, for if left to themselves the animals gradually change
in a generation or two, and would undoubtedly revert
back to some common form, though perhaps not necessarily
the same as any form at present existing.
In short, whichever department of the farm we turn
to, we find that the style of working the soil, crop and
stock can be referred to the geological nature of that
part of the country, and conversely, that knowing the
geology of a district, we have a key to the kind of
farming which could be successfully practised there. I
am not able as yet to work out the whole story for a
given soil or a given breed of domestic animals, as there
are many missing links ; but the evidence is cumulative
in one direction, and as time goes on the details are
filling in. It is one of the charms of a country life that
there is room for investigations such as this, and
knowledge of this kind gives zest to farm work which
otherwise many look on as drudgery and physical dis-
comfort, bringing in little money return. It is further
evident that this is another case of knowledge being
a power, for a farmer or purchaser armed with this
geological knowledge would know which districts to
avoid if looking for a certain class of farm, or once
settled, would know of many things to do or not do on
his land, and thus know in which direction development
ought to be carried out.
PRIMROSE MCCONNELL, B.Sc.
770
LAND
CHAPTER LXXXII.
LAND AND MINERALS.
BY PROFESSOR J. LOGAN LOBLEY, F.G.S.,
J^ofessor of Physiography and Astronomy, City of London College; Lecturer on
Geology ', Crystal Palace School of Engineering ; Vice- President of the City of London
College of Science Society ; Member of the General Committee of the British Association ;
Member of the Geologists' 1 Association ; Hon. Member Hamp. F. C. ; etc. Author
cf " The Stiidy of Geology" " Geology for All" "Mount Vesuvius," " Hampstead
Hill" " The Inter-relations of the Field Naturalist's Knowledge" " The Cretaceous
Rocks of England" " The Carises of Volcanic Action" " The Origin of Gold" etc.
BESIDES coal and limestone, the presence of either of
which at available depths is usually well known, not only
to the proprietors but also to the inhabitants generally
of the districts in which they occur, there are other
minerals, both metallic and non-metallic, in British rocks
that may give a high value to the overlying land.
Although Coal may be the basis of the wealth of this
country, it will scarcely be denied that next to it, Iron
the iron of our machinery, our railways, and our great
steamships contributes most to that industrial activity,
both in manufactures and commerce, which distinguishes
the England and Scotland of to-day. The two ores that
furnish our supplies of iron are Haematite and Clay
Ironstone, the one a peroxide, and the other a carbonate
of iron. Both of these are in bedded masses in the
Carboniferous rocks of the British Islands, and the per-
oxide is so largely disseminated in some other rocks that
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 771
their most ferruginous beds are worked for this important
ore. In the Midlands Jurassic, and in the south of
England Cretaceous, rocks are so worked ; and in the last
and the preceding century the chief seat of the iron trade
of England was the Weald of Sussex, where ironstone
nodules were reduced and metallic iron obtained by
means of the charcoal of the wood of the oaks which
there grew at that time in the greatest profusion. The
ironstone nodules are still in the Wealden rocks in abun-
dance, but the oaks have gone, and coal has not yet been
worked in the south-east of England. With reduced
charges for the conveyance of coal, it may be possible to
work highly ferruginous beds with profit in localities
where mining is now unknown. In many cases, such
beds not forming hard rocks and being near the surface
can be worked at small expense by open excavations or
quarrying.
The Lead ores of the British Islands, though of less
are of great importance, not only from the lead they
yield, but also from the very considerable quantities of
Silver some of them contain, for our chief lead ore is
Galena, and much of it is argentiferous. This rich ore of
lead, so well known from its conspicuous metallic aspect
and splendid lustre, is, like coal and iron, an associate of
Carboniferous rocks, though galena lodes are also found
traversing other strata. It is extensively mined in the
North of England, in Wales, and in the Isle of Man, and
gives a large return for the capital expended. Though
the silver in the galena is but a small proportion, yet
from its high value it adds greatly to the profit of lead
mining.
After silver it may perhaps not be out of place to
mention Gold, since the precious metal has been obtained
from several districts in these islands. Most persons
772 LAND:
have been recently made aware of gold having been
found in Wales, where it was evidently worked in Roman
and perhaps in pre-Roman times. But the occurrence oi
gold in Wicklow, in Londonderry and other parts of
Ireland, in Scotland, and in the west of England, is not
so generally known, and few of the visitors to Edinburgh
Castle are aware that the regalia there safeguarded and
exhibited was made from Scotch gold obtained, in the
days of James V. of the northern kingdom, from the
beds of the streams in the Lead Hills district.
To the west of England Copper ore is, and has been
for a long period, of great importance ; for the mining
industry of Cornwall, which has made that county famous
throughout the world for its miners, has been largely
dependent on its copper mines. The adjoining county
of Devon also possesses very valuable cupriferous lodes.
The ore of copper most abundant in English rocks is
the sulphide, or sulphuret, of copper, commonly known
by the name "copper pyrites," and the veins containing it
are in Lower Devonian rocks, which are called in local
language "killas." Associated with the copper pyrites,
the Cornish and Devonian lodes contain considerable
quantities of Blende, or "black jack," a sulphide of
zinc, and a valuable ore of that metal, together with
iron pyrites and other minerals. Ruby copper ore and
melaconite, or black copper ore, both oxides of copper,
as well as malachite, or green carbonate of copper, a^e
also obtained from our English rocks, but not abundantly,
and copper pyrites remains the chief ore of the metal in
this country.
The Tin ore of Cornwall is much more famous than
the ore of copper, and has been known and worked for a
much longer period. In pre-Roman, or British times,
tin-stone was exported to the then more civilized
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 773
countries at the east of the Mediterranean. This was
14 stream tin," obtained from the beds of rivers and
streams where the tin-stones had been accumulating,
commingled with gravel, for vast periods of time. But
these stores having been so long and so largely drawn
upon, the tin-stone now sought for is that of the lodes in
the massive rocks. These stanniferous veins traverse the
granitic rocks that are so prominent in the south-west of
England. Tin-stone is the black oxide of tin, and often
occurs in brilliant black crystals called " diamond
tin," but sometimes it is brown or yellow, with a some-
what fibrous structure, and then called " wood tin."
With it there is frequently associated much Schorl and
Wolfram, a tungstate of iron. In Cornwall, too, near
Gunnislake, an ore of Uranium has recently been found
in considerable abundance.
There is another metallic mineral largely disseminated
through English rocks that is of some economic value,
though not used as a metallic ore. This is Iron Pyrites,
a sulphide of iron, which, when it is obtained abun-
dantly, as in the Isle of Sheppy, is used for the
manufacture of sulphuric acid and sulphate of iron or
green vitriol.
Of the non-metallic minerals obtained from British
strata, Rock Salt has, after coal, the greatest economic
value. In Cheshire, in Worcestershire, and in Yorkshire,
beds of rock salt are very extensively worked with most
profitable results. This deposit, the result of the evapora-
tion of salt lakes in early Mesozoic times, occurs chiefly in
the Triassic rocks, those usually called New Red Sand-
stone, and which wide-spreading and almost horizontal
strata form the great midland plains of England. The
beds of rock salt are so thick that the mineral is worked
by large and lofty excavations underground that produce
774 LAND :
caverns of great size, altogether unlike the low and narrow
galleries of coal mines.
The Triassic rocks of England also contain very
valuable beds of Alabaster and Gypsum. Both of these
are sulphate of lime and much softer than marble, , the
carbonate of lime. This softness, together with its beauty
and fineness of texture, renders alabaster admirably
suited for carved ornamental objects, and for interior
architectural adornment. Gypsum, which is less massive
and more nodular, is of value for making plaster of Paris,
and it is also used in the manufacture of glass and porce-
lain. Staffordshire, Derbyshire, and Cheshire have long
been known as localities whence alabaster and gypsum are
obtained, but they are by no means confined to these
counties. The famous "Sub-Wealden Boring," near
Battle in Sussex, undertaken under the auspices of the
British Association, though it did not reach beds of coal
as some expected, revealed the existence of a splendid
and most valuable bed of fine white gypsum at no great
distance from the surface, in strata determined to be of, in
geological language, Purbeck age. This is a striking
illustration of the possibility of valuable minerals being
under estates now known only as agricultural land.
Such another mineral is Barytes, or heavy spar,
occurring also in Staffordshire and Cheshire, but found
likewise in the south-east of England, in Surrey, where
it occurs in fine crystals.
Fluor Spar, or Blue John, is a very beautiful mineral,
that has been so long associated with Derbyshire that it
is called Derbyshire Spar. It is a Fluoride of Calcium,
and occurs in splendid cubical crystals, and also often
massive, of very various colours, a rich blue or purple
being perhaps the most common. Fluor Spar is
obtained from the Carboniferous Limestone of Derby
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 775
shire, where is the well-known cavern called the " Blue
John Mine."
Alum, a sulphate of alumina and potash, is largely
obtained from the Upper Lias of Whitby, but is not con-
fined either to that locality or to Liassic strata, for in
Scotland it is procured from Carboniferous rocks. The
Alum Shales of Whitby, which contain iron pyrites, are
either exposed to weathering action or roasted, when the
pyrites is decomposed and sulphate of alumina formed.
The mass is then digested with water and the liquid
treated with' chloride of potassium, after which, with
evaporation, crystals of alum are freely obtained.
One of the geological formations well developed in
Somersetshire is named " The Fuller's Earth " from
being largely made up of that mineral substance.
Fuller's earth is, however, more commonly obtained from
other strata that yield it in finer quality. The most
important bed is, perhaps, that at Nutfield, in Surrey,
where it occurs in Lower Greensand or Neocomian rocks,
and whence it is sent in large quantities to the woollen
manufacturing districts, where it is so much required for
the dressing of cloth. In England, besides Somersetshire
and Surrey, this valuable material is found in Kent,
Bedfordshire, and Nottinghamshire, and may, like the
finest terra-cotta clay and other valuable minerals, be
met with in localities where now the only industry is
agriculture.
The mineral produce of the United Kingdom is vast,
but were landed proprietors more fully acquainted with
the geological structure of their estates, the aggregate
annual money value of the minerals obtained from
British rocks would be greatly increased. From what
has now been said, it will be seen that the mineral
treasures of these islands are not confined to a few
776 LAND:
localities, or restricted to one or two rock formations.
Indeed, it is not too much to say that there is no part of
the United Kingdom where minerals of economic value
may not be found, and on many estates, in purely
agricultural districts that were only expected by their
proprietors to yield the produce of their surface soils,
mineral substances of great value have been discovered
by a knowledge of the underlying rocks.
J. LOGAN LOBLEY.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 777
CHAPTER LXXXIII.
LAND AND STONE.
BY PROFESSOR J. LOGAN LOBLEY, F.G.S.,
Professor of Physiography and Astronomy, City of London College ; Lecturer on
Geology, Crystal Palace School of Engineering ; Vice- President of the City of London
College of Science Society ; Member of the General Committee of the British Association :
Member of the Geologists' Association ; Hon. Member Hamp. F. C. ; etc. Author
of " The Study of Geology," " Geology for All," "Mount Vesuvius" " Hampstead
Hill? " The Inter-relations of the Field Nattiralisf s Knowledge," " The Cretaceous
Rocks of England? " The Catises of Volcanic Action," " The Origin of Gold," etc.
FACILITIES for the conveyance of building stone from
remote rural districts have been so greatly increased by
the development of our network of railways, that many
estates have been rendered thereby of greater potential
value. Very much agricultural land is over rocks con-
taining beds of excellent building stone, that could now
be without difficulty taken to large and growing towns
where good stone is in constant demand.
In olden times the building materials furnished by
a district were almost exclusively used for the edifices
erected there. Thus in a chalk country the old churches
are of the harder beds of the chalk or of chalk flints, in a
sandstone country of sandstone, and in a limestone district
of limestone. The ancient buildings of the south-east of
Yorkshire and the north of Nottinghamshire are of
magnesian-limestone, and the older colleges of Oxford
are built of the Coral Rag from the neighbouring
Headington Hill. The extensive use of Purbeck marble
778 LAND :
for the churches and cathedrals of the Early English period
was an exception to the rule, for this stone was so highly
valued by the mediaeval ecclesiastical builders that great
expense was incurred in obtaining it, and hence it was
taken so far north as Lincoln, where it is conspicuously
seen in the glorious minster of that city.
Building materials are now brought from long
distances, and so there is a greater variety of stone seen
in modern buildings, especially in London, but still there
is much less variety than there might be, for sandstone as
a building material is little known in the south of
England, and limestone for building purposes is not used
in the north.
The handsome buildings of Edinburgh and Glasgow,
of Newcastle-on-Tyne, of Leeds, Bradford, and other
towns of Yorkshire, as well as the houses generally, are
built of the fine light-coloured SANDSTONE of the Carbon-
iferous rocks. At Craigleith, in Mid- Lothian, this stone
has been worked very largely, the New Town of Edin-
burgh being almost entirely built of it. Carboniferous
sandstones are also extensively quarried in Yorkshire
and Derbyshire, and from them in the former county are
obtained, besides the free-stones, the flag-stones so much
used for pavements, landings, etc., called " Yorkshire
Flags."
Of sandstones, next to the Carboniferous, perhaps the
Triassic are the most used. In south-west Lancashire, in
Cheshire, and in Staffordshire, Shropshire and Warwick-
shire, the Triassic, or New Red, sandstone is very largely
quarried for building stone. Most of the public buildings
of Liverpool are of this stone, which is in some places
red, in some yellow, but in many localities white. At
Stourton in Cheshire, at Grinsill near Shrewsbury, and
at other large quarries, it is a thick-bedded white rock,
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 779
at Liverpool chiefly red, but often yellow and sometimes
variegated. At Chester it is red, as the cathedral and
ancient city walls conspicuously show.
There are sandstones in the Devonian and Silurian
rocks quarried for building stones as the Old Red of
Scotland and the Downton sandstone of Shropshire, but
they are of less importance than the Carboniferous and
Triassic stones.
A fine-grained pink sandstone of Permian age, from
near Penrith, has recently been favoured by architects
and used in London, in conjunction with white stone and
brickwork, with pleasing effect.
The LIMESTONES suitable for building purposes are
very numerous, including several that are so hand-
some when polished that they are used for internal
decoration.
Portland Stone may perhaps be mentioned first
amongst the limestones, as most of the large national
buildings of London are of this material, as well as the
majority of the minor stone edifices of the metropolis.
The Portlandian, or Upper, Oolites having a considerable
extension in the south of England, Portland Stone is by
no means confined to the Isle of Portland. At Old
Swindon and Chilmark in Wilts, and at Brill and Stone
in Bucks, this well-known limestone is largely worked,
though the quarries at Portland are the most extensive
and the most famous. The Chilmark quarries supplied
stone for Salisbury Cathedral and those at Portland gave
to Sir Christopher Wren the material for St. Paul's. The
beds worked for building stone are compact white 9olitic
limestones, but that called the "Roach Bed ' ; is highly
fossiliferous and vesicular. The u roach " has, however,
been advantageously used in the construction of the great
Breakwater at Portland.
780 LAND I
The equally well-known freestone called Bath Stone
has a more decided oolitic structure, is softer, and of a
richer colour than Portland Stone. Bath Stone, whether
from the immediate neighbourhood of Bath, or from other
parts of Somersetshire, is from the Great Oolite, one of
the English Lower Oolites. It is much used for door-
ways and windows in conjunction with brickwork and
rough stone work, but in the west of England it is the
chief stone used for dwelling-houses, public buildings
and churches, and the beautiful city of Bath may be said
to be entirely built of the stone bearing its name.
Another of the Lower Oolites, the Inferior Oolite,
also furnishes an excellent stone. This has been largely
quarried at Leckhampton, Doulting and Dundry, and
the town of Cheltenham and the Cathedral of Wells
excellently display its architectural capabilities. In some
localities, as at Ham Hill and Sherborne, the stone of
the Inferior Oolite has a very warm and rich colour, as
seen in the buildings of Yeovil and the surrounding
country.
The Lower Oolites, in addition, yield a hard, shell
limestone called Forest Marble, and two thin-bedded
fissile limestones which have been named, from their
localities, Stonesfield Slate and Collyweston Slate.
Although the limestones of the Lias are not worked
for building stones, they furnish valuable building
materials ; the Marlstone of the middle Lias, and the
" Blue Lias " of the Lower Lias, making excellent lime,
that of the latter forming hydraulic cement.
The Middle Oolites contain the Coral Rag, which has
been, for five hundred years, largely used as a building
stone, and is still extensively quarried.
The Purbecks at the top of the Upper Oolites furnished
the builders of the middle ages with a highly valued
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 781
stone, for it is largely found in the ecclesiastical edifices
of the "Early English" period, the finest illustrations
being in Salisbury Cathedral, and in London, in the
Temple Church, where not only the slender shafts, but
the recumbent figures of the Knight Templars are of
Purbeck marble.
The newer Cretaceous rocks also furnish largely used
limestones. The Kentish Rag of the Lower Greensand,
the Totternhoe stone, the Merstham and Godstone
firestone, and the harder beds of the Lower Chalk, are all
well known as building stones. Some of these were used
in our most ancient buildings, as St. Albans Abbey,.
Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, and Windsor
Castle. While the soft Upper Chalk itself has for
centuries been washed for whiting, and burnt for lime ;
the flints it contains have, apart from other uses, been
extensively employed, both as building and as road
material.
The still newer Tertiaries furnish, in the Isle of
Wight, a fine white freshwater limestone, that was
worked so* anciently as the period of the building
of Winchester Cathedral, for which it was largely
used.
The Palaeozoic rocks contain some remarkable lime-
stones. From the Permians the magnesian limestone,
or dolomite, is obtained. Of this stone the Houses of
Parliament were built, and although its success under the
atmospheric conditions of London is not great, yet in
Yorkshire some of the oldest buildings show it as a highly
durable material.
The Carboniferous limestones are chiefly worked for
fluxes or lime burning, but they yield some very beautiful
so-called marbles, as the encrinital and shelly marbles of
Derbyshire, the black and variegated marbles of Ireland,
782 LAND I
the Mona Marble of Anglesea, and the marble of the
Isle of Man used for the black steps of St. Paul's.
The Devonian rocks are famed for their limestones,
giving the beautiful Devonian marbles, now so much
used for interior architectural decoration, and the
Plymouth limestone of which the great breakwater in
Plymouth Sound is built.
Though the Silurian limestones are not used as
building stones, they are of high value for the other
economic purposes to which limestone is applied.
Both the Silurian and the still older Cambrian rock
systems yield the very important building material, slate.
This is largely worked in North Wales, and the quarries
there are of great size. Slate is a changed or metamor-
phosed clay, the alteration having been produced by,
amongst other influences, great lateral pressure which
has induced a new structure giving a cleavage across,
and not parallel with, the plane of original deposition.
The finest slates split into very thin plates as may be
seen in the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street.
Some of the non-stratified rocks, igneous and meta-
morphic, also consist of most valuable stone. Granites
are every year becoming more extensively used both for
plain and ornamental work. When polished, from their
beauty, variety and durability, their suitability for exterior
decoration is pre-eminent, and when unpolished they are
admirably adapted for bold and massive works. Granite
in England is abundant in Cornwall, Devonshire,
Cumberland, and Leicestershire, in many localities in
Ireland and Scotland, and in Lundy Island and the
Channel Islands. The colour of granite chiefly depends
on that of the felspar it contains, which, with quartz and
mica, constitute ordinary granite. Granite containing
hornblende is exceedingly tough and durable, and hence
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 783
the hornblende granites of Mount Sorrel, in Leicestershire,
are very largely used for road metal. The ancient
granite monuments of Egypt, of which Cleopatra's
Needle on the Victoria Embankment is one, are of this
stone. The pink granite of Aberdeenshire has recently
been greatly used for polished work, and the richly
coloured porphyritic Shap granite is becoming more
widely known, but the very handsome Luxullianite, also
porphyritic, is seldom seen. From this last named
granite the sarcophagus for the body of the Duke of
Wellington, in the crypt of St. Paul's, was made. Other
valuable ornamental stones from this class of rocks, some
true porphyries, are obtained from British localities.
Besides those from the granitic rocks, Cornwall
furnishes a very beautiful stone in the Serpentine of the
Lizard. This rock, although much resembling marble
in appearance, is of a quite different composition, being
a silicate of magnesia and entirely devoid of lime. It is
much used for interior architectural adornment as well as
for ornamental objects.
Many other stones from British rocks well adapted
for building, for ornament, and for road material, might
be enumerated, since, perhaps, no part of the world of
equal area contains such varied rocks as the British
Islands.
J. LOGAN LOBLEY.
784 LAND I
CHAPTER LXXXIV
CLAYS.
BY PROFESSOR J. LOGAN LOBLEY, F.G.S.,
Professor of Physiography and Astronomy , City of London College ; Lecturer on
Geology ', Crystal Palace School of Engineering ; Vice- President of the City of
London College of Science Society : Member of the General Committee of the
British Association ; Member of the Geologists' Association ; Hon. Member Hamp.
F. C. ; etc. Author of " 7 he Study of Geology? " Geology for All," "Mount
Vesuvius" " Hampstead Hill," "The Inter-relations of the Field Naturalist's
Knowledge" " The Cretaceous Rocks of England" " The Causes of Volcanic
Action^ " The Origin of Gold" etc.
CLAYS underlie the soil of a large proportion of agri-
cultural land, and though possessing the prominent main
characteristic of more or less plasticity with water in
common, they vary very considerably, so that amongst
the numerous varieties that are distinguishable, while
some are little used for any economic purpose, others
have a high commercial value for fictile manufactures,
and one for a textile industry.
The recent development of the terra-cotta manu-
facture, and its extensive architectural employment as a
building material, give additional value and interest to
many clays that were hitherto only regarded as being
suitable for bricks or tiles. Since the general disuse of
stucco, too, ornamental and high-class brickwork has
largely increased, and fine bricks of good colour are
consequently in much greater request. The present is,
therefore, a most favourable time for landowners to work
the clays on their estates with profit.
IT> ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 785
The word "clay" is very commonly used, but often
misapplied. It is incorrectly used in the term "a clay
soil," so frequently met with in books and newspapers ;
for although a soil may be a clayey one from having
much clay in it, if it is fit for cultivation it is not clay.
Clay is essentially a hydrous silicate of alumina, the
varieties being formed by the inclusion and intimate
admixture of various substances in different but small
proportions.
The purest clay is the fine white china clay, or
kaolin, used for the manufacture of porcelain, which is
altogether silica, alumina and water. It results from the
decomposition of the felspar of granitic rocks, which,
consisting of a silicate of alumina and potash, is acted
upon by the carbonic acid of the atmosphere and rain
water combining with its potash to form carbonate of
potash, a soluble compound that is carried off by water
action, leaving the insoluble silicate of alumina that
constitutes the clay. Kaolin was brought to Europe
from China, where its name was given from the hills of
Kao-ling in Chiang-Usi, at the beginning of the last
century, and in 1755 it was discovered in England. In
this country it is chiefly obtained from Cornwall, where
granite forms several large areas of the county. China
clay, from the absence of iron and other substances that
act as fluxes, is most refractory, and hence it is used for
small crucibles for chemical analyses in which high
temperatures are necessary.
Pipe clay is a similar white clay, but containing a
little free silica. It is worked in the Isle of Purbeck and
at Newton Abbot in Devonshire. Ordinary potters' clay
is one less pure than china clay, and coarser clays with
varying proportions of oxide of iron are used for the
making of tiles, drain pipes, bricks, etc. Clays for terra-
786 LAND :
cotta are selected clays, and are frequently mixed with
fine white sand and the powder of broken pottery.
The usual colours of clays are white, blue, brownish-
yellow, and reddish-brown. White clays are almost pure
kaolin ; blue clays contain, with other mineral substances
in a state of minute division iron in the form of protoxide ;
and the yellow and brown clays are so coloured by the
peroxide of. iron.
The presence of the protoxide of iron in blue clays
occasions the change of colour to red on " burning," the
iron taking more oxygen to form the reddish-brown
hydrated peroxide, and, when the water of hydration has
been quite driven off, the red anhydrous peroxide or
sesquioxide of iron.
Of the older geological formations, the Coal Measures
contain a clay of a very refractory character, and hence
it is used for making fire-bricks, and called " fire-clay."
It is the thin bed of clay underlying each seam of coal,
and doubtless represents the soil in which the coal plants
grew. In the Permians there are also beds of clay and
marl, and the Triassic clays form the subsoil of a large
area in Cheshire, used for dairy farming and the pro-
duction of the famous Cheshire cheese.
The blue clay of the Lower Lias is sometimes used
for brick and tile making, but not extensively, and the
indurated clays or shales of the Upper Lias, at Whitby,
yield our chief supplies of alum.
In the Lower Oolites are the Fullers' earth, and in
Wiltshire the Bradford clay. Fullers' earth has not the
same plasticity that ordinary clay possesses, and when
put into water falls into powder. This is owing to its
containing a smaller percentage of alumina, the compo-
sition of Fullers 5 earth being, approximately, silica 53 ;
alumina, 10; water, 24; and the remainder magnesia,
lime and iron oxide. Its power of absorbing grease
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 787
and oily matter renders it of great value in the woollen
manufacture.
The Middle Oolites contain a very thick clay, called
the Oxford clay, from its forming a large area in
Oxfordshire. It is a stiff blue, and sometimes brown
clay, attaining in some places a thickness of six hundred
feet, and extending from the coast of Dorsetshire to the
coast of Yorkshire. It forms land much better adapted
for pasture than tillage. Near Peterborough, Oxford,
and other places, it is worked for bricks and tiles.
In the Uf)per Oolites there is the highly bituminous
clay, called the Kimmeridge clay, that has a maximum
thickness of nearly seven hundred feet. Besides bitu-
minous matter, the Kimmeridge clay contains much
iron pyrites and selenite. Though not forming very
fertile land, timber trees, especially oaks, grow well upon
it, and the clay is used in some localities for brick and
tile making. It underlies much land in Dorsetshire,
Somersetshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire,
Norfolk, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire.
The wide-spreading clay of the great vales of the
Weald of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex is also very thick, in
one place a thousand feet. Though it forms rather cold
land, hops are largely grown upon it, and in past times it
supported dense forests of oaks. It is worked for brick
and tile making, and at Ditchling, in Sussex, it yields very
fine terra-cotta clays, from which large quantities of that
material are made. Another though minor clay of the
Weald, the Wadhurst clay, gave the iron-stones from
which the famous Sussex iron was manufactured in the
last and the preceding centuries, when the southern
county was the chief seat of the iron trade. It has a
maximum thickness of about one hundred and eighty
feet.
788 LAND :
At Speeton in Yorkshire, and at Atherfield, and
various places in the south of England, are other Creta-
ceous clays. At Nutfield, in Surrey, the Lower Green-
sand contains a very valuable bed of fine Fullers' earth,
which is extensively worked.
The Gault clay is of considerable importance. It is
a stiff blue clay, in some places two hundred feet thick,
and having very long though narrow outcrops. It is
seen in the Isle of Wight, Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, Surrey,
Sussex, Kent, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Cambridge-
shire, and in Kent is very largely worked for tiles as
well as bricks. It contains much iron pyrites, the fossils
of the Gault being often coated with that mineral.
The clay of the Woolwich and Reading series is
worked for bricks in several localities both in the eastern
and western parts of the area occupied by this formation.
In the Isle of Wight it constitutes what was called at one
time the " Plastic clay," and from its somewhat mixed
and varied colours, the " Mottled clay." It contains in
some places leaves and lignites.
To the thick clay which extends from Hungerford in
Berkshire to the coast of Essex, although overlain in
many places by gravels, brick-earth, drift, and alluvium,
the name " London clay " is given. It underlies London
and nearly the whole of Middlesex and Essex, and has
a maximum thickness of upwards of four hundred feet.
It is thickest in the Isle of Sheppy, where it contains
much iron pyrites. In the metropolitan area many
septaria, aggregations of calcareous matter, are found in
it, and crystals of selenite are also common. At High-
gate a peculiar bituminous substance called Highgate
resin, or copaline, occurs. The London clay is a very
stiff clay, brownish-yellow where it has been exposed to
air and water action near the surface, but of a blue-grey
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 789
colour at lower depths. It forms good pasture lands and
supports fine timber. It is not much used for brick
making, as the brick earths upon it are much more
suitable for that purpose from containing more sandy
matter. The London clay contains very little impurity
besides iron oxide. From 1750 grains of dry London
clay I have only obtained ten grains, or 0*57 per cent, of
non-argillaceous and non-ferruginous matter.
The economically very important though very impure
clay, the Brick-earth of river valleys, is widely spread in
the Thames valley, and from it immense quantities of
bricks are annually made, both east and west of London.
At Sittingbourne, at Grays, at Crayford, at Ilford, at
Acton, and at Southall are extensive brick works on
deposits of this material, which is of post-Pliocene age,
and therefore very much newer than the London clay
over which it lies. It is a clay containing a certain pro-
portion of fine sand, that renders it less stiff than ordinary
clay, and therefore better adapted for the stock bricks
used for ordinary brickwork. It may consequently be
said, speaking broadly, that the brick-earth, not the
London clay, is the material of which London is built.
At Bovey Tracey, in Devonshire, there is an inte-
resting and valuable clay of doubtful Miocene age. It
encloses so much lignite that that substance has been
obtained from it for purposes of fuel. The clay itself
furnishes excellent potter's and pipe clay, of which large
quantities are obtained from this deposit.
On higher levels, and widely distributed in England,
is the Boulder clay, which, in Lancashire and other
places, forms the usual brick-making material, and near
London also, at Finchley, it has long been worked for
bricks. The southern clay is bluish in colour and
encloses masses, of various sizes and shapes, of chalk,
790 LAND : ,
from which it is called the ''chalky boulder clay," but in
the north the clay is brown and much more homogeneous.
On still higher levels, on the summit of the chalk downs,
there are to be found argillaceous deposits, giving beds
of clay, of no great thickness it is true, but yet in some
places furnishing useful material for bricks or tiles.
It will thus be seen that both the Palaeozoic, the
Secondary and the Tertiary rocks contain clays, and that
they are very widely distributed in this country, and so
varied in character as to be suited to a variety of pur-
poses. And it may be safely predicted that this most
useful and cheaply procurable substance, with improved
methods and appliances for its manufacture into building
materials and ornamental objects, will be more and more
used, and beds of fine clay will therefore become very
desirable features of a landed estate.
J. LOGAN LOBLEY.
ITS ATTRACTION^ AND RICHES. 79!
CHAPTER L X X X V.
LIME.
BY PROFESSOR J. LOGAN LOBLEV, P\G.S.,
Professor of Physiography and Astronomy, City of London College ; Lecturer on
Geology ', Crystal Palace School of Engineering ; Vice-President of the City of London
College of Science Society: Member of the General Committee of the British
Association; Member of the Geologists' Association ; Hon. Member Hamp. F. C., etc.
Author of "The Study of Geology," " Geology for All," "Mount Vestivius,"
" Hampstead Hill" "The Inter-relations of the Field Naturalist's Knowledge,"
"The Cretaceous Rocks of England," " TJie Causes of Volcanic Action," "The
Origin of Gold," etc.
LIME is so useful a substance for agricultural purposes,
often so effective as a manure, and so much required for
mortar, that the occurrence of a bed of limestone must
add value to land, although it may not be suitable for use
as building stone, and not sold and sent off the estate.
The manufacture of hydraulic cement, however, the
making of whiting, the employment of limestone as a
flux, and the use of lime in other ways, in addition to its
ordinary use for agricultural and building purposes, some-
times give to a bed of limestone very considerable value.
Some limestones form thick and massive rocks, rising
into bold hills, others are rocks of moderate thickness,
and in still other cases they are in thin beds. The lime-
stones used as building stones having been treated of in
another chapter, those used for other purposes will
receive consideration here.
Pure limestone is altogether carbonate of lime from
which pure lime is obtained by the common burning
792 , LAND :
process, which drives off the carbonic acid. But nearly
all limestones are more or less impure, and contain an
admixture of other substances. In some there is free
silica in the form of fine grains of sand, in some clay or
silicate of alumina, in some oxide of iron, and in some all
these substances with others in addition. In many cases
a limestone derives a special value from its impurities,
since the lime it produces is rendered thereby more
suitable for the manufacture of certain cements, notably
of that called hydraulic cement, from its power of setting
winder water. Thus, the Lower Lias limestone is in
great demand, and extensively quarried for this purpose,
and the very argillaceous limestones called Septaria, so
abundant in the London clay, are in request for the
manufacture of Roman cement.
Very low down in the series of sedimentary rocks,
there are two limestones of great value for agricultural
purposes in the localities in which they occur, because
there is such an enormous area in these districts, to
which lime-dressing is highly beneficial, and under which
there is no limestone. These are the Bala and Hirnant
limestones, members of the Lower Silurian series of
rocks. The Bala limestone is about twenty-five feet
thick, and the Hirnant limestone only ten feet thick,
while they are separated by rocks devoid of lime of one
thousand four hundred feet in thickness. In the north of
England, the Bala is represented by the Coniston lime-
stone. At Woolhope, in Herefordshire, and some other
places in that district, there is a hard limestone of about
thirty feet in thickness, suitable for burning for agri-
cultural requirements in the Upper Silurian rocks. The
Wenlock limestone is a much more important one, how-
^ever, both in thickness and extension, since it sometimes
thickens to three hundred feet, and forms a ridge of land
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 793
in the Wenlock district, of twenty miles in length. It is
also well seen at Dudley, where it protrudes through the
Coal Measures, and forms the Castle Hill and "Wren's
Nest." a verdant island as it were in the dark sea of the
" Black Country." In Shropshire, there is another
Silurian limestone, called the Aymestry limestone, of great
agricultural value. It is in thin beds, and is of an
earthy and nodular character. The great and massive
limestones of South Devon, are largely worked for build-
ing stones, and furnish the Devonshire marbles, now so
much used, but they are also employed for paving stones,
and other purposes.
In the Carboniferous, Mountain, Scaur, or Scar, lime-
stone, we have one of the greatest developments of
limestone rock in the British Islands. In the range of
hills called the Pennine Chain, extending from Scotland
to Derbyshire, this limestone attains the enormous thick-
ness of four thousand feet, but it thins southwards, so
that near Bristol it is reduced to two thousand feet, and
in South Wales to five hundred feet thick. It is largely
quarried in many localities both for flux, for iron furnaces,
and for burning for lime.
The limestone is very extensively worked, especially
in Warwickshire and Leicestershire, for the production
of hydraulic lime, and even the masses that fall on to
the sea shore by the action of the sea on the cliffs near
Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire, are collected for that pur-
pose. The rough nodular " Marlstone " of the Middle
Lias is quarried chiefly for agricultural lime, but the
Oolitic limestones are mainly building stones.
The Chalk is another great, and, in the south-east of
England, a very conspicuous limestone, forming as it
does, the North and South Downs, Marlborough Downs,
the Chiltern Hills, and large areas in the Eastern Coun-
794 LAND :
ties. It likewise forms the Wolds of Lincolnshire and
terminates northwards in Flamborough Head. In all
these localities it is the great source of lime, and along
the banks of the Lower Thames is extensively employed
for the making of " whiting." The upper, or white
chalk, known by its bands of flint nodules, is almost pure
carbonate of lime, giving only about two per cent, of
clayey matter and oxide of iron. It is composed of the
shell-matter of a microscopic deep sea organism still
living in the Atlantic Ocean.
There are limestones of value in the Tertiary rocks
of the Isle of Wight, and some others of minor im-
portance, but those that have been mentioned are our
chief lime-producing rocks.
J. LOGAN LOBLEY.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 795
CHAPTER LXXX VI.
COAL.
BY PROFESSOR J. LOGAN LOBLEY, F.G.S.,
Professor of Physiography and Astronomy, City of London College ; Lecturer oil
Geology, Crystal Palace School of Engineering ; Vice- President of the City of London
College of Science Society ; Member of the General Committee of the British
Association ; Member of the Geologists' Association ; Hon. Member Hamp. F. C. t etc.
Author of " The Sttidy of Geology" " Geology for All" " Mount Vesuvius,"
" Hampstead Hill" " The Inter-relations of the Field Naturalist's Knowledge" ;
" The Cretaceous Rocks of England^ " The Causes of Volcanic Action," " The Origin
of Gold," etc.
ALTHOUGH England was prosperous when our great
supplies of coal were unknown, the population was then
so much smaller than now that the produce of the land
as merely agricultural land fully sufficed for the support
and welfare of the people. The immensely increased
population of the present day requires other wealth-
producing agencies than agriculture, and it is not too
much to say that the foundation of the modern power
and wealth of Great Britain is the coal of British rocks.
For, however much may be due to the energy and skill
of the people, England, without her abundant coal
supply, would have been also without her principal
manufacturing industries, and consequently lacking in
the great wealth-creating agencies as it now exists.
The abundance of coal in the rocks of these small
islands is so great that in 1871, after the enormous con-
sumption and exportation that has been going on for
796 LAND
centuries, the Royal Commission on our coal supply in
lhat year estimated the amount of coal still untouched at
146,480,000,000 of tons.
