languid than on drier lands. They will also be particularly important in accounting for the opposite effects which take place in the autumn, and at the approach of winter: nay by such alone, I conceive, can we assign any probable cause why calcareous and sandy soils which had previously exhibited greater fertility by earlier vegetation than clayey or deep ones should at that season so notoriously manifest a greater decline of vegetative power.

"On the same principle too, I would explain a fact, probably not generally noticed, though rather anomalous in the science of vegetation: it is, that meadow or pasture grounds which have been covered with water during a part of the winter, on being drained even early in the spring will for a short time shew a verdure which the adjoining drier lands cannot equal; when afterwards, on the continued action of the rays of light, the dry lands will far surpass them. This I beg to be understood as confined to land which had been covered with water not of a fertilizing quality; not such as having passed through a highly cultivated country might deposit its sediment.

"Nor will this principle be found less useful in accounting for the different effects which a sudden change in the heat of the atmosphere may produce on certain vegetables, in different or even on the same soils when under other modes of management. Whatever has a tendency to check a quick and great loss of temperature in the substances which surround such vegetables, particularly their roots, will be best calculated to save them from that effect and from vegetative death; consequently those earths which are the worst conductors of heat, or in other words, are the longest in heating and cooling, will be the most favorable in resisting any sudden alteration, and the vegetables growing on them will be the least injured when so assailed."

After all, evaporation is the great generator of cold, and although there may be some intrinsic and original difference in the capacities of different earths for retaining heat, abstracted from the retention of water, Mr. Egremont cannot avoid concluding, it is to that retentive power that the chief cause of difference is assignable, and that soils are good and bad conductors of heat according to the moisture they contain. The inference is that clay, being of all others the most retentive, will defend crops from the mildew better than drier soils: and allowance being made for local differences, that soils most liable to have their crops injured may stated in the following order: Peat or moor, calcareous, sand, grey earth, and clay.

be

That the susceptibility of these soils to injury from mildew is actually diminished in the order here laid down is a hazardous statement: next to peat or moor, my observation justifies me in suspecting that strong, adhesive, clayey soils, especially those which

are insufficiently drained, and indeed they scarcely ever can be sufficiently drained, are of all others the least capable of resisting the ravages of mildew. These plants become unhealthy from superabundant moisture, rather than from excessive cold, or sudden variations in temperature, and in consequence of that unhealthiness are attacked by parasitic fungi which they are incapable of repelling. Where there is a substratum of clay through which no water can filter, the land is soaked and saturated with it, and can only be relieved by the tardy process of exhalation. On such soils beans are perhaps the best preparative for wheat: for in the first place their leaves are shed on the ground and contribute to manure it, and in the second place, their strong tubular roots are left in the soil and contribute in a most essential manner to keep it loose and open.

After all that can be said concerning the mildew, as to its nature, character, or cause; even supposing it may occasionally be prevented by an intention to those circumstances of shelter, drainage, and general culture which contribute to the healthy vigor 1 of the growing crops, since we are not possessed of such a command over the elements as the Philosopher Imlac enjoyed, the mischief will occasionally spread itself over our fields, as it has done in the present year, far and fatally. When this is the case, a question arises of some consequence, about which farmers differ, namely, should the infected crop be cut early or late? The general practice is to cut it early, before the corn is fully ripe. This practice is founded, so far as I have been able to learn from enquiry of those who have taken the trouble to reason upon it at all, on a supposition, that "as the mildew feeds upon the living straw, the sooner you destroy the life of the straw the sooner you check the progress of the mildew.” This is very unsatisfactory: Sir Joseph Banks and Mr. Bauer have traced the action of the parasitic fungi in a manner described in the early part of this paper: their minute roots passing under the bark and into the cellular substance of the straw intercept a part of the nourishment which was destined for the kernel. But it is clear that they intercept only a part of that nourishment: if they intercepted the whole, there could be no flour in the kernel, which would then be an empty husk, nothing but bran. So long as there is a living principle in the straw sufficient to convey nourishment from the earth to the ear, it must be injurious to cut off the communication between them. The mildew intercepts a part of the nourishment, the sickle intercepts the whole.

There is an unhealthy vigor, a rank luxuriance of growth, which is very likely to be followed by disease and mildew.

ON THE

PRESENT STATE

OF THE

Agricultural Interest,

ADDRESSED TO

CHARLES FORBES, ESQ. M. P.

BY THE

REV. A. CROMBIE, LL. D.

LONDON.

ESTEEM for your private character, combined with respect for your independent conduct, as a Member of Parliament, must plead my apology for addressing to you the following Letters, on the present state of the Agricultural Interest.

In these Letters, it is not my intention to enter into any scien→ tific explanation of the principles by which the corn trade, in a country like ours, ought to be regulated. This task has been executed already by Major Torrens, in so clear, so complete, and so masterly a manner, that the theory of the subject may now be regarded as incontrovertibly established. My observations shall be chiefly practical.

In the last session of Parliament the old corn law was abolished, and a new one enacted in its stead. Under the operation of the former act, passed in the year 1804, the farmer had no competition to fear till the average price of wheat had risen to 63s. per quarter. A higher protection is now granted, and all competition excluded, till the price of the quarter has risen to the average of 80s. This higher protection was intended to secure to the farmer a greater remuneration for the expenditure of labor and capital, and to encourage him to take waste lands and inferior soils into culture. Its immediate purpose, therefore, was to increase the price of wheat. In order to quiet the apprehensions of the

public, and to reconcile them to this measure, the advocates for the new Act confidently maintained, that its evident intention was, and its necessary effect would be, to reduce the price. The farmer was told that he should receive a higher remuneration than the old law was calculated to afford; and the consumer was assured that he would have less to pay for his quartern loaf. How assertions so contradictory are to be reconciled, it is not for a common understanding to comprehend. What the farmer receives, it is presumed the consumer must pay. If the agriculturist is not, by the new Act, to receive a higher remuneration, how is he to be benefited by its enactment? If he is to receive this higher remuneration, whence is it to come, but from the pockets of the public? If the former Act furnished the farmer with a sufficient protection and secured to him an adequate return for labor and capital, then the new Act is manifestly a work of supererogation. If the reverse was the fact, then let it not be absurdly affirmed, that while the farmer is to receive a higher price, the consumer is to pay less.

It may be replied, that though the immediate effect of the new corn law might be an augmentation of the price of wheat, yet its ultimate tendency is, by increasing the supply, to lower the price. The argument is fallacious. It could be just only on the supposition, that the waste lands, when once broken up, inclosed and cultivated, and the inferior soils, when once brought,. as the farmers say, into good heart, will continue to afford the agriculturist a sufficient remuneration for labor and capital, at the reduced price of grain, which the advocates of the act professed to have in contemplation. The supposition is almost ridiculously false. It is a notorious fact, that there are at present în cultivation, inferior soils, requiring a constant large expenditure of labor and capital, which would not remunerate the farmer, unless he should receive from ninety shillings to five pounds for every quarter of wheat, which they may produce. And much of that waste land, which remains to be inclosed, is of the same character, the produce of which, therefore, if brought into tillage, must, in order to indemnify the farmer, not only now but continue to fetch a high price. It is not to be expected that he will expend labor and capital without the prospect of

NO. XV.

Pam.

VOL. VIII.

I