The farmer's encyclopædia, and dictionary of rural affairs

"For fear of destroying with cattle or rain,
The sooner ye load it more profit ye gain."
And as to barley, Tusser says,
"The mowing of barley, if barley do stand,
Is cheapest and best, for to rid out of hand:
Some mow it, and rake it, and set it on cocks;
Some mow it, and bind it, and set it on shocks."

They let out, at the period when Tusser wrote, it seems, the harvest-work either by the acre or by the day; of which modes of getting in the corn he seems to prefer the latter:

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"Corn carried, let such as be poor go and glean,
And after thy cattle, to mouth it up clean;
Then spare it for rowen till Michel be past,
To lengthen thy dairy, no better thou hast.

In harvest-time, harvest folk, servants and all,
Should make alltogether, good cheer in the hall;
And fill out the black bowl of blythe to their song,
And let them be merry all harvest-time long.
Once ended thy harvest, let none be beguil'd ;
Please such as did help thee-man, woman, and child.
Thus doing, with alway, such help as they can ;
Thou winnest the praise of the labouring man.
Now look up to God-ward, let tongue never cease
In thanking of Him for his mighty increase,
Accept my good will, for a proof go and try;
The better thou thrivest, the gladder am I."

Having commenced his directions with the outgoing tenant, his last stanza concludes with a reference to the incoming:

"New farmer he thinketh each hour a day,
Untill the old farmer be packing away.'

"Thus endeth and holdeth out
August's Husbandry till

Michaelmas Eve. Tho. Tusser."

The Book of Husbandry of Tusser is also interesting from the information it gives us with regard to the customs and habits of the farmers of more than two centuries and a half since. It is evident that they then lived very much upon salt fish, for in his directions for the farmer's diet, he mentions for Lent herrings and salt fish-at Easter they had veal and bacon-at Martinmas, beef-before the feast of St. John, mackerel-fresh herrings at Michaelmas at Hallowtide, sprats and spurlings - for Christmas fare they seemed to have all the modern standing dishes,

"Good bread and good drink, a good fire in the hall,
Brawn-pudding and souse, and good mustard withal;
Beef, mutton, and pork, shred pies of the best,
Pig, veal, goose, and capon, and turkey well drest."

They bought, in Tusser's time, such stocks of salt fish as would amaze a modern farmer in these protestant days, when, by the increase of green winter food, cattle and sheep are kept easily through the winter, and fresh meat is always to be had. Few farmers would now think of undertaking a journey to buy fish; yet he directed the farmer of the sixteenth century, —

"When harvest is ended, take shipping or ride, Ling, salt-fish, and herring for Lent to provide Get home that is bought, and go stack it up dry, With pease-straw between it, the safer to lie." They had a rude way of measuring time, it seems:

"As buswives are teached, instead of a clock,

How winter nights passeth by crowing of cock."

The care of the garden evidently fella the wife's share, who had also to see to the feeding of the household. It seems that the labourers had then a great fondness for por ridge, for Tusser tells us,—

"No spoon-meat, no bellyfull, labourers think.” In other days, too, it is evident that spinning was no mean part of the mistress avocation, for it is here said,

Wife, pluck fro thy seed hemp the fimble hemp
This looketh more yellow, the other more gre
Use t'one for thy spinning, leave Michell the ter
For shoe-thread and halter, for rope and such other
Now pluck up thy flax for the maidens to spis.

Tusser never seems to have forgotten
any occasion, to recommend to the land
holder the payment of his just dues; ere
the question of the tithes, once so obnoxiu
to the farmer, was not overlooked by
He advised his farming brethren to
"Tithe duly and truly, with hearty good will.

That God and his blessing may dwell with thee st
Though parson neglecteth his duty for this,
Thank thou thy Lord God, and give ev'ry man h

The Points of Huswifery, united to 3r comfort of Husbandry, by Thomas Tuss Gentleman, was, it is concluded, first p lished with The Husbandry in 1561 or 15 It is written in rather a more lively str than the former, and has an epistle der tory, "to the right honorable, and especiall good lady and mistress, the Lay Paget," which he thus commences:

"Though danger be mickle,
And favour so fickle;
Yet duty doth tickle
My fancy to write:
Concerning how pretty,
How fine and bow netty,
Good huswife should jetty
From morning to night."

This work contains an abundance of
|rections, in his usual style of versificatio

They evidently, however, lived generally for the conduct of household duties

very frugally:

"Where fish is scant and fruit of trees,
Supply that want with butter and cheese,
Quoth Tusser."

directs the servants, before breakfast, set to work:

"Let some to peel hemp, or else rushes to rest, To spin, or to card, or to seething of bride

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"By noon, see your dinner be ready and neat ; Let meat tarry servant, not servant his meat." The mistress of the house then made, as now in some parts of England, her own andles, it seems:

"Provide for thy tallow, ere frost cometh in,

And make thine own candle, ere winter begin."

Twice a week, Sundays and Thursdays, the ploughmen were entitled to roast meat for supper; and to a harvest goose when the corn was gathered in. At harvest-home the mistress was enjoined,

"Remember thou therefore, though I do it not, The seed-cake, and pasties, and furmety pot." In Tusser's time a very unwholesome custom prevailed, in the absence of carpets, of strewing the citizens' houses with rushes, and those of the country with flowers. He gives, therefore, a list of "strewing flowers of all sorts," in which we find only the common sorts of flowers now cultivated, such as cowslips, daisies, lavender, roses, sage, tansy, violets, &c.