And not only is coal abundant in the British Islands,
but it has a wide distribution also, and so adds to
the value of land in many localities, for coal is to be
obtained from the rocks of all of the following counties :
Anglesea, Antrim, Argyleshire, Ayrshire, Carmarthen-
shire, Carlow, Cheshire, Clackmannanshire, Clare, Cork,
Cumberland, Denbighshire, Derbyshire, Dumbartonshire,
Dumfries-shire, Durham, Fifeshire, Flintshire, Gla-
morganshire, Gloucestershire, Haddingtonshire, Inver-
ness-shire, Kilkenny, Lanarkshire, Lancashire, Leicester-
shire, Leitrim, Limerick, Mid-Lothian, Monmouthshire,
Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Pembrokeshire,
Queen's County, Renfrewshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire,
Stirlingshire, Somersetshire, Tipperary, Tyrone, War-
wickshire, Worcestershire and Yorkshire.
This long list of no less than forty-four counties
indicates only the known coal-fields, but as Professor
Hull remarks, 4< It is unquestionable that very large
quantities lie concealed beneath Permian, Triassic and
even Liassic strata beyond the margins of these coal-
fields themselves." The recent striking of a seam of
good coal by Sir Edward Watkins' boring at Dover
indeed will conclusively show to those quite unacquainted
with geology that new coal-fields may yet be established
in England, if not in the other parts of the British
Islands.
It would be out of place here to give the reasons for
the belief entertained by geologists in the existence of
workable beds of coal in the south of England, but it
may perhaps be stated that coal has already been proved
along two-thirds of a line extending from Westphalia to
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 797
Pembrokeshire in South Wales, and that the part of the
line where coal is not yet obtained passes through the
counties of Kent, Surrey, Berks and Wilts. Since
Dover is on this line, and the occurrence of coal there
is in entire accordance with the views held by geologists-
for nearly half a century, it is probable that other borings
at points, recommended by those who have given special
attention to the subject, will soon be undertaken.
All the coal of the British Islands now worked is in
the Carboniferous Rocks which underlie the Permian,
the uppermost of the Palaeozoic division of the sedimentary
rocks. In some localities coal is worked below the Per-
mian, as in Durham, where the mines are consequently
deep, but in others the coal seams crop out at the surface-
as in the South Yorkshire, the Lancashire and the
Shropshire coal-fields, and can be worked, in some cases,
by galleries from the hill sides without shafts. It is
considered, however, that good seams of coal may be
profitably worked as deep as at four thousand feet from
the surface.
Coal is a hydrocarbon containing usually about
eighty-three per cent, of carbon, six of hydrogen, and
eleven of oxygen, and being the result of the mineralisa-
tion of vegetable matter by the elimination of some of its
hydrogen, and much of its oxygen, may be found in
various formations. Indeed, from 1814 to 1827 the
large quantity of seventy million tons of coal was
obtained from the Lower Oolites of Brora in Sutherland-
shire, but this coal-field was abandoned in 1832. The
conditions, however, most favourable for the production
of coal appear to have existed chiefly in the Carboniferous
period, and therefore it is only, as a rule, looked for in
localities where the uppermost division of the Carboniferous
rocks, called the Coal Measures, or the succeeding
79 8 LAND : ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
Permians form the surface. But as is strikingly shown
by the Radstock coal-field in Somersetshire, coal may
^xist at workable depths below much newer rocks, since
it is there successfully worked below the Lias as the
surface rock. It must not, however, be expected at any
locality where older rocks than the Carboniferous are seen
at the surface.
A remarkable case of the occurrence of coal in an
abnormal position is seen at the Clee Hills in Shropshire,
where the Coal Measures are found at seventeen hundred
and eighty feet above the level of the sea, and under a
mass of basalt, or old volcanic rock, forming the summit
of the hills, which, indeed, from its great hardness, has
resisted the wearing action of denudation, and so has
secured these hills from destruction, and has actually-
preserved the coal, above which it flowed as lava, through
vast ages for the use of man.
J. LOGAN LOBLEY.
SECTION VII.
LAND : ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. Sol
CHAPTER LXXXVII.
THE IRISH LAND SYSTEM.
BY T. W. RUSSELL, M.F.
" THERE has," says the Report of the Bessborough
Commission, "survived to the Irish farmer through all
vicissitudes, in despite of the seeming or real veto of the
law. and in apparent defiance of political economy, a
living tradition of possessory right, such as belonged in
the more primitive ages of society, to the status of men
who tilled the soil." No one anxious to get to the
bottom of the Irish Land System can afford to ignore the
tact here referred to. It is the root of three centuries of
Irish trouble, and it has finally forced a system of legis-
lation the avowed object of which is to restore peasant
ownership of the land. In an article such as the present,
limited in more senses than one, it would be manifestly
i m possible to describe, at any length, the ancient system
of land tenure in Ireland. Space alone forbids it. This
much, however, may be said that, although under the
Breton laws, the conception of individual ownership began
to be evolved, the Celtic idea centred in a community
of ownership. The chief of the clan or sept was elected
under the law of Tanistry. By virtue of his position he
became the proprietor of a seigniary over all the lands of
the tribe. The common people were not tenants in the,
modern sense. They held under the law of Gavelkind,
8O2 LAND I
and, on the death of any member of the tribe or sept, his
holding reverted not to his heirs but to the tribe a fresh
distribution by the chief being necessary. This, in sub-
stance, was the Celtic system of tenure. And although,
as I have said, the idea of single ownership was gradually
being evolved, the Chieftain becoming more and more a
landlord, it held its own until finally supplanted by
English feudalism. The impossibility of maintaining
such a system was apparent, and both the laws of
Tanistry and Gavelkincl were formally abolished by the
Courts in the reign of James the First.
Before this took place, however, several efforts were
made to impose the English system of tenure upon the
Irish Chiefs. Speaking of Henry the Eighth in this
connection, Mr. Froude observes : " Henry did not
insist that the Irish, ill-trained as they had been, should
submit at once to English law. He disavowed all
intention of depriving the Chiefs of their lands, or of
confiscating their rights for the benefit of Englishmen.
He desired to persuade them to exchange their system
of election for a feudal tenure, to acknowledge by a
formal act of surrender that they held their lordships
under the Crown. In return they might retain and
administer the more tolerable of their own Breton laws
till a more settled life brought with it a desire for the
English common law." In the reign of Elizabeth a
similar effort was made notably, in Connaught. Here
it was proposed to establish the feudal tenure by
the imposition of something like a head-rent for the
Crown, the land in return being freed from all cess
and taxation. All these efforts, however, were in vain,
and finally, as I have said, by a judgment in the
Courts, the laws of Gavelkincl and Tanistry were
abolished and the English tenure established. It was a
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 803
fateful and fruitful decision. Under the old system a
man who had four sons was in this position : On his
death all the sons were members of the sept, and had a
share in the common inheritance of the clan. Their
position was now very different. The land on the death
of the father no longer reverted to the clan, but to the
eldest son. He alone was entitled to succeed, and the
three younger brethren were left out in the cold. Thus,
at the very start, English law was weighted. At the very
start it became an engine of oppression. The confisca-
tions, known to every reader of history, followed. The
old chiefs were all but entirely dispersed, and whether
this was done under Tudor, Cromwellian, or Williamite
auspices, the effect was the same a rankling sense of
injustice and wrong remained. The rest is the history
of Irish landlordism, a history full of tragedy and
suffering.
I have thus roughly outlined what may be called the
ancient history of the Irish Land Question, my main
purpose being to state somewhat in detail the Agrarian
position at the present time. In modern times the Irish
tenant has been weighted with two serious drawbacks.
He had, in the main, to provide what may be called the
farming plant, i.e., he had to build his own house, drain
and fence the land, and do whatever was to be done in
the way of improvements ; and when all was done he
had little or no security of tenure. In the main he was
a yearly tenant, liable to be evicted, and his property
confiscated, at the will of the landlord. The system was
an odious one. Under it gross injustice was done, and
we owe to it more than to everything else combined,
those Irish troubles which have puzzled statesmen and
taxed the resources of the Empire. So recently as 1860,
a measure, popularly known as Deasy's Act, was passed.
804 LAND :
So little were the actual facts of the situation then
realized by Parliament, that this measure the main
principle of which made the letting of land in Ireland a
mere matter of contract between two parties was passed
with comparative ease. It may have satisfied the political
economist. It ignored the actual facts of the situation
in Ireland. There could be no fair contract between
two such contracting parties. The one was bent upon
extracting rent ; the other was clinging to a patch of
land, for which there were many bidders each of them
prepared to outbid the other ; and each of them know-
ing full well that they were cutting one another's throats.
But better times were at hand. They came with the
dawn of household suffrage, and in 18/0 the first step
was taken to put the Irish land system on an equitable
basis. The measure then introduced and passed by
Mr. Gladstone had a two-fold object. It aimed at
making evictions costly and difficult, and to secure com-
pensation to the tenant for his improvements. Under the
Irish Church Act, passed in 1869, the glebe lands
had been mainly sold to the occupiers, and, although
this operation had been carried through on most
unfavourable terms for the Church tenants, it was
the beginning of that system of land purchase which
has already had notable results. Accordingly, Mr.
Bright, during the passage of the Bill of 1870, secured
clauses giving fresh facilities to agricultural tenants for
the purchase of the fee simple of their holdings.
Truth compels me to say, however, that this the first
real step taken in the direction of fairplay to the Irish
tenant was of a very faulty character ; Mr. B right's
clauses were killed by Treasury regulations and Mr.
Gladstone's efforts to cripple the evictor were largely
rendered of no effect by the ability shown by the Irish
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 805
landlord, of getting behind them. In one respect, and
in one respect alone, was the Act of real service. It
established the doctrine of Tenants' Property in the soil.
It did not exactly legalise dual ownership ; it recognised
xistence. It was the day of small things ; but it
was the beginning of better times. Indeed, had the
Irish landlords been wise, their day of grace might have
been considerably lengthened. They were not wise.
By a variety of subterfuges, they attempted to go behind
the Act of 1870. They succeeded in seriously impairing
its usefulness, and they necessitated the Act of 1881.
This was a far bolder measure. In one sense it was
thoroughly illogical ; but its very thoroughness made it,
notwithstanding its want of logic, a great boon, and
constituted it the Charter of the Irish tenant. This
measure conferred three enormous boons on the tenant.
It won for him
(a) . Security of tenure.
(6). A fair rent.
(c). Legalisation of his interest in the soil.
Under it eviction became practically impossible unless
for non-payment of rent. The question of rent was re-
moved from the region of contract, and a tribunal was
established to find out, after inspection of the holding,
what the fair rent was ; and finally the tenant was enabled
freely to sell his interest in the holding in the open
market, just as the holder under the Ulster custom had
generally been free to do. The Bill, in fact, established
what was known as "the three F's Fixity of Tenure,
Fair Rent, and Free Sale." I have said it was illogical
in so far as it legalized at one and the same time fair
rent and free sale. Because, after a fair rent had been
fixed, it was possible for the tenant to sell his interest at
a price which forthwith made the rent perhaps more than
806 [.AND :
it had been. But the Act saved Ireland. It struck two
million pounds off the rental of the country. It gave a
feeling of security. It made freemen of slaves. But it
created an impossible situation. It legalized dual owner-
ship. It established legal interests in the soil on the
part of two individuals whose interests were not common,
but hostile. And so statesmen began to see what Mr.
Bright had clearly seen in 1870 the necessity of estab-
lishing a system of occupying ownership of the land of
Ireland. Under the Church Act, by the Act of 1870,
and again by the Act of 1881, facilities had been given
for the purchase of the fee simple of their holdings by
tenants. But owing to the halting character of the
arrangements made, the number who availed themselves
of the privilege conferred was comparatively small. In
1885, however, a decisive step was taken by the Con-
servative party, who were then in power, under the
provisions of what is called the Ashbourne Act. A sum
of five million pounds was placed at the disposal of
the Irish farmers for the purchase of their holdings.
Where the landlord and tenant agreed as to price, and
the Land Commission determined that the security
was sufficient, the State advanced the whole of the
purchase-money, the tenant purchaser repaying the
amount in ninety-eight half-yearly instalments. And such
was the advantage of the State credit that on an average
the purchaser found his terminable annuity twenty-five
per cent, less than his annual rent to the landlord. It
was manifest that such a system as this was bound to
extend and to prevail. It had enormous economic
advantages for the tenant. It was pre-eminently a heal-
ing and pacific measure for the State. The result was
that in 1888 another sum of ,5,000,000 was granted,
despite the somewhat singular opposition of the Irish,
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 807
Nationalist party, the members of which had hailed the
first grant with unbounded approbation. Even here it was
impossible to stop, and in the Session of 1891 a measure
was passed which authorised Imperial credit to the extent
of ^33,ooo,ooo for this beneficent purpose. Under the
Ashbourne Acts the landlord who sold his property
received the price in cash. Under the Act of 1891 he
receives it in Guaranteed Land Stock, bearing interest at
the rate of 2-| per cent. This is one of the main differ-
ences in the two measures, and it remains to be seen how
far this change will affect the working of the scheme.
But as things stand at present the Irish farmer has a
legal position which no agriculturist in the world
possesses. It may be summed up thus :
i st. Should he choose to remain a tenant he has
absolute security of tenure save for non-payment of rent.
His rent is fixed by a land court on a careful inspection of
the holding, and after the exclusion of all his own im-
provements from the calculation. This even applies to
farms held under lease all of which may now be set
aside. And he can sell his interest or goodwill at any
moment to the highest bidder.
2nd. Should he desire to obtain the freehold he has
only to agree with his landlord as to the price and
satisfy the Land Commission that the security for the
advance exists, and the State advances the whole of the
purchase money on terms which make his repayments to
the State twenty-five per cent, less than his payments as
rent. At the end of forty-nine years he is the owner
in fee.
This is the exact agricultural position at the present
moment in Ireland. Already twenty-five thousand owners
have been created under the various Acts. In the main
these have honourably fulfilled their obligations to the State,
$o8 LAND :
The repayments for the advances have been regular!)
made. Peace and good order prevail where the change has
taken place, and that sense of " possessory right " to
which the Bessborough Commission referred has been
met and satisfied on terms fair alike to landlord and
tenant, and safe for the State. Indeed, so strong is the
feeling in favour of the Acts, that the cry of compulsory
sale has been loudly raised. Enamoured of the advantages
arising from the various transactions that have been
carried through under the Acts, farmers have been
tempted to call for the coercion of those owners who
either have no desire to sell or who do not see their way
to do so. This cry is a proof that at last the remedy for
agrarian discontent has been found. The passion for
land is the dominant passion in Ireland. Nor is this to
be wondered at. Land is life. Indeed, in three provinces
out of four it is the only means by which life can be
sustained. But so long as the sales under the various
Acts go forward as they have been doing, the cry of
compulsion may be safely unheeded. It is an impossible
cry, because of the demands it would make on State
credit. It is also impossible, I would fain hope, because
of the injustice it would inflict upon many.
-
T. W. RUSSELL.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
CHAPTER LXXXVIII.
ENGLISH HOMES IN THE FAR SOUTH
(AUSTRALASIAN).
Bv F. W. WARD.
HAPPY English homes: what are they? Primarily, no
doubt, the happy English home of both romance and
reality is the family, dwell where and how it may, which
is knit together in affection, illuminated by intelligence,
and maintained in comfort by industry. Such a family
is, perhaps, the highest product of Christian civilisation.
But the environment of the English family counts for
much both in romance and in reality. The tenant or
owner of a section of a city terrace thinks himself less
fortunate, other things being equal, than the tenant or
owner of a house situate in broad acres where the open
skies, the unimpeded and unpolluted breezes, and the
marvel and the beauty of vegetable growth are round
about him. When God created man He did not put him
in a terrace, but in a well-watered garden where He had
made to grow " every tree that is pleasant to the sight
and good for food/' Human nature has never lost its
love for trees and flowers and fruits. That is assuredly
true of the Englishman. When he hurries out of
London, and the earth broadens out into fertile garden and
corn-covered field and stately wood, when amidst these
surroundings he notes the dotted homes, spreading with
careless contradiction of city values of space, the thought
SlO LAND I
in his heart is, " This is better ! '' And if he possesses
more than the average of intelligence, or industry, or
both, what he longs for, works for, hopes for, is to rent
or buy a resting-place for himself and a growing place
for his children in the country. But England is only an
island. Its population increases faster than the chances
of profitable employment and comfortable lodgment
multiply. Pressed hard by threatening poverty, the
energetic surplus emigrates to unpeopled lands. And of
late, as these unpeopled lands have come to be better
understood, there have been many who have left the
mother-land less because of threatening distress there
than because of inviting opportunity of ease and wealth
in the new territories.
It is of the new territories in the far south, Australia,
Tasmania, and New Zealand, collectively known as
Australasia, that it is my privilege to write. Privilege ?
Yes ; but the robust optimism which I could wish to
glow in my sentences and stir the pulses of my readers
is not associated with a disparaging estimate of dear
and great England. Born under the Southern Cross,
loving my birth-land and its sister islands, proud of the
young communities which are rapidly developing into
nationality, I had hardly stepped a few months ago upon
English soil than I felt it was my mother-land. I wish
it were a continent, so that its millions of sons might
for centuries have room enough and to spare. But
since the island limitations have to be accepted, it is a
privilege to speak warmly in old England of the young
England in the south. Australasia is a long way off.
It is the earth's diameter distant. But it was not a
national mistake to claim it in its then solitude for
England, to plant the old flag there, and to send adven-
turous English youth to subdue its forces, discover its
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 8l I
hidden wealth and open up its possibilities. A century
of British possession has passed over the southern lands.
Old England has invested several hundreds of millions
sterling in enterprises, public and private, which have
exposed to view vast natural wealth and assured an
immense future population.
Think of the extent of these almost unpeopled spaces
of the Empire. They amount to two-fifths of the whole
British dominions. The seven Colonies, or Australasia,
are twenty-six times as large as Great Britain and
Ireland, fifteen times as large as France, half as large
again as European Russia, almost as large as Europe or
the United States of America. Upon that broad portion
of the earth's surface there are not quite four millions of
people ; but a great saving fact is that the young nation
is almost exclusively derived by immigration or descent
from the United Kingdom. Using the word "English"
in its full sense, the Australians are one of the most
P^nglish communities in the world. The admixture of
foreigners is greater in London than in the southern
group of Colonies. And I think I do not wander from
the truth of the matter in saying that the just interpre-
tation of the cry, "Australia for the Australians," is
seeing that the Australians are essentially and em-
phatically English " Australia for the English." The
lands of the south are an English possession in
the important sense that, either exclusively or
dominantly, they are certain to be peopled from the
mother country. And though the growing nation is, and
must ever continue to be, self-governed, the character
of the government can never cease to show the influence
of ideas and principles drawn from the ancient home of
English political liberty and responsibility : in other
words, the racial relationship is indestructible.
Si 2 LAND I
One of the makers of the Australian nation is the
English love of a country life and of a country home.
The crowding of population into Melbourne and Sydney
may be quoted against this view, just as London and
other great cities are now spoken of as over-powerful
magnets to country-born folk in England. On both
sides of the world the balance of attractiveness between
country and town seems ill-adjusted; but I take it that
the ill-adjustment is a temporary evil. The rather
feverish attractiveness of the town will give way to the
quieter attractiveness of the country. The skies, and
breezes, and trees and fields, the unconstraint and
healthiness of rural existence, will re-assert their power
everywhere over the Englishman. Certain it is that in
Australasia the industries which are connected with the
soil will be the great source of national wealth and
greatness.
A large portion of Australia, embracing parts of
Queensland, South Australia (the Northern Territory),
and Western Australia, amounting to 1,176,000 square
miles, is inter- tropical territory. From the idea of found-
ing a home there, the Englishman in England, braced by
inherited constitution and habit, as he thinks, only against
the severities of low temperatures and moist atmospheres,
naturally shrinks. But the Englishman is really the
toughest man on the face of the earth. It would be
rash to attempt to define what latitudes destroy his
endurance and enjoyments. In tropical Australia he is
often a splendid specimen of strong manhood. But the
question of settlement there does not press for immediate
answer ; and the answer may be more intelligently given
from enlarged and prolonged experience of life under
sub-tropical conditions. Extra-tropical Australasia, that is
to say, the southern portions of Queensland and Western
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 813
Australia, South Australia proper (excluding the
Northern Territory) and all of New South Wales,
Victoria, Tasmania, and New Zealand, is where for
many years to come we may expect to see the principal
achievements of English energy. It measures 1,985,000
square miles, soil enough for the production of incalculable
quantities of food, if the soil is good and the rainfall
sufficient. Let it be said at once that, in the broad and
comprehensive sense of the words, sub-tropical heat is
no bar to production. Warm sunshine is a glorious
stimulant to plant life, provided the soil is rich in plant
food and amply supplied with moisture. It requires very
hot air indeed to wither vegetation which can get all
that it wants through its roots. Now, of good soil extra-
tropical Australia possesses so much that it is hardly
worth while to even try to ascertain approximately how
much. That is a question which may come up for
practical determination some time in the next century.
The vital question is rainfall. New Zealand has a
tolerably regular supply of cloud water, though parts of
each island are occasionally visited with droughts at
critical periods in agricultural production ; but Tasmania
and Australia are liable to a variable and often scanty
rainfall. An average fall of less than ten inches is pro-
hibitory of tillage, and this is the unfortunate condition of
more than a third of Australasia, a third, however, which
lies almost entirely within the tropics. It is the rainfall of
extni-tropical regions that demands consideration. A
fourth of Australasia has a fall of from ten inches to-
twenty. Wonderful things could be done with a country
having a rainfall of from fifteen to twenty inches, if
only the clouds were controllable by human will and
intelligence. But the apparent caprices of Nature
are a poor substitute for scientific control. Give
814 LAND:
an irrigationist the power to make the best he can of
fifteen inches of water in the course of a year, and he will
make the desert to blossom as the rose. And yet that
desert might have an average rainfall of fifteen inches.
With a high temperature heating and hardening the
soil, and an utterly incalculable irregularity of fall, fifteen
inches of rain are easily wasted. All the country in
Australia which has a rainfall of under twenty inches, is
known as "dry country," not unoccupied or unproductive,
but w th occupation and productiveness minimised by
the uncertainties and deficiencies of climate. Englishmen
have set themselves, with the practical intelligence, the
inexhaustible resourcefulness, the dogged perseverance of
their race, if not to conquer these adverse conditions, at
least to win wealth in spite of them ; and they have suc-
ceeded in placing a hardy type of sheep by millions upon
millions, and these little wonders of digestive capacity
have succeeded in converting year after year the natural
crop of indigenous and often drought-stricken vegetation
into the fine wool which, worked up in English factories,
finds its way into most of the markets of the civilised
world. With a notable exception, an experiment in
irrigated intense culture, the dry country of Australia is
avoided by agriculturists. It is pastoral country. But
the pastoral industry is not confined to it. The third of
Australasia which has a rainfall averaging more than
twenty inches is variously occupied, but through it all the
pastoralist is to be found. His is a great calling in the
south, the annual output being valued at about thirty-five
million sterling, and as most of the produce is exported
to the northern hemisphere it is the basis of an enormous
oversea trade. When it is remembered that over one
hundred million of sheep, not to speak of cattle, are
depastured in Australasia, it can be understood at a
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 815
glance that the shipments of wool and meat, hides and
tallow, to Europe are upon an immense scale.
The pastoralist in a comparatively moist and cool
country for instance, anywhere in New Zealand or
Tasmania, and in parts of Victoria and New South
Wales if only his " holding " or " station " is either free
of debt, or not heavily burdened with high-interest
mortgages, often lives an enviably pleasant life. Sim-
plicity, freedom, and health are the qualities of his
comfort. The conditions are contributory to the
growth of a truly English type of character. The
fluctuations in the prices of wool and hides and frozen
meats are not so harassing as the incessant and com-
plicated mishaps and anxieties of city business. If the
wool-grower chooses to do so, he can spend part of the
year in inter-colonial travel, or in the metropolis or one
of the leading cities of his colony. He is not shut out
from the social province of civilisation. He is never far
from it. But he is not a victim of its unrest and dis-
content. In the breadth and peacefulness of his home
surroundings he can find the profit of gladness.
But the " dry country"! Ah, that has its hard-
ships, its trials, its temptations. It is generally a
lonely life. The settler's nearest neighbour may be
one or two, or even three days' journey distant
that is, the nearest man of his own class. His em-
ployes, however, are about him; overseers, "jackeroos,"
" rouseabouts," boundary riders, and the rest. And
there is the annual excitement (and sometimes tumult)
of the shearing. Still he is acquainted with solitude.
Mails are infrequent, and it is hard to sustain an
intellectual interest in the big world's affairs. The only
talk he can listen to is about sheep. His own thoughts
are apt to range only within the sphere of his labours.
816 LAND:
The difficulties of a wayward climate and of a strange
vegetation beset him. Periodically, his patience is both
strained and strengthened by a prolonged drought. His
sheep starve, and neither the pity in his heart nor the
power in his hand avails to save them alive. One
scorching, withering day follows another in appalling
succession. But the curse of rainless months or years
is a discipline. It has searching power. It discovers in
and reveals to him unsuspected reserves of courage. The
courage inspires thought, purpose -ultimately achieve-
ment. The " squatter" grapples with the terror. He
learns how, if not to defeat it, at least to mitigate or
minimise its awfulness. And in this fortitude, this reso-
lution, this conflict with climate, there are elements which
blend and develop into heroic character. A certain
rugged power of manhood is wrested from inhospitable
skies and earth. And there are positive compensations.
The free open-air life is itself a luxury. The daily
companionship with Nature, never voiceless to those who
have ears to hear, establishes a masterful hold upon the
mind. The magical growth after the fall of a few inches
of rain : the dusty desert changing to a tender garden
within a few days ; the delicious coolness of the earth to
the foot and of the sky to the eye who that has had
this experience could willingly forget it ? And then the
supreme triumph of individually carrying out the original
charter; of subduing and replenishing a patch of hitherto
unprofitable country, of extracting from the scanty
vegetation of a desolate territory the wool which will
give warmth to the poor who shiver through the northern
winters !
But it is the agricultural industry which will give the
broadest basis for the future prosperity of Australasia
which will create innumerable homes for the English nation
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 817
there. Neither the pastoral, nor the mining, nor the
manufacturing industry has the potentiality of wealth-
production which is the attribute of the agricultural use
of the soil. Even now a comparison can be made which
proves and illustrates this statement. The pastoral
industry has spread itself over six of the seven colonies,
and is the largest occupant of space in the seventh. In
1889, tne aggregate value of its output of produce was
calculated to be about thirty-five millions sterling. In
that year only about one-third of one acre of every
hundred acres was put under crop, but that small
fraction of the total space yielded, exclusive of dairy
produce, a return of about twenty-five millions sterling,
or about seven-tenths of the pastoral result. That is a
prophetic fact. Is it likely that agriculture will be
neglected in the years to come? It has its own puzzling
problems to the English immigrants, who are unaccus-
tomed to the ways of a sub-tropical climate ; but the
problems are not insoluble. The cooler lands are pro-
ducing the grains and roots and fruits of the mother
country, and the capabilities of the warmer lands are
being tested and discovered season by season. Agri-
culture is already the leading occupation in New Zealand,
Tasmania, South Australia and Victoria. Only in New
South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia is the
pastoral supremacy maintained. There will always be a
great pastoral industry in Australasia. Wool and meat
will always be immense freights to the northern markets
of the world. But wheat, and oats, and barley, and
maize, and hops, and wine, and fruit, will make a
wonderful aggregate in quantity and value. The cool
chamber of the modern steamship virtually abolishes the
geographical distance between producer and consumer
of the perishable products of the soil. Beef and mutton,
818 LAND:
butter and apples, are now regularly shipped from
Australia to London. Other articles will be added to
this list in the near future. And when all that is implied
in the reversal of the seasons in the two hemispheres is
borne in mind, that southern products will be placed on
the northern markets when otherwise they would be
more or less bare, it is clear that a magnificent expansion
awaits the agricultural industry in antipodean settlements.
The far South is holding out hands, lifting up' voices
of invitation to English tillers of the soil. Cheap land and
stimulating sunshine are surely suggestive to energetic,
profit-loving men. The change of sky is not associated
with change of flag. Differences, political and social,
there are and must be, but they are not of repulsive
character. The English there are perhaps just a little
more English than the English here more independent,
more boastful ; the old national character under less
pressure of encompassing conditions. The faults of the
new development have nothing very terrible in them.
They are not much else than the excesses of youth and
freedom. The sterling qualities of the old race are more
deeply embedded in the nature and will exhibit more
power in conduct than pessimists imagine, As population
increases, the sense of nationality, of the higher citizen-
ship, of the nobler responsibility of civilisation, will grow
into a complete and irresistible self-governing force.
The happy English homes of the south will be no
unworthy reproduction of the happy English homes of
the north ; and what better thing could patriotic purpose
labour to achieve ?
F. W. WARD.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 8 1 9>
CHAPTER LXXXIX.
BRITISH PRAIRIES NEAR TO ENGLAND.
BY EDWARD H PAXTON, F.S.I.
ONE of the most vital social problems which presents
itself for solution to the minds of thoughtful men of the
present day, is how to provide for the rising generation,
which threatens to swell the vast tide of humanity,,
already flowing with rapidly increasing volume into the
cities and towns of this country.
One cannot but foresee that, unless the channels of
emigration are largely availed of, the keen competition
which now exists in all branches of professional and
commercial interest in Great Britain must, in the near
future, resolve itself into a struggle for very existence.
This is a fact which cannot be lightly set aside, and
it becomes, therefore, the duty of parents to consider,
however reluctantly, the advisability of looking beyond
the seas for a start in life for their children.
Loyalty and love of their country are cherished in
the hearts of every true Englishman, and a repugnance to
become subject to any foreign flag, or to go far from the
old home, naturally asserts itself. Happily, however,
there is no necessity to adopt either of these courses.
Glance at a map of the world, and note that vast extent
of British territory, the eastern and western shores of
which are washed by the mightiest oceans of the universe,
its southern boundary the United States of America, and
82O LAND :
its northern limits stretching to the Polar regions, and
consider that here are thousands of acres of imtilled soil,
waiting to yield their riches to future generations.
Let the young man who thinks Colonial life might
suit him, carefully weigh the advantages of this Dominion
before turning his thoughts elsewhere. Let him reflect
that the rapid Transatlantic liners now afloat, the specially
equipped trains of the Canadian and Pacific Railway,
and the flying express service of this country would, in
ten or twelve days, convey him from the erstwhile home
of the buffalo and the Indian to London, the commercial
centre of the world.
Some young men are physically unsuited for Colonial
life ; but such as are healthy and vigorous, and anxious to
make their way in the world, should surely hesitate to
plod on day by day, week by week, year by year, " quill
driving " in the cheerless offices of smoky London,
when within easy reach of their English homes they
might be enjoying such sunshine as we never see, air
such as we never breathe, and exercise such as we cannot
obtain in the Metropolis or in the towns of this country.
Across the boundless prairies of this British territory
the balmy breezes of spring blow pure and invigorating,
and Nature yields herself to their wooing. The bluffs
and valleys are clothed with flowers of wondrous hues,
the brilliant scarlet of the cactus, the mauve of the
crocus, the tawny yellow of the tiger lily, the pink and
damask of the rose, and the rich purple of the violet
blend with the emerald tints of grass and shrub and
tree, and form a harmony such as Nature, unassisted,
can alone produce. Around flit innumerable birds of
gaudy plumage, whose musical repertoire appears in-
exhaustible, while butterflies of every shape and colour
abound.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 821
When in Canada, in the spring of 1888, I saw the
beauties of Nature developing themselves with such
astounding rapidity that it was with difficulty I realized
that, amid a scene of such splendour, I was within a few
days' journey of the old country, with its cities, its
factories, its network of railways, and its seething,
struggling multitudes.
Moreover, by means of the great line of railway which
intersects the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
the thriving cities of Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto are
easily accessible on the one hand, while on the other it is
a comparatively short trip to Victoria and Vancouver,
and thence to China and the East.
This line of railway is a main factor to the commercial
prosperity of Canada. It facilitates transport to and fro
between England and the East, and its freightage is
enormously increasing, while along the line at intervals,
spurs and branches are being thrown out, by which
means the country is becoming settled, and its resources
developed.
It is impracticable in the space allotted to me to enter
into technicalities as to farming in the British Territories,
but I may say that the country offers exceptional facilities
for cattle-ranching, and that stock thrive in a remarkable
manner upon the rich and nutritious natural grasses of
the prairie.
The knowledge necessary for either this branch of
agriculture or for grain-raising is easily and rapidly
acquired, and the course of training through which it is
necessary to pass before entering upon the management
of a farm in England is comparatively valueless in this
territory.
One of the most successful farmers I met in Canada
nad Deen trained tor the Wavy, another was a young
822 LAND !
fellow who emigrated direct from Charterhouse, another
a medical student.
The winters are, of course, severe, but the atmosphere
is so rarified that their severity is neutralised. I have
spent two winters in the Dominion, and the coldest
month I experienced was in January, 1888, when the
thermometer registered an average temperature for the
month of thirty-one degrees below zero, or sixty-three
degrees of frost, and during that time I did not feel the
effect of the cold so much as in the winter of 1890-91
which I spent in London.
Moreover, the occupation of timber felling, which is
carried on in the winter months, is conducive to circu-
lation, and admirably suited for the season ; while
a sleigh drive over the snow-clad plains, with the
bright sun shining above, compares favourably with a
tramp through the slush, and mud, and fogs " on this
side."
The fall, or autumn, is the most lovely period of the
year. It lasts generally through the months of September,
October, and part of November, and should be experienced
for its enjoyments to be realised.
The opinion of one of the Committee of British
Agriculturists who went out to Canada in 1890, and
subsequently published a very favourable report upon the
country, is certainly valuable, and I therefore quote a
remark made to me by Mr. Henry Simmons, of Bear-
wood, Wokingham, a gentleman who was a member of
this committee. He said, " The soil is undoubtedly
marvellously productive. I think the climate must be
the finest in the world, and if I were a younger man, I
should not hesitate about going to Canada to live."
Although the Territorial Government assists settlers
to a very oreat extent by grants of land, a small capital
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 823
is requisite for anyone intending to enter upon farming
operations when arriving in the Dominion.
Having settled, a home can in a few years be formed,
where a man may be owner of the soil he cultivates, and
produce therefrom and thereupon all the necessities of
life (with, of course, the exception of groceries and
clothing), and where he may derive infinite enjoyment
from the freedom of his life, and the natural beauties of
his surroundings.
Sport also is to hand ; myriads of wild duck, geese,
crane, etc., pass over the country each spring and fall,
and besides affording capital shooting they are delicious
on the table. Prairie chicken and white hares (or "jack
rabbits," as they are called) abound, and antelope are
numerous at some seasons, while to the more adventurous
the coyote, wolf, and an occasional lynx may prove
attractive.
There is no doubt that a man with energy, enterprise,
and a little capital may form a home upon British
territory, within easy reach of his native land, where he
may live at least comfortably and probably prosperously,
whereas in over-crowded England these ends are
apparently unattainable by men of limited means.
EDWARD H. PAXTON.
824 LAND
CHAPTER XC.
EGYPTIAN LANDS.
BY ROBERT WALLACE, F.L.S., F.R.S.E.,
Professor of Agriculture and Rural Economy in the University of Edinburgh ;
Author of ''India in 1887," " The Rural Economy and Agriculture of Australia
and New Zealand," etc.
THE Egyptian delta has been aptly likened to a fan, the
Nile and the trunk canals of the irrigation system of the
country representing the ribs. To lend a little variety to
the usual simile, the fertile part of " Egypt-proper" may
be compared to a fan-shaped palmate leaf with a long stalk
fringed with leaf-like stipules. Upper Egypt, from
Wady Haifa northward until Cairo is almost reached,
being a narrow strip of fertile land only a few miles wide
on the banks of the Nile, hemmed in on each side by
desert-rocks and sandy wastes, represents the stipules,
and the delta, or Lower Egypt, the broad blade of the
leaf. The Nile, while it is yet one river, is the leaf-stalk.
Its two outlet branches, together with a number of the
old arms of the hydra-headed river now acting as canals,
and the recently constructed trunk canals, form the mid-
ribs of the leaf. The immense network of minor canals
represents its veins.
The comparatively narrow valley through which the
river flows for hundreds of miles in its northern course,
has been worn out of the solid rock, and the fertile land
on the banks deposited from time to time from the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 825
earthy matter carried down by the river. In Upper
Egypt, the rocks stand out prominently on the east bank
as, owing to the rotation of the earth, such a large body
of water naturally hugs that shore and prevents the
deposit of alluvium going on to form soil. The culti-
vable land is, in consequence, mostly on the left bank of
the river. It is interesting from a geological point of
view in connection with the palseontological history of
surface-movements of the outer rocky crust of our globe
that the various strata lie, in appearance to the naked
eye, in a horizontal position, and have not suffered tilting
and contortion as the rocks in the British Isles have been
moved and twisted. This has, no doubt, a great deal to
do with the wonderfully perfect state of preservation in
which the ancient subterranean tombs are now found.
In the delta, the land surface is more or less ribbed
by being elevated near to the Nile, and to the irrigation
water supply canals. When muddy or red water is
allowed on to the surface of land, the fine earthy matter
held in suspension rapidly deposits, and this has led
to the elevation of those parts which for ages have
received the best and most copious water-supply. The
most fertile land is near the main canals, extending
roughly from a mile to two miles from the water channels.
The land thus elevated is naturally bordered by low-lying
areas, which, by receiving too much water from the
higher parts, when not sufficiently drained, tend to
become marshy and salt or alkaline.
This state of matters reaches a climax towards the
lower ends of the canals in a chain of salt lakes barred
in from the Mediterranean by an irregular chain of sand
banks which skirt the coast. The lakes, though they
occupy the surface of much good land possibly one
million acrec exercise an important function as evapora-
826 LAND :
ting basins, which are almost indispensable in the interests
of economy when the lake receiving the drainage water
is below sea level and is discharged by pumping. The
cost would be enormous if the whole of the water
flowing from land freely irrigated, for the purpose say of
rice growing, were pumped.
The exposure of sheets of water in lakes of a few
miles, or even acres, in extent in a dry climate like
Egypt, results in a marvellous diminution of its volume
and a proportionate reduction of the work and cost of
pumping. It is possible and feasible to reduce the area
of the lakes, and also to lower their surfaces with the
object of securing a sufficient fall to drain the marsh and
lowland in their vicinity; but the complete drainage of the
lakes would be an expensive and injudicious undertaking,
apart altogether from the fact that Government at
present derives a large revenue from the leases of fishing
rights.
Evaporation in Egypt is also a source of evil in
the case of soil, which possesses no sufficient means of
escape for surplus moisture, or where too much irrigation
water is applied. As the surface water is taken into the
air by evaporation, capillary action brings up a new
supply from below, to be in turn vapourised. This
simple process in itself would be beneficial rather than
injurious, unless carried to an extreme ; but the water in
passing through the soil dissolves various salts par-
ticularly of soda and magnesia and these, not being
able to pass off as vapour, are left as whitish crystaline
powders on the surface of the land, and in- bad cases
even mixed through its substance to the depth of a few
inches, rendering it unable to support plant life with the
possible exception of a few stray salt bushes or weeds.
This tendency to develop surface salt has i
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 827
the time when improvements were begun in the irrigation
system by the British.
A vastly improved drainage system is now admitted
to be the most urgent work before the Irrigation Depart-
ment, and the more urgently so in view of the fact, that
schemes are in contemplation which will vastly increase
the amount of irrigation water carried on to the land.
The tendency to accumulate salts inimical to the
higher forms of vegetation, under conditions which bring
about the evaporation of much water from the bare land-
surface, is possessed by Egypt in common with all hot
countries where irrigation is much practised. The "usar"
or " reh " soils of India and the "alkaline" lands of
Western America are typical cases in point, situated at a
great distance apart. The whole secret of the situation
maybe summed up in two simple words, " insufficient
drainage." Other local conditions may aggravate the
injury, but with an ample water supply and free means
of escape for water, we have not in all the course of a
wide experience of travel yet found a soil which could
not be restored to fertility.
The at one time hydra-headed river possesses now
only two outlets to the sea, which separate from each
other at the great Barrage, a few miles to the north of
Cairo, where also the three great trunk canals, which
carry the great body of irrigation water to Lower Egypt
take off. The so-called " Rosetta " branch inclines
slightly to the west of the original northerly course of the
river, and the " Damietta " branch diverges similarly, but
towards the east. The former scours its course, while
the latter is more sluggish in its action, and is threatening
to silt up.
After the river enters the plain of the delta, it becomes
tortuous, and it naturally shifts its course, from
828 LAND !
time to time, at the various bends, cutting away a ban!
here, cutting off a loop there, and depositing the products
of the work of erosion at some convenient spot lower
down. Land deposited in this fashion by haphazard, as
it were, is generally irregular in character, and not of first
rate quality. The different soil samples are mechanically
separated by the water, and deposited by the river in the
usual erratic way, not judiciously mixed together, but a
bank of sand in one place, the fine particles of dense clay
in another, and light alluvial loam in a third.
The fertile bank at a bend may be carried away by a
change in the current, and unless artificially directed the
compensating work of deposition may produce a piece of
ground of very inferior quality. One great secret of the
fertility of the soil of Egypt is that it has been gradually
formed by depositions of the finest of earthy materials
from the rich red Nile-mud, which has accumulated from
age to age, while the heavy sand has been shut back by
the earth -banks (which at one time surrounded all
irrigated areas) and allowed to disappear in the sea.
Islands in the river which have not been banked so
that the water flow could be regulated, are usually
inferior in soil, full of sand banks and covered with
weeds. The best thing for the country in the case of
such an island is, that it should be washed away and
re-deposited under control further down the stream.
Banking should be the first step in the process of reclama-
tion, followed by a judicious system of warping the
surface. When land lies out of cultivation, the surface
particles soon begin to be blown. The finer dust is
carried away by wind, and sand collects in wreaths and
ridges to mask and obscure the natural soil. Even rich
soil soon deteriorates in this way if left out of cultivation
in a climate like Egypt.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 829
It is rather a strange phenomenon that shifting sand
does not always travel in the direction of the prevailing
winds. It acquires a tendency, probably due to local
waves or currents of air on the surface of the ground, to
move in directions peculiar to different districts, but not
necessarily with the prevailing wind. In the Land of
Goshen sand moves from south to north, while on the
west bank of the Nile for example at a place, a day by
steamer to the north of Cairo its direction is from west
to east. Upon the character of the wind, as regards
moisture, depends much of the surface movements of the
finer of the loose particles of earth. A moist breeze, blow-
ing from the north at the rate of four miles an hour, will
not raise dust, while a two mile breeze from the arid south
will do so easily.
There are two distinctly different systems of irrigation
practised in Egypt, each having its functions, its advan-
tages, and its drawbacks, (i) The basin system of the
ancient Egyptians, seen in Upper Egypt and doomed to
vanish before the (2) the canal system on the Indian plan,
which was introduced by Mohamed Ali, and is now being
perfected under the direction of the British engineers, who
were brought in 1882 from the Indian Irrigation Depart-
ment to develop the irrigation system of Egypt.
In basin irrigation, red water from the Nile in flood
is admitted into a basin, or area of land surrounded by
heavy earth walls, which retain the water for a period of
from forty-five to sixty days. One metre of red water
excludes air and light from the grasses and other weeds
growing on the land sufficiently to destroy them. The
mud is deposited as a fine layer of rich top-dressing,
which maintains fertility, and the whole mass of soil is
meanwhile thoroughly soaked. When the time comes the
clean water is run off, and the seed is frequently sown on
830 LAND :
the wet mud as the water recedes. Land thus treated is
liable, on drying, to crack deeply, and to become very hard
on the surface, too hard, indeed, to give the best returns
under crop. At times the land is allowed to dry
sufficiently to be broken up and thoroughly cultivated,
and the seed sown with excellent results on a well
prepared seed bed. Although basin irrigation is a system
which maintains the fertility of the soil, as it can only be
largely practised during high Nile, when the water is
muddy, it has one immense drawback in these days of
intense cultivation : it does not permit of the growth of
more than one crop on the same land during the year.
This restricts the cultivator to a limited number of crops,
and immensely reduces the capital value of the property,
and the return per acre, as compared with similar land
which possesses a full water supply all the year round.
The second or canal system of irrigation is rapidly
being developed and perfected, more particularly in
Lower Egypt, where it has driven out the Basin system,
and also in the province of the Fagoum, and by syphon
along the high and dry or "sharaqi" (fissured) lands on
the immediate banks of the Nile in Upper Egypt, which
without artificial watering are barren.
This system requires much less water, and in conse-
quence much less mud is taken to and left on the surface ;
but when it is as complete as it is ultimately possible to
make it for the whole of the fertile area of Egypt, water
will be within command at all seasons of the year, in
quantity to meet the requirements of the wonderful
variety of crops which it is possible to bring to maturity
in the Egyptian climate, which varies from the semi-
tropical for a few months in summer to the temperate
coolness of an English autumn during winter.
While the application of clear water stimulates the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 83!
growth of crops, it does not carry with it that which the
red water of flood-time bears to make good the loss
sustained by the soil in growing a heavy crop. With
regular cropping, under these conditions, deterioration
must steadily go on in the absence of the use of manure.
The fellahin have made this discovery since the introduc-
tion by Mohamed Ali of the canal system of water-
supply and the manure-charged earth from the piles of
ruined villages is carefully dug up and carried long
distances on the backs of camels and donkeys to be
spread on the fields in preparation for crop.
The material thus used is named "sabakh " the
word in common use for manure but it is also applied
to the salt which appears as a surface efflorescence in
certain parts of the country to which we have already
alluded. Sabakh (the manure) possesses its virtue from
the remains of the human excreta of many generations
of ancient Egyptians, preserved from loss by washing of
rain in the dry climate of Egypt, as guano was of old
preserved in Peru. Like Peruvian guano, " sabakh " is
within measurable distance of being exhausted, although
the coming of the end has been delayed for the present
by the extension of the search for this material from the
ruined and deserted piles to the ground upon which
existing villages are built. Contractors remove the mud
hovels of which the villages (and even many of the cities)
are made up, and after digging the floors and immediate
surroundings to secure the manure, reconstruct the
buildings on the original sites.
The time is not far distant when Egypt will require
to look in some other direction for the necessary manure
supply, which will become more and more an essential
element to success, as the irrigation system becomes
more perfect. The more "sefi" (summer) watering
832 LAND :
which is undertaken, the more will the soil require to be
strengthened to bear the increasing burden of crops.
The poorer classes in Egypt use as fuel the dung of
their cattle, baked into cakes dried in the sun. The
larger and better class cultivators carefully preserve
both solid and liquid manure by spreading under their
cattle dry and pulverulent Nile-mud, which, on being
incorporated with the manure, fixes it mechanically, and
prevents it from fermenting injuriously. Though, no
doubt, more animals might possibly be kept with advantage
in Egypt, still the great future manure-supply of the
country need not be looked for in this direction alone.
Another simple and extremely valuable method of
restoring lost fertility to land is the growth of leguminous
crops such as beans ("foul"), "barsim," or Egyptian
clover, Trifolium Alexandrinum. The root residue
after the crop is removed forms excellent manure for the
succeeding crop.
Land in Egypt is worth about twelve to eighteen
years purchase, after deducting from the gross rent the
amount due to the State for taxes and the cost of water
supply.
The land revenue or tax due to government varies
from thirty to one hundred and sixty piastres per
"feddan"* per annum. As this is not now payable
according to the present value of the land, but in virtue
of an old basis of valuation, a re-allotment or re-adjust-
ment of this important source of revenue is now necessary.
In so doing land under reclamation, such as salt land,
being drained and washed, should be entirely free from
any revenue tax for a number of years, and the possibility
of a man being additionally taxed, while engaged upon an
* The "feddan," or Egyptian acre, is a very small fraction larger than an
English acre.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 833
improvement work of great value to the country, before
it becomes remunerative to him, removed.
The Ancient Egyptian land-law regarding the pro-
prietary right to land was the same as the Ancient
Roman law. The land belonging to the State, and the
occupier or nominal owner held it only while he paid
the annual tax upon it. He could also be turned out
without any compensation. If government chose to
raise the taxes so that the fellahin were unable to pay
them, it could take over the property and re-let the land
to others, or retain possession under its own direction.
It was in this way that the existing immense government
estates of the Daira Sanieh and Estate Domains were
formed in the time of Ismail Pasha. Even now,
theoretically, land could be taken from the occupier
without compensation ; but the British have modified
the practice so that the law upon the point is interpreted
more in the light of the existing land-law of England.
Lengthened occupation now constitutes certain rights
of ownership which require to be compensated for if
interfered with.
There are some curious details in Egyptian land-
law, which are unique and due to the peculiar nature of
the country. Before the time of Mohamed Ali, a man
who lost a piece of land by the flood wearing the banks
of the river, could go down stream for hundreds of miles
and take up an equal portion of newly-deposited land
in lieu of that which had disappeared. The area within
which he had his choice (with others in a similar position),
was in time restricted to his own Province or " Mudiria,"
and finally to the smaller village area.
The cost of pumping water on to land for the use
of crops, in addition to that which flows naturally at high
Nile, is in many parts of the country on an average
834 LAND :
about i per acre, where a regular succession of crops
is maintained ; some crops, like cotton, costing more
than this sum, others less.
In the neighbourhood of Zagazig, a good agricultural
district which may be taken as a typical example, land
near the city conveniently situated and rented at 6 per
acre was, in the autumn of 1891, worth ^"50 to sell
with land-tax of 133 piastres (equal to about i 6s. 8d.)
and cost of pumping, i per acre, to deduct. Where
land was more distant from the centre of population, the
rent did not exceed 4.
The capital and rental value of land was reported to
have risen one-third in three or four years. It was
further stated on good authority to be of the same value
as it was in 1875. It came down to half the price in
1885, when it reached its lowest point, and taking a turn
in the other direction, it began to increase in value. The
rise in 1875 was due to tne high prices obtained for
cotton and wheat. The recent recovery is largely due to
improved irrigation, and to the greater measure of security
which a just and stable government inspires in the work-
ing population of the country. The fellahin are now
becoming steadily richer ; the smaller men, holders of
four to ten feddans, more quickly than the owners of
large estates. There are several good and wholesome
reasons for this state of affairs, (i) Wages have risen
from one-and-half piastres* to three piastres per day in
five or six years. This does not affect the man who does
his own labour, but reduces the profits of those who have
to pay for the work of others. (2) Irrigation water is
now distributed honestly, and the rich man cannot buy, as
he was but a few years ago able to do, a prior right to
*One piastre = twopence-halfpenny sterling!
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 835
an early and abundant supply of water, to the detriment
of his poorer neighbours.
There is still an opening for the capitalist, as a middle-
man, if he will reside in the district, and attend personally
to his business, by renting land in considerable areas at
^4 per acre, and letting it out in small plots of a few
acres to the working fellahin, at ^5 per acre. The
difference in the two rents named, is not pocketed by
the one party to the contract at the expense of the other,
because very considerable advantages can be secured
when one man possesses command over a large tract of
country, by arranging the areas to grow certain crops, so
that no land is injured by soakage of water coming from
the land occupied by a crop requiring much water, to
that bearing a crop which demands little moisture.
It is open for the development in Egyptian agriculture
to proceed on a number of lines :
1 . Better returns could be made than at present, from
many small areas growing a great variety of crops as
above indicated, under some general district supervision,
such as could be exercised by a large owner over his own
property, or by a representative board in the case of a
community.
2. The area of cultivation now generally stated at
five million feddans is capable of very considerable
extension by reclamation, variously estimated at one
million to two million feddans.
3. An increased supply of water all the year round
will enable the cultivators of immense areas to grow two
and three crops annually in place of one crop.
4. There is considerable room for improvement and
for the development of new varieties by selection of
superior plants, for example, in the case of cotton, by far
the most important revenue paying product of the
836 LAND I
country ; but there is no great call for the importation of
new kinds of crops.
5. Much is possible in the way of combating fungoid
and insect crop-pests.
6. Soil fertility is to be maintained by the use of
artificial manures, and by increasing the numbers of live
stock in the country.
7. The Tewfikieh College of Agriculture at Ghizeh
will be the means of imparting instruction to the sons of
landowners and to youths of the working fellahin class
who desire to become "holys" (bailiffs), and in this way a
knowledge will be disseminated of the best native prac-
tices, the best varieties of crops to grow, the best rotations
to adopt, the best manures to apply, the best stock to
keep, and the best systems of dairy management under
prevailing Egyptian conditions.
R OB ERT W ALL A ( I .
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 837
CHAPTER XCI.
ANCIENT LANDS (BABYLONIAN, &c.).
By REV. A. H. SAYCE, M.A.,
> oj Aisyriology, Oxford ; Hon. LL.D., Dublin, etc. ; Decipherer of the,
Cuneiform Inscriptions of Van ; Atithor of " Fresh Light from the Ancient
Monuments " ; ''Assyria Its Princes, Priests, and People" ; "An Introduction
to Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther '^ ; etc., etc.
RECENT discovery has given us an insight into the
character and tenure of landed property in ancient
Babylonia and Assyria, such as could not have been
dreamed of a few years ago. A vast number of con-
tracts have been found in Babylonia, dating from the
period of Nebuchadnezzar to that of the later Persian
kings, which afford us a perfect mine of information on
the laws, commercial habits, and economic conditions
of the ancient population of Chaldaea. Other contracts
of a similar nature, though far less numerous, have been
discovered which belong to a much earlier time (about
2300 B.C.), while the library of Nineveh also has fur-
nished contracts and leases dated in the reigns of the
later Assyrian kings.
The earliest document yet met with relating to land-
tenure in Babylonia is one which was originally written
in the pre-Semitic language of Chaldaea, and to which,
therefore, a translation into Semitic Babylonian has been
subsequently added. It seems to be a collection of
extracts from a work which was intended to be a guide to
838 LAND :
the professional classes of the country, and its language
has the proverb-like form characteristic of primitive
literary productions. We learn from it that in the ca.se
of simple tenure the legal occupation of a farm was
held to begin in the sixth month of the year. After
settling with his landlord about the terms of his lease,
the farmer was required to pay a tax to the Government
and thereby acquire a title to his holding. He was next
called upon to surround the farm with fences, beyond
which his cattle and poultry were forbidden to stray.
For every sixty measures of produce he was allowed
to keep eight ; the rest went to the landlord as rent.
But there were various kinds of tenure. In one
called " half-tenure " the tenant was required to work
the farm under the control of the landlord's agent, the
live stock, seeds, and manure, however, being regarded
as his property. The idea seems to have been that
while the land belonged to the lessor, the lessee con-
tributed, by way of rent, his labour and stock.
At other times the tenure was that of "partnership."
The "landlord" and the "farmer" were placed on a
footing of equality ; the farmer contributed his labour,
the landlord the house, carts, oxen, utensils, grain, seed,
and the like. It would appear that as long as the contract
lasted landlord and tenant were regarded as having equal
rights in the land.
Partnership in land doubtless rested on the same
principles as partnership in trade, about which the later
contracts give us plenty of information. A partnership
was formed for a certain number of years, and during
this period the partners put their property, "both in the
town and in the country/' into a common stock, and
divided the profits proportionally to the amount contri-
buted by each. When the partnership was dissolved
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 839
each party similarly received a proportionate amount of
the existing capital.
Rent, which was paid in kind, depended on the
agreement made between the landlord and his tenant
in what we should call the " lease." The farmer might
take either the third, fourth, fifth, or only the tenth part
of the produce. In every case, however, he was required
to pay the " tithe " levied for the support of the temples.
In a lease given as a type of the rest it is agreed
that the tenant shall plant date-palms, repair the walls
and fences, and build lodgings for the farm-servants.
This last, indeed, is to be done before he sets about
building a house for himself. His own house must be
erected and fitted in a durable and " proper " manner,
under penalty of a fine of ten shekels. On the last day
of the eighth month, when the dates are gathered, two-
thirds of them are to be delivered to the landlord.
Finally, the landlord has power to dismiss the tenant
and to terminate the lease.
The remote age to which these stipulations belong
give to them a special interest. They illustrate the
antiquity to which the rights of individual possession of
landed property mount back, as well as the relations
between landlord and tenant. Already, in the pre-
Semitic age of Babylonia, five thousand years ago,
payment of rent was as fixed an institution as it is to-day.
In the later period of Babylonian history, though
payment in kind was still common, it was being super-
seded by payment in currency. The currency usually
consisted of bars of the precious metals, each stamped
with their legal weight. Coins, in the modern sense of
the word, however, were already becoming known in the
time of Nebuchadnezzar, and it is probable that a century
later they had altogether taken the place of the older and
840 LAND :
more cumbrous bars. The silver maneh of sixty shekels,
equivalent to about nine pounds of our money, was the
standard of the currency, though gold was also used, and
occasionally copper or bronze as well.
Here is a document which illustrates several points of
Babylonian law, and which I therefore select in preference
to others that bear solely upon the sale or leasing of lands
and houses.* " Two manehs of silver, belonging to
Nergal-ritsua, the slave of Itti-Merodach-baladh, the son
of Nebo-akhi-iddin, the son of Egibi (paid) to Beltis-tassi,
the son of El-dakin and Sini-banah his wife, the daughter
of Beltis-zir-bani. Their house, which is situated in the
street called Khubur, adjoining the house of Nadin, the
son of Khanunu, on the one side, and the house of
nu, the son of Nebo-akhi-iddin, the son of Butsu,
on the other (has been handed over to Nergal-ritsua), in
return for the money. He shall not sublet the house or
mortgage it, and upon each (maneh) twelve shekels shall
be paid annually by way of interest by Beltis-tassi and
his wife. No other person shall prefer a claim of posses-
sion (of the house) until Nergal-ritsua repays the money,
namely, two manehs. Nergal-ritsua and his wife shall be.
jointly responsible for the payment of the debt. The
interest upon one maneh shall commence from the second
day of the month Marchesvan." Then follow the names
of three witnesses and a priest. " Dated at Babylon, the
second day of the month Marchesvan, in the first year of
Cambyses, King of Babylon, King of the Provinces."
In this case the house merely served as a guarantee
for a loan ; but the contract is interesting, as it shows,
what is made clear by numberless other legal documents,
that both women and slaves in Babylonia were on the
* Strossmaier: Babylonische Texte, VIII. , No. 68.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AM) RICHES. 84!
same footing as freemen in regard to the transaction of
business. The next deed I give is a specimen of those
which relate to the letting of property in houses or land.*
<l 1 7 canes 4 cubits and 1 7 J spans, the measurement of a
house and its surroundings in the quarter called Te in
the city of Babylon. On the upper side, west, adjoining
the reed-bed of the son of the soldier it measures 2\ gar
6 cubits and 8 spans ; on the lower side, east, where
there is a way out of the middle of the property, 3 gar
2 cubits. Here also it adjoins the house of Gimillu, the
son of Itti-E-saggil-zir, the son of the priest of the god
Ea. At the upper end, north, adjoining the exit from the
property of the son of the soldier, and of Ibna, the son
of Baladhsu, the son of the officer, it measures i gar and
cubit ; at the lower end, south, adjoining the house of
Baniya, the son of Nebo-Kullimanni, i gar 3^ cubits.
Altogether its first measurement is 14 canes. On the
upper side, north, adjoining the exit from the property of
the son of the official, and of Ibna, the son of the fisher-
man, it measures i gar 14 spans ; on the lower side,
south, adjoining the house of Gimillu, the son of the
priest of Ea, i gar i cubit 8 spans. At the upper end,
west, adjoining the middle of the field already measured,
it measures \ gar 5^ cubits ; at the lower end, east, ad-
joining the Broad Street, \ gar 4-5- cubits. Altogether
the second measurement of the property and its entrances
is 3 canes 4 cubits and 1 7^ spans. Altogether the mea-
surement of this house is 17 canes 4 cubits and i/^
spans. From Merodach-tabik-ziri, the son of Merodach-
/ir-ibni, the son of the priest of the god Uras, Nebo-
akhi-iddina, the son of Sula, the son of Aguba-yuballidh
lias bought and named one half of the property for.
* Strassmaier : Babylonische Textc, V., No. 164.
842 LAND !
shekels of silver, and has agreed to give 6-f manehs and
2^ shekels of silver as its full price. He has now paid 9
shekels of silver to bind the agreement. For the rest of
the price (?) Nebo-akhi-iddina, the son of Sula, the son
of Aguba-yuballidh (has paid) i shekel on account.
Merodach-tabik-ziri, the son of Merodach-zir-ibni, the
priest of the god Uras, has received and taken the full
amount of the price of the house. There shall be no
reclamation; there shall be no withdrawal from the
contract or disputing with one another at any time on
the part of brothers or sons, or the male and female
relations of the sons of the priest of Uras, alleging before
the Court that * this house has not been handed over
and the money has not been received/ The money has
been received. The (false) claimant of it shall return it
to twelve times the amount. The two parties have sworn
together by the life of Nebo and Merodach their gods,
and by the life of Nebuchadnezzar their lord, not to
depart (from this agreement). At the sealing of this
contract the following witnesses were present." Then
follow the names of 1 1 witnesses, including those of the
two "clerks." "Dated at Babylon the 2nd day of the
month Ab, the 26th year of Nebuchadnezzar, King of
Babylon. The nail-mark of Merodach-tabik-ziri, the
vendor of the house, confirming his seal." (Nail-marks
follow and then the seals of the two clerks. The two
measurements seem to imply that the property consisted
of two lots.)
The leasing of property in houses or lands can be
best illustrated from the two following deeds, which
belong to the reign of Cambyses* :
." The house belonging to Itti-Merodach-baladh, the
Strassmaier: Babylonischc Texte\\\\., Nos. 97, 147.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 843
son of Merodach-akhi-iddin, the son of Egibi, has been
leased for a year at a rent of 5 shekels of silver to Nebo-
nazir-pal, the son of Ina-Esaggil-zir-bani, the son of Irani.
One half the money is to be paid at the beginning of the
year, and the remainder in the middle of the year. The
tenant shall repair the outhouses, and undertake to keep
the walls in good order. In case he violates the terms
of the lease, he shall pay 10 shekels of silver. The
money shall be paid to Nubta, the wife of Itti-Merodach-
baladh." The names of two witnesses are attached to
the agreement, one of them being a priest, and the deed
is dated at Babylon in the first year of the reign of
Cambyses.
" A house which adjoins the temple of the god Abil-
biti, and belongs to Nadin-Merodach, the son of Basa,
the son of Nur-Sin, is leased for 2 years at a rent of one
maneh ten shekels of silver a year to Padakhnu, the son
of Niqudu, the son of the marshal. One half of the
money is to be paid at the beginning of the year, and
the other half in the middle of the year. The tenant
shall repair the outhouses, and keep the walls in good
order. In the months Nisan and Chisleu (March and
November) he shall deliver 200 bundles of garden
produce. On the first day of the month Elul (August)
in the 2nd year of the reign of Cambyses, in the presence
of Padakhnu, Nadin-Merodach has received 5 shekels
on account of the lease of this house at the beginning
of this year. An infringement of the terms of the
contract shall be punished by a fine of i maneh of silver.
The two parties have taken a copy of the deed to
prevent changes being made in it." Two witnesses and
a priest sign the agreement, which is dated at Babylon
the 5th day of (Elul)* in the 2nd year of Cambyses.
* The name of the month is lost.
:8 4 4
The 5 shekels, it may be added, were paid to bind the
contract.
Property could be purchased or contracted for through
an agent. The precautions taken in this case may be
gathered from the following document, which has been
translated by Dr. Peiser*:
" A piece of property at the approach to the common
land of the villages of Satirim and Sidibaratu, extending
from the Euphrates to the boundary of the property of
Samas-edhir, the son of Ziriya, the son of Mastukku,
which he has bought for 8 manehs of silver through the
agency of Labasi, the son of Merodach-nadin-akhi, the
son of Mastukku. Labasi, the son of Merodach-nadin-
akhi, the son of Mastukku, has paid the money. In
the month Ab (Samas-edhir) shall bring the money and
repay it to Labasi, and Labasi shall hand over the
piece of property to Samas-edhir. If Samas-edhir does
not bring the money in the month Ab and repay Labasi,
the piece of property shall remain in the possession of
Labasi as quittance of the payment made by him." Then
come the names of four witnesses and a priest, and the
deed is dated at the town of Subat-bil-sunu the 8th day
of Sivan in the 22nd year of Nebuchadnezzar. The
opening lines of the deed show us, what we also learn
from other documents, that in addition to the property
held by private individuals and to the crown-lands, there
were also common lands which belonged to corporate
townships.
Another contract translated by Dr. Peiser is interest-
ing as proving that foreigners could acquire property in
Babylonia like the ordinary natives of the country. The
parties concerned in it bear, for the most part, Syrian
* Strassmaier : Babylonischc Texte, V., No. 246.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 845
names, and probably came from the neighbourhood of
Damascus. The deed is as follows*:
" 7 canes 5 cubits 17 spans, the measurement of a
house already built in the district of the Gardens in
Horsippa, which Dayan-sum-iddina, the son of Zirya,
the son of Naba, bought for n^ manehs of silver, fully
paid, from Ikisa-bal, the son of Zilla, the son of the
carpenter. He bought this house on commission from
Ben-hadad-nathan, the son of Hadadya and Bunanit his
wife, the daughter of Khariza. He paid the money of
Ben-hadad-nathan and Bunanit in order to purchase the
house. Dayan-sum-iddina had no claim upon either
house or money. The deed to which Dayan-sum-iddina
attached his signature he handed over to Ben-hadad-
nathan and Bunanit. Whatever sealed copy is produced,
or any other contract relating to this house, whether it is
found in the house of Dayan-sum-iddina, or anywhere
else, it will belong to Ben-hadad-nathan and Bunanit/'
The usual signatures of the witnesses follow, together
with the names and seals of two clerks, and the deed is
dated at Babylon the 24th day of the month Sebat and
the 2nd year of the reign of Nabonidos.
The translations which have been given make further
comment unnecessary. Babylonia was not only agri-
cultural, it was also commercial, and its merchant princes
had a passion for becoming large landed proprietors. At
the same time it is questionable whether they possessed
large estates in the modern sense of the word ; the
alluvial plain of Babylonia was not more than sufficient
for the population it contained, and the number of small
proprietors shows that the desire to possess land was
common to all classes of the population.
* Strassmaier : Babylonisehe Texte : Inschripten von Nabonidos^ No. 85.
846 LAND I
What was true of Babylonia was also true, to a more
limited extent, of Assyria. But the Assyrians were
not an agricultural people like the Babylonians, and they
seem to have preferred the town to the country. Almost
the only deeds concerning real estate which the library
of Nineveh has bequeathed to us relate to the sale or
leasing of houses in the city. The following agreement,
dated in the reign of Assur-bani-pal, Avill give an idea of
what they were like :
" A house built of wood, with two doors, having in it
a . . ., and adjoining the houses of Tsil-Nebo, Dhab-sar-
Istar and Samas-idi, as well as the Street of the Oracle at
the end of the city of Nineveh, has been offered for
sale and bought by Kuzira from Pakana-Arbela and
Sar-Istar (the former owners) for half a maneh of silver.
The full price has been paid ; the house has been ac-
quired and bought, so that the contract may not be
departed from.
Whoever hereafter at any time, whether Pakana-
Arbela himself or his sons or grandsons, shall dispute
(the sale) and raise a claim in order to annul the contract
with Kuzira, his sons or his grandsons, he shall pay 5
manehs of silver." The deed was witnessed by five
persons as well as the registrar of the court, and duly
dated.
Another deed belonging to the same period may be
added for the sake of completeness. " The seal of Samas-
ballidhanni, and the seal of Arad-Istar, the two sons of
Abu-erba, of the city of Kurubi, and the owner of the
property including house, fence, garden, poultry-yard and
pond, which has been delivered up for a term of years.
The part of the land facing the property of Urdi produces
two homers (of corn) as well as that which faces the
property of Luballidh ; that which faces the property of
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 847
Risa and Nebo-baladhsu-ikbi produces 54 ephahs ; that
which faces the property of Luballidh and .... produces
42 ephahs . . . . ; that which faces the property which
Luballidh has bought, adjoining the property of Lam
.... produces i homer 30 ephahs ; that at the lodge (?)
at the foot of the hill facing the property of Isgum-Rimmon
produces 30 ephahs ; that at the stabling on the mound
facing the property of Samas-erba produces i pa ; besides
3 homers in addition ; making in all 20 homers. The
property, with a crop of 8 ephahs, including the house,
fence, garden, poultry-yard, and pond, in the city of
Kurubi, has been offered for sale, and its usufruct has
been bought by Kakkullanu, the superintendent of the
(royal) domain, for i maneh of silver for a term of years.
For 6 years he shall have the usufruct of 3 sowings and
3 harvestings. He deposits the money on account of the
grain, A tenth part of the grain produced by the field
shall be carried away (for sale), a fourth part shall remain
(for future sowings)." Then follow the names of the
witnesses and of the registrar, together with the date.
Our knowledge of ancient Egyptian law in relation
to land is not so extensive as our knowledge of that of
Babylonia. The oldest deeds yet discovered are not
older than the time of Tirhakah, the contemporary of
Hezekiah, and the greater part of them belong to the age
of the Ptolemies. Besides the crown-lands and the
ecclesiastical property, or domains attached to the
temples, certain lands, called " allotments " in the Greek
period, were assigned to veteran soldiers and their heirs.
According to Herodotus they were allowed to hold 12
amrcz of these free of imposts. The rest of the property
in the country was held by private persons, not unfre-
quently by small peasant proprietors. As in Babylonia,
women could inherit and manage landed property ; the
848
result being that in the Ptolemaic age they held a con-
siderable proportion of the property of the country, and
cases even occurred in which a husband had to go ta
law in order to obtain alimony from his wife. The tenant
usually paid his rent in kind, and was sometimes called
upon to perform unpaid service for his landlord or the
state. The larger farms were for the most part worked
by serfs. The artizans in the towns formed unions which
anticipated the " strikes " of modern times ; whether
similar unions existed among the agricultural labourers
we do not know.
Owing to the constant changes produced by the Nile
in the size and form of the estates which bordered on the
river, a whole field being sometimes washed away, and
its soil transferred to the property of another, it became
necessary, for fiscal purposes, that each separate property
should be surveyed by the Government every year. The
result of this was that an accurate register was kept of
the size of every estate, and the title of its owner or
owners. But in spite of the "landhunger " which con-
sumed the Egyptian of the past, as it consumes his
successor to-day, the lot of the smaller agriculturalist
could not have been a very happy one. The burden
of taxation fell almost entirely upon him, and we can
form some idea of his condition from a letter written
in the fourteenth century before our era, and translated
by the late Mr. Goodwin, in which the writer contrasts
the profession of the scribe with that of the husbandman.
" Whereas it has been told me that thou forsakest letters,
and departest from eloquence that thou givest thy
attention to the labours of the fields, and turnest thy
back on the divine words -behold, hast thou not con-
sidered the estate of the husbandman ? When he would
gather in his crops, the caterpillar ravages part of the
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 849
corn, and the beasts devour the other things. Multitudes
of rats are in the fields ; the grasshoppers alight ; the
horned beasts consume ; the sparrows steal. If the
husbandman neglects the rest of the crops, thieves will
rob the field. His ploughshare, which is of metal,
corrodes ; the horses die through the labour of ploughing.
The tax-gatherer is at the landing-place ; he exacts the
tribute ; there are police-officers with staves, negro-
slaves with palm-branches ; they demand the corn ; they
will not be put off. The husbandman is carried away
to the canal (for forced labour) ; they use him roughly ;
his wife is bound before him ; his children are stripped ;
his neighbours go away to attend to their own crops."
The picture is doubtless somewhat coloured, but
there are numerous indications that it contains a con-
siderable element of truth.
A. H. SAYCE.
850 LAND :
CHAPTER XCII.
LAND IN THE JEWISH POLITY.
BY REV. F. B. MEYER, B.A., Minister of Regent's Park Chapel.
" EVERY child of Adam has a right to enough land to
provide him with bread. This is as much his right as
the air he breathes, and the water he drinks. By his
very birth as an inhabitant of this world, he becomes heir
to as much of its broad expanse as will sustain the life-
imparted to him by his Creator." This is a fundamental
proposition, which becomes clear as soon as we think
ourselves back to the original condition of society in
which there were no intermediaries, no commerce, no
money, but every man raised for himself that which was
requisite for the supply of his daily need.
And, as a matter of fact and theory, each man has
somewhere on the surface of the earth a little patch of
ground from which he derives his supplies. He may
never have seen it, he may have no idea where it is, it
may be in fact broken up into many tiny parcels in various
countries ; but it is nevertheless true that every one of
us is as dependent on some part of the earth's surface as
the peasant who gets a scanty living by terracing some
portion of the Alps, or the emancipated slave that
encloses a plot on the margin of the forest.
There is an especial solemnity in the act by which
a man acquires ground enough for a grave. When
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 851
Abraham stood up before the sons of Heth and asked
for it, his claim was at once allowed, though he was but
a stranger amongst them ; and in the ideal state the right
of every individual to land enough for the maintenance
of the living as well as for the burial of the dead would
be certainly granted. The ultimate unit of all possession
must be the land and its produce.
This necessity has rendered the owning of land of
prime importance in the eyes of men, and it has been the
dear object of their ambition to acquire not only as much
land as was absolutely necessary, but as much more as
could be obtained, either by force or purchase or fraud.
To add field to field, to break down wall and barrier, to
be able to look over broad acres, and to know that for
long miles pastureland and forest, moor and hill, were
included in one great holding such has been the
cherished ambition of man's heart. For the best of land
hordes of men have poured from their mountain fastnesses
over luxuriant plains ; conquerors have led their hosts to
subjugate defenceless peoples ; flotillas of ships have
crossed the seas ; discoverers have turned their eyes
towards new hemispheres ; fierce revolutions have con-
vulsed great states, and overthrown ancient dynasties.
The question which rent the Roman Commonwealth
in the days of the agrarian disputes is the one which in
the present day is most hotly debated in all the Socialist
clubs in England and the States. In all revolutions the
tenure of the land has been the great subject in dispute.
Irritation on the part of tenant against the landlord ;
the demand of the labourer to own some of the land
which it was his lot to till ; the iniquity of keeping vast
estates devoted to the pleasures of the chase and of
sport, which would be more than enough to provide
hundreds of men with sustenance ; these things have
852 LAND I
resulted in the opening of the sluice gates of feud and
riot and war. In our times the agitation that led to
the passing of the corn laws, the outcry against ground
rents, the emigration of vast hosts of people to the new
lands of the west, the debates as to how to settle the
people on the land, the passing of the Irish land laws,
have been parts of the same great question.
It is very remarkable to turn from all the legislation
and turmoil which would fain adjust these difficulties to
the legislation of Moses, which was intended to prevent
them from ever arising. And how much better is it to
prevent difficulties by anticipation than to deal with them
after they have attained such proportions as to threaten
the stability of the State. It is seldom realized by the
cursory readers of the Bible how much science is contained
in the old Book of Leviticus which, with Divine sanctions,
probably embodies so much of the wisdom of Egypt,
with which in his earlier years its author was deeply
acquainted.