Such were the works of Tusser, writings which were long in the hand-book of the English country gentleman. That they were popular is evidenced by the rapid succession of copious editions which fell to their lot; that they were read with delight is shown by the way in which he is commonly quoted by the farmer of all grades. If he had spoken in prose, as has been sometimes suggested, he might certainly have been more instructive to the few, but he would not have been read by the many.

The popular details and histories of all nations escaping from rudeness are commonly written in verse; and multitudes can learn these by heart who never were taught to read Tusser, therefore, is deserving of the gratitude of the English farmer, for his labours tended to improve, to refine, to elevate the profession he celebrated in his

UDDER.

verses. The attempt at any thing like a systematic treatise on farming had not, when Tusser died, been deemed possible. (Quart. Journ. Agr. vol. xii. p. 69.)

TUTSAN. See JOHN'S WORT.

honour of Martin Lister, M.D. a famous TWAYBLADE. (Listera; named in English physician and naturalist; best known as a conchologist and entomologist.) A genus of curious little native plants, growing wild in shady places. They may be grown in a mixture of peat and loam, and are increased by divisions of the roots. (Paxton's Bot. Dict.)

TWIFALLOW. A term applied to a second ploughing over, or fallowing the

land.

TWIG-RUSH. (Cladium, from klados, a branch or twig, referring to the appearance of the plant.) This is a genus of hard, harsh, rushy, often prickly-edged plants, whose stems, whether round or triangular, are more or less clothed with alternate sheathing leaves or scales. Spikes numerous, brown or blackish, aggregate, generally panicled: one species only is indigenous. The prickly twig-rush (Ć. mariscus), which is perennial, and grows about fens and in boggy places, flowering in July and August. The long and creeping roots stretch under the moss, and throw up erect, polished, angular stems, from three to four feet high, bearing keeled, taper-pointed, sharply serrated leaves. The flowers are in erect corymbose panicles, with furrowed branches, consisting of two flowering spikes of a rusty brown hue. The fruit is a drupe, containing a hard, brown, angular nut. (Smith's Eng. Flor. vol. i. p. 36.) TWITCH. See COUCH. TWITE. See LINNET.

UDDER. The glandular organ of a cow, mare, ewe, or other animal which is destined for the secretion of milk. There are four teats, each of which consists of two granular lobated glands, comprehending blood vessels, nerves, and milk ducts, all of which first unite into eight or ten principal ducts, and these again into one, which perforates the skin of the teat at its apex. The granular part is the secreting organ; but how the milk is separated from the blood is not known. It is known to be affected in the vesicles of the granules, which open and pour the secretion into the ducts; but how or in what manner the chemical change takes place to form blood into milk, is a mystery which may never be solved. See CATTLE, MILK, &c.

ULCER. See CANCER.
ULMUS. See ELM.

UMBEL. In botany, a particular arrangement of the flowers in certain plants, of which the carrot is a familiar example; the peduncles and pedicles spring from a common centre, and rise till they form a somewhat flat tuft. The umbel is a loose inflorescence, the primary axis of which is short, and the secondary long; and the umbel becomes compound when the secondary axes are developed, in the same manner as the primary. Both the primary and the secondary umbel is generally furnished with bractes at the point of its divergence. The secondary umbel is termed umbellule. The difference between an umbel and a corymb is, that in the latter the flowers form a flat head, the secondary axes arising alternately from different points of the primary, not, as in the former, springing from a common centre. See INFLORESCENCE.

UMBER. See GRAYLING.

UNDERWOOD. A term applied to coppice, or any wood not accounted timber. See COPPICE, FOREST, and PLANTATION. URE. A provincial term applied to the udder of a cow, sheep, &c.

URINE. A saline fluid secreted from the blood of animals by the kidneys, collected in the urinary bladder, and emitted by the canal of the urethra. Urine differs in different animals, and varies in its characters, according to the kind of food employed. The usual salts contained in it are, sulphates, phosphates, and chlorides, all of which are fertilising substances. The urine also of oxen and horses is alkaline; it undergoes decomposition less rapidly than that of carnivorous animals: it contains hippurates, but no lithic acid, that substance which forms red gravel in man. Hippuric acid contains 7 per cent. of nitrogen. Urine, therefore, is of much use as a manure, improving most kinds of soil. Columella has asserted that, stale, it is excellent for the roots of trees. And Hartlib commends the Dutch for preserving the urine of cows as carefully as they do the dung, to enrich their lands.

It is a fluid capable of being employed with great benefit both on meadows and on arable land. (Com. Board of Agr. vol. iv. p.416.) See LIQUID MANURE and NIGHT

SOIL.

URITH. Provincially the etherings or bindings of hedges.

URIVES. A term applied to nets to catch hawks with.

URRY. A kind of blue or black clay, lying near a vein of coal.

USTILAGO. (From ustus, scorched appearance.) A genus of fungi, parasitical,

which are found preying upon the cereal and other grasses. See SMUT.

VAGS. A term provincially applied to

turfs cut and dried for fuel.

VALERIAN. (Valeriana.) A gens di plants, most of the species of which are very ornamental in flower borders. The perfectly hardy kinds succeed well in com mon garden soil; those from warmer chmates should be grown in pots, in a mixture of loam, sand, and peat, and placed in a frame or green-house in winter. They are all readily increased by division at the root There are three perennial indigenous species.

1. The red valerian (V. rubra), a percanial which grows on chalk cliffs and old walls, bearing a corymb of elegant rosecoloured scentless flowers from June t September. The plant is glaucous, and rises two feet in height; the leaves are lanceolate and entire, occasionally toothed

near the base.

2. The small marsh valerian (V. dioics') which is also perennial, very common moist boggy meadows, flowering in Jun It is a small plant