Competent authorities assert that a perfect code of
sanitation is to be discovered beneath the surface of
ceremonial rite, which if only adopted in the present day
would secure the health of our populations as it does that
of the Hebrew population amongst us. And it is certain
that that wonderful system to which we are now about to
advert, of land tenure, whether anything of the sort was
in vogue in Egypt or not, suggests a method of dealing
with perplexities which are assuming alarming proportions.
In the outset the land was viewed as being God's. " The
land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is Mine ; ye
are strangers and sojourners with Me." (Lev. xxv., 23.)
This position was still further accentuated by the fact
that God gave them the land. It was acquired not by
their sword or bow, but by a special miracle of His
ITS ATTRACTIONS AXH RICHES. 855,
power. And their possession of the land as His tenants
was still further attested by the fact that when they
abused 1 1 is gift they were disinherited, and scattered to
distant countries to become dependent upon money-
lending as their only means of livelihood, the Jews being;
notoriously inapt as craftsmen.
On their entering Canaan, the land was portioned out
to them by lot, each family and individual becoming
proprietor by direct tenancy from God. Thus as the
Jew sat beneath his vine and fig tree and looked across
his little patrimony, he viewed it as his by an inalienable
right, the gift to him of the God. who owned all. And
when an imperious monarch demanded of one such the
foregoing of his right to the inheritance of his fathers, he
received from the stalwart Naboth a reply that indicated
how religious was the objection lying at the root of
his refusal, " The Lord forbid it me that I should give
the inheritance of my fathers unto thee."
The conditions on which the land was held were as
follows: (i) It was not to be sold. It might be mort-
gaged for a time, to meet some pressing need, but the
absolute right and proprietorship was not to pass from the
original holder to another, and hence it is probable that
certain lands remained in the possession of the same
families, from the time of the Conquest under Joshua,
to the time of the carrying away into the captivity. What a
beautiful provision this was to encourage the people to
expend thought and care upon estates, such as would
benefit generations of their children ; and how impossible
it was for greed and rapacity to find room for exercise,,
since it was not permitted for any heritor to increase his
possession by the permanent acquisition of land in his
near neighbourhood. If others might not sell, of course
he could not buy.
854 LAND :
(2) The land was to rest every seventh year. The
seven-fold division of Jewish time had many applications.
There was, for instance, the rest of the seventh day for
the people. Then the rest of the seventh year for the
land, in which it lay fallow ; a method which is being
advocated in high places to-day, as the only true one of
enriching the soil. Fallowness of the land gives time to the
recuperative forces of nature to restore to it an equivalent
for its gifts to men. The teeming produce of the sixth
year was graciously contrived to make the produce of the
seventh needless. In later times, this provision was
allowed to fall into disuse, and one of the reasons of the
captivity is alleged to have been that the land might
^enjoy the sabbaths, of which it had been deprived.
(3) The institution of the year of Jubilee. Once at
the end of nine-and-forty years, trumpets sounding through
the land proclaimed that the year of Jubilee had arrived,
which brought untold blessings with it to the whole
Jewish commonwealth. Then, the small peasant pro-
prietor who had been compelled by bad seasons, and by
heavy debts, to make over his land to some neighbouring
and wealthy landowner, and had pawned, not his land
only, but himself and his labour for bread, returned to his
home, and, in addition, the land returned to its original
proprietor. For twenty, thirty, or forty years it might
have been in the possession of others, and children com-
pelled to till the soil as slaves, which, in happier days,
their fathers had cultivated for themselves, But, at the
given signal, each returned to his own possession. The
results of misfortune or fault, of rash improvidence or
imprudence, of bad harvests or Arab incursions, were
thus wiped out, and an opportunity was given to the
younger branches of the family to start afresh. Some
former generation may have sown to the wind, but its
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 855
successor was not compelled to reap the whirlwind. Thus
society was reconstituted twice in a century ; there was a
re-division of the land which reduced large estates to their
original dimensions, and asserted the rights of all to an
equality of maintenance and position.
It is obvious that there was no room in the Jewish
land system for a great territorial nobility, for the
existence of large estates, or for the absolute exclusion
of any part of the population from access to the land.
There was not a man that had not an immediate or a
prospective right to some portion of the Land of Promise
of which it was impossible to deprive him ; and there
was not a scrap of land which had not a claim on the
personal attention of some possessor. Even if some
sudden disaster on others were to swell the estate of
some wealthy landowner, he could never count as his
own any such accession of territory, since all must pass
out of his control at the year of Jubilee.
Not only were the lands jealously kept for the indi-
vidual Israelites, but also for the tribes, so much so that
the chief fathers of the families of the children of Gilead
came near, and spake before Moses, and complained that
there was a danger of a considerable portion of their
territory passing out of their hands in consequence of
the daughters of Zelophehad marrying into other tribes,
"when the Jubilee of the children of Israel shall be,
then shall their inheritance be put unto the inheritance
ot the tribe whereunto they were received." Then
Moses decided that when land was vested in girls,
as the sole survivors of their father, they were to marry
only in the family of the tribe of their father, and
thus their inheritance remained included in the original
limits of their tribal boundaries. In this manner it
was as impossible for any tribal territories to become
856 LAND:
enlarged beyond their original limits, as for a personal
estate.
It would be of course out of the question to attempt
to reproduce these ancient customs on the statute books
of our time, but they at least suggest some necessary
principles, that the land is God's, given by Him to every
man, and that there should be a possibility of men
regaining that, from which temporary misfortune or the
faults of their fathers may have deprived them. And
probably there was more genuine enjoyment and blessed-
ness throughout Israel in those simple days of agri-
cultural toil and comparative equality, than in our own,
when on the one hand, there is abundance of bread and
of idleness, and on the other there is grinding toil and
scarcity, and jealous hatred. Rapacity, avarice, monopoly,
pride of power, found far less room to grow in those old
days than in these, when there is practically no limit to
the fortunes which men may amass and to the vast lands
which they may acquire. Would that religion might do
what perhaps legislation will never dare to put its hand
to, in the lessening of human selfishness and the recog-
nition of those duties which are imposed on all men by
the possession of position, and wealth, and success.
Property has duties as well as rights, to be performed as
in the sight of God.
F. B. MEVER.
ITS ATTRACTION- AND RICHES. 857
CHAPTER XCIII.
THE PRIMEVAL COMMAND, AND THE
PROPHETIC PROMISE.
BY G. H. PEMBER, M.A.,
Author of " Earth's Earliest Ages^ etc.
THE Bible leaves us in no doubt as to the object which
God had in view when He prepared our earth for
habitation. " The heavens," says the Psalmist, " are
the heavens of the Lord ; but the earth hath He given
to the children of men.' 1 *
Yet, when Adam was created, God did not bewilder
him by bidding him go and take possession of all the
broad lands on the face of the globe. No : He planted
a delightful garden, of fitting dimensions, and placed the
man there, not to live in idleness, but to " work " it, and
to " watch over " or " guard " it. Now, the first of these
words has the general meaning of "to bestow labour
upon," and is used of tilling the ground, or of tending a
vineyard or garden ; the second manifestly hints at foes
who would seek to deprive him of his enclosed estate,!
and against whom he must be upon his guard.
Thus in the Garden of Eden we seem to have the
first instance of private property, the tenure of which,
*Psa. cxv., 1 6.
t The precise meaning of the Hebrew- word is "an enclosed space/' Similarly,
our English word "garden"' is derived from the Anglo-Saxon gyrdan, to gird or
enclose.
858 LAND I
granted by God Himself, was subject to certain con-
ditions. The man must work it and guard it; moreover,
he must acknowledge the rights of the Lord paramount
by abstaining from the fruits of a single tree which was
pointed out to him. Here, then, is the whole duty of a
landowner according to the Old Testament for the
Mosaic law is but a development of it ; he must see that
his acres are duly tilled, that, so far as he can compass it,
they are bringing forth bread for the eater ; and he must
not forget to render his tithes to the God Whose steward
he is.
Even in man's sinless condition the duty of working
the land was set before him ; nevertheless, no toilsome
labour was proposed ; for the earth itself and all Nature
would, with one accord, assist him. But after his fall the
duty became hard ; he could no longer live upon the
easily cultivated fruit of trees, but must till the ground
for the bread-corn, and force it by the sweat of his brow
from the unwilling earth. Yet, even this curse, if he bowed
to it, would become a blessing, and that the greatest
which he was capable of receiving in his fallen circum-
stances. For there is naught but honest labour that can
make the present life wholesome and tolerable ; there is
no other secondary means which is so powerful to deliver
men from the dangerous horrors of ennui> and to
preserve them from temptation and vice.
As a side light upon the blessings which the gift of
land in settled tenure conferred, we may note that Cain,
in punishment for his crime, was condemned to be a
fugitive and a wanderer upon the face of the earth, to
know the joy neither of homestead nor holding. It is
true that he refused to obey the command of God, and
did settle himself and build a city. But the sequel shows
that the best things of this earth are blessings only when
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 859
we hold them by the will of God. Cain's city became a
fountain of lawlessness, which covered the earth with its
corrupting waters, and presently caused the destruction
of all flesh.
After the deluge, when the world had again aposta-
tized to such a degree that God would no longer deal
with it as a whole. He determined to call out Abraham
from among the idolaters, and to make an elect people ot
his seed. And with the call to the patriarch came also
the promise of a land a very indefinite promise at first,
merely of " a land that I shall show thee ; "* so that
Abraham "went out, not knowing whither he went."t
But when his faith had been proved, God spoke definitely,
and said : " Unto thy seed have I given this land from
the Brook? of Egypt to the great river, the River
Euphrates."
Such is the promise to the people who are presently
to dwell upon the earth in righteousness : it was given
without conditions, and therefore, ultimately, nothing can
hinder its literal and complete fulfilment. Not yet, how-
ever, has God found this fulfilment possible. The
Israelites sinned from the beginning, and the first con-
sequence of their conduct was that they had to wander
forty years in the wilderness before they could enter the
* Gen. xii., i.
t Heb. xi., 8.
That is, the present Wady-el-Arish, which flows into the Mediterranean by the
site of Rhinocolura, and which once formed the boundary of Israel and Egypt. The
Hebrew word does, indeed, usually mean a river rather than a small stream or brook ;
but by the " river of Egypt :; we could only understand the Nile, which could not be
intended here for two reasons. For (i) the Euphrates could scarcely be called " the
great river " in contrast with the Nile, which exceeds it considerably, both in the
length of its course and in the breadth of its stream. Moreover (2), if the Israelitish
Kingdom were to extend to the Nile, it would encroach upon Egypt, which it is not
likely to do, since Egypt also is to be revived as well as Israel. See Isa. xix., 23-25.
Gen. xv., 18.
860 LAND :
borders of Canaan. Yet, as Moses somewhat abruptly
remarks in the second verse of his fifth book, it was a
journey of only eleven days from Horeb to Kadesh,
and at the end of that brief period they might have
taken possession of the land had their hearts been
right with God. When, at length, they did enter it,
their unfaithfulness was so established that He would
entrust them with a small portion only, barely a fifth
indeed, of the promised realm.
And now the land-laws, which God had previously
dictated, came into action. First, Palestine was divided
among the tribes, and then the area of each tribal portion
was measured with the line, and a due allotment assigned
to each family as its inalienable property. For the land
could never be sold out of the family to which it originally
belonged. If a holder were in debt, he might indeed
dispose of the crops and a temporary possession of the
ground. But at the next year of Jubilee the land would
revert, without payment or incumbrance of any kind, to
its proper owner.* Thus, if one generation had been
idle, or extravagant, or incompetent, the next at least
would have an opportunity of beginning afresh with a
free and unburdened estate.
And so strictly was this beneficent law carried out,
that the estate must feed the family to which it belonged,
that if a man had been compelled to part with his land
until the next Jubilee, he was, nevertheless, at liberty,
should a change of circumstances permit, to redeem it at
any previous time by returning to the purchaser a pro-
portionate amount of the purchase-money. Moreover, if
he were himself unable to do this, it was lawful for any
of his relations to act as goel, or redeemer, and do it in
his stead. f
*Lev. xxv., 13-16. fLev. xxv., 23-28.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 86 1
\Ve may find a remarkable instance of the working
of this law in the thirty-second chapter of Jeremiah.
The preceding passage is aglow with the joy of Israel's
final restoration, and the glory of the millennial Jerusalem ;
then follows one of those striking contrasts which abound
in the Bible, and the scene is shifted back from the
Jerusalem that is to be to the Jerusalem which then was.
And terrible is the change ! The Chaldeans are harry-
ing Palestine, and their mounds are already rising against
the capital ; Jerusalem is enclosed by hostile bands, so
that none can go out or come in. And, worst of all, the
prophet of God, through whom alone help could be
found, is rejected and shut up in the court of the guard
which was in the king's house.
At this critical time the word of the Lord came to
Jeremiah ; for, now that the darkest clouds had gathered
over Jerusalem, the prophet must show his faith in God's
promise of a glorious future. The purport of the Divine
message was that Hanameel, his uncle's son, was coming
to him with a request that he would buy, and retain for
the family, a field in Anathoth, which his cousin was con-
strained to sell. Of course the field was of no value
whatever at the time, seeing that it was already in the
hands of the Chaldeans ; nevertheless, God commanded
Jeremiah to effect the purchase with all due formality,
and to take measures for the preservation of the deeds.
Moreover, the meaning of the act was to be expounded
to the witnesses and bystanders. It was to indicate that,
although Palestine must be devastated by the Chaldeans,
yet the wrath of God should not endure for ever, but a
time should come when houses and fields and vineyards
should again be possessed in the land.
Hanameel soon appeared, and in obedience to the
word of the Lord, Jeremiah purchased the field with a
862 LAND :
scrupulous observance of the usual legal forms. First he
subscribed and sealed the deed. This must, of course,
be what is afterwards called the sealed deed, and is said
to contain "the Commandment and the Statutes." It
was, probably, the original title to the land, prefaced by
an extract from the part of the law which commanded
the allotment ; and Jeremiah seems to have signed it as
an acknowledgment, before taking temporary possession
of the field, that Hanameel and his descendants were the
real owners. The document was then sealed up, perhaps
to signify, in Oriental figure, that the title was in abeyance
until the next Jubilee, or until the field was otherwise
restored. Hence, if the seller were again put in
possession of his property, the fact would be signified by
the breaking of the seals, and the exposure of the original
title.
After he had signed and sealed this deed, Jeremiah
proceeded to summon witnesses, and to weigh out the
money to Hanameel. The witnesses then subscribed a
document called the open deed, which was probably the
conveyance of the field to Jeremiah, left open, because
its provisions were of present force. And so the purchase
was completed.
Of such importance was it deemed to keep the land
in the possession of the family to which it had been
assigned. But the preservation of its own allotments to
each tribe was a matter of even more serious moment, as
we may see in the case of the daughters of Zelophehad.
These women had no brother ; and, consequently, their
father's inheritance was given to them by command of
God. Then a difficulty arose, which was represented to
Moses by the heads of their family. What was to
become of Zelophehad's land, if his daughters should
marry into another tribe ? Was it to pass for ever from
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 863
the possession of Manasseh ? The peremptory answer
was that such a thing might not be allowed ; but that
every daughter who possessed an inheritance in any tribe
of the children of Israel, should be wife unto one of the
family of the tribe of her father, that the children of
Israel might enjoy, even* man, the inheritance of his
fathers. *
But, it may be urged, God's promise of the land came
to nothing after all. In the days of Solomon. Judah and
Israel did indeed dwell safely, every man under his vine
and under his fig-tree, from Dan even to Beersheba. But
that short period had soon passed by, and the like to it
was never known in subsequent times. Calamities,
invasions, and oppressions followed in rapid succession,
while the land-laws, as well as the other enactments of
the Divine code, were violated, and fell more or less into
desuetude. And at length the Ten, and finally the Two
Tribes were removed altogether from their own country
and carried into captivity. What, then, has become of
the promise, the unconditional promise, that the land
should belong to Abraham and to his seed for ever ?
Now this very point was causing perplexity to the
Israelites on the banks of the Chebar, just after the
destruction of Jerusalem. "Our bones," they said, "are
dried up, and our hope is lost : we are clean cut off."t
For they remembered that many generations of their
fathers had lived and died, but had never seen their
people in possession of the land from the Brook of
Egypt to the River Euphrates ; nay, had never enjoyed
more than a brief rest even in the small territory which
they had been permitted to call their own. And now
that they themselves had been altogether removed from
* Num. xxxvi., 6-9. fEzek. xxxvii., n.
86 4 LAND :
Palestine, the case was hopeless : the promise must have
failed.
But in response to their piteous wail, God graciously
revealed His far-reaching purpose to Ezekiel, and showed
in how wondrous a manner He would yet fulfil His word
to every faithful descendant of Jacob, from his sons to
the latest generation. The seer was carried by the Spirit
into the midst of a great valley which was filled with dry
bones. Then the word of the Lord came to him, and
demanded, " Son of man, can these bones live ?" Ezekiel
could only reply, " O Lord God, Thou knowest ; " where-
upon he was commanded to prophecy to the dry bones,
that the Lord would make them live again. And while
he was uttering the words that were put into his mouth,
there was a noise like thunder, and an earthquake ; and,
lo, the bones began to draw together, bone to its bone,
sinews appeared, and flesh came up, and skin covered
them above ; but there was no breath in them. Then
the prophet was directed to prophecy to the wind, and
bid it breathe upon these slain that they might live. And
immediately the Spirit entered into them, and they lived,
and stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army.
Such was the vision, and its interpretation was given
by God Himself. It was His glorious answer to the
complaint of Israel, that their bones were dried up, and
their hope lost. "Behold," He said, "I will open your
graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, O My
people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel.
And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have
opened your graves, and caused you to come up out of
your graves, O My people. And I will put My Spirit
in you, and ye shall live, and I will place you in your own
land?
Yes, the promises of God cannot fail ; His gifts and
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 865
callings are without repentance. Nothing can prevent
the ultimate occupation of the whole of their land by the
seed of Abraham ; and since their transgressions have
hitherto stood in the way, they must be raised from their*
graves, and both know and testify that God is true.
Hence, throughout the whole of the Old Testament
they have no promise of heaven, but only of the land ;
for the calling of Israel is earthly, and not heavenly a
ours is.
Had the people duly considered their own ritual, they
would have understood that from the beginning God
knew what He was about to do. For they were com-
manded to circumcise their children on trie eighth day
after birth ; and both in the Old and New Testaments
the eighth day, as being the first after the seventh, points
to resurrection. Hence, circumcision on the eighth day
manifestly indicated that the blessings of which that rite
was the seal could be realised only in resurrection. The
same thing is hinted by Jeremiah, when he describes
Rachael weeping for her children, and refusing to be
comforted, because they were not. For she is bidden to
refrain her voice from weeping, and her eyes from tears,
because there is hope for her latter end, and her children
shall come again to their own border*
But how can the forfeited land be won back for the
people who have lost it by their own transgressions ; and
who will act as g oel to redeem it for them ?
The grand scene in the fourth and fifth chapters of
the Apocalypse will answer this question. There the
Most High God, the Father Almighty, is seen sitting
upon His Throne of Judgment, and on the palm of His
hand lies a roll sealed with seven seals. From what has
*Jer. xxxi., 17.
866 LAND :
been already said, we may probably recognise in this roll
some title-deed which is in abeyance, and is, therefore,
sealed up. And from the context it would seem to
be nothing less than the title-deed of the whole earth,
which was originally man's estate but was lost by
Adam's fall.
As John gazed upon the solemn scene he saw a strong
angel proclaiming with a loud voice, that if there were
any of man's family who could redeem the inheritance,
he should come forward, take the roll from the hand of
Him That sat upon the Throne, and break its seven
seals. But when the angel had ceased speaking, there
was an awful silence : no voice, either from heaven, or
from earth, or from beneath the earth, was heard in
response ; and John wept at the thought that there was
no- one to ransom the sin-stricken and woe-begone earth.
Then one of the elders, who were sitting at the foot of
the Throne, came to him, and bade him refrain from
weeping, because one of Adam's sons, an Israelite, the
Lion of the tribe of Judah, had overcome, both in life and
in death, and was therefore found worthy, as a sinless man,
to open the roll, and reveal His own inalienable right
to the inheritance. And so, amid the breathless silence
of Heaven, a Lamb, as though It had been slain, was seen
standing by the Throne, and taking the roll from the
hand of the Almighty. The hour of redemption had
come ; a loud cry of praise rose from the four living
creatures and the twenty-four elders, and was taken up
by the countless myriads of angels vvhich surrounded
them, while a thrill of joy and thanksgiving passed
through the whole animated creation.
It is, then, as an Israelite that the Lord receives for
Himself the Kingdom the nations for His inheritance,
and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. 867
As He breaks the seals of the roll, mighty agents, like
the destroying angels of old, are summoned from before
the Throne to begin His short but terrible war upon the
inhabitants of earth. And the final result of that war,
brought about by His own personal appearing, will be to
place His people Israel, the living and the dead alike, in
their own inheritance, with full possession of the whole
of it, and dominion over all the other nations of the
world.
If, however, we glance at the map, we may be dis-
appointed to find that the greater portion of the vast
triangular territory, which will then be Immanuers land,
is nothing but barren wastes, and presents no fruitful
acres capable of supporting a teeming population. But
this defect will be remedied, for the great convulsion,
which is to herald the Lord's appearing, will not merely
cast out living waters from Mount Zion, but will change
the whole face of Israel's inheritance, causing springs and
rivulets to burst forth in all directions ; so that the wilder-
ness and the solitary place shall be glad for the returning
exiles, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.
"And there shall be," says Isaiah, "upon every high
mountain, and upon every high hill, rivers and streams of
waters in the day of the great slaughter, when the
towers fall."* The slaughter is, of course, what is else-
where called the treading of the winepress of the wrath
of God, the slaying of the Lord's enemies before His
eyes ; while the ruin of the towers points to the greatest
seismic disturbance which shall make the earth reel like
a drunken man,f and cause all the cities of the nations
to fall.}
After the Advent, the whole land will be divided
* Isa. xxx., 25. flsa. xxiv., 18-20. JRev. xvi., 18, 19.
868 LAND :
among the Twelve Tribes in the manner described by
Ezekiel, and each family will have its own ample allot-
ment measured out by the lines. And in those days, not
one here and there, but every man will be able to say,
" The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places ; yea, I
have a goodly heritage."* For what with water every-
where at hand, the sun shining with seven-fold geniality, f
and the deserts turned into fertile plains, "the seed," as
Zechariah predicts, " shall be prosperous, the vine shall
give her fruit, and the ground shall give her increase, and
the heavens shall give their dew."J For "behold, the
days come, saith the Lord, that the ploughman shall
overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that
soweth seed ; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine,
and all the hills shall melt." " And they shall beat their
swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning
hooks : nation shall not lift up a sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit
every man under his vine arid under his fig-tree ; and
none shall make them afraid." ||
So shall the consequences of Christ's propitiatory
death begin to extend even to the habitation and sur-
roundings of the human race, and the promise be fulfilled.
" Then shall the earth yield her increase ; and God, even
our own God, shall bless us."^f And the fact that in the
next age the chief blessing will be a man's quiet
occupation of his own land then freed from the curse of
barrenness, irregular seasons, and scanty water, enables us
to understand God's estimate of the value of a landed
possession on His earth.
Moreover, there may be something analogous to
this even in the Heavenly realrn : for among the things
* Psa. xvi., 6. tlsa. xxx., 26. JZech. viii., 12. Amosix., 13, 14.
|| Micnh iv., 3, 4. . f PsH. Ixrii., 6.
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. #69
promised to the members of Christ, we observe, not only
an immortal body, a treasure, and a dwelling-place in the
City of God, but also "an inheritance, incorruptible, and
undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in Heaven
for them."*
G. H. PEMBER.
i Pet. i., 4.
INDEX.
A.
ABERDEEN cattle, 542
Abolition of rates means higher ground
rents, 328
Abraham, God's promise to, 859
Absolute title to land, 690
Absorption of carbonic acid by plants, 9
Account of the origin and growth of
tithes, 722
Account keeping by the Romans, 648
neglect of, 649
Acid condition of rain, the, 10
Aconite root mistaken for horse-radish,
223
Acreage, changes in, table of, 408
Acts, land transfer, evils of, 686
,, of Parliament, and failure of
crops, 602
Adam Smith, 651
Advance in the imports of cheese, 416
,, of dairy farming, 435
,, of rights in land, 639
Advantages of bee-keeping, 567
,, of fruit culture, 449
,, of small drain pipes, 377
to the labouring classes of
small holdings, 297
Adversity, teachings of, 393
Aeration of the soil, necessity of, 371
.Esthetic acres at aesthetic prices, 154
.Esthetics, principle of, 151
African gold mines, losses in, 261
Agitation for rating ground rents, 322
Agitators, disagreement among, 323
fallacies of, 323
Agreements between landlord and
tenant not wisely framed, 513
Agricultural areas, creation of new, 581
chemistry, 759
colleges, arguments against,
352
,, colleges, usefulness of, 352
Compensation Act, 654
condition preceded by the
pastoral, 633
Agricultural depression and tithes, 729
,, depression, near end of, 136
,, depression, worst year
of, 403
education, 349.
,, education, a wide subject,
362
,, education in our Universi-
ties, 361
,, experts as agents, 360
r
Holdings Act, 295, 513
,, a bad model,
386
,, ,, a failure, 380
,, ,, conducive to
costly litigation, 380
,, Holdings Act, effect of,
38i
,, hopelessly-
bad in construction, 380
,, Holdings Act, pitfalls of,
677
working of, 382
,, horses, improvement in,
551
,, improvement, position of,
385
lands developed into build-
ing sites, 341
,, lands, minerals under, 774
,, machinery and electro
motors, 757
,, produce, stores for the
direct distribution of,
526
,, products, higher prices for,
394
,, rents, rise of, 645
statistics, 1891, 410
Agriculture and electricity, 753
,, allurements of, 49
and health, 13
,, a new epoch in. 685
872
LAND I
Agriculture, a period of prosperity for,
392
,, a period of prosperity set-
ting in for, 388
,, efforts for the advancement
of, 400
,, frequently starved for want
of means, 508
,, future of, 426
imperial interest of, 483
,, in rural and middle class
schools, teaching of, 508
v neither a science nor an
art, 595
,, of Denmark, transformed
by butter-making, 437
,, technical instruction in,
353
fat
Agriculturists, fatal errors -of, 601
,, work, interest of, 114
Air, coldness of, in valleys, 313
examination of the, for microbes, 8
,, pollution, 10
sewage in valleys, 315
Alabaster and gypsum, beds of, 774
Alcohol and chloral, danger of the use
of, 150
Alienation of capitalists from land, 3
Allotment Acts, development of, 134
,, problem, solution of, 459
Allotments, 5
,, at Nottingham, success of,
459
Alum shales of Whitby, 775
Alternate good and bad farming, disad-
vantage of, 385
America, fall in the value of land in, 404
American apples, 458
American and English methods of
fruit growing, 458
,, breweries, ceased to pay
dividends, 248
,, cheap beef production, end of,
398
,, railroad stocks, 262
,, railways, comparative prices
of stock of, 256
Ancient British barrows, 123
,, Babylonian deeds, 840, 841
,, country homes, 53
,, homes, defying the ravages ol
time, 51
,, individual rights, restriction of,
577
,, lands, 837
,, partnership in land, 838
Angora rabbit, the, 560
,, wool, 561, 562
Animal food imports, 411
,, life and vegetation, 9
Annual amount derived from cattle, 536
Annual value of tithes, decrease in, 729
Antiquity of individual rights to land,
39
,, of the desire to possess land,
845
Ants, 211
Apic acid, medicinal properties of,
5 66
Apiculture, ample room for, 570
Appeal against the land tax, 747
Apple evaporation in Norfolk, 486
,, tree, profit from one, 453
Apples, varieties of, 468, 469
Arable acreage, restriction of, 517
, , land and dairy farming, 438
Arboriculture, 592
Area of roots, decline in, 410
Areas, computation of, 625
Argentine and Uruguayan stocks,
100,000,000 lost in, 258
Arguments against agricultural colleges,
352
,, in favour of free trade, 655
Aristocratic west, the, 127
Arithmetic and fruit growing, fallacy
of, 443
Art, for its own sake, 54
,, landscapes, and landscapes in
Nature, 151, 152
,, of angling, fascination of the, 176
,, of measuring, the, 619
Articles of luxury to be paid for at their
proper value, 153
Artifice of modern luxury, the, 112
Artificial famine of the corn laws, 65 1
,, manures, satisfactory result of
well selected, 368
,, recuperation, 150
Artistic cottage, an, more satisfactory
than a shoddy palace, 49
Ashbourne Act, the, 806
Assessment of values, 736
,, committees, 738
,, fallacious doctrine of, 739
Atmosphere of Manchester, 10
,, polluted, gradations of, 8
Atmospheric condition of England,
variety of, 52
,, conditions of the English
climate augment the
grace of our landscapes,
the, 52
,, impurities, 8
Attractions of a country life, 141
,, of the country, n
Australia, scanty rainfall in, 813
,, a pastoral country, 814
,, for the Australians, 811
Australasia, English homes in, 809
,, always a great pastoral
industry in, 817
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
Autobiography of a company promoter,
265
Average cost of draining land, 378
,, investor, risks attending the,
of ai
,, value of an acre of wheat, 395
Avoidance of pools and swamps in
land, 16
,, of pulmonary complaints, 148
Axe, the abuse of, 594
Ayrshire cow, milk from an, 542
B.
BACK-YARD, the prison-like, 306
Bacon, " On Gardens," 59.
Bad effect of a wet harvest, 390
Baden-Baden of England, the, 600
Bad harvests and low prices, conjunc-
tion of, 401
" Bad times," not for the careful fruit
grower, 452
Baa times teach economy in labour, 393
Balance of power between land and
life, the, 1 8
Banks, extensive losses in, 247
Bank stoppages, 247
Barley, 603
,, and oats, immense improvement
in, 432
,, ,, reduction in the supply
of, 3?8
has held its price better than
other grains, 603
Barren land rendered productive, 289
Bath stone, 780
Beans, 605
,, method of dressing land for, 606
Beauty of the rainbow, 120
,, uses of, blindness to the, 595
Beddgelert, village of, 154, 158
Beef, exclusive breeding for, 416
,, two-year-old, 545
Bee-keeping, advantages of, 567
Bee products, 566
Bees fertilizing fruit blossoms, 60
ignorance of the habits of, 207
,, importance of, in fruit growing,
480
,, use of, to fruit growers, 114
,, wax, 570
Beet, 607
Belgian hare, the, 560
Beneficial movement, a, 162
Best farmed land always the earliest,
5"
,, form of tenant right, 384
Bilateral contracts, 639
Birches, "slumbering and liquid trees,"
' 64
Bird economy, a feature in, 144
Birds, beauty of, 216
Black ant, conical nests of the, 69
Blackberries, 472
Blackberry, change in, 428
Black death, ravages of, 650
" Black earth " of Russia, 768
" Black year," the, 403
Blindness to the uses of beauty, 595
Blue clay, 786
Blue John Mine, the, 775
Book learning, not the best part of
human knowledge, 94
,, of Nature, the, 105
Boscobel oak, the, 54
Botany, educational worth of, 221, 222
,, effort required to study, 218
,, elementary knowledge of, de-
sirable, 224
,, embryonic stage of, 219
inexhaustibleness of the study
of, 219
,, pleasure derived from, 219
,, value of, 218, 221
Boulder clay, 760
Boundary of the Britons, 126
Bracing influences of country games,
139
Brahma-Dorking, the, 574
Bradford clay, the, 786'
Breeding ewes, value of, 611
sheep, 557
Breweries, financial position of, 239
;3>ooo,ooo lost in, 239
Brick earths, 789
Brick houses in towns, depressing effect
of, 34
Bricks and mortar, our fondness for, 141
Brigadier Mackintosh, 53
British broad acres, 2, 4
,, ,, definiteness of, 153
, , Dairy Farmers' Association, the,
435
,, Dairy Institute, the, 440
,, farmers, practicality of, 349
,, farms, too large for profitable
occupation, 511
farming, greatest curse of, 556
,, prairies near to England, 819
,, territory, vast extent of, 819
Britons, a deteriorated race of, 125
Broad acre gardens, 306
,, ,, yet to be deve-
loped, 309
,, investments, tangibility of,
, 2 53
,, value of, 253
Broad acres, diversion of capital from,
236
8 74
LAND
Broad acres, men thirst for, 310
,, unpopularity of investments
in, 236
Brood mares, 554
Browning on ' Sunrise," 93
Building lands, 343
,, ,, wisdom of buying, 343
,, land, who shall determine
what is, 335
,, op rations advantageous to
the community, 284
Bullocks, early fattening of, a question
of good feeding, 424
,, young, gain of weight in, per
week, 423, 424
,, ,, saleability of, 423
Buried forests. 578
Bush fruits, profitableness of, 451
,, ,, summer pruning of, 466
,, table of life of, 478
Business centres, large towns as, 1 1
Butter and cheese, decrease in the home
supplies of, 417
,, ,, home produce and
imports compared, 410
,, and margarine, net imports of,
416
,, and parsnips, 608
,, consumption, increase in, 440
Butterflies and moths, difference be-
tween, 210
Butterfly, the beautiful, 209
Butter, home made, consumption of, 437
,, imported, consumption of, 437
,, making in France, 438
,, ,, Norway, 438
,, in Sweden, 438
C.
CABBAGE, the thousand-headed, 430
Caledonian Bank, ruin of the, 252
,, forest, the, 65
Calf, how to rear a, 544
Calves, advisability of good feeding for,
545
,, hand rearing, 544
,, wintering of, 544
Canada, sport in, 823
Canadian Dominion, the, 820
, , climate the finest in the world,
822
,, winters, coldness of, 822
Cancer and high levels, 313
Canning and evaporation of fruit com-
pared, 488
Cant of art, the, the art of Cant, 48
Capital frightened from the soil, 236
Capital in land, an excellent invest-
ment, 400
,, ,, need of a free flow
of, 388
,, lost to the country, 236
,, to land, necessity of attracting,
419
Capitalists, alienation of, from land, 3
Carbonic acid, absorption of, by plants,
9
Carboniferous limestones, 781
Careful observation, habits of, 107
Careless manner of cultivating, the, 602
Carelessness of modern Englishmen,
648
Carrots, 608
Cart horse stud book, the, 551
, , horses, representative breeds of, 5 5 1
Cattle, 535
,, and sheep, diminutive size of,
300 years ago, 420
,, early fattening of,
. 425 .
,, ,, increase in the quan-
tity of, in 1891, 411
annual amount derived from, 536
breeding on pasture lands, 543
census for 1891, 535
cheapest source of good manure.
422
concentrated food for, 548.
cost per pound of live weight of,
549
daily increase of weight in, 549
Devon breed of, 538
Durham breeds of, 539
feeding, experiments in, 433
for market, ripening of, 423
great improvement in, 537
herds of, steady increase in, 535
increase of, in 1891, 517
long horned, 537
Norfolk and Suffolk polls, 541
of Scotland, 541
periodical weighings of, 549
prices of pedigree, 540
ranch interests, decline of, 398
red, of West Somerset, 537
shorthorn, 539
statistics for 1891, 535
sufferings of, from insanitation,
26
tuberculosis in, 26
weight of, 538
white faced, 538
Cereals, 60 1
,, imports of, increase in, 402
,, of all plants the most neglected,
43.1
Chair of agriculture, a, 360
Chalk, composition of, 794
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
875
Chalk soil, value of, 313
,, subsoil and dry atmosphere, 312
Chalky districts, cool air of, 313
,, soil, advantage of a, 311
Change in the cultivation of root crops.
369
' Change of air, ' 37
Changes in acreage, table of, 408
Changing seasons of the year, 137
Characteristics of a fee tail, 699
Charm of the aspect of the clouds, the,
119
("harms of rock and coast, the, 103
,, of the country to town-bred
people, 1 02
Chaucer's opinion of the security of a
country life, 77, 78
Chaucer, quotation from, 78
Cheap beef production, end of Ameri-
can, 398
,, frozen mutton does not affect the
price of British mutton, 398
.. land and cheap transfer, 707
,, locomotion, 141
meat making, era of, departing,
406
Cheese, advance in the imports of, 416
., home-made, consumption of,
. 437
., imported, consumption of, 437
,, making and County Councils,
440
., ,, industry, an extended,
440
,. value of, 440
Chemical constituents of the soil, the
most valuable, 365
Cherries, varieties of, 471
Chest complaints and pine forests, 9
Chicago, rapid rise of, 339
Chief feature of the new agriculture,
650
Children's holiday fund, the, 159
Chilliogham cattle, 536
China clay, 785
Choked drains, evil of, 587
Christ's propitiatory death, conse-
quences of, 868
Church dues, 723
Churches, the history of England,
writ in stone, 53
Cities jar against our sensibilities, 50
., vaster than Rome, 163
Civilization, result of, 145
Clay beds of fine, value of, 790
blue, 786
component parts of. 785
fire, 786
gault, 788
soil and oats, 765
soil, incorrect use of the term, 785
Clay lands and land drainage, 375
the Boulder, 789
the Bradford, 786
the Kimmeridge, 787
the London, 788
the Oxford. 787
white china, 785
Clays, 784
,, impervious, 597
,, for terra-cotta, 786
,, high commercial value of some,
784
,, may be worked with profit, 784
,, usual colours of, 786
Clayey soils adapted for arable purposes,
601
Climate a result of geological condi-
tions. 767
" Cloister and the hearth," the, 54
Cluster pine, the, on sand dunes, 580
Clydesdale horses, 553
Coal, 795
,, abnormal position of, 798
,, abundance of, in the British Isles.
795, 796
,, at Dover, 796
,, composition of, 797
,, field and mountain lake, simila-
rity of, 755
,, quantity untouched, 796
,, the basis of wealth, 770
,, the foundation of our wealth,
795
Cockroaches, 212
Coleoptera, interest of, 212
College-trained farmers, failure of, 353
Combination amongst farmers, neces-
sity of, 531
,, ., importance
of, 524
Commercial enterprises, losses in. 240,
241
,, experience, a, men may be
induced to imitate, 304
Commodities, price of, not likely to
advance, 507
Commutation of tithes, 727
Company directors, incompetence of,
237
,, promoter, autobiography of,
265
,, promoter, the unscrupulous,
230
,, promoters, dodges of, 270
,, promoting, chicanery of, 267
-269
Companies in liquidation, 244
,, wound up in 1889, 244, 245
1890, 245
Comparison between country and town
life, 31
87-6
LAND
Comparison between town and country
in reference to health, 6
,, between the health of the
town and country dwel-
ler, 7
,, of death rate in town and
country, 7
Compensation to tenants for actual im-
provements, 380
Competition in dairy produce, 399
Complicated system of land transfer in
the United States, 713
Compulsory registration of title to land,
694
-Computation of areas, 625
Concentrated food for cattle, 548
Condition of land conveyance in the
Bahamas, 712
Conjunction of bad harvests and low
prices, 401
Conservation of storm water, 17
Considerations of reclamation of land,
31.9
Consolidation of farms, 651
Consumer and producer, necessity of
bringing closer together, 525
Consumption of meat per head, increase
of, 413
Contemporaneous sports, 166
Contracts, ancient Babylonian, 840
843
Contrast between town and country
life, 307
Conversion of a forlorn waste into fer-
tile pasture, 14
Conveyance of land, cost of, 707
,, ,, simple and cheap,
711
Cool air of chalky districts, 313
Co-operative Firewood Association, the,
272
Copper ore, 772
Coral rag as a building stone, 780
Corn, benefit of a rise in the price of,
305
,, crops, decrease of, 408
,, decrease of home supplies of,
417
,, fields, golden richness of, 103
,, imports of, for 1870 and 1890
compared, 418
,, laws, artificial famine of, 651
,, master manufacturers of, 647
,, net imports of, 418
Costs of purchasing land, 718
Cotton seed, imports of, 409
Council Bluffs, value of land in, 340
Country life, advantages of, 130
,, ardent lovers of, 163
,, ,, attractions of, 141
benefit of, 169
Country life, charms of, 101
delights of, 104
description of, 32
drawbacks of, 120
economy of, 142
endless pleasures of, 105
enhancement of the plea-
sures of, 147
hope for a fresh era of,
40
infinite preference of, to
town, 118
influence of, apparent in
Shakespeare's writings,
influence of, upon Shakes-
peare, 5
length of, above that ol
towns, 135
Milton's familiarity with,
old type of, largely faded
away, 40
permanent benefit of, 61
pleasures of, 163
poets on, 73
restfulness of, 118
superiority of, 171
Tennyson on, 73
the best means of main-
taining health, 61
the longing for, 37
the "misery" of, 42
the natural life, 1 1 1
the peace and quietness
of, 45
,, the physical and moral
comfort of, 30
,, varied advantages of, 135
air, essential to young children,
169
attractions of the, 1 1
breeding, ashamed of our, 36
decrease of employment in
the, 131
depression in. cannot last for
ever. 46
desertion of, by the man of
moderate means, 46
districts, in: migration from, 6
early morning in the, 42
games, bracing influence of,
139
home, pleasures of, 105
homes the happiest, 36
houses, great reduction of rents
of, 46
inducements to exercise in, n
into town, evolution of, 593
joy, sources of, 84
lanes, joyous rambles in, 107
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
8 77
Country, modern revolt against the, 39
" Country mouse," the, 38
Country, pleasures of the, 29, 47
,, ,, and interests, IOI
,, products, absolute freshness of,
in the country, 169
pursuits, 1 66
salubrity of, 135
superior healthfulness of, 106
,, the, absolute stillness of, 117
the, an earthly paradise, 42
the, chief delight of, 121
, . the delight of early rising in
the, 41
,, the, infinitely more endurable
than the town. 45
Country's aspect, the, result of our fore-
fathers' work, 34
County councils and cheese-making, 440
Cowper on " Conscience," 98
on "Hope," 97
,, on the country, 80
,, quotations from, 80, 83,84, 91?
92, 94, 97, 98, 99
Cow, yield of milk per, greater now than
in 1870, 416
Cranborne Chase, excavations in, 122
Craze for felling trees, 593
Creation of new agricultural areas, 581
Creature pests, extermination of, 604
Crimson heather of the Cairngorm
Mountains, 65
Cropping, change of, necessity for, 605
,, restrictions, lawyer - made.
387
Crops and stock, improvement of, 427
,, rotation of, 513
Cross-bred wheats, 431
Crusade against growing timber, a, 594
Cultivation of fruit, 442
of hardy fruit, systematic,
448
of land, charm of, 317
., of the soil, chief object of,
Cumbersome and vexatious land trans-
fer, 721
Curious details of Egyptian land laws,
833
Currants, varieties of, 472
Curtailment of landlords' rights, 640
Customs, foolish, allowed to exist under
the misuse of the word ' practi-
cal," 21
D.
DAILY Lire, artificial routine of, in
towns, 107
" Daily News ''on the Glasgow bank
failure, 250
"Daily Telegraph" on the Glasgow
bank failure, 251
Dairies, use of separator in, 439
Dairy affects the value of land, how the,
436
,, cows, improvement in. 416
,, of the Channel Islands, 543
,, exhibitions, value of, 439
,, farmer, tremendous scope for, 437
,, Farmers' Association, the British,
435
,, farming, 435
advance of, 435
,, ,, and arable land, 438
,, ,, belief in the prospects
of, 441
,, modern growth of, 435
,, practice, marked improvement in,
393
., produce and the Factory System,
5i6
,, ,, better system of distri-
bution wanted for, 399
,, ,, competition in, 399
,, ,, increase in, 548
market for, 437
,, schools and practical work, 354
,, introduction of, 436
Dance of death, the, 211
Dandelion, 504
Death and life, the mystery of, 97
,, rate in town and country com-
pared, 7
Debt of Peru, loss on the, 258
Decline in the potato crop, 410
,, of cattle ranch interests, 398
,, of health and agriculture
synonymous, 13
,, of imports of meat, 415
,, of the wheat area, 404
Decoying, secret of, 203
Decoys, 201
,, decay of, 201
,, description of, 202
,, interest of, 201
,, number of wild fowl taken in,
201
Decrease in the annual value of tithes,
729
,, of corn crops, 408
,, of home supplies of corn, 417
Deeds, ancient Babylonian, 840, 841
Deep cultivation, injury of, 364
,, drainage proved unsatisfactory,
375
,, drains, 368
Definition of waste lands, 491
Degeneracy in physical strength, 6
Deluded shareholders, 231
Demand for foreign timber, 590
Demolition of hedges, 594
878
LAND
Depopulation an indication of decay,
448
Depressing influences, 4
Depression, periods of, 281
the, of 1879, 401
,, worst year of agricultural,
403
Depth of land drains, 375
" Deserted Village," the, 82
,, ,, lament of the,
82
Desirability of fruit growing, 383
,, of a wider diffusion of land,
720
Desire for luxury, gratification of, 152,
153
Desolate state of the Isle of Ely, 14
Deterioration of town dwellers, 6
Development of Egyptian agriculture,
835
,, of waste common lands,
496
Devonshire, one of the poorest parishes
in, 299
Diamond tin, 773
Difference of rain water in town and
country, 10
Diffusion of land, a wide, 4
Dignity of rural labour, 78
Diminution of labour in country
districts, 131
Diminutive size of cattle and sheep, 300
years ago, 420
Directors' Liability Act, the, 233
,, ,, evasion of,
233
,, shameless, 238
Disadvantage of alternate good and bad
farming, 385
Diseases of rabbits, remedies for, 564,
565
Districts, rural, not allowed to starve, 4
Dodges of company promoters, 270
Dogs, 113
,, charm of break ing in, 185
,, sagacity of, 185
,, use of, in decoying wild fowl, 203
Domestic pets, 143
Downs, the, 314
Dragon fly, the, 21 1
Drainage, engineer, first duty of, 372
ethics of, 373
,, of land, 17
,, neglect of, 14
,, the first essential to
health, 16
,, principles of, 16
,, proper, of land conduces to
health, 17
,, system of, 368
,, urban system of, 147
Draining land, average cost of, 378
thorough, required on millions
of acres, 386
Drains, evil of choked, 587
Drapers' Gardens, ground rent of, 341
Drummond of Hawthornden, 87
,, ,, quotations
from, 88
" Dry country," 814
,, soil, advantages of, 311
subsoil, necessity of, 312
Drying fruit, 485
Duke of Richmond's commission, 677
Dulness of village life, 135
,, the disease of the unoccupied,
135
Dummy directors, 237
Dust from dry roads, injurious effects of,
on animals, 21
Dutch rabbit, the, 560
Duties and responsibilities of landlords,
679
Dynamos, 756
E.
" EARLIEST OF ALL " wheat, 431
Earliest document relating to land
tenure, 837
Early fattening of sheep and cattle, 425
,, maturity of live stock, the, 420
advance of,
413
,, morning, ozone-laden fragrance
of, 143
,, tints of spring, the, 101
Earth, development of latent powers of,
317
,, great laboratory of the, 1 20
Easy transfer of land, 707
Economic value of rock-salt, 773
Economy of country life, 142
Education a matter for the young, 358
,, benefits of, 136
Effect of acid condition of rain, the, 10
,, protection, 667
,, railway enterprise, 164
Effects of fog in towns, 10
Egg importation, a standing rebuke, 575
Eggs, imports of, constant increase in
the, 417
Egypt, value of land in, 832
Egyptian agriculture, development of,
835
,, land laws, curious details of,
833
,, land taxes, 833
,, lands, 824
Electric lighting companies, startling
facts concerning, 246
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
879
Electrical energy and wind power, 758
Electricity and agriculture, 753
and plant life, 753
the coming motor power,
618
Electro motors and agricultural machin-
ery, 757
Elevated situations, cooler m summer,
312
warmer in winter,
312
Elevating power of Nature, the, 84
Elizabethan poets, the, 87
Emigrators from the country seldom
return, 134
Employment for the finest tastes in the
country, 101
,, want of, in cities, 133
Enclosures, 25
Encroachments of landlord, 641
Engine, application of the, to making
roads, 24
,, necessary on any farm of 100
acres, 23
,, the pulsating heart of the farm,
24
Engines, 23
,, application of, 23
,, sewage pumping: by, 23
,, steam, development of, in
agriculture, 23
England a country of large landowners,
652
,, British prairies near to, 819
,, needs exploring and preserv-
ing, 56
,, the subtle charm of, 39
,, the mother land of her colo-
nies, 8 10
,, the world's jam factory, 476
English, a country bred people, 36
,, and Canadian winters, com-
parison of, 822
,, atmosphere, the, and Turner,
5?
,, brain, the, 47
,, cultivator, deterioration of,
H5
,, fruit, superiority of, 458
,, garden of Eden, an, 53
,, granite, abundance of, 782
,, homes in the Far South, 809
,, oats more wholesome than
foreign ones, 173
,, romance, the cradle of, 51
scenery, homelike beauty of,
32
Englishmen, carelessness of, 648
,, not all muscles and motion,
47
(i toughness" of, 812
Englishman, the typical, of the twen-
tieth century, 49
Enormous crop of strawberries, 457
,, demand for fruit, 458
Ensilage, 610
,, a substitute for roots, 6li
,, stacks, method of making,
612
,, system of, profitable, 610
,, wholesomeness of, 612
Entail and settlement of land, 697
law of, 699
Entails, barring of, 700
modern objections to, 701
Ephemeral ventures, millions sterling
sunk in, 238
Equivalent tables, 346
Era of cheap meat making departing,
406
Erroneous assessments, rectification of,
747
Error of manuring deeply, 370
Essex wheat lands, low rent of, 644
Estate, an, in "Wild Wales," descrip-
tion of, 154 157
,, settlement of an, form of, 701,
702
Estates, general mismanagement of,
683
, s in expectancy, 66 1
,, successful management of, 684
value of, increased by wise tree
planting, 591
Ethics of drainage. 373
Etiology, 220
Euclid, a teacher of surveying, 619
Evaporated fruit, value of, 486
Ever-operating miracle, an, 137
Evidence of early times buried in the
soil, 129
Evils of city life, remedy for, 132
,, of the Land Transfer Acts, 686
Examination of the air for microbes, 8
Excellence of English honey, 568
Excessive assessments, appeal against,
738
Exchange of town for rural life, 131
Exemption from payment of tithes,
725
Exemptions from land tax, 745
Exercise, inducements to, in the coun-
try, ii
,, in towns, 1 1
Exhaustion of forests, 597
Expenses of dealing with land after
registration, 716
Experiments in cattle feeding, 433
Extended use of forage crops, 426
Extensive use of Purbeck marble, 777
Extermination of creature pests, 604
Extraordinary tithe rent charge, 728
88o
LAND :
Extravagant claims of tenants for im-
provements, 380
Ezekiel's prophecy, 864
F.
FACTS in favour of investments in land,
275-278
Failure of college trained farmers, 353
,, crops and Acts of Parliament,
602
the Agricultural Holdings
Act, 380
,, the " Land Transfer Act,
1876," 690
Fair prices for wheat during the next
decade, 398
Fallacies and facts concerning fruit
cultivation, 442
Fall in the value of land in America,
404
Farm agreements, old forms of, ini-
quitous, 677
buildings, insufficiency of, 385
,, ,, the owner the proper
person to erect, 385
,, covenants, restrictive, 387
,, dilapidations, 294
,, house and suitable buildings,
estimate for, 295
,, lands, comparatively little un-
settled in America, 405
,, orchards, scandalous condition
of, 3 86
,, produce, imports of in 1890, 530
Farming, a source of pleasure and
profit, 281
,, capital has been greatly
reduced, 682
experience the only teacher,
geology a key to, 769
,, how made profitable, 506
,, intensive, the only paying
system, 509
,, perfect system of, removal of
obstacles to a, 385
pleasures of, 58
,, profit in, depends on the
capital and capability of
the farmer, 511
,, profits of, unsatisfactory, 529
,, ,, not reaped in large
instalments, 518
prospects of, 390
,, systematic attention neces-
sary, 507
,, the most independent calling
in the world, 484
, , the satisfaction of good, 58
Farming, want of thought in, 514
',, what kind secures best
returns, 510
Farmer, a good, a benefactor to his
country, 58
,, the, stands close to Nature,
58
Farmers, British, labour under no
disabilities, 506
,, in leading strings, Scotch
idea of, 387
institutes, 358
,, prejudices of, 357
., the, deficient knowledge of
stockfeeding, 433
Farms, 338
,, advantages attendant on the
possession of, 57
buildings on, 292
consolidation of, 651
improving investments, 339
poor, fall in the rentals of,
510
refuse of, utilization of, 519
some, can be had for any rent,
296
Farmyard manure, value of, 462
,, sanitation, 25
the, 25
,, the, a centre for the pro-
duction of disease, 26
Fatal errors of agriculturalists, 60 1
Fat cattle, fallacy of estimating value
by handling, 550
Faults of the landowner, 646
Feebleness of the town dweller, 10
Feeding rabbits, 563
Fee tail, a, 699
Felling trees, craze for, 593
Fens, reclamation of, 318
Fertile land always fertile, 289
Feudal tenure, the, 802-
Fever miasms in valleys, 315
Field book, the, 622
,, sports, a recreation, 57
Financial companies, losses in, 242
,, position of breweries, ^239
Fines and Recoveries Abolition Act,
700
Firewood, 597
imports of, 597
Fir, the, an old world tree, 64
,, the tree of the mountains, 64
,, forest, an impressive object, 66
the, 63
,, ,, the, and Goethe, 67
,, ,, the, unlike any other scene
in Nature, 67
,, ,, weird mystery of the, 67
,,' forests, awe-inspiring stillness of,
67
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
88 I
Fir forests a ban to epidemic visita-
tion, 66
,, juniper bushes in, 68
,, ,, o( Rothiemurchus, 65
perennial aspect of, 67
resinous odour of, 68
sanative influence of, 66
., tree*, as a shelter to cultivated
highlands, 72
perpetuation of, 71
picturesqueness of old, 65
slow growth of, 71
., tree thinnings, useful for many
domestic purposes, 72
timber, as a means of rent,
72
wood, adapted for ornamental
furniture, 71
,, adapted for the breasts of
violins, 71
beauty of the grain of, 71
fire, pleasant fragrance of,
71
hard texture of, 70
splinters used as torches,
70
,, woods, rare insects in, 69
Fire clay, 786
Firs, the aromatic scents of, 64
,, the evergreen link between the
ages, 65
First duty of the drainage engineer, 372
,, hand knowledge, perennial sweet-
ness of, 208
,, registration of land, expenses of,
715
Fishermen, lovers of Nature, 167
Fishing, 175
charms of, 176
enduring charm of, 176
enjoyment of, 167
for trout, 177
skill required for, 176
tackle, 1 80
variety of, 177
Fixity of tenure, fair rent, and free sale,
805
Flapper shooting, 186
Flowers, increased beauty of, in late
years, 60
Fluor spar, 774
Fly and bee orchis, the, 53
,, fishing, 178-180
Fluke disease, the, 555
Fodder crops, as a winter food for cows,
Si8
Fog and tubercular disease, 148
,, cause of, 148
,, in towns, 10
Foliage, majestic glory of, 143
,, unhealthiness of dense, 31$
Food growth barely keeps pace with
population in India, 405
,, stuffs, sixfold increase of imports
of, 418
,, supplies, our dependence on
foreign countries for, 418
supply, our, 407
Forage crops, extended use of, 426
Foreigner to be fought with his own
weapons, 350
,, subsidizing the, 599
Foreign competition and the price of
land, 401
,, reduces the value
of land, 401
,, ,, strain of, becom-
ing lighter, 394
feeding stuff?, imports of, 409
food imports, quantity of, 411
loans, gigantic loss on, 252
stocks, great losses in, 254, 281
list of, for 1891, 254,
2 55
,, timber, great demand for, 590
Forestry, 584
,, a new era of, 586
,, general failure of, 587
,, no State control of, 585
,, true economy of, 586
Forest trees, reckless sale of, 585
,, lands, regular income from,
585
,, marble, 780
Forests, exhaustion of, 597
Forlorn waste, converted into fertile
pasture, a, 14
Form of settlement of an estate, 702
land, 698
Fortunes by land buying, 275
Fox hunting, 172
,, ,, farmers to be paid for
losses sustained through,
172
,, ,, waning popularity of
172
France, love of land in, 668
Fraudulent promotion of companies^
instances of, 233, 234
Free church, free schools, 632
,, competition with the world has
done its worst to agriculture,
404
contract, fallacy of, 633
land, 673
market the common ground, 656
trade, a moral tonic, 667
and land, 656
arguments in favour of, 655
or protection, 655
special excellence of, 667
what is it ? 655
^ L
882
LAND :
Freehold allotments by instalments,
459
,, the untaxed, 658
French and English labourers com-
pared, 512
Fresh air, 7
,, ,, benefit to be derived from,
162
,, ,, club, a, 160-162
,, ,, for poor London children,
159
,, ,, necessity of, 132
Freshwater limestone, 781
Friendship with God's works, 106
Frontages to oceans and rivers, 576
" Frowning and gloomy " winter f 88
Frozen mutton traffic, 398
Fruit canning, 487
,, culture, intensive, 493
? , on bad land not remunera-
tive, 451
. revival of, 449
,, ,, striking advantages of, 449
' ,,' -crops, some estimates of, 450
,, cultivation, 442
,, danger of growing, in valleys,
' 460
,, (distribution, ridiculous system of,
598
,, drying and evaporation, 485
. V, enormous demand for, 458
,, evaporation, description of, 487
,, exchanges, 598
; , farm, desirable position for a, 479
' ;, farming, successful, 458, 459
,, farms, easily let, 383-
,, first class, remunerative prices
for, 458
,, gardening, 453
,, growing, 474
'-,, ,, American and, English
methods, 458
,, and science, 482
,, ,, a prosperous business,
,, ,, artificial manures in, 462
,, ,, as ah adjunct to mixed
farming, 476
a truth which science
teaches in, 445
best soil for, 461
by arithmetic, 442
cry in favour of, 475
deep culture essential,
461
desirability of, 383
earliest varieties desir-
able, 481
efficient draining neces-
sary for, 461
".
-
Fruit growing, encouraging examples
of, 449
,, ,, heavy clayey soils un-
suitable for, 461
,, ,, importance of bees in,
480
,, ,, in Kent, success of, 451
,, ,, in Lincolnshire, 452
,, ,, in the Fens, 452
,, ,,' . landmarks for guidance
in, 443
,, ,, liberal supplies of fer-
tilizers necessary, 479
,, liquid manure in, 462
.;, ,, manuring for, 462
,, ,, methods of culture, 460
,, , more profitable than
farm crops, 448
, ,, on strong clayey soils,
. 452
,, . ,, On the Surrey hills, 492
. ,, .pays the best, 453
,, ,, planting, 463
,, r ;,." = popular delusions in,
1 447
,, ,, sites and shelter for, 460
,, ,, soil and its preparation
for, 461
,, ,, suitable ground for,. 480
,, worst soil for, 461
,, preserving, 486
Fruits, modification and improvement
of, 428.
,, profitable nature of soft, 456
.,, varieties of 467
Fruit trees at Maidstone, 449
,, ,, dangers of .planting too
deeply, 463
,, ,, dwarf, poplars as a shelter
for, 460
,, ,, inferior -varieties of, exhaust
the land, 445
,, ,, -judicious plan ting of, enhance
the value of land, 444
,, ,, on dwarf stocks, quick
.returns from, 481
,, ,, on grazing land, 455
,, ,, pruning,' 464
,, , v staking-tall, 464
,, ,, table of approximate life of,
478
,, young, folly of planting .on
old orchards, 445
Function of hydraulic motor, 615
Functions' of leaves, study ,ot, 220
Funds, capital in, and in land, 643
Fungi, 69 , -
Fuller's earth, composition of, 786 ,
the, 775 .
Future of; agriculture,; 426
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
88 3
G.
GARDEN, advantages of the, 59
,, a, often gives a glimpse of
wild Nature, 60
,, bees should always be kept in
a, 60
44 Garden for the Gardener," the, 112
Garden of Eden, the, 857
pea, modification of, 428
,, pleasures of, 59
Gardeners' efforts, the, often only
appreciated by results, 113 ,
Gardening, a healthy occupation, 168
,, a profitable pastime, ir
,, the advantage to health of,
. 6j
,, the purest of human plea-
.-.ures, 59
,. varied interest of, 168
Gascbigne, quotation from, 78
Gault clay, 788
Gavelkind, law of, 80 1
General disuse of stucco, 784
,, Election, a, and agitation, 322
General-- Pitt Rivers' Exhibition, 271,
128
Geological' conditions, climate a result
of, 767
Geology, a key to. fanning, 769
, agricultural, 759
,, value of a knowledge of, 764
G. P. (X, the, as a distributor of
fruit, 477
Geotle; craft, the, a heaven-sent boon,
176
Geomet*y t . the father of, 620
George Norton, M.A., 57
Gigantic loss of capital in public com-
panies,- 244, 246
Glacial drift, 760
Gladstone Irish Land Acts, the, 654
Glasgow Bank, enormous loss of
capital in, 247
. ., ', ,, failure, misery caused
by the, 249
,, , x shareholders, absolute
ruin of, 249
,, ,, the failure of, 249
Glauconite, 763
God's first temples, 137
,, law in the Jewish Church, 72.2
,, promise to Abraham, 859
works, wonders and glories of,
208
Goethe and the fir forest, 67
Goldsmith on the decay of the naiion,
82
.,, quotations from, 82, 83
Gpodly. heritage, a, 102
Golden plover shooting, 198
Gold in Wales, 772
,, mines, losses in, 242 246
,, . mining companies, 260
Golf, 169
Good natured farmer, the, and stunted
Londoniboy, 161
,, pasture, value of, 383
, , tenant, a, kk ms more successfully
than the landlord, 293
,, tenants, importance of attracting,
683
Goodwill between country dwellers, the,
165
Gooseberries, varieties of, 472
Gooseberry bushes, profitable nature of,
.480.
,, pruning of, 466
Government examiner of title to land,
a, 707,
,, stocks, 236
Gradations of polluted atmosphere, 8
Gradual absorption of the country by
tfie town, the, 308
,,. purchase of land, the, 134
Granite, 782
Grass and pasture for arable lands,
substitution of, 131
Grave mounds, 123
Grazing season of i89i r unprofitable-
ness of, 392
Greatest wealth, the, ihexHrest poverty,
132
Greenery, paradise of, 593
Greene, Robert, on contentment, 86
Greene, quotations fronii 86
Green mint, 502
peas, 605
Grief and na( lire,; 149
Grouse driving, 187, 190, 192
shooting, i 86'
,, ^description of, 188
Growing timber, a crusade against, 594
Growth of wheat in- Europe has failed
^to keep pace with;population, 397
Ground rent reversions, 329 r
rents, 343
agitation for rating, 322
desire to purchase, 343
direct assessment of, can-
. not be supported, 329
first popularity of, 343
money invested in, 326
rating .of, 326
values, taxing of, 322
, , to be assessed on capital
value, whether occu-
pied or vacant, 325
Grabber, use of the, wards off mildew,
369
Guernsey .cattle, 543
Gunner's joy, the, 184
884
LAND
H.
HALWILL Manor Estate, the, 298
Hampshire Down sheep, superiority of,
424
,, freedom from cancer in,
313
Hansard Publishing Union, the, 247
I lappiness, essence of, to not know we
are enjoying it, 39
" Happy autumn fields," the message
of, to the human soul, 29
Happy homes, 146
Hardy fruits for special positions,
varieties of, 472, 473
Harvest, wet, bad effect of, 390
Hay, injury to, by wet weather, 390
Health and agriculture, 13
,, ,, decline of,
synonymous, 13
,, and pleasure to be found near
home, 164
,, land the test of, 13
,, of the town and country dweller
compared, 7
,, in town and country compared,
6
Healthiness of moderate elevations, 312
Healthy home for children, advantage
of a, 311
Heathen graves, 125
Hedgerows, beauty of, 142
Hedges, demolition of, 594
Hedging and ditching, 114
Henry George and the law of contract,
633
Herbs and herb culture, 499
,, large imports of, from abroad,
499
methods of raising, 499 505
nature of, 500505
spaces between fruit trees to be
utilized for growing, 499
varieties of. 500, 501
where chief supply obtained
from, 499
" Hermit " on the pleasures of a country
life, in
Hero of Preston, the, 54
Herrick, quotations from, 87
Robert, 86
Hidebound pastures, 368
High class fruit, always a special
market for, 478
Higher prices for agricultural products,
394
High farmers stand the strain of
depression better than low farmers,
High level, advantages of a, 311
,, levels, and cancer, 313
High railway rates and fruit growing,
400
,, rate of stamp duty, 718
Higher wages, attraction of, to rural
labourers, 133
Hill slopes, profitable utilization of, 490
,, ,, terrace cultivation of, 496
Himalayan rabbit, the, 560
Histology, 219
Historic clock, a, 153
History of rights of property in land,
631
,, the law of entail, 699
Hoeing root crops, value of, 369
Holiday in the country, a, 170
Home colonization, 134
,, and imported meats, percentages
of, 41$
,, and imported meats, total con-
sumption per head of popu-
lation, 415
in the country, repose of a, 306
production of meat, 414
supplies of corn, decrease of, 417
supply of meat, 413
the pleasures of our, 103
Homeric hymn to Demeter, quotation
from, 75
Honest labour, sanctity of, 858
Honey, adulteration of, 568
and wax from bees, 566
as a food , 567
English, excellence of, 568
fruit preserved in, 570
heat giving properties of, 567
one pound of, equal to two
pounds of butter, 569
,, vinegar, 570
Hop crop of 1891, 391
" Hope," by Cowper, quotation from,
97
Horace as a farmer, 76, 77
,, quotations from, 76, 77, 85
Horace's Sabine farm, 85
Horace, the Anacreon of the Augustan
age, 49
Hornblende granites, 783
Horse breeding, 553
Horse hoe, the, 369
Horses, 551
,, Clydesdales, 553
Shires, 551
Suffolks, 552
Horse-stingers, 211
Horticulture, improvement in, 430
" House," not home, 165
Houses for occupation, 345
,, shops, and cottages, 345
Housing of the working classes, 336
How far should a landowner improve
his land ? 290
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
88 5
Human happiness, basis of, 142
nature's love for flowers and
fruits, 809
1 tumidity of the air, injurious to life, 316
Hunting, 172
,, and cultivation of the soil to
go together, 174
,, an inducement to invest
money in land, 173
,, inherent in man, 199
,, makes farming popular, 173
,, usefulness of, in improving
breed of horses, 173
Hydraulic lime, 792, 793
,, motors, function of, 615
I.
IGNORANCE of poultry farming, 571
Imagination, a banquet which never
palls, 50
Immigration from country districts, 6
Imperial assessments on landed
property, 734
Importance of attracting capital to
land, 683
,, settlements of land,
697
Imported feeding stuffs, 408, 409
meat, 412
,, meat, great rise in per-
centage of, 415
Imports, duty on, 305 *
of animal food, 411
butter and margarine, 416
cereals, increase in, 402
cotton seed, 409
farm produce, in 1890, 530
maize, 409
meat, decline of, 415
,, net increase of, 413
Imposition of duty on imports, 305
Impoverished farms, necessary improve-
ments of, 294
Improved farms readily let, 384
,, method of working land, 60 1
Improvement in barley and oats, 432
,, dairy cows, 416
of crops and stock, 427
,, fruits, 428
Improvements in agricultural horses, 551
,, on farms, right of sale of,
384
Improving farms a safe investment, 288
Impurities, atmospheric, 8
Income lax, 739
> assessments, Schedules A
and B, 743
Increase in butter consumption, 440
cattle in 1891, 517
,, dairy produce, 548
of meat imports, 413
permanent pastures, 409
Individual rights to land, antiquity of,
839
Inducements to exercise in the country,
ii
Industrial revolution, an, 460
success, instances of, 300
" Influence of Natural Objects," quota-
tion from, 89
Influence of soils on live stock, 769
Inherent capabilities of the soil,
381, 579
Innate love of animals, birds and
flowers, the, 105
Insects and the microscope, 211
paucity of, 147
Institution, a recent, 159
,, for London, a most needed,
162
Instruments for levelling, 627
Insufficiency of farm buildings on most
holdings, 385
Insurance fund for loss of interest in
land, 695
Intemperance of town life, 133
Intensive fruit culture, 493
Interim interests, 332
Introduction of dairy schools, 436
Investment, an, giving healthy relaxa-
tion, 304
,, improving farms a safe,
288
Investments, 279
,, in broad acres, unpopu-
larity of, 236
,, in land, facts in favour
of, 275-278
,, on the Stock Exchange
and in land compared,
256
Investors, serious warning to, 254
Iodine from seaweed, 582
Ireland, landlords in, 642
Irish agricultural position, the present,
807
cattle, 541
Church Act, the, 804
Land Acts, the Gladstone, 654
, , unjustness of, 384
Land Question, ancient history
of, 802, 803
land system, 801
marbles, 781
passion for land, the, 808
trouble, the lapd system the root
of, 801
Iron pyrites, 773
886
Iron trade and the W^ikl'of Sussex, 771
Irrigation T>asiri syste'ih of, 829, 830
,, canal system of, 830
,, in Egypt, description! of, 829
Isaiah's song of joyv 96
Isle of Ely, desoVat^ state of; 14
" It is just Paradise," 102
"It is mine, "'76 ' : ;
Land
_
JEAN INGELOW on Nature, 94, 95
Jersey cattle, 5-43
Jewish polity, land in the, 850
Josiah Park es arid deep drainage, 375 ;
Judicious investment inland does pay,
293
Juniper bushes, atomatic- fragrance of,
68 (. ' >
K.
KENTISH rustic,; enjoyment of, 593 ;
Kimmeridge clay, 787
King Solomon's n>ines> 260
Kingsley's ",'pde- to, the North-east,
Wind," 89V 9Q. V
Kingsley, quotatipn/ffotp, 90
Knowledge of geology, value of a> 764
L. >v; .
LABOURERS, agricultural, French and
English compared, $12
Labouring claSses,V ad vantages to the,
of small holdings,- 29^
Lack of tenant rigfat, : 388
Lads' brigade, a t i6ii.
" Lady Bountiful, '*,< 1/70
Lady Hope on country* pleasures, 101,
Land, absolute ownership of, 700
, , . title -to, '-690
after registration, expenses of
dealing with, 716 .
alienatiori : of Capitalists from, 3
ancient par trierihip in, 838
and Free Trade, 656
and house investments, 338 -
and mineralfc776
and stone, 777 <
an indestructibly possession, 280
as ia food manufactory, 647
as a luxury, 151
as easily transferable as consols,
694
at jii per acre, 455
at seaside resorts, rise in value
of, 287
average cost of draining, 378
avoidance of pools and. swamps
in, 16
a wide diffusion of, 4
benefits derived from^ 280 u
best farmed, always the earliest,
5"
capital in, and in the'flinds,>643
,, value of, 291 1|
wisely expended in, will
yield a return, 296 v ' '
care needed in improvement of,
289
cheapness of in most English
counties, 45
conditions under which it ^was
held by ancient Jews, 853
conveyance in the Bahamas,
condition of, 712
costs of purchasing, 718
covered by water, recovery of,
is- - ' ; ; '
cultivation, 103
,, ofV calls forth 1 our,.
highest qualities, 482'
definition of, 279
demand increases for, but 'supply
cannot be increased, 287
desirability of a wider diffusion 1
of, 720
desire to possess, antiquity of,
8.4S .
drainrge, 372
and clay lands, 375
and Sir Edwin Ghad-
wick, li
necessity of,. 383 '
neglect 6f, 14
of, the first essential to
health, 16
drains, depth of, 375
easy transfer of* 70(7 '
enclosure, a system of reclaim-
ing land, 25
enclosures, perfection of, 25
expenditure oh, to be of a two-
fold character, ^92
farmed by owners often badly
cultivated, 512 ; '
fertile sources : of income in,,
283
fettering and tying' up of,<7Oi
fluctuation of rent of, 645
for the labourer's tillage, f34 '
free, 673
from a liberty point f vie W^'
liealthy managerhrent of, ^8
hidden wealth of, 279
'
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
887
Land improvement, capital invested
in, to be safe from con-
liscation, 389
,, improvement of, by sheep, 557
,, inalienability of, 699
increased demand for, 286
,, in Egypt, value of, 832
inherent right to the, 850
,, insurance fund for loss of interest
in, 695
,, in the Jewish polity, 850
,, judicious investment in, does
pay, 293
,, judicious planting on, 59
,, law reformer and the law of
entail, 701
,, laws prevent property changing
. hands, 298
method of dressing, for beans.
606
mode of measuring, 621
,, money wisely expended in, 291
,, more than mere soil, 288
,, necessity of attracting capital to,
419
,, ,, of recuperating its
fertility, 509
,, need of a free flow of capital in,
388
neglected, not poor land, 603
,, of Promise, the, 835
., perfect ownership in, 673
., permanent value of, 285
poor condition of, compared to
twenty years ago, 407
possession of, penalized by tax
collectors, 669
,, possessory title to, 692
,, problem, solution of, 657
,, produce of, in the United King-
dom could be
doubled, 388
,, .may be doubled, 434
., profit from, under strawberry
cultivation, 456
purchase in France, 667
registering titles to, 692, 693
,, registration of, expense of, 689
registration of titles to, in
Australia, 709
., registration of titles to, in
Belgium, 709
registry, present work of the,
7H
rental of, increased by straw-
berry cultivation, 457
rights of property in, history of,
6 3i
,, of the living and interests
of the dead in, 662
ripening of title to, 671
Land, rise in rent of, 644
sales, absolute and risk charges
in effecting, 719, 720
., sales, solicitors' and agents'
charges in effecting, compared,
719
,, securest investment for capital,
281
,, settlement and entail of, 697
,, ,, of, interest to the
politician of, 703
,, State burdens not to be placed
on, 658
, , strong desire to become possessed
of, 280
. , succession to property in, 660
,, surveying and levelling, 619
,, ,, theory of, 625, 626
tax, 745
,, ,, appeal against the, 747
,, exemptions from, 745
,, ,, manner of assessing, 746
,, ,, redemption of, 749
,, taxes in Egypt, 833
,, tenant's business to cultivate the,
377
tenure, earliest document relating
to, 837
,, the common birthright, 321
,, title to, a Government examiner
of, 707
,, the Irish passion for, 808
,, the source of industry and com-
merce, 285
,, the test of health, 13
,, to be administered for public
good, 662
,, to be taxed on capital value, 325
to be taxed 2Os. in the t 325.
,. Transfer Act, 669
, , Transfer Acts a dead letter, 686
" Transfer Act, 1876," failure of
the, 690
, , Transfer Act of Lord Cairns, 689
,, Transfer Bill of Lord Halsbury,
701
,, transfer, cumbersome and vex-,
atious, 721
., transfer, desirability of a readier
system, 720
transfer in the United States,
complicated system of, 713
transfer of, 693
transfer of, in France, expense
of, 712
,, treasures of, 2/9
j2000 per acre, 308
,, unproductive or waste, 490
,, usual way of measuring, 622
,, value of, enhanced by judicious
planting of fruit trees, 444
888
LAND :
Land, value of, in Council Bluffs, 340
,, value of, in settled countries will
be higher, 406
vast portions still unreclaimed, 25
what an acre can produce, 520-523
what shall we do with our, 475
well drained, 16
worked on an improved method,
601
,, work to be found for labourers
on, 448
Landed property in ancient Babylonia,
837
,, ,, local and imperial
assessments on, 734
,, ,, rapid circulation of,
641
41 Land hunger," 848
Landlord and tenant's interests identical,
679
,, encroachments of, 641
,, should not rank before other
creditors, 673
Landlords are on their trial, 678
, , bad, enemies to landlords, 676
,, duty, first principles of, 675
,, duties and responsibilities of,
679
,, in Ireland, 642
property tax, 739
,, rights, curtailment of, 640
Landmarks for guidance in fruit-grow-
ing, 443
Landowner, condition of, no sympathy
with, 645
,, faults of, 646
,, official investigation of the
title of the, 687
,, the proper person to erect
farm buildings, 385
. whole duty of, 858
Landowners, apathy of, in not register-
ing their titles, 716
,, hostility of, to " The Land
Act, 1882," 694
,, need of technical education
for, 359
Landscapes, sympathy with the tender
beauties of English, 34
Lands, ancient, 837
of Egypt, the, 824
residential, 339
Landed proprietors in Cato's time, 635
Lard, enormous increase in the imports
of, 417
Large estates, advantages enjoyed by
owners of, 57
,, pipes in drainage, objection to,
373
,, towns as business centres, 1 1
j, ,, turmoil of, 131
Large towns, unskilled labour in, 130
Law Amendment Society, congress of,
708
,, of gavelkind, 801
,, of primogeniture, 697
,, oftanistry, 80 1
,, of the settlement of land, wise
and beneficial, 706
" Laws " of Arthur Young, 648
Laws of Nature must be obeyed, 150
Lawyer-made cropping restrictions, 387
Leading provisions of the Tithe Act,
730
Lead ores of the British Islands, 771
Learning to observe, the advantage of,
109
Leasehold enfranchisement, principle
of, 672
,, property, enormous increase
in value of, 331
Leases, short, consistence of, 672
Legislation of Moses, 853
Legislative enactments as to tithes, 724
,, injustice will not affect the
value of ground rents, 337
Legumes, roots and vegetables, 605
" Level Book," the, 627
Levelling and surveying, 619
,, practice of, 626
Liberty point of view, land from a, 654
Life and death, the mystery of, 97
,, estates, non-justification of, 671
, , in overgrown cities a heresy against
human liberty, 48
in the country, absolute rule of, 147
,, the, of fancy and sympathy, 55
Light railways, 308, 309
Lime, 791
,, as manure, 791
uses of, 791
Limestone hills and sweet pastures, 766
Limestones, 791
,, suitable for building pur-
poses, 779
Limited liability investments, dangers
of, 229
Lineal measures, table of, 624
Little brown birds, feast of, 192
Live stock, early maturity of, 420
,, ,, effect of different soils on,
766
,, ,, permanent improvement of,
421
Living fences, beauty of, 25
Local assessments on landed property,
734
,, systems of sewage distribution,
480
"Locksley Hall," 74
London, a great intellectual centre, 31
,, a perpetual fog, 50
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
88 9
London children, fresh air for, 159
,, ,, country people's de-
light in, 161
,, the sharp, 160
,, unnatural lives of,
102
clay, the, 788
fog, cause of, 148
periodically overbuilt, 334
window gardening, 224
Longfellow, quotations from, 92
Longfellow's " Evangeline," 92
Long-horned cattle, 537
Lord and vassal, relation of, 641
,, Beaconsfield and the tenure of
property, 680
Cairns' Land Transfer Act, 688
Halsbury's new Bill, 694
Tollemache and the farm labourer,
684
Wcstbary's Act, 688
,, ,, scheme of, 688
Losses by stock exchange investments,
254
,, in commercial companies, 240,
241
,, in financial companies, 242
,, in trust companies, 243
,, on the Stock Exchange, 236
Lost fertility to land, restoring, 832
Low price of wheat in the "eighties,''
394
,, rent of Essex wheat lands, 644
Luncheon amidst the heather, 189
Luxury, definition of, 151
,, of open air life, 816
M.
MACAU LAY'S country squire, 646
Machinery, water power, 614
Main drains, practicable fall of, 374
object of Lord Westbury's Act,
Maize, imports of, 409
increase in the supplies of, 403
" Making of the land,'' the, 320
Mammoth farms, 395
Man of letters, a pure and simple, 88
,, primitive instincts in, 29
Manchester, atmosphere of, 10
Mankind, common desires of, 57
Manner of working the dog in decoys,
203
Manufacturers of corn, 647
Manure pits, 24
, , waste heaps of, 23
Manures, adulterated, serious losses by
using, 519
Manurial condition of land, cheapest
way of raising the, 368
Manuring deeply, error of, 370
,, fruit trees, method of, 462
Marketable securities, depreciation in
the value of, 248
,, titles and registration of
title, 717
Market, always a special, for high-class
fruits, 478
,, gardening, extension of, 516
Marlstone, the, 793
Marsh land a source of disease, 314
Materialistic and utilitarian life in
towns, the, 33
Maturity of live stock, the early, 420
Mazarin Bible, the, 152
Meaning of Free Trade, 656
,, of settlement, 697
Measuring, the art of, 619
Meat consumed, total, 414
,, consumption per head, increase
of, 413
decline of imports of, 415
home production of, 414
home supply of, 413
imported, 412
production will not increase faster
than the population, 399
,, rapid making of, 433
Mechanism of the universe, the, 137
Medicinal properties of apic acid, 566
Melampyrum, the, or cow wheat, 68
Melbourne lands, increase in value of,
275 2 78
Melodies of the field, the, 55
Men, forces which compel, to crowd in
towns, 30
,, in the wrong place, 139
Merchants to pay tithes on profits, 727
" Mere," a border ground, 126
Merging of the country into town, 593
Metayer tenures, 636
Method of making ensilage, 612
Metropolis, the, as a permanent abode,
61
Metropolitan land, increase in value of,
284
,, properties, increase in
value of, 331
Microbes, examination of the air for, 8
in the air, a fruitful source of
disease, 149
Middlemen, evil effect of, 525
" Midsummer Night's Dream," a, 35
Migratory birds, our, 144
Milk, increase in the home supply of,
417
,, profitable production of, 438
Milieu's " Angelus," 152
Minerals under agricultural lands 774
LAND I
Mineral wealth in the earth, 282
Mining investments, results of the craze
for, 262
Miracle, an ever-operating, 137
Mirrors. of profoundest peace, 91
Miseries of town Jife, 133 .
Mode df ' surveying, 623
Model farmer, the, 55
, , farmirigTiOt .necessarily scientific,
35 - .
,, steward, the, Cato's description
?. f 6 3$
Moderate agricultural prosperity, 400
''' elevations, healthiness 6f, 312
Modern builder, the, the upas of art, 51
,, growth of< dairy farming, 435
,, objections to entails, 701
Moel Hebog, 154, 158
Money, a means to an end only, 56
,, enormous amount of, spent in
. hunting, 173
Moorland, "reclamation of, 301, 326
Moral character of country life, 136
Morphology, 221
Mortgage, the^ no objection to, 663
Most independent calling in the world,
the, 484
,, heeded institution for London, a
: - 162
Mother Earthr, 75
,, our guardian, 100
,, '' )',' the source of all use and
?>cnuty, 100
'i ; "" v ',' treasures in the keeping
of, .100
Moths, 210
Motors'; varieties of water, 615
,, water wheels as, 616
Mr. Mechi;68 3
Mr. Saunders and the landlords, 325
,, arguments;, examples of,
329
Museum of practical geology, 782
Mystery of life and death, the, 97
. . N,
NATIONAL granaries, 533
,i nealth, soil the basis of, 318
"Nationalization of land " ? 287
Nation of book-keepers, th. Romans as
a, 637
Natural history, 108
: ,, a charming pursuit, 59
> ,,, an agreeable occupa-
tion, 207
,> ,, derived irom books a
tedious study, 58
beauty,
Natural history, from books and from
Nature contrasted^
,, ignorance of, 206
, , mental diversion ( of,
207 .
,, ,, pleasures derived from,
205
,, ,, popular beliefs of, .206
,, provision of Providence, Jhe,
133
,, reproduction of trees, 590 ,'
Nature, a home with, 119
,, as an instrument of good in
man, 91
boundless glories of, 216
calm of, 214
contemplation of, 136
elevating power of, 84 ,
fishermen lovers of, 167 ' .
glories of, 94
laws of, must be obeyed , 1 50.
no adulteration in, 115
omnipresent grace of, 596
our chief storehouse of bea
93
patient observers of, 225
power of, to foster brain power.
H5
real delight of, 41 >
solace of the study of, 225
sweet harmonies of, 107
to be admired for her own sake.
49
"Nature unadorned," ill
Nature, unconscious sympathy of, 95
,, unselfishness of the pleasurev
of, 94
,, varying moods of, 84
,, wonders of, 109
Nature's balmy sleep, 145
,, calm solitudes, 307
,, developments, 167
,, ,, endless interest
of, 167
,, disinfectant, 9
,, goods, stores of, 145
,, ,, utilization of, 145
, , message to those glad in the-
light of heaven, 97
science, 144
,, thousand voices, 216
Necessitous poor, the, 132
Necessity drives the multitudes from
the country to the town, 131
,, for a speedy system of laricfc
transfer, 720
,, of attracting capital to land;
419
,, of dry subsoil, 312
Need of a free flow of capital in Iarid v
388
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
891
Neglected farms, speedy restoration of,
388
,, land not poor land, 603
Neglect of account-keeping; 649
,, of land drainage, 14
Net imports of meat, increase of, 415
Netting grey mullet, 182
New agriculture, chief feature of, 680 ' '
,, El Dorado, the, 261
,, era of forestry, a, 586
,, fruit movement, the, 449
,, page of life to town-bred children,
a, 105
,, red marl, the, 762
Newt, the, 215
Nitrification of the soil, 366
Noises of suburban districts, 307
Nomadic constitution in man, the, a
source of evil, 19
Norfolk biffins, 485
Normandy pippins, 485
Notable prepotency of shorthorn strains,
541
Noxious matter, dessicated particles of,
in the air, 148
'
OAT growing, 603
Oats and barley, immense \impr6ve-
ment in, 432
inferior, produced on' sandy soils,
. 765
,, on clay soils,, superiority of, 765
Objection to latge pipes in drainage,
373
Observation, power of the spirit' of,
587
Ocean and river frontages, 576
frontages, value 'of! 583
"Ode to the North-East Wind," 89
Odours, poisonous, food Vo -land if
properly utilized, 24
Officialism, plague of, 667
Oldest Testament, the, 105
Old orchards give a " ba'd : * character
to land, 44
. , permanent pastures, moderate cost
of draining, 379
,, red sandstone soils, fertility 'of,
765
., wych elm, 'an.' I2.S
Omnipresent grace of Nature, 596
Ontario land, fall in the value of, 404
Oolites, 780
Open air life, luxury of, 8i(>.
,. spaces, the safety valve of health,
334
Open spaces to be rated as building
land, 334
Opening contracts, danger of, 327
Orchards, scandalous condition of many,
386
Origin and growth of tithes, 722
Ornamental trees, 592
Osier, the, a profitable crop, 581
Our food supply, 467
,, own country the best, 164
Ousely, Sir F. A. G., 54
Over-crowding in towns, 7
Over-draining, 16
Over-feeding of poultry, 574
Owners of arable land and the income
tax, 392
,, who improve neighbourhoods
benefit the community,
336
Oxford clay, 787
Oxygen, 8
PANTER pits, 374
Paradise, a, for starving town dwellers,
139
,, of greenery, 593
Paris, a perpetual fair, 50
Parochial origin of the tithe system, 724
Parsnips, 608
Partridge breeders of a thousand years
40
shooting, 193
,, description of, 193,
194
Partridges, beauty of young, 186
Party politics and small holdings, 297
Passion for land, the Irish, 808
Pastoral condition preceded the agri-
cultural, 633
Pasture lands and cattle breeding, 543
Pastures, hidebound. 368
,, profitably fertilized by flocks
and herds, 517
Patagonian rabbit, the, 560
Paucity of habitations in the country,
133
Pauper-laden cities, our, 134
,, population of towns, a paradise
for, 139
Pears, varieties of, 470, 471
Peasant proprietors, can they hold their
own? 665
,, proprietorship, 349
Peasantry^, work for the, 174
Peas, kind of soil for, 606
,, method of cultivating, 607
Peat, 761
8 9 2
LAND I
Pedigree cattle at Holker, 540
prices of, 540
Pedlar's Acre, 342
Peppercorn rents, 330
,, ,, thousands of, in
London, 330
Periodical weighings of cattle, usefulness
of, 549
Permanent pasture in 1891, 517
,, pastures, increase of, 409,
410
* ' Permissive waste " in timber, 588
Peroxide of hydrogen as a purifier,
value of, 9
Perpetuities, rule against, 698
Persephone, the " gladsome spring," 75
Peruvian debt, great loss in the, 258,
259
Pheasant shooting, 195
,, ,, artificial condition
of, 195
Pheasants, preparation of, 195
Philosophy, impotence of, 138
,, theory of, 151
Physical strength, degeneracy of, 6
Physiology of plants, 219
Picture, a, ^56 per square inch for,
152
Piers Plowman, 78
" Pilgrim's way," the, 53
Pine forests and chest complaints, 9
Pipe-clay, 78
Pitfalls of the Agricultural Holdings
Act, 677
41 Plain living and high thinking," 86
Planting fruit trees, 463
Plant life, effect of electricity on, 753
Plants, cereals the most neglected of
all, 431
,, crossing of, 431
,, "improvement " of, 428
,, utility of, in utilizing waste pro-
ducts, 9
Pleasures arising from the possession of
land, the, 57
,, of a country life, 163
,, of country life from the health
standpoint, 147
,, of solitude, the, 149
,, of the country, the, 29
,, of the country, yearning for,
3"
,, of the table, 168
Plebeian East, the, 127
Plums, varieties of, 471
Poaching at Rushmore and Cranborne
Chase, 123
Poet's love of Nature, the, 88
Poets on the country, 73
Politician, interest to the, of settlement
of land, 703
Politicians, a sheer invention of, 135
,, promises, 322
Polluted atmosphere, gradations of, 8
Pools and swamps in land, avoidance
of, 16
Poor condition of land, compared to
twenty years ago, 407
,, London children, fresh air for, 159
rate, the, 735
,, sufferings of the, in winter, 103
,, weekly property brings trouble,
345
Poplars as a shelter for dwarf fruit
trees, 460
Popular delusions in fruit growing, 447
Population, congregation of in huge
centres not permanent, 31
Populous cities, accumulation of wealth
in, 131
Portland stone, 779
Portugal, ^80,000,000 lost in, 259
Position of agricultural improvements,
385
" Possessory right," 808
Possessory title to land, 692
Possible investments, field of, 338
Potato crop, decline in, 410
,, crops, advantage to, by con-
stantly stirring soil, 370
,, disease, 609
Potatoes, 608
,, small imports of, in 1870, 418
,, soils for, 608
,, varieties of, 429
Potter's clay, 785
Poultry farming, 571
,, ,, clean water a neces-
sary requirement,
573.
,, ,, great ignorance or,
571
feeding of, 573
,, house, a warm, necessary for
profit, 573
,, description of, 571
keeping interesting and profit-
able, 575
,, overfeeding of, 574
,, stock, necessity of cleanliness
in, 572
Power of Nature, the, in the light of
modern thought, 75
,, of the country on a perturbed
spirit, 138
,, of the sound of rustling leaves,
138
Practical drainage, efficiency and
economy the rule of, 372
,, knowledge of farm work
essential, 350, 351
" Praises of the pavement," the, 38
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
89.
Preparation of soil for fruit growing,
461
Presence of trees a necessity, 591
1 'resent health, our, clue to out-
ancestors' country life, 62
,, Irish agricultural position, the,
807
State system of taxation, our,
668
Preserving fruit, 486
Price of commodities not likely to
advance, 507
corn, benefit of a rise in the,
305
land, the, and foreign com-
petition, 401
Prices, rents do not depend on, 645
Primeval command and the prophetic
promise, 857
Primogeniture, abolishment of, 704
law of, 697
Prince Bismarck, statement of, 665
Principle of leasehold enfranchisement,
672
Principles of drainage, 16
Printing press, the, 361
Private property, basis of, 634
Privilege of wintering sheep on farms,
387
Privileges of a river frontage, 581
,, of the dead not to conflict
with those of the living, 658
Produce of land may be doubled, 434
,, ,, in the United Kingdom
could be doubled, 388
Productive powers of the soil, increase
of the, 371
Profitable farming, adequate capital a
sine qttd non^ 508
,, ,, no royal road to,
506
,, ,, permanent improve-
ments essential
for, 507
,, nature of soft fruits, 456
,, pastime, gardening a, 1 1
Profitableness of bush fruits, 45 1
Profit from one apple tree equals an
acre of wheat, 453
Profits from sheep are manifold, 556
Property has duties as well as rights, 856
,, in land legal robbery, 325
,, ,, succession to, 660
,, tax in France, 666
,, the landlords', 739
Proposal to assess the value of buildings
apart from the land, 329
Prospects of farming, 390
Prospectuses, deceitful, 230, 231
,, plausible statements in,
232
Prosperity for agriculture, a period of r
392
Protection and the price of land and
food, 404
,, effect of, 667
,, injurious effects of, 667
,, or free trade, 655
Protective tariffs, injury of, 131
Pruning fruit trees and bushes, 464
,, ,, method of, 464
Ptolemy and Euclid, 620
Public companies, reductions in value
of, 257
,, houses, suppression of, 678
Pulmonary complaints, avoidance of,
148
Purbeck marble, 780, 781
,, marbles, extensive use of, 777
Purchasing land, costs of, 718
Pure air, immense benefit to health by
breathing, 61
Q-
QUALITY of the soil the first element of
value, 289
Questionable excitements of the town,
139
Quiet and repose to town toilers, need
of, 306
R.
RADBIT culture, 559
feeding, 563
hutches, description of, 562
inexpensive, 562
shooting, 196
skins, use of, 561
warrens, paying concerns, 565
Rabbits, 559
diseases, 563
,, remedies for, 564, 565
preserving, reason for (?), 593
tame, 559
varieties of, 559, 560
Racial relationship, indestructibility of,
811
Railway enterprise, effect of, 164
,, rates and fruit-growing, 400
Rain, acid condition of, 10
,, and the atmosphere, 10
,, water in town and country,
difference of, 10
Rainbow arch, the, 120
" Rare Ben Jonson," 93
LAND :
Raspberries and strawberries, 456
. .pruning of, 467
,, varieties of, 472
Rateable values, 736
Rates, abolition 6f, would cause higher
ground rents, 328
Rating Aground rents, agitation for, 322
,, of ground rents, 326
Ravages of the " black death," 650
Ready money reckoner, home of, 146
Real estate easily dealt with, 298
Reason for preserving rabbits (?) 593
Recent institution, a, 159
Reclamation, 317
;-, of land, 318
. ,, ,, considerations of,
319
,, of waste lands, two classes
of, 319
Recovery of land covered by water, 15
Rtectification of erroneous assessments,
747
Red cattle of West Somerset, 537
,, marl, the new, 762
Reduction in the supply of barley and
oats,; 398
,, of the timber crop, 594
Registration of title, 687
to land, 686
.;>;:.; V> ." cannot be
avoided,
-,,':,.:.,.. : 6 95
., compulsory,
694
,, ,, costs of, 694
,, ,, ,, description
of, 710
' economy of,
715
,, ,, un fait accompli,
695
Reindeer moss ; 69
Relation of lord and vassal, 641
Remarkable properties of triangles, 621
Remedy for tHe recovery of tithes, 726
Reiit - of Essex wheat i lands, low, 644
,, of land, fluctuations in, 645
,, payment, of} in ancient days, 839
'*& - v rise of, in land; 644 "
Rents, ido hot depend on prices, 645
,, enormous advance in, 400
,, great rfeductSon 'in, 392
Import of Mr. Marshall, 14
Representative breeds, of cart horses,
55*.
Reservoir for surplus water, a profitable
investment, 17
Residential lands, 339
Kestfulness 1 of the '.country, 1 1 8
Rest, importance of, 146
Restoring lost fertility : to-Mnd; x 832 "
Restraint of trade, 386
Restriction of ancient individual rights,
577.
, , of arable acreage, 5 1 7
Restrictive farm covenants, 387
Revelation of St. John, the, 866
Revival of fruit culture, 449
Rheumatism in valleys, 315
Rich and poor, comparison between
the, 83
Right Hon. John Bright and salmon
' fishing, 176
, , of sale of improvements on farms,
384
,, of the landowner, modern con-
ception of, 637
Rights and privileges of sea frontages,
. 578
,, in land, advance of, 639
,, of property in land, history of,
63>
,, .. of property, regard for,' 172
Riparian boundaries, 580
Risks attending the average investor,
230
River frontagey privileges of a, 581
,, frontages, 576
value of, 583
Road making, the imperfect, system
generally followed, 20
Road's and embankments, 20
,, good, importance of, to the
modern agriculturist,
20
,, '',',, save labour, 22
' construction of, 22
Robbed l land cannot l>e, immediately
renovated, 293
Rock salt, ^economic value of, 773
Roman account- keeping, 648
,, Dbrrrinusj the, 638
Romano,-British tumuli, 123
Romans, the, as a nation of book-
keeper^ 637,
Root, crop's, cultivation of, change in
the, 369 J
Rotation farming, value of, 305
,, -necessity of well-arranged, 605
of crops, 513
Rot, in sheep, 15
" Rotting" places, 21
Royal command, a, 147
,, Commissicn on the housing of
the' working classes, 336 ,
Rule against 'petpetuities, 698
Running' water, no property in,. 580
Rural 'districts, .delighttul harrnony of,
'34
,, ^ in England, the loveliest
in the world, 31
iioi allowed to starve, 4
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
895
Rural England in Shakespeare's day,
home, value of a, 311
,, labour, simple dignity of, 78
labourer, dearest wish of, 134
life, literature in praise of, 38
man's longing for, 30
passionate enjoyment of, 39
the economy of, over town
live, 45
the spiritual side of, 33
Virgil on, 85
pleasures, the characteristics of
English life, 61
. >'i , 5 of Continental nations,
61
. ',, scenes, our gratification in, 50
Kuskin, Mr., parable of, 48
s.
SALES OF LAND, legal costs on, 666
Salmon fishing, description of, 177, 178
Salvation of the goldfinch, the, 56
Sanative influence of fir forests, 66
: Sand dunes, 579
Sandstone largely used for building in
the north, 778
Sandy soils produce inferior oats, 765
Sanitary text, a, 16
Sanitation, like charity, to commence
at home, 26
, , of the soil a necessary part
of agricultural education,
18
Scandalous condition of farm orchards,
386
Science and Art Department and agri-
culture, 359
,, fruit growing, 482
,, of experience, the, 320
Scientific agriculturist's duty with
regard to sewage, the, 19
knowledge, thirst for, 144
Scope for the biologist, 144 ,
Scotch cattle, quality of beef of, 542
fir, the, 63
,, ,, eccentricity of shape of the,
63
,, ,, individuality of, 63
- ,, . ,, the, in autumn, 65
.. timber, firm and solid after
400 years' use, 70
,, : ,, why it should be cultivated,
7i
firs, monotonous appearance of
young, 64
gold, 772
,, sheep, 555.
Scot's Common, 54
Sea boundary, privileges and advan-
tages of a> 577
,, fishing, 182
,, frontages, rights of, 57$ .
,, mist, a cause of London fog, 148
Seaside camp, a, 162
Seaweed, collection of, 582 ,
,, iodine from, 582
Seeds of sickness, unhappiness and
disease, the, 141
Selfish enjoyment, 172
" Sennett down," 561
Serenity, the, of fields and woods, 137
" Settled Land Act, 1882," 690
,, ,, ; . hostility of
landowners to, 694
Settled Land Act, satisfactory nature
of, 705
Settlement and entail of land, 697
,, of land, definition of, 697
,, ,, importanqe of, 697
,, ,. interest, to the
politician of, 703
Settlements, meaning of, 697
,, of land, form, of, 698
Sewage, distribution of, 19
,, distributions, local systems of,
48o
fearful waste pf, 23,
irrigation of land by, 23
natural application of, to land,
19 . '' - : :
removal of, 24
the importance of 'quick
removal, 20
Shakespeare and the butter-fly, 269
frog, 214, 2V5
,, language of, proves the
influence '.at., a rural
home, 50 : j
,, on the charms of a country
life, 78,, 79
,, quotations from, 79
Shareholder, the foolish, 232 .> ...
Shareholders, avaricious,- 238. :.
, , vast army of ruined, 230
555
advice in keeping, 558
and cattle breeding, .science of,
423:- ,
>v increase jn the quality
.of.in/i$9i. 411
breeding, an easy way of making
rent, 556 '.
danger of wet and., .rniry- roads
to, 21 _.. '
diminutive 'sipe of, 306' years
' ,ago, 420
.early fattening v system o 424
early maturity of, 420 r
8 9 6
LAND
Sheep, Ellman's Dishley, 421
,, famous short- woolled, 421
,, farming, 555
,, farming, a pleasant occupation,
556
,, good returns from, 555
,, Hampshire Down, superiority
of;- 4*4
,, in Australia, 814
,, Leicester, 421
,, liver fluke in, 22
,, management of, 424
,, profitably fertilize pastures, 517
,, profits from, are manifold, 556
,, prominent position of, in the
future, 557
,, rot in, 15, 21
,, saving of, from rot, 22
,, Southdown, 420, 421
weight of, 421
$, Teeswater, 421
"Sheep tread with golden feet," 556,
557
Sheep, Wensleydale, 421
,, winter feeding of, 510
,, wool of the, 557
Shooting, 167, 184
anecdotes of, 191
,, delights of, 184
,, enjoyment of, 184
,, excitement of, 187
,, health derived from, 200
Shorthorn cattle, 539
,, cows, average yield of milk
from, 541
., Society, the, 539
i, -strains, notable prepotency
of, 541
Shire horses, 551
Silage, best crop for, 611
Simple and cheap conveyance of land,
7ii.
Simplicity and grandeur of the country,
119
Sin of tree slaughter, 594
Sir Edwin Chadwick, 6
Sir James Paget, 108
Sir Robert Torrens and registration of
titles of land, 709
Sir William Temple on gardening, 59
Skilful drainage, practice and careful
instruction necessary for, 376
Slavery of town life, 112
Small drain pipes, advantages of, 377
" Small holdings," 130
Small holdings and party politics, 297
a political stalking
horse, 297
as an investment, 297
,,' dotheypnythelabourer?
298
Small holdings, do they pay the land-
owner ? 298
Smithfield Club, primary object of, 432
the, 425
Snipe, scarcity of, 197
,, shooting, 197
,, ,, keen satisfaction of,.
c , I97
Snowdon, 157
Social mill, the, 79
,, problem, the most vital, 819
Soft fruits, profitable nature of, 456
Soil, aeration of the, necessity of,,
371
,, careless manner of cultivating the,
602
,, clothed with vegetation, necessity;
of keeping the, 368
,, inherent capabilities of, 381, 579
., kinds of, for peas, 606
,, nitrification of, 366
,, of Egypt, secret of the fertility of,
828
,, preparation of, for fruit growing,.
461
,, productive powers of, rapidly
increasing, 371
,, the, basis of national wealth, 318
,, thorough cultivation of 364
Soils, all, are grateful for judicious.
treatment, 511
,, geological characteristics of, 764
,, vary in absorbing and retaining
water, 18
Solicitors and the Land Act, 1882, 694
,, Remuneration Act, the, JiJ
Solitudes of Nature, the, 138
Solution of the land problem, 657
Some pleasures of a country life, ill
Sorrow, sympathetically reflected by
Nature, 96
Soul, the eye and ear the avenues of, 48
Sources of country joy, 84
South American loans, depreciation in,
256
,, American railways, losses in, 255
Southdown sheep, 420, 421
, , increase in weight of,
421
Spanish debt, the, 259
Spearing flat fish, 182
Speculative builder, abuse of, 285
,, builders not all rogues, 285
Speedy restoration of neglected farms,
388
,, system of land transfer,
necessity for a, 720
Spider's web, the, 213
Spiritual life, an exotic in the world, 99
Sport in Canada, 823
Sporting dogs, intelligence of 185
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES.
897
Spring, early tints of, 101
Square measures, table of, 624
Stable, the, interest of, 113
Staking fruit trees, 464
Stamp duty, high rate of, 718
Starry night in a dry frosty air, beauty
of, 1 20
s r.rvation wages, 136
State brigandage, 666
,, burdens, 664
, , not to be placed on land,
658
., system of taxation, our present.
668
Statutes of Limitation, 692
Steam culture, 368
Steers, proper method of feeding, 547
Stickleback, the, 213
Mirring of the soil, advantage to
potato crops, 370
Stock and land lease, the, 634
., Exchange investments, depre-
ciated value of, 238
., Exchange losses, 236
., ,, investments, disastrous
fall of, 254
,, ,, Royal Commission on,
252
,, ,, securities, unstableness
of, 253
,, shelter for, imperative, 510
Stonehenge, 123
Store beasts, deceptive appearance of,
55
Stores for the direct distribution of
agricultural produce, 526
Strawberries, luxurious crop of, 457
in 1891, 457
,, varieties of, 472
" Stream tin," 773
41 Street-bred" people, a, 36
Street planting, best trees for, 589
Striking advantages of fruit culture> 449
Stucco, general disuse of, 784
Stupendous contrast between town and
country, 307
Subsidizing the foreigner, 599
Suburban districts, noises in, 307
,, estates, increase in the value
of, 342, 343
Succession to property in land, 660
Suffolk horses, 552
Sulphurous acid gas in the atmosphere,
224
Summary of statute law as to tithes,
724
Summer fallows no longer a necessity,
368
Sunset, description of a country, 44
Sunshine, the glorious stimulant of, 813
Sun's vast stores of energy, 755
Superior dweller in Belgravia(?) the,
112
,, Metropolitan, the, in
Superiority of English fruit, 458
,, ,, honey, 568
,, Hampshire Down sheep,
424
,, oats on clay soils, 765
Suppression of public houses, 678
Surface excavations, 122
,, level, definition, 626
, , manuring, necessity of, 370
,, value of, 366
,, salt on Egyptian soil, 826
Surplus population, a huge, 133
Surrey hills, fruit growing on the, 492
Surveying and levelling, 619
,, mode of, 623
Surveyor, necessary attainments of a,
620
Sweet harmonies of Nature, 107
,, pastures on limestone hills, 766
Systematic cultivation of hardy fruit,
448
T.
TABLE, equivalent, 346
,, of animal food imports, 411
. , of approximate life of fruit trees,
478
,, of changes in acreage, 408
,, of life of bush fruits, 478
,, of lineal measures, 624
,, of percentages of home and
imported meats, 415
pleasures of the, 168
,, of square measures, 624
Tame rabbits, 559
Tanistry, law of, 801
"Task," the, selection from, 80-92, 94
Tasmania, scanty rainfall in, 813
Technical education, 356, 357
,, education for landowners,
need of, 359
,, instruction in agriculture, 353
Temperance, value of, 302
Temple in the woods, a, 128
Tenant occupiers, 679
right, 380
,, ,, best form of, 384
lack of, 388
,, ,, Ulster system of, 384
Tenant's business to cultivate the land,
377 .
,, compensation to, for improve-
ments, 380
,, extravagant claims of, f r
improvements, 380
8 9 8
LAND :
Tenants' improvements, compensation
for, 380
,, property in the soil, doctrine
of, 805
,, to be encouraged to plant fruit
trees, 384
Tennyson, quotations from, 74, 79, 91,
96,97
Terrace cultivation in the East, 496
,, gardening, 495
Terra-cotta clay, 775
,, manufacture and clay, 784
Thanksgiving, a, 86
Thatching, 114
Theory of practical farm work, useless-
ness of, 353
, , of rent, 645
,, ,, Ricardo's, rejection of,
631
The Times on the Glasgow Bank failure,
249, 250, 251
Thorough draining required on millions
of acres, 386
Thousand-headed cabbage, the, 430
Thrill of a noble manhood, the, 140
Tillage of land, stimulation of, 305
Timber crop, reduction of, 594
,, foreign, great demand for, 590
, , growing nation, England cannot
become a, 590
,, of the old Scotch fir, durability
of, 70
,, " permissive waste" in, 588
Tin ore of Cornwall, 772
Tithe Act, 1891, the, 730
,, leading provisions of the,
730
,, of cattle, 726
,, rent charge, 729
,, system, parochial origin of, 724
Tithes, Acts of Parliament in relation
to, 725, 731
,, ancient reason for, 723
,, and agricultural depression, 729
,, commutation of, 727
,, exemption from payment of,
725
,, merchants to pay, on profits,
727
,, origin and growth of, 722
,, payable according to custom,
723
,, remedy for the recovery of, 726
,, summary of Statute law as to,
724
,, unwritten law of, 723
,, voluntary dedication of, 723
,, Welsh agitations against, 73<>
,, written law of, 723
Title, registration of, 687
,, to land, absolute, 690
Title to land, expense of investigating,
708
,, ,, registration of, 686
Tomatoes, 429
,, crossing of, 429
Torrens' system of transfer of land,
720
Total meat consumed per head of
population, 414
Town and country air, comparison of,
107
,, ,, life, distorted balance
of, 130
,, bred child, the pale and puny,
106
,, children, fastidiousness of, 161
,, dweller, feebleness of, 10
,, ,, the, the discoverer of
Nature's beauties,
5 2
,, ,, unhealthiness of, 10
,, dwellers, deterioration of, 6
,, holdings, select committee on,
323
,, life antagonistic to development
of natural faculties, 37
,, ,, artificiality of, ill
, , , , crowded and fretful existence
of, 40
,, ,, debilitating allurements of,
62
,, ,, enervating effects of, 62
,, ,, fancied devotion to, 1 18
,, ,, interest and excitement of
39
,, ,, restless activity of, 36
,, ,, slavery of, 112
,, populations, tremendous over-
growth of, 130
,, the, pleasurable occupations of,
120
,, toilers need quiet and repose,
306
Towns, overcrowding in, 7
,, the, gradual absorption of the
country by, 308
Transfer of land, 693
,, in France, expense of,
712
,, ,, necessity of facilitating
the, 708
Treeless wilderness, a, 599
Tree planting, wise, will increase value
of estates, 591
Tree -slaughter, sin of, 594
Trees, craze for felling, 593
,, disease of, 588
,, evil of overcrowding, 589
,, for street planting, 589
,, natural reproduction of, 590
,, ornamental, 592
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHKS.
899
Trees, planting of, 589
presence of, a necessity, 591
Triangles, remarkable properties of,
621
Trolling for pollock, 183
,, for trout, 181
Tropieolum, the, 429
Trout, fishing, 177
the, 127
Trust companies, 238
,, losses in, 243
Tuberculosis, probable origin of, in
cattle, 26
Turbines, 617
classes of, 617
Turkish debt, the, 258
, , loss to the country through
the, 258
Turner and the English atmosphere,
5 2
Twelfth of August, the, 187
u.
ULSTER system of tenant right, 384
Underwood, value of, 596
Undiscovered treasures, 56
Unearned increment, the, 331
,, ,, ground tenants
have all the value of the,
331
Unhealthiness of the town dweller, 10
U. S. railway, manner of starting a,
263
,, ,, shares, fall in, 255
,, railways, losses in, 265
, , ordinary stocks, worth-
lessness of, 263
United State?, the chief competitor with
this country, 405
Unmarred works of God, the, 138
Unmethodical system of working gone
for ever, 350
Unstable foundation of the financier's
wealth, 286
Untaxed freehold, the, 658
Upland tracts redeemed by planting fir
trees, 71
Urban life, gravitation towards, 47
Usefulness of agricultural colleges, 352
,, of weighing-machines on
farms, 519
Use of the dog in decoying wild fowl,
203
Utility of plants in utilizing waste pro-
ducts, 9
Utilization of waste power, 755
V.
VACANT building land, advantage of,
336
lands, rating of, 322,
333
" Valid marketable title," a, 689
Valleys, air sewage in, 315
,, coldness of air in, 313
fever miasms in, 315
frosts, in, 311, 312, 314
rheumatism in, 315
Value of a knowledge of geology, 764
,, of beds of fine clay, 790
,, of botany, 218
,, of cereals ruled by the price of
wheat, 401
., of chalk soil, 313
,, of estates increased by wise tree
planting, 591
,, of evaporated fruit, 486
,, of ground rents, the, not affected
by legislative injustice, 337
,, of land, fall in, 403
in Egypt, 832
,, of peroxide of hydrogen as a
purifier, 9
Varied advantages of country life, 135
,, rocks of the British Isles, 783
Varieties of apples, 468, 469
cherries, 471
currants, 472
fruits, 467
gooseberries, 472
herbs, 500, 501
pears, 470, 471
plums, 471
raspberries, 472
,, water motors, 615
' ; Variety of the street," the, 38
Varying moods of Nature, 84
Vegetable and fruit growing, extension
of, 516
,, evaporation, 487
,, existence, epoch of, 49
,, kingdom, diversity of the,
220
., kingdom, princes of, 592
,, life, law of, 220
Vegetables. 607
,, in towns, 223
,, roots and legumes, 605
Vegetation and animal life, 9
necessity of keeping the so'il
covered with, 368
Vicissitudes of city life, Shakespeare
on, 79
Victorian era, mental brilliance of,
47
Villa farms, 306
Villa farm yeomen, 308
9oo
LAND I
Village public-house, the, nuisance of,
302
Villages, repopulation of, 136
Virgil on a rural life, 85
,, quotations from, 85
Vital social problem, 819
Voluntary dedication of tithes, 723
w.
WAGES replaced by ownership in the
soil, 139
" Waiting for a bite," 175
Warping, 578
War prices, injury of, 400
Waste common lands, development of,
496
,, lands, definition of, 491
,, ,, profitable utilization of,
490
,, ,, soil of some, equal to that
of the Channel Islands, 497
,, power, utilization of, 755
,, products, utility of plants in
utilizing, 9
Water, conservation of, 615
Watercress, the, 581
Water meadow system, the, 582
,, motors, 614, 756
,, power machinery, 614
,, recovery of land covered by, 15
,, running, no property in, 580
,, weight of a cubic foot, 615
,, wheels as motors, 616
Weald of Sussex and the iron trade,77i
Wealth, coal the basis of, 770
,, of England, not yet touched,
103
Weekly farm papers, utility of, 361
Weigh-bridge, usefulness of the, 550
Weighing machine, extended use for,
549
,, machines on farms, useful-
ness of, 519
Weight of a cubic foot of water, 615
Weirs, 618
Well-drained land, 16
Welsh slates, 782
Wet harvest, bad effect of, 390
,, weather, injury to hay by, 390
What an acre of land can produce,
520-523
Wheat, annual average price of, low-
ness of, 403
,, area, decline of, 404
3 > ,, of the world too small,
397
Wheat, average value of an acre of,
395
,, demand for, has overtaken the
supply, 402
,, "earliest of all," 431
, , fair prices for, 398
,, from India, 394
,, growing, 602
,, ,, area, enormous in-
crease in, 394
,, ,, decrease in, 408
,, ,, in Australia, cheap-
ness of, 405
,, ,, unremunerative, 395
,, " hundredfold," 432
,, lands depastured with sheep,
405
,, ,, low rent of, 644
, , low price of, in the " eighties,"
394
,, price of, rules the values of
other grains, 401
,, production, no profit in, 396
,, rise of, in 1891, 602
,, straw as a litter for horses,
173
Wheats, cross-bred, 431
,, value of cross-bred, 432
W T hitby alum shales, the, 775
White china clay, 785
White-faced cattle, 538
White straw crops, 60 1
,, ,, ,, repeated too fre-
quently, 601
Wide diffusion of land, a, 4
Wider diffusion of land, desirability of
a, 720
Wild fowl, curiosity of, 204
,, ,, bravado of, 204
,, shooting, 198
,, ,, taken in decoys, number of,
201
,, fowling, an infatuating pursuit,
198
,, ,, excitement of, 198
"Wild Wales," 154
Windmills as a source of power, 757
Wind of God, the, 90
Window gardening in London, 224
Wind power and electrical energy, 758
Winter, delights of, 103
,, sufferings of the poor in, 103
" Winter Walks," 88
Wintering of calves, 544
,, sheep on Scotch farms, privi-
lege of, 387
Wisdom of buying building lands, 343
Wise speculator invests in land, the,
. 285
Wither, George, on spring, 87
,, quotations from, 87
ITS ATTRACTIONS AND RICHES. , OOI
I*
Woodcock, difficulty of shooting, 196 Wordsworth on the country, 77
shooting, 196 the poetry of, 81
Woodland cleared by fruit growers, ,, quotations from, 77, 8l,
474 8 9> 99
decay, waste of, 588 Work for the peasantry, 174
Woodlands as capital in reserve, 585 Worst year of agricultural depression,
,, percentage of yield from, 585 403
" Woodman, spare that tree," 600
Woods, a walk in the, in spring, 1 1 5
the delights of, 42, 43
the gaiety of, 43 Y .
Wood -tin, 773
Wool from Angora rabbits, 562 YEAR, changing seasons of the, 137
,, low price of, 403 Yorkshire flags, 778
LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS.
His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh, G.C., K.T., K.P., &c.
His Grace The Duke of Norfolk, E.G.
His Grace The Duke of Wellington, J.P.
His Grace The Duke of Sutherland, E.G., F.R.G.S.
His Grace The Duke of Grafton, E.G., C.B.
His Grace TheDuke of Rutland, E.G., G.C.B.,P.C.,D.C.L.,LL.D.
His Grace The Duke of Portland, P.O., J.P.
The Most Noble The Marquess of Lothian, E.T., P.O., F.R.G.S.
The Most Noble The Marquess of Downshire.
The Right Hon. The Earl of Gosford, E.P.
The Right Hon. The Earl Grey, E.G., G.C.M.G., P.C.
The Right Hon. The Earl of Yarborough, F.S. A.
The Right Hon. The Earl of Lovelace, F.R.S.
The Right Hon. The Earl of Ashburnham, F.S.A.
The Right Hon. The Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, M.A., J.P., D.C.L.
The Right Hon. The Earl of Devon, J.P., D.L.
The Right Hon. The Earl of Darnley.
The Right Hon. The Viscount Barrington, D.L., J.P.
The Right Hon. The Viscount Cranbrook, P.O., G.C.S.I.
The Right Hon. The Viscount Powerscourt, E.P.
The Right Hon. The Lord Halsbury, P.C. (The Lord High
Chancellor of England).
The Right Hon. The Lord Addington, J.P., M.A.
The Right Hon. The Lord Einnaird, J.P., D.L.
The Right Hon. The Lord Masham, J.P., D.L.
The Right Hon. The Lord O'Neill, J.P., D.L.
The Right Hon. The Lord Sackville, G.C.M.G.
The Right Hon. The Lord Thring, E.C.B.
The Right Hon. The Lord Tweedmouth, M.A., J.P., D.L.
The Bight Hon. The Lord Wantage, E.C.B., V.C., F.R.G.S.
904 LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS.
The Eight Hon. The Lord St. Oswald, J.P., D.L,
The Eight Hon. The Lord Canioys, J.P., D.L.
The Eight Hon. Lord Stanley of Alderley, J.P.
The Eight Hon. Lord Penzance, P.O.
The Eight Hon. Lord Thurlow, P.O., F.E.S.
The Eight Hon. Lord Truro, J.P.
The Eight Hon. The Dowager Lady Hatherton.
The Countess Dowager of Dalhousie.
Sir Andrew Clark, Bart., M.D., F.E.S., LL.D.
Sir Henry Meysey Thompson, Bart., B.A., J.P., D.L.
The Hon. Auberon Herbert, B.A., B.C.L.
Major-Gen. Sir Wm.Crossman,E.E.,K.C.M.G.,F.S.A.,M.P., J.P.
Sir J. D. Astley, Bart.
Sir H. W. Becher, Bart.
Sir Eeginald P. Beauchamp, Bart.
Sir John Kennaway, Bart., M.P.
Admiral The Hon. G. H. Douglas, J.P.
Eear- Admiral Bullock.
The Eight Eev. The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells, D.D., M.A.
Sir Edward Bulwer, K.C.B.
Professor A. H. Sayce, M.A., LL.D.
Professor E. P. Wright.
General H. T. Tucker, C.B.
General W. H. Astell (Grenadier Guards) J.P.
Colonel W. Cornwallis West, J.P., M.P.
Colonel A. T. P. Bouverie Campbell Wyndham.
Colonel G. T. Skipworth, E.E.
Colonel The Hon. L. P. Dawnay, M.P., J.P.
Colonel Thomas Clarke, Ex-Sheriff.
Lieut.-Col. H. Denison, J.P.
Captain Pringle, E.N., J.P., D.L.
JohnD. Allcroft, Esq., F.E.A.S.,F.E.G.S., J.P.
Hamar Bass, Esq., M.P.
Herbert Gladstone, Esq., M.P., M.A.
Wm. L. A. B. Burdett-Coutts, Esq., M.P.
J. H. Tritton, Esq., F.E.G.S., F.S.S.
E. D. Sassoon, Esq.
Matthew Bell, Esq., M.A., J.P., D.L.
LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. 905
George Croshaw, Esq.
George Pollock, Esq.
The Rev. V. H. Moyle, M.A., F.R.H.S.
T. Penn Gaskell, Esq., C.E.
J. Livingstone-Learmonth, Esq.
Domett Stone, Esq., M.D.
J. G. A. Baird, Esq., M.P.
William O'Brien, Esq., M.P.
Sampson Copestake, Esq.
M. H. Crackenthorpe, Esq., Q.C., D.C.L.
Thomas Milvain, Esq., Q.C., M.P.
Joseph K. Aston, Esq.
H. J. E. Brake, Esq.
The Property Protection Society.
The Liberty and Property Defence League.
The Royal Exchange Assurance Company. E. R. Handcock,
Esq., Secretary.
The Sun Life Office. H. L. C. Saunders, Esq., Manager.
Daniel Watney, Esq., F.S.I.
Christopher Oakley, Esq., F.S.I.
Sir John Whittaker Ellis, Bart., M.P., F.S.I.
Francis Vigers, Esq., F.S.I.
Robert Vigers, Esq., F.S.I.
F. G. Debenham, Esq., F.S.I.
Gilbert Murray,|Esq., F.S.I., M.R.A.S. Soc.Ecg.
F. J. Chinnock, Esq., F.S.I.
Henry Lofts, Esq., F.S.I.
Robert Lake Cobb, Esq., F.S.I.
D. J. Chattell, Esq., F.S.I.
Messrs. Rogers, Chapman & Thomas, F.S.I.
C. E. Curtis, Esq., F.S.I.
George Brinsley, Esq., F.S.I.
Walter Graves, Esq., F.S.I.
C. Clarke, Esq., F.S.I.
E. Lovell Clare, Esq., F.S.I.
George Beken, Esq., F.S.I.
Reuben Bingham, Esq., F.S.I.
Percival Currey, Esq., F.S.I.
906 LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS.
Freak. Eiloart, Esq., F.S.I.
Edmund Cruse, Esq., F.S.I.
B. Chart, Esq., F.S.I.
C. F. Jones, Esq., F.S.I.
T. J. Hankinson, Esq., F.S.I.
H. Northcroft, Esq., F.S.I.
Messrs. Haslam & Son, F.S.I.
W. H. Norris, Esq., F.S.L
Henry Owen, Esq., F.S.I.
Ernest Hall, Esq., F.S.I.
Edward Maynard, Esq., F.S.I.
W. R. Peck, Esq., F.S.I.
C. J. Hornor, Esq., F.S.I.
Messrs. Wm. Heskett and Son, F.S.I.
J. G. Dawson, Esq., F.S.I.
J. A. Eggar, Esq., F.S.L
W. B. Hallett, Esq., F.S.I.
R. Stafford Charles, Esq., F.S.I.
Thomas Fletcher, Esq., F.S.I.
Wm. Roper, Esq., F.S.I.
H. Russell Smith, Esq., F.S.I.
Henry J. Way, Esq., F.S.I.
James Woodham, Esq., F.S.I.
W. J. Roker, Esq., F.S.I.
J. Warner Turner, Esq., F.S.I.
J. Groves Cooper, Esq., F.S.I.
T. M. Rickman, Esq., F.S.I.
W. C, Pickering, Esq., F.S.I.
Walter D. Watney, Esq., F.S.I.
J. H. Lepper, Esq., F.S.I.
Richard Scriven, Esq., F.S.I.
Robert Rich, Esq., F.S.I., M.R.A.S., M.R.A.C,
C. W. Tindall, Esq., F.S.L
John H. Tiffen, Esq., F.S.I.
C. H. Sample, Esq., F.S.L
Caleb William Gater, Esq., F.S.I.
Messrs. Weatherall & Green, F.S.L
Percy J. Dawson, Esq., F.S.L
LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS.. 907
E. Howard Dawson, Esq., A.R.I.B.A., F.S.I.
A. E. Christy, Esq., F.S.I.
Rowland R. Batstone, Esq., F.S.I.
F. D. Holiday, Esq., F.S.I.
Walter Pearson Evans, Esq., F.S.I.
A. W. Taylor, Esq., F.S.I.
Arthur Garrard, Esq., F.S.I.
R. T. A. Hardy, Esq., F.S.I., M.R.A.S. England.
A. Dudley Clarke, Esq., F.S.I.
C. E. Vernon Jessett, Esq., P.A.S.I.
Osman F- Giddy, Esq., P.A.S.I.
W. M. Stewart, Esq.
J. Townsend Trench, Esq.
. T. Hoare, Esq., J.P.
James Mason, Esq. J.P.
George Norton, Esq., M.A.
John Walker, Esq.
W. Whiteley, Esq.
George W T illiams, Esq.
John Kemsley, Esq.
J.E.A.Gwynne,Esq.,J.P.,F.S.A.,C.E.,F.S.S.
John Teede, Esq.
C. W. Barnett, Esq.
W. H. Cullingford, Esq.
J. Townsend, Esq.
S. Salmon, Esq.
W. H. Hitchcock, Esq.
W. G. Pidduck, Esq.
Edward Harris, Esq.
Charles Paine, Esq.
Henry Gourlay, Esq.
H. Harland, Esq., M.D.
Thomas Boys, Esq.
Martin J. Sutton, Esq.
W. H. Willett, Esq.
John Jones, Esq., F.R.G.S.
T. J. Hamp, Esq.
H. E. Norton, Esq.
LIST^OF SUBSCRIBERS
S. M. Hussey, Esq., J.P.
W. J. Terrill, Esq.
C. M. Welstead, Esq.
J. S. H. Fullerton, Esq.
Louis Ames, Esq.
Eev. J. E. Loughnan, M.A.
Mrs. Brightwen.
Mrs. Granville Ward.
Mrs. Meyer.
Mrs. Tuzo.
Mrs. Bourne.
Miss Light.
Miss Constance Maynard.
S. A. Sillem, Esq., M.A.
A. B. Penn Gaskell, Esq.
M. P. Manfield, Esq.
H. C. Stephens, Esq., M.P.
P. S. Stevenson, Esq., M.P.
Henry Tubb, Esq.
Ernest W. Beckett, Esq., M.P.
Arthur Wm. Arkwright, Esq., D.L,, J.P.
C. W. Heckethorn, Esq.
C. P. Allix, Esq., J.P., D.L.
Messrs. Waterlow Brothers & Layton.
P. F. S. Amery, Esq., J.P.
Eev. E. B. Kennard, M.A.
C. J. Backhouse, Esq., J.P.
Edward M. Denny, Esq.
Messrs. John D. Wood & Co.
Arthur H. Bowles, Esq.
Charles Fruen, Esq.
G. Simmins, Esq.
F. E. Astley-Corbett, Esq.
Herbert Thos. Steward, Esq.
W. J. Sandford-Thonipson, Esq.
Wolseley Emerton, Esq., M.A./JD.C.L.
Albert H. Williams, Esq.
E. A. Williams, Esq., M.E.A.C.
LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. 909
John Lucy, Esq.
J. Timbrell Pierce, Esq., J.P., D.L.
George Burt, Esq., J.P., Ex-Sheriff.
H. N. Pym, Esq.
Peter Mackay, Esq.
Frank Moss, Esq.
S. D. Stanley Dodgson, Esq.
Eowland John Beech, Esq., J.P., D.L.
Cornelius G. Myott, Esq.
John Edward Holmes, Esq.
Rowland Comyns Berkeley, Esq.
T. Ruddiman Johnston, Esq.
Thomas Tucker, Esq.
Peter Taylor, Esq.
John Corbett, Esq., M.P., J.P., D.L.
H. A. Dawson, Esq.
N. Sadler, Esq.
Captain R. C. Coode, J.P.
Arthur Coode, Esq., J.P.
William E. Bear, Esq.
Colonel C. W. Wahab.
Richard Harrild, Esq.
Robert Goff, Esq.
W. Gilford, Esq.
E. I. Pettiward, Esq., J.P.
Walter Young, Esq., LL.B.
G. N. Dorrell, Esq.
G. L. Beeforth, Esq., J.P.
J. J. Colman, Esq., M.P.
Edward Curre, Esq., J.P.
Robert J. Davies, Esq., J.P.
Lloyd Davies, Esq., J.P., (Merlin's Castle)
C. F. Fitch, Esq.
A. J. Butler, Esq.
William Jones, Esq., J.P., D.L.
Fred. W. Jones, Esq.
W. J. Han-is, Esq., F.S.S.
John Coventry, Esq.
Thos. Coote, Esq.
Joseph Cowen, Esq.
Joseph Howard, Esq.
9IO LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS.
John W. Davies, Esq., J.P.
David Davies, Esq., J.P.
E. Frank, Esq.
J. F. Eemnant, Esq.
John Eose, Esq.
Michael Ellison, Esq.
John Wright, Esq.
William Purves, Esq.
H. Eeginald Corbet, Esq., J.P.
James Hodsoll, Esq.
E. C. Allen, Esq.
J. Martyn Milne, Esq.
E. Garnett, Esq.
John Newton Sharp, Esq.
J. H. Ealph Smyth, Esq.
A. J. Wells, Esq.
John Hartley, Esq.
B. S. Hudson, Esq.
C. W. Crompton Eoberts, Esq.
P. J. Stanley, Esq., M.P.
A. Hey ward, Esq.
Messrs. Beaumont, Son & Eigden, Solicitors..
E. Newman Knocker, Esq., Solicitor.
William Bristow, Esq., Solicitor.
Frederick Gordon, Esq., Solicitor.
Charles B. Geake, Esq., Solicitor.
G. L. P. Eyre, Esq., Solicitor.
W. Lloyd Jones, Esq., Solicitor.
C. S. Pemberton, Esq., Solicitor.
T. Yeo, Esq., Solicitor.
Percy C. Harvey, Esq., Solicitor.
W. TimbreU Elliot, Esq., Solicitor.
Messrs. Bloxam, Ellison, & Co., Solicitors.
W. Wood, Esq., Solicitor.
Messrs. Home & Birkett, Solicitors.
Edwin Albery, Esq., Solicitor.
Messrs. Collyer-Bristow, Eussell, & Hill, Solicitors.
G. C. Sherrard, Esq., Solicitor.
John Warren, Esq., Solicitor.
W. H. Phillimore, Esq., Solicitor.
W. Stubbs, Esq., Solicitor.
OPINIONS OF PRESS,
LAND: its Attractions and Riches.
Published price, 27s. 6d. ; but it may be had direct from
Messrs. Dowsett & Co., 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, for
Jls. net, or 22s. post free.
900 pages. 93 original chapters by 57 well-known authors.
The type is distributed, and no second edition will be issued.
THE COUNTRY ON THE BOOK.
This book has stirred up the country to consider
the advantages of land in its residential and
investment aspects, and reviews and long recom-
mendatory articles are appearing in all parts of
the capital and the provinces. We give frag-
ments hereunder of such as have come under our
notice.
From the " Times" :
" The essays are very various, and deal with almost every
aspect of lauded property, social, economical, commercial and
the like. They set forth the man3" attractions, amenities, re-
sources, and advantages of landed property, and they may,
perhaps, induce some capitalists to consider that land at its
present value is an investment not to be despised."
From the " Standard " :
" The main object is to suggest the advantages of land as
an investment, compared with many other investments in
which such numbers of people lose their money, and for this
purpose the different contributors set forth, in the most
glowing terms, all its attractions economical, social, philan-
thropic, sporting, and all the pleasures that may be derived
from the studies of natural history, botany, geology, and other
sciences which can only be pursued in the country."
From the " Daily Telegraph " :
" These subjects are dealt with by meu who have a practical
acquaintance with them. ... A solid contribution to our
knowledge of modern agricultural conditions and difficulties."
From, the " Morning Post."
" In this volume is embodied practically all that can be said
in favour of land as a source of livelihood to industrious man-
kind. The rehabilitation of English agriculture is one of the
questions of the day, and Mr. Dowsett, in this book, con-
tributes something towards its proper solution/'
From the " Daily News" :
" A great storehouse of facts bearing on land in its economical,
political, and social aspects."
From the " Morning Advertiser " :
"Tells us almost everything which we can want to know
about country life."
From the " St. James's Gazette " :
" It will be seen that in this unique book, the man of business
and the divine, the philosopher and the farmer, the journalist
and the poet, all combine to sing the praises of the soil ; and
doubtless the result will be to induce many owners of Goschens
to sell out and buy some of the 'aesthetic acres,' that stay so
long in the market."
From the " Globe " :
" The whole tendency of the work is in the right direction,
and though it is of formidable bulk (900 pages) it should find
many readers, for it is by no means wholly of a dry-as-dust
description."
From the " Echo " :
" To all who care to try country life for the sake of health,
peace, and profitable occupation we recommend this compila-
tion on land."
From the "Evening News and Post."
"It is a huge work covering every aspect of the subject l>y
writers of authority. The motive is patriotic."
From the " Citizen" :
" The writers between them glance at the question of land
from every conceivable point of view."
From the " Saturday Eeview " :
" The articles on Forestry and Arboriculture should be
read with interest and profit by owners of property in certain
districts. . . . We will say once more that Laud contains
a good deal we would almost go so far as to say a great deal
that is worth reading."
From the " City Press " :
" In publishing this work, Mr. Dowsett has certainly done
the country a great and undeniable service in many ways. The
land has for long stood in need of a champion, for of late it has
been exposed to criticism on all hands, while it has found no
one able, or, at any rate, willing, to show the other side of the
picture, and defend it from the attacks made upon it. Certain-
ly, a more comprehensive work on the subject or a work at
once more interesting and moie instructive has never been
published."
From the " Surveyor" :
" There is distinct service to the community in directing
attention to a matter of vital importance, in stimulating
thought and interest, and in pointing out some of the most
likely means by which a better and more prosperous state of
affairs might be brought about. These things Mr, Dowsett
may claim in some measure to have done."
From the " Estates Gazette" :
" The burden of the book is that there is abundant hope for
the land owner and the land-tiller, and that it is a good deal
safer and more prudent to invest in real property than to
hazard it in doubtful schemes of finance. That is another
lesson which sadly needs to be learned, and this volume should
prove an excellent aid to learning it."
From the " Agricultural Gazette " :
" There is strong evidence in the book before us to prove that
the losses of owners of land during an unequalled period of
depression have been trifling in comparison with those suffered
by investors in certain foreign loans and limited companies.
If all the British money sunk in foreign lands during the last
quarter of a century had been expended upon the soil of tMs
country, it would have sufficed to make the arable land of
Great Britain one great garden.''
From "Land and Water" .-
" There is a vast quantity of information in the book. Messrs.
Dowsett are valuable champions in the landed interest.' '
From the " Financial Standard " :
" It is to be expected that Mr. Dowsett's work will be very
widely read, and, wheresoever read, appreciated. The thanks
of the public are due to Mr. Dowsett for compiling what is
undoubtedly the completest and easiest reference work on land
at one's disposal."
From the " Queen."
" The wisdom is undeniable, because if a man has a fair
income he can get much more enjoyment for his money in the
country than in the town, and the enjoyment is of a better
sort."
.From the "Local Government Journal."
" The contents of the book, which comprise every phase of
the question, are placed in such an attractive way as to allure
one more than an ordinary three volume novel, the regret
being, as reviewers of the shockers say, that we came to the
end. The delay, therefore, in noticing this really standard
work is due to the fascination its study entailed, and there will
be few who, having read it once, will not read it again. We
heartily agree with Mr. Dowsett when he says the land wants
capital. It not only wants it, but hungers for it, and starves
in consequence. We want small holdings developed, and
everything which the land is capable of yielding brought out."
From the "County Genl
" We are glad to note that, while Mr. Dowsett advocates a
wider diffusion of land than that which at present exists, he is
opposed to all methods of direct and indirect confiscation.
He would rather reach the desired end by easier and more
expeditious means of transfer, and a statutory enlargement of
the powers of proprietors to dispose of their land."
From the " Horticultural Times " :
" This work is iuvaluihle to country gentlemen, landed pro-
prietors, politicians, land and estate agents, journalists, and,
in fact, all classes who are directly or indirectly interested in
the land, and those desirous of obtaining a book exhaustively
dealing with land from social, commercial, and cultural points
of view, will find Mr. Dowsett's great work the most unique,
useful, and interesting book of its class yet published."
From the " Brixton Free Press" :
" It ought to command a quick sale."
From the " Colonies and India," on Chapter XXXVII. :
" Mr. Dowsett is once more upon the side ot common sense.
He clearly proves the necessity of resisting this injustice to
the uttermost, as the adoption of any such proposal would
seriously injure not only the wealthy, but the general
community."
From the " Eock " :
"There are in the book so many subjects which in them-
selves will not only attract readers, but have also been so
happily treated by specialists, that sooner or later public
opinion would be likely to be influenced if it were possi ble to
reissue the volume in a cheaper form. It is a very noteworthy
publication, and although connected with professional enter-
prise, has been, on the face of it, conceived in a truly philan-
thropic spirit."
From the " East London Advertiser " :
" How much something is needed to stop the continual influx
of unskilled casual labour, we in East London know too well,
and could but agricultural development be fostered at a greater
rate and this book shows it could be done with profit and
advantage one of the most pressicg social problems would be in
a fair way towards solution. Mr. Dowsett has done his work
well, and in saying that the book is one which every thoughtful
man who desires to form his opinion from fact and not from
fiction, should possess, we are only paying the work a just
compliment. It is many years since we took up a work of such
engrossing interest, such valuable information, such striking
statistics. Doubtless the ultimate effect of the work will be to
restore confidence in land as an investment."
From the " West London Observer " :
" The book is in every respect an admirable one, and will be
read with interest by all those who have the welfare of the
country at heart."
From the " News of the World."
" It will make an excellent volume for our public libraries,
and should be read by every intelligent man who has at heart
the welfare of the country, and contemplates with dismay the
overcrowding of the towns."
From the " City Leader " :
" In our opinion it would be to the advantage of all con-
cerned if more money was put in land, and less into City
schemes, than is at present the case."
From the " South London Press " :
"The scheme of this work is a most useful and laudable one.
Concession is made to every taste to the practical man and
the unpractical man."
From the " Middlesex County Times " :
" A most valuable contribution, and one which will tend
materially to elucidate vexed problems. Messrs. Dowsett have
had the assistance of a band of specialists, who have invested
the essays with a fascination that should attract the attention
of all."
From the " Rural World " :
" This important volume, valuable and timely."
From the " Capitalist " on Ch. xxxvii. :
" Mr. Dowsett's contribution is worthy of careful attention."
From the " Eecord" :
"Nothing like it, so far as we know, has hitherto been
obtainable, and all who are interested in the land or in
country life will find the book repay their attention. Any-
thing more comprehensive it would be hard to devise within
the same limits."
From " Electricity " :
" Mr. Eawson shows what has been done up to the present,
both for the treatment of plants with an electric current, and
the use of electricity as applied to agricultural implements."
From " Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper."
" Politics are set on one side, and all work together to extol
the excellencies of the country compared to the town, and paint
vividly the risks of investors in other things than land."
From the "Law Journal."
" The essays on settlement and entail of land and easy
transfer of land are worth perusal as good statements of the
points at which some politicians aim. The volume may be
recommended to those who desire to study the land question,
not only in its legal aspect, but also in its relation to the
political and social questions of the day."
From the "Vegetarian Messenger."
" Is well worth the attention of our readers, who will find in
it information of importance on many topics which are closely
allied to the vegetarian movement."
From the " Christian Leader."
" It is a strange thing, the empire being so wide and so rich,
that the state of land is so unsatisfactory. We have millions
f or| Chilian revolutionists, for Argentine ' Wild Cat ' schemes,
for all the loose securities of the world, but people with money
to spend will invest in anything rather than the broad acres
which were once the desire of every true Briton who made
money."
From the " Architect."
"In its way the collection is a sort of encyclopaedia, in
which practical as well as amateur agriculturists will find much
that will interest them. The book will serve as a companion
to the country, for it is readable enough to be taken up at
times as a relaxation."
From the " Building News."
" Those who wish to read both sides of a very important
question will derive much information from Mr. Dowsett's
book."
From the " Christian."
" Those who possess (or desire to possess) real estate, or are
engaged in developing property in land, or directing works
thereon as stewards or trustees, will find the book of real
service."
From the "Land Agents' Record."
" The book is interesting and instructive. The undertaking
was a very spirited one, and the labour of carrying it out must
have been immense."
From the " Farming World."
" The volume is no ordinary one. It is comprehensive and
wonderfully complete in detail. The editor is to be heartily
congratulated on the outcome of his efforts."
From the "British Medical Journal."
" This well conceived and interesting volume. . . . has been
written with a special business object, but is none the less
eminently readable and instructive."
From the " Builder's Reporter."
"This is a very important and valuable contribution to the
store of literature bearing on the land question. . . . Should
be in the hands of all who are in any way interested in land."
From "Piccadilly."
" A book which should be read in town and country. It is
a volume that should be welcome in any country gentlemen's
library a profit to host and guest."
From "Eod and Gun."
" Land is becoming more and more a luxury. There is no
denying . . . the attractions which land holds out, and
lias always held out to every section of the community."
Fanner and Stockbreeder."
" Challenges the attention of all who are concerned in the
landed interest using that term in its broadest sense in this
country. It is a book with a purpose."
From the " Aberdeen Journal " :
" The volume just issued by Mr. C. F. Dowsett, comes upon
the reader with all the freshness and force of novelty. Modern
Britons know, as well as the ancient Spartans did, that the
progress and the security of a country depend largely on the
physical stamina of its manhood, and that the highest physical
qualities are attainable only under the conditions of rural life.
Had the many millions that have been lost in shady and wild cat
foreign schemes been put in the soil of the investors' native
country, there would have been something to show for it to-day.
People inclined to doubt whether money can nowadays be
prudently and profitably invested in land at home, by those who
comply with the modern conditions of agricultural success,
would do well to make acquaintance with Mr. Dowsett's
practical and suggestive work."
From the " Essex Herald " :
" The information is exhaustive, and the volume will be found
interesting to country gentlemen and farmers."
From the " East Lancashire Echo " :
" There can be no hesitation in stating that Mr. Dowsett, the
editor of these articles and the author of several of those of a
business-like character, has fully succeeded in his very worthy
aim of expounding the desirability of land as an investment
whether ' for pleasure or for profit.' He has produced at once
an eminently readable work and a valuable book of reference
that must materially tend to raise the market value of land
once more to something like its normal character."
From the " North British Daily Mail " :
" The book contains so much which is good and useful, that
we have no hesitation in recommending it to all who live or
wish to live in the country."
From the " Inverness Courier " :
" The book is varied, lively, and useful, and contains inform-
ation on numerous important topics."
From " Bex-row's Worcester Journal " :
" This volume appeals to sentiment, to love of legitimate
recreation, to the sense of duty, and to material interest.
Mr. Dowsett's undertaking is strikingly planned, and on the
whole is a distinct success.
From the " Sheffield Independent " :
" Indeed, when confronted with this book, which enshrines
the productions of 57 active brains, the reader realises, perhaps
for the first time, the inestimable importance in land, in its
social, political, financial, historical, legal, and scientific
aspects. Eeally, Mr. Dowsett has omitted nothing."
From the " Stockton Herald" :
" The social pleasures of the country are explained by several
writers who touch on the beauties of scenery, the simple
occupations of a country squire : the delights of the fir woods ;
the interests and attractions of a country home, viewed from
a feminine standpoint ; the outdoor sports, such as hunting,
fishing, and shooting, which appeal so forcibly to the tastes of
the male sex; and the various attractions from a natural
history, geological, or botanical point of view."
From the " Coventry Standard " :
"We can only persuade all who are interested in our
' British broad acres,' not only those who are actually lords of
the soil, but others, who, from the fortunate possession of
capital, might be and perchance may be, to get the book and
read it for themselves. Practical agriculturists will also find
abundant material for their profitable attention in such
chapters as those on cultivation, drainage, tenant-right,
farming prospects, foreign competition, methods of crop and
stock treatment, fruit culture, combination, and so on."
From the " Midland Counties Express ":
"The book, as a matter of fact, contains something for
everybody. The technical, legal, scientific, special, and other
phases of the land question are set forth clearly and concisely."
From " the Westmoreland Gazette " :
" A good, deal to interest."
From the " Northern Echo " :
" If a perusal of this document induces the capitalist to
leave foreign loans and doubtful large dividends in industrial
undertakings for the lower return but invigorating touch of
pastoral or arable land investments, its mission will have been
fulfilled."
From the " Croydon Observer" :
"A very valuable and useful work."
From the " Cork Constitution " :
" It will be read with much interest by all who wish that
land maybe appraised at its real value and not at the valuation
that its detractors would place upon it."
From the " Sussex Advertiser" :
" The work is a storehouse of information, and its object
partakes of a national character. We recommend all interested
in agriculture or country sports to secure a copy of the book."
From the " Birmingham Daily Gazette " :
" The articles are by men eminent as authorities upon the
subjects they treat, and as a whole the volume can hardly fail
to serve a most useful purpose in attracting attention to some
of the supremely important rural questions that mere political
agitators consistently ignore."
From the " Gloucester Journal" :
" The object of such a book is as apparent as it is praise-
worthy. No one will begrudge Messrs. Dowsett any business
that they may acquire in consequence."
From the "Hampshire Chronicle":
" We trust that the work may have the influence for which
it is intended, and thus help to solve one of the greatest pro-
blems of the day."
From the " Ayr Observer " :
"Depressed agriculture sooner or later tells on commerce
and trade ; and the return of capital to the soil, with a resident
proprietary, and the best means taken to develop the resources
of the land, should be encouraged by every lover of his
country. The work before us points out how this can be done."
From the " Leicester Daily Post " :
"A more exhaustive work of its class than this, indeed.it
would be difficult to find. That it is at once ably written and
reliable may be realized from the well-known names of some of
its principal contributors."
From the " Portsmouth Evening News " :
" When land is going out of cultivation, thereby diminishing
our home food supplies, any book which will tend to show the
advantages of rural life, to encourage agricultural pursuits,
and to increase the productiveness of the soil, cannot be too
highly commended. This is the aim and end of this book, and
as such we welcome it as one tending to promote national
prosperity."
From the " Perthshire Courier " :
" All the contributions are written by specialists, and convey
much valuable information. The book is quite unique, and to
any who have money to invest we cordially commend it for
their careful perusal."
From the " Kentish Observer" :
" We regard the book as one of the highest value and
importance, and can only hope that its publication may result
in largely improving the prospects of landowning. Every
phase of the subject is dealt with, and in a manner that could
scarcely be excelled."
From the " Sunderland Daily Echo " :
" By reading and keeping by him this work, every man
interested in land would become his own college of agriculture,
his own lawyer, and his own mineralogist. He will gain also
great insight into natural science. In short, he will find in the
volume a wealth of information upon every subject that is
likely to crop up in the diversified experience of land in the
largest sense of the word. To young men looking for a field
for their energies, and to fathers wishing to place sons in life,
' Land : its Attractions and Eiches,' is likely to be of extreme
value."
From the " Bristol Times and Mirror " :
iost enticing volume It is refreshing, too, to come
across a new book about the country and country pursuits
which, while having a serious aim, is almost entirely destitute
of allusions to politics or party strife."
From the " North British Agriculturist" :
" The book is a weighty and most useful contribution to the
public stock of knowledge respecting the holding of land in
any form."
From the " Nottingham Guardian" -.
"The subject of land as an investment is ably treated, and
so far Mr. Dowsett and his friends have justified their funda-
mental contention that capital can be invested in and applied
to land with reasonable grounds of a fair return, and also
their subsidiary one, that when residential estates of ex-
ceptional attractiveness are in question, the basis of value is
not their productive capacity alone, but their value as
luxuries.' "
From the " Glasgow Herald " :
' ' It contains a great amount of useful and valuable inform-
ation, and does much to show the superior advantages of land
as an investment."
From the " Galloway Advertiser " :
" Remarkably comprehensive, and forms excellent and
instructive reading."
From the " Somerset County Herald " :
" Contains many able papers, and is well timed in its
publication. Just now, when so much attention is being paid
to the land, it may, and we sincerely hope it will, enlighten
people on the matter, and help to induce men of ability and
possessing capital to make another effort to turn the cultivation
of the soil to profitable account, and restore what will otherwise
be a dying industry."
From the " Lancaster Guardian " :
" A most interesting volume."
From the " Suffolk Chronicle " :
" It is imperative, if the country is to remain in a sound and
healthy state, that capital should get back to the land . . .
and if Mr. Dowsett succeeds in increasing confidence in invest-
ment in land and in drawing out a love for rural life, the
country will be willing to crown him with a chaplet and to hail
him as a public benefactor."
From the " Merthyr Express " :
" Instead of having a laborious compilation the work of a
single mind with the inevitable tediousness of detail and
frequency of lapse into vapid padding, we have here a series
of short chapters, into which the most that can be said within
a small compass upon each specific branch of the general
luestion has been skilfully compressed by writers of known
repute and ability. Land in the open country alongside the
railways or near good main roads and within easy drive of a
market town will yield as good a return as any of the limited
number of safe investments in stocks and shares."
From the "South-Eastern Gazette":
"The whole subject is thus exhaustively treated. Mr.
Dowsett may be complimented on the result."
From the " Liverpool Mercury " :
" This noble volume subserves a doable purpose ; it in-
tensifies the reader's love for his native land, and it shows
how much wealth still lies undeveloped within it. Every
landlord should read and re-read the work."
From the " Manchester Examiner " :
" Even if the publication of this volume does not result in
materially raising the price of land, it may have the desired
effect of inducing some capitalists to invest in landed property.
The book certainly contains a great deal of valuable information,
and must be regarded as a unique production."
From the " Yorkshire Daily Post " .
" The standard of quality of the articles maintained is a high
one. Altogether, the papers written revive delightful recollec-
tions in those who do know country life, and ought to prove
most alluring to those who do not."
From the " Liverpool Courier " :
" It is characterized by much logical force and clearness, and
will form a valuable contribution indeed to the literature
affecting a staple interest in this country."
From the " Scotsman " :
" The book as a whole, makes a miscellany both entertaining
and instructive, which answers to the particular tastes and
requirements of landholders, and which is likely to awaken an
interest in land."
From the "North Devon Herald" :
" This admirable work has been issued at a most opportune
moment. Popular thought and studious investigation are alike
being directed at this juncture to the land problem in all its
ramifications and bearings. The tide has ebbed so long in rural
investments, that the time of its flow must be fast approaching,
and those who want to make the most and the best of their
capital to obtain substantial security and a fair interest-
can now find opportunities in that direction which may not be
available a few years hence. The subject is treated from every
point of view. We congratulate Mr. Dowsett on the sterling
character and marked ability of his book, which cannot have
too large a circulation, or be too widely read."
From the " Caithness Courier " :
" There is scarcely a question of interest connected with the
subject but is referred to. It is a book which we can recom-
mend to the consideration of every one."
Frooi the " Essex Standard" :
" The object being to attract capital once more to the 391!,
and to refute a good deal of the depreciative expressions which
have been made on the subject in the Press."
From the " Leamington Spa Courier " :
" This handsome volume of over 900 pages, is peculiar in
having so many authors and comprising so many topics. But
diversified as are the latter, they exhibit one common aim, and
that aim is to counteract the disfavour with which investments
in land are commonly regarded."
From the " Leeds Mercury" :
"If Mr. Dowsett can convince any considerable number of
British capitalists that they will be likely to do much better
by investing their money in the purchase and improvement of
land in this country than by yielding to the temptation of high
interest in connection with risky foreign bonds or railways or
limited companies, his book will prove one of the most bene-
ficent works of the century. Half the capital which had been
squandered in foreign countries during the last ten years would
probably have sufficed to increase the produce of the land in
England by 50 per cent. We heartily wish success to the re-
markably spirited venture made by Mr. Dowsett in bringing out
a costly book in eulogy of land."
From the " Devon Gazette " :
" All who are at all interested in the land question should at
once make themselves acquainted with the contents of the
publication."
From the " Nottingham Daily Express " :
" The publication is one which will repay the perusal of all
who are interested in agriculture and all who have money with
which they fear to speculate."
From the " Western Daily Press " :
" There can be no doubt whatever that Mr. Dowsett has pro-
duced an exceedingly interesting and useful volume, whether
we look to the land question as it appeals to investors, or to its
social bearing on the farming class, and the rural and town
populations. The work, in fact, has a good word to say for
land, and it will no doubt attract attention among statesmen,
politicians, and all who interest themselves in the social and
commercial questions of the day. If Mr. Dowsett should suc-
ceed, as he is likely to do, in again attracting capital to the
land, he will help to solve sortie knotty social questions, and he
will also open the way to the special enjoyment which sound
health renders possible."
From the " Belfast News Letter" :
"A volume possessing more than ordinary attractions. It
supplies information not generally known. There has been a
loss of more than 100,000,000 in one foreign stock, 150,000,000
in another, 80,000 000 in another, and so on, proving that the
reduction in the value of land in the United Kingdom has not
involved the disastrous losses British capitalists have had to
bear in connection with their investments in foreign enter-
prises."
From the " Warrington Guardian " :
" The book is really a rich repertory of excellent matter."
From the " Buckingham Advertiser " :
" It is a most fascinating book, and we can confidently
recommend our readers and those who take any interest in the
great land question to study it."
From the " Norwich Mercury '' :
" The volume has materials which would go to the making of
-half-a-dozen ordinary books ; but it is one that can be taken in
hand for half-an-hour, and the reader will find the time pass so
pleasantly that he needs must admit that Mr. Dowsett has, at
any rate, won pleasure for the public out of land."
From the "Evening Despatch" (Edinburgh) :
" A massive and valuable book. The whole question of laud
as an investment, as a luxury, and as a residential necessity,
together with the comparative attractions of town and country
life, is exhaustively dealt with in this most useful publication."
From the " Derry Journal " :
" This is a remarkable book, unique in its idea and arrange-
ment, and of great instructiveness and attractiveness as welL
There is a wise utter absence of political bias, The writers
are of every shade, agreed on the one essential aim, setting
forth the advantages and riches of land. It is a purpose of
the highest patriotism, nothing the worse for its utilitarianism.
No aspect is omitted, whether it is in the matter of practical
or technical information, or the amusements, pleasure, or
sports of flood and field. No more potent and attractive
appeal for the land has come under our notice. This is a book
of rare quality, and once known is certain to be widely in
circulation."
From the "Derbyshire Advertiser":
"We have every confidence in saying that all persons
concerned with or interested in the land should procure this
work, the nine hundred well-printed pages of which they will
find a perfect mine of useful and interesting information."
From the "Royal Cornwall Gazette":
'Many of the papers are of a distinctly practical and
technical character, explaining in detail the methods which
should be adopted to attain better results."
From the " Kenilworth Advertiser " :
" The land and its interests have been fruitful of controversy,
but certainly in the way of literary productions nothing more
comprehensive has appeared."
From the " Hull Daily News " :
" This book from its very excellence and the importance of
its subject demands a wide-spread circulation. It forms a
landmark in the history of our present day political economy
and as such will be closely studied by every deep thinking man."
From the " Londonderry Sentinel."
"An excellent idea has been admirably carried out in the
production of this volume, which is a book of wide and
diversified interest, treating of the subject of land in all its
aspects and phases with great completeness and variety. It
forms a symposium of interesting and attractive information."
From the " Taunton Courier."
"We sincerely hope will enlighten people on the matter,
and help to induce men of ability and possessing capital, to
make another effort to turn the cultivation of the soil to
profitable account, and restore what will otherwise be a dying
industry.'
10
From the " Newcastle Journal."
" By adopting the present method of allowing a great
multitude of different writers to take up the question, each
from his own point of view, but all subordinated to the general
aim, the reader can pick and choose, and does not feel bound
to read through a bulky volume before he can be sure that he
has thoroughly grasped the author's argument and understood
his position."
From the " Yorkshire Herald."
"The book is in many wajs a remarkable one. It is sent
forth from the press with a distinct mission, which it seems
quite competent to fulfil, and success in which is greatly to be
desired. The ultimate result of their labours ought to be a
large addition to the number of those persons who find in
country life, and in some close association with the land, a
satisfaction which no other manner of living affords."
From the " Hampshire Telegraph."
''Upon the whole this book is one which deserves a careful
perusal. The questions upon which it treats demand our most
serious attention."
From the "Manchester Guardian."
"Enormous savings are accumulated every year, and
hundreds of millions are sunk in foreign enterprises. The
whole world shares the fertilising stream for the want of
which our own fields are languishing. Mr. Dowsett has
probably special reasons for looking regretfully upon this state
of things, but even if they are professional they may be quite
legitimate, and the action to which they lead may be of great
service to the community. It would not be easy to find a dull
or dry page in the whole of this big volume."
From the "Clare Journal."
" This work is in itself a library on Land."
From the " Limerick Chronicle."
"The laws, the history, the geology, the settlement and
entail, the crops, the poetry, the pleasures, and the profits
connected with land, whether above the earth or contained in
the earth, all are to be found treated in this volume by men
who may be regarded as experts, each in his particular pro-
fession."
From the "Carlisle Patriot."
" People interested in country life ought to get Mr. C. F.
Dpwsett's book, ' Land : Its Attractions and Kiches.' With a
wide diversity of aspect and style, it combines a logical pur-
pose that, namely, of displaying the charm, the salubrity, the
entertainment, and even the profitableness of agriculture and
kindred pursuits."
From the "Newry Telegraph."
"Although it contains some 900 pages of large and vcrv
clear type, it is neither heavy in the hand nor heavy to read'.
Calculations are made to show the enormous sums of money
lost annually by speculating in other things than land."
From the "Cheshire Chronicle."
" The writers are all writers of renown."
From the "Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard."
" The truth is that land is not fairly treated just now, and
those who are wise and look a little further ahead than their
neighbours, are awaking to the fact that before long things
will take the inevitable turn, and land will rise in value as
rapidly as it has fallen of late. If Mr. Dowsett's interesting
book contributes anything to this juster appreciation of the
true value of land it will not have been written in vain."
From the "Bucks Herald."
" The politician, too, may learn much from this excellent
publication, which we have no hesitation in commending as
one of the most valuable and comprehensive treatises on land
that has of late years issued from the Press."
From the "Fife Herald."
" Within the limits of a brief notice like this we can only
give a faint indication of the quality of the book ; but from our
perusal of it we can unreservedly recommend it to all readers
who have an interest, however remote, in the subjects which
it discusses."
11
From the "Sussex Daily News."
"A more comprehensive work on land has perhaps never
been offered to the public."
From the " Birmingham News."
" It would not be easy to name a more interesting', or a more
instructive book on the subject. One so exhaustive has not of
late years been issued from the Press."
From the " Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette " :
" Eemarkable book. It contains a very large amount of
interesting and valuable information."
From the " Shrewsbury Chronicle " :
" As valuable as it is unique."
From the " West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser" :
" To win back capital to the soil is the all-pervading purpose
of the book from beginning to end, and if the vast amount of
information and advice with which its pages are stored receives
that considerate attention from the piblic to which it is
entitled, it is not too much to hope that the publication of this
work will materially assist the solution of one of the most
serious problems of the times."
From the " Beading Observer " :
" The most remarkable work in its way that it has ever been
our lot to peruse. Matters affecting the future of agriculture
and landed estate in this country are dealt with in a manner
that entitles this work not only to be read and studied both for
pleasure and profit, but to be recognised as an authority on
many of the questions relating to the possession and cultivation
of land in this country. '
From the " Durham Chronicle."
" Undoubtedly one of the most interesting and compre-
hensive works yet issued on the subject of Land. The ordinary
dryness of the subject is thoroughly covered by the racy
manner in which most of the writers have managed to clothe
their subjects."
From the "Scottish Property Gazette."
" The work cannot fail to be the book of reference on the
subject of which it treats, as without a doubt the business
man who fails to have this book in his office neglects the most
important piece of furniture."
From the " Huddersfield Daily Chronicle."
" It is increasingly important that we should get all we can
out of the land, if not in one way then in another. The book
full of hints of how this may be done."
From the " Poole and Bournemouth Herald."
" A very unique, but thoroughly interesting and valuable
volume."
From the " Lincoln Mercury."
" The book will prove useful to agriculturalists."
From the "Macclesfield Courier."
"Every landowner, every farmer, everyone, indeed, who
takes any interest in the greatest of our national industries,
which is, at the present moment, engaging so much of the
attention of public men of all shades of opinion, ought to read
this excellent book."
From the " Salisbury and Winchester Journal " :
" The editor has gathered around him an array of experts
who are well qualified to deal with the various subjects of
which they treat. The work is a very interesting one, and
contains much that is of practical value. It deserves to be
widely read."
From the " Cambridge Independent Press " :
"Information abounds in every chapter, and in the 900
pages almost every phase of the subject is touched upon. The
pleasures and the profits of country life are dealt with by
authorities, and we can recommend the work as being ex-
cellently written."
From the "Macclesfield Courier " :
" We recommend all concerned in agriculture to secure a
copy, as the type having been distributed no second edition
will be published."
12
From the " West Cumberland Times " :
"Very interesting and timely. Interesting from cover to
cover. Should it attain, or even only partly realize, its noble
end, the editor and contributors will have deserved well of
their country."
From the " Barnsley Chronicle " :
"The practical farmer will find it a vade rnecuni of most
valuable information relating to land and its treatment ; the
intending land buyer will obtain from it not a few useful hints
as to the paying or non-paying nature of different kinds of
investments : to writers who contemplate working up any
particular branch of the question it will prove a useful book
of reference; while the general reader will find in its pages
not a little of both an edifying and an entertaining character."
From the " Surrey Advertiser ' ' :
" To everybody interested in land and in rural life the work
is calculated to prove one of immense value."
From the " Cheltenham Examiner " :
" A book which cannot fail to instruct and entertain readers
of all classes who are interested in land questions. And who
is not ?
From the " Lymington Chronicle " :
"A very unique but thoroughly interesting and valuable
volume."
From the " Western Daily Mercury" :
" Mr. Dowsett is to be warmly congratulated on his work,
which must become a classic on land questions, and form a part
of every respectable private and public library. Not a book,
but an encyclopaedia. The publicist, farmer, sportsman,
naturalist and historian will all find materials in it for enjoy-
ment and edification."
From the " Yorkshire Gazette."
" The land is treated from almost every conceivable point of
view. We have charming, almost fairy -like pictures of rural
life, by no means over-coloured."
From the " Midland Counties Herald " :
" An instructive, interesting and comprehensive volume,
treating of land from all points of view. No such work as this
on Land and its associations, has, we think, yet been
published."
From the "Durham County Advertiser" :
" It is, perhaps, one of the most important literary publi-
cations of recent years, the subject being one of national
interest. We can hardly speak sufficiently highly of this book.
It is one, we believe, which will go with a bang in the literary
market, and in meeting with extraordinary success it will
receive no more than its due. It affects many classes of people,
country gentlemen, landlords, farmers, &c., and should find a
place in every gentleman's library."
From the " Ayr Advertiser " .
" The book altogether presents a clear and intelligent view
of every matter relating to the subject of Land ; and as such,
we can highly recommend it."
From the " Carlisle Journal " :
"The object of this massive collection of essays which is
published by a well known firm of land agents, is to set forth
in an exhaustive fashion the superiorities of country life, and
the advantages of land as an investment."
From the " Hereford Times " :
"Most commendable endeavour to bring about a more
healthy state of popular feeling."
From " Keene's Bath Journal" :
" Full justice, in the space at command, can scarcely be done
to all the many phases of so useful a compilation ; we must,
therefore, content ourselves with summing the whole up in
this one sentence: 'Land: its Attractions and Eiches,' will
benefit all who read it."
From the " Barrow Herald " :
" The attractions and advantages of a country life are set forth
with a vividness which must impress the most unimaginative
dwellers in towns. The work is strongly educational, and
those who peruse its pleasurable pages will find an inexhaust-
ible fund of information on every phase of rural life and work."
13
From the " Northampton Herald." :
" Every imaginable aspect of the question forms the subject
of special treatment or incidental allusion."
From the " Hunts County News " .
"Invaluable to agriculturists."
From the " Dorset County Chronicle " :
" A good case has been made out in behalf of land invest-
ment. The question has been treated in a broad and practical
manner, and we are inclined to think that those who study
the volume will come to the conclusion that land holding is
not after all so forlorn a matter as many have represented
it to be."
From the " Cambridge Chronicle " :
"The prospects of farming, crops, cattle raising, poultry,
ensilage, and scientific agriculture, are amongst the subjects
treated in this comprehensive work upon land."
From the " Eastern Daily Press " :
" We have read many of the articles with profound pleasure.
. . . The most remarkable production that has appeared
for a generation."
From the " East Sussex News " :
" This work not only deals with the manifold pleasures and
improved health derived from a country life, but gives practical
instructions as to how farming can be made profitable from the
keeping of bees to the rearing and feeding of cattle."
From the " Loughborough Monitor" :
" We have no hesitation in commending it to the perusal of
all interested in the land question from any point of view."
From the " Derby Mercury " :
" In every respect the work is a notable one; it will un-
doubtedly prove a very valuable contribution to one of the
most perplexing problems of the times."
From the " Eastbourne Chronicle " :
"The work not only deals with the manifold pleasures and
improved health derived from a country life, but gives practical
instructions as to how farming can be made profitable."
From the " Western Mail " :
" A most enticing volume. It is refreshing to come across a
new book about the country and country pursuits, which, while
having a serious aim is almost entirely destitute of allusions to
politics or party strife."
From the " Eastern Morning News " :
" Poetry and prose, description and scientific classification,
retrospect and forecast, are about equally mingled in this
encyclopaedic publication."
From the " Oldham Chronicle."
" Its most interesting and pleasant features are dealt with first,
and so bright and alluring is this mode of treatment that the
reader's attention is so engrossed that he feels that there is
not a dry or dull page in any of the ninety-three chapters of
the book."
Fro in the " Manchester Courier."
" It is impossible to close the book without feeling that in a
vast majority of the papers the author has been thoroughly in
love with his subject, and we can only again praise the
admirable and attractive manner in which the claims of
' mother country ' to our increased support have been put
before us."
Fi-"in the " Newcastle L.
" The book is as readable as it is useful, and those who have
read it will probably have a burning ambition to get a farm or
allotment as soon as possible."
'/c " Fifeshire Journal."
" Assuredly we should be well pleased to see the stream of
capital diverted into the channel suggested."
.From the " Aberdeen Free Press."
. . . " Bringing conclusive figures to prove that, after
all, land is the surest and purest source of wealth, that the
agriculturist has pleasures which the merchant or banker are
straneers to, and the poor literary hack sighs for in vain."
14
Prom the " Dundee Courier."
"Everybody interested in the Land Question should procure
a copy of this work."
From the " Dundee Advertiser."
" Shall we be allured by the moneyed prospectus, with its
imposing list of directors and its golden promises of ten per
cent. ? "
From the " Dumfries and Galloway Courier."
" The book is crowded'with good things. It is of practical
value to the laird or farmer ; it is full of delightful matter for
general readers, and it fulfils a praiseworthy and patriotic
mission."
From the " Cambrian."
"To all who take an interest in the immensely important
question of the present condition and future prospects of the
land of this country, this book is capable of affording a vast
amount of useful information in a very readable and pleasant
as well as reliable form."
From the " Somerset County Gazette."
" A remarkable volume, having a most laudable aim in view."
From the " Cumbrian News."
' ' If landowners wish to see what they might do to improve
the condition of farmers, and to make their own position
secure, they cannot do better thau obtain this work."
From the " Torquay Times and South Devon Advertiser."
"The book should be read by every owner and tenant of
land, as well as by those to whom the advantage of a safe and
slowly improving investment is more alluring than the
brilliantly painted and often deceitful inducements of the
Stock Exchange.
From the " Cornish Telegraph."
"The book is a most fascinating one . . . reliable in every
respect. It is a very different work from books of its kind
which have preceded it, and is not a mere compilation of dry
statistics and humdrum phrases. It is a standard work which
will rank high in the records of this country."
From the " Cumberland and Westmoreland Advertiser."
" This book, which is unique in its conception and execution,
is a proof, if proof were needed, of the importance of the
subject."
From the " Northern Newspaper Syndicate" (Ke-ndal).
" The more centralised the conditions of life become, the
greater will be the inclination to get back to the land. During
the past quarter of a century the inclination has been to divide
and sub-divide, until now the number of small holdings is
greater than it has ever been before. Nowadays, the City
man is apt to indulge the petite culture in some of its numerous
forms, and Mr. Dowsett's book suggests a hundred pleasures
besides."
From the " Worcester Herald."
" This important work yields an enormous quantity of
valuable information for those who have any interest present
or prospective in the cultivation of the land."
From the " Windsor and Eton Express."
" Intending purchasers should secure a copy as early as
possible."
From the " Westmeatk Guardian."
" We wish the book every success, and trust it will fall into
the hands of those who have power to promote its object."
From the " Southampton Times."
" We have no doubt that it will have an important influence
in shaping public opinion, and will do much in the direction of
attracting capital back again to the land, in that way aiding the
restoration of the rural population, the increase of prosperity
to our farmers, and a general and lasting improvement in the
health, wealth, and happiness of the nation at large."
" A work of an unusually comprehensive character. To say
that the \ohune is one that no landowner should be without,
though high commendation, would be doing scant justice to
the h
m the "Leicester Advert t-
" The book covers a very wide range of subjects, and all are
treated elaborately and clearly, giving here and there a good
deal of useful practical information, and holding up the bright
side of country life, whether for health, occupation, or
investment."
F.-om tic " Times or India."
" You should get the new book called ' Land,' edited by Mr.
Dowsett."
F,-' m the "Armagh Guardian."
"Although the book before us is a voluminous one, we have
"read and studied it carefully, and we have no hesitation in
sayiiig that if it is taken as a text-book for those desirous of
becoming land-owners, or those who are already such, it will,
in a short time, place the British farmers and others of that
ilk in a much better position than the}- have been for years.
We doubt not, when once undertaken, that it will be atten-
tively read, entirely through its intrinsic merit. Nay, we
question very much if it does not become a popular book
amongst all having any pretensions to be classed amongst the
reading world. The style is brilliantly commonplace, written
clearly and simply, yet with a national vein which must be
attractive to all readers."
From the "Irish Fnr;nin-i World."
" It is comprehensive and wonderfully complete in detail
The editor is to be heartily congratulated on the outcome of
his ett
From the "Liverpool C
" The work certainly does not fall short of the full achievr-
ment of its purpose in the matter of testifying to and vividly
depicting the ' attractions ' of the soil."
Prom the " Northern Whig" (Belfast).
" The articles are ably written, and the collection is one
which should be in the hands of everyone interested, directly or
indirectly, in the prospects of land in the United Kingdom."
From the " 0*>i-c*t ry A<l>-?ftlmr."
" Contains a large amount of information on fruit growing,
poultry farming, bee products, and similar subjects."
.From the " London Commercial Bee: .
" No man, however feloniously inclined, can run away with
an acre of land. (The book) is certainly well worth perusal."
Fro,,, the"Bolton Chronicle."
"Land is after all the ultimate pivot upon which, under
Providence, existence and prosperity turn. It may be hoped
that the book will meet with the appreciation and considera-
tion which it deser
' Journal."
" The book is a useful one, full of information. On whatever
side you touch land there you find a paper."
" From the Liverpool Post."
" A bulky volume of diversified contents."
From the " Elgin Courant and Courier."
" You can open it anywhere and find something worth your
attention. Lairds, factors, and farmers would find it a useful
volume to have at hand, whether for instruction or for enter-
Tuinment."
16
From " Woman's Work."
" It can be strongly recommended as a present for husbands,
brothers, and sons, although much of it would surely be
enjoyed by our own particular readers."
From the " South Bucks Free Press."
" The labour involved in the compilation of such a work
must have been immense, and we trust that the editor will find
it appreciated, and in good demand."
From the " London and Middlesex Note Book."
" Anything which should help to counteract the pessimistic
views, which are now so current, should be welcomed by those
who are interested in English, provincial, and country life.
Mr. Dowsett's book seenis well calculated to revive interest in
land, and it ought to have good effect in dissipating some of
the many fallacies now prevalent."
From the " Journal of Horticulture."
"It may be expected that 'Land: its Attractions and
Riches,' will find its way into the libraries of landowners,
cultivators, and others, who are interested in the various
aspects of the great and undeniably important subject in which
they are embraced. The volume is a substantial one, well
printed, and considering its size (900 pages) cannot be regarded
as expensive."
From the " Bedford Times."
" This book is as interesting as it is singular. All questions
that concern land appear to be here touched upon more or less
in detail. The subject of land is looked at from all sides from
the points of view of the political economist, of the landlord,
of the tenant, &c. Men who have money to invest will find the
book suggestive."
From the " New Era."
"This portly volume is one of unusual character. It is
unique in its way and is a good thing well done. One can but
admire the ingenuity and success with which the Editor of
this work has carried out his plan."
From the " English and American Reporter " (Berlin).
" It is at once a capital guide to profitable farming and land
investment, live stock, fruit culture, botany, geology, &c."
From the " Lancaster Gazette."
" Its articles are quite exhaustive, and many of the chapters
contain paragraphs of great beauty."
From the " Wakefield Echo."
" The work is invaluable to all landowners and country resi-
dents, as it gives a vast amount of trustworthy advice by
experienced writers."
Favourable reviews also appeared in the " Grimsby News,"
and many other papers.
The Lands of Old England are treated of with a pathos which
will find a loud echo in the heart of every lover of country life.
Natural charms. Luxury. Health. Eecreations. Sports.
Pets. Natural History. Poetry. Large and Small Hold-
ings. Botany. Investments. Villa Farms. Agricultural
Education. Thorough Cultivation. Drainage. Reclamation.
Tenant Rights. Prospects of Farming. How Farming can
be made Profitable. Crops. Live Stock. Dairying. What
One Acre can Produce. Foreign Competition. Fruit Culti-
vations. Forestry. History. Liberty. Landlords. Titles.
Settlements. Entail. Transfers. Tithes. Taxes. Agitation.
Electricity. Geology. Minerals. Lands : Irish, Australian,
Canadian, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Biblical.
ADVERTISEMENTS.
TO OWNERS
TO OWNERS OF LANDED ESTATES.
TO OWNERS OF RESIDENTIAL LANDS.
TO OWNERS OF FARMS.
TO OWNERS OF FRUIT LANDS.
TO OWNERS OF WILD AND WASTE
LANDS.
TO OWNERS OF BUILDING LANDS.
TO OWNERS OF COUNTRY RESIDENCES.
TO OWNERS OF TOWN RESIDENCES.
TO OWNERS OF GROUND RENTS.
TO OWNERS OF HOUSE AND SHOP
PROPERTY.
TO OWNERS OF COLONIAL LANDS.
TO OWNERS OF FOREIGN PROPERTIES.
TO OWNERS OF EVERY DESCRIPTION OF
LAND AND HOUSE PROPERTY
(whether British or Foreign).
MESSRS. DOWSETT & Co. invite owners of any of the
above-mentioned descriptions of property who wish to
sell to use their Agency. They publish a monthly paper,
well known for many years past as " THE LAND ROLL,"
which may be obtained from them, price One Penny.
DOWSETT & Co. (Established 1859), Estate Agents, Auctioneers,
Valuers and Surveyors, 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London.
11. ADVERTISEMENTS.
TO OWNERS
AN agent should have a personal knowledge of the
property he is instructed to sell, and Messrs. DOWSETT
& Co. have met this necessity by adopting the custom
for many years past of visiting and taking particulars of
property for sale at the nominal charge of 6d. per mile,
reckoned to the railway station thus, if a property were
situate twenty miles from London the charge would be
i os., if two hundred miles, ^5. The owner to send a
conveyance to meet and take back to the station, other-
wise an extra charge is made of 2s. per mile for the
distance between the railway station and the property.
By a personal knowledge the Agent is much better
able to conduct a negotiation to a successful issue, and
having regard to the expense mentioned, he risks much
more than the owner, for he risks his time and services.
Special terms are made for viewing properties out of
Great Britain.
DOWSETT d Co. (Established 1859), Estate Agents, Auctioneers,
Valuers and Surveyors, 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London,
ADVERTISEMENTS. 111.
TERMS OF COMMISSION.
On effecting a Sale of Land or House Property
Messrs. DOWSETT & Co. charge the following com-
mission :
On Amounts up to 3000 2 per cent.
On Amounts ranging from 3000 to 10,000 2 per cent, on
3000, and 1 per cent, on the remainder.
On Amounts ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 1 per cent.
on 10,000, and 1 per cent, on the remainder.
On Amounts exceeding 100,0001 per cent, on 100,000,
and per cent, on remainder.
SALES BY AUCTION.
Definite terms may be arranged, so that owners may
know exactly what expenses they incur. Such expenses
are in proportion to the style and extent of publicity
in newspaper and other forms of advertisements
printing, etc.
Owners and their Solicitors find it most satisfactory
to know the extent of costs which an Auction will
involve.
When Owners have made up their minds to sell a
property, it is to their interest to incur some judicious
expense in publicity that the world may know (whether
in a public or a private form) that such a description
of property is obtainable.
DOWSETT d Co. (Established 1859}, Estate Agents, Auctioneers,
Valuers and Surveyors, 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London.
IV. ADVERTISEMENTS.
List of Agency Work carried out by
Messrs. DOWSETT & CO., of 3, Lincoln's
Inn Fields, London.
Selling every description of Land and House Property
privately.
Selling every description of Land and House Property
by Auction,
Valuing every description of Land and House Property
for Mortgages, Exchange, Probate, and every
other purpose.
Letting every description of Land and House Property,
whether for Occupation, Commerce, Develop-
ment by Building or other purpose.
Selling Furniture, Live and Dead Farm Stock, Tenant
Rights, Growing Crops, Timber, Fixtures, Good-
wills, Stocks-in-Trade, &c., by Auction and
privately.
Valuing Furniture, Live and Dead Farm Stock, Tenant
Rights, Growing Crops, Timber, Fixtures, Good-
wills, Stocks-in-Trade, &c., for every purpose.
Conducting every description of Case against Railway
Companies and other Public Bodies who acquire
Property under Compulsory Powers. Also con-
ducting Ancient Light cases.
Making Field Surveys with preparation of Plans, whether
of extensive or small areas (from a Landed Estate
to a Single Plot). Also making Architectural
Surveys, Superintending Building Operations, &c.
DOWSETT & Co, (Established 1859), Estate Agents, Auctioneers,
Valuers and Surveyors, 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London.
ADVERTISEMENTS. V.
LIST OF AGENCY WORK continued.
Making Geological Surveys and Reports of Soils,
Minerals and Water, and giving quantitative
analyses thereof.
Preparing Specifications and making Valuations of
Dilapidations under Leases, and for other
purposes.
Collecting Rents and managing Land and House Pro-
perties generally.
Making and checking Inventories and Schedules.
Procuring money on the Mortgage Security of Land and
House Property.
Negotiating exchanges of Property.
Messrs. DOWSETT & Co. undertake these varied
services in London, or any part of England, Scotland,
Ireland, the Colonies, America, or other countries, and
personally visit other countries on agreed terms.
Messrs. DOWSETT & Co. are assisted, when special
needs require, by experts in agricultural, architectural
and sanitary science, and also by specialists in every
branch of professional and commercial enterprise.
Messrs. DOWSETT & Co. undertake every kind of
negotiation (of an honourable character) in relation to
Lands, Houses, Businesses, Companies, Factories, Mines,
Mortgages, Exchanges, Settlements, Partnerships, &c.
DOWSETT d Co, (Established 1859}, Estate Agents, Auctioneers,
Valuers and Surveyors, 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London,
VI.
ADVERTISEMENTS.
LANDS FOR SALE
WE HAVE FOR SALE
Landed Estates.
Country Residences.
Pleasure Farms, with Posses-
sion.
Farms Let and producing
Income.
Residential Lands.
Building Lands.
Yilla Farms, Fruit Farms,
Poultry Farms, etc.
Town Residences.
House Property producing
Income.
Shop Property producing
Income.
Commercial Lands and Build-
ings producing Income.
Commercial Enterprises and
Partnerships.
Ground Rents.
Ready Money Rentals
(Weekly Houses).
Reversions.
Colonial Lands, Houses, and
Enterprises.
Foreign Lands, Houses, and
Enterprises.
Particulars of the above Properties for Sale are described
in "THE LAND ROLL," which is published monthly at One
Penny, and may be obtained of
DOWSETT d Co, (Established 1859), Estate Agents, Auctioneers,
Valuers and Surveyors, 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London.
ADVERTISEMENTS. Vll.
MORTGAGE MONEYS.
OWNERS of Landed or House Estates, whether of the
value of hundreds, or of hundreds of thousands, wishing
to borrow small or large sums upon them by way of
mortgage at interest ranging (according to the pro-
portion and quality of security) at from three-and-a
half to five per cent., are invited to consult Messrs.
DOWSETT & Co., who have extensive sources whence
they can procure loans on mortgage.
MORTGAGE SECURITIES.
CAPITALISTS wishing to secure a safe investment are
invited to place their money on Mortgages of Landed
and House Properties. They would receive security of
one-third beyond the amount they lend. By lending
200 they would be secured by 300 worth of pro-
perty; by lending 2000 they would be secured by
3000 worth of property; by lending 200,000 they
would be secured by 300,000 worth of property, and
so on.
DOWSETT & Co, (Established 1859), Estate Agents, Auctioneers,
Valuers and Surveyors, 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London,
VI11. ADVERTISEMENTS.
TO LANDOWNERS.
LAND FOR THE PEOPLE.
LANDOWNERS who wish to dispose of land, situate near
towns or railway stations, and which could be divided into
lots ranging from 50 acres to i acre each, for the pur-
poses of Poultry Farms, Game Farms, Rabbit Farms,
Fruit Farms, Vegetable Farms, Potato Farms, Beetroot
(for sugar) Farms, Flower Farms, Nursery Garden
Farms, Legume Farms, Small Dairy Farms, Pig Farms,
Goat Farms, Bee Farms, Villa Farms or Building Lots,
are invited to consult Messrs. DOWSETT & Co., Estate
Agents, Valuers, Auctioneers and Surveyors, 3, Lincoln's
Inn Fields, London, who make a speciality of this form
of land diffusion.
TO LAND BUYERS.
LAND, THE TJNIVEKSAL WANT.
LAND for Sale, suitable for creating ground rents, by
which means immense fortunes have been amassed.
Land in Villa Farms or large sections. Building sites
from a plot, to a mountain affording the grandest views in
the Empire. Land let in farms producing perfectly safe
incomes. Landed Sporting Estates. Landed Domains
with Mansions. Bond fidt requirers of land, from
perches to a province, with or without a residence, are
invited to call, or write, explaining some details of their
wants to Messrs. DOWSETT & Co., " THE LAND ROLL "
Offices, 3 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London.
We are assured that the land market is a rising
market, and that land purchased at present prices will in
a few years be saleable at a substantial profit, and
Farms let at present rentals, and bought on the basis of
such rentals, will be a most satisfactory investment,
because such rental values will increase.
DOWSETT & Co. (Established 1859), Estate Agents, Auctioneers,
Valuers and Surveyors, 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London,
ADVERTISEMENTS. IX.
GROUND RENT INVESTMENTS.
Since the Financial Crisis of 1866, Messrs. DOWSETT Co. have
made the sale of Ground Rents a speciality.
Freehold Ground Rents are at once the most safe and the most
lucrative of any investment. Being secured several times over by the
value of the rack rentals, the money invested in them is rendered
absolutely safe, while the future certain benefit of the rack rentals
falling in at the expiration of the leases, possesses them with an element
of value distinguishing them from every other kind of investment, and
thus causing them to be duly appreciated by those having to place out
moneys for the benefit of families or of corporate bodies.
The large Metropolitan Estates belonging to corporate bodies and
private families reveal the secret of their immense accumulated wealth
in the fact that as the Ground Leases have run out, the rack rentals
have run in, whereby they have added enormous revenues to the
fortunate ground landlords, that is, the owners of the Freehold Ground
Rents. Government Stocks now pay so small an interest, and other
forms of scrip investments have in them some element of risk, that
trustees and others who must have absolute security for their moneys,
cannot find any form of property at once so safe, so satisfactory, and so
prospectively beneficial as Freehold Ground Rents.
Leasehold Ground Rents are frequently as well secured as Free-
holds. They may be bought to pay rather a larger interest than
Freeholds. They are a very safe form of investment, being secured
by rack rentals several times their own value. They have not attached
to them any of the annoyances sometimes connected with-houses let
at rack rentals, and they have none of the risk attending the general
Stock Exchange investments.
DOWSETT & Co, (Established 1859], Estate Agents, Auctioneers,
Valuers and Surveyors, 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London,
X. ADVERTISEMENTS.
CALIFORNIA.
(A LAND OF SUNSHINE.)
For Sale, in lots of 20 acres upwards, about 60,000
acres of choice Vine and Fruit Land, with perpetual
water right. The prices range from $75 to $150 per
acre, and easy terms of payment may be arranged by
purchasers who buy to settle on the land and to make
substantial improvements thereon.
The lands are suited for the cultivation of raisins,
wine, and table grapes, peaches, apricots, prunes, plums,
pears, figs, nectarines, cherries, olives, oranges, lemons,
&c. ; in fact, all that can be grown in a semi-tropical
climate may be produced with profit. For the growth
of ordinary market garden and farm crops the soil is
most excellent.
The land can be reached in fourteen days from
England, and is situated convenient to a station on a
Main Trunk Railway, Shops, Churches, Chapels,
Schools, Society, &c.
Lands which are not irrigated may be obtained at
lower prices.
A pamphlet, entitled " A Start in Life" (112 pages),
by Mr. C. F. DOWSETT, who has personally inspected
the lands, may be obtained of us. It is published at One
Shilling, but intending settlers may purchase a copy for
Sixpence. The pamphlet describes the journey from
London to California and back, and gives much informa-
tion necessary to persons wishing to settle there.
Books, maps, plans, views, samples of soils, &c., may
be seen at the offices of Messrs. DOWSETT & Co., 3,
Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, from whom (by personal
interview) fuller information may be obtained.
DOWSETT & Co. (Established 1859), Estate Agents, Auctioneers,
Valuers and Surveyors, 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London,
^*fe *t'
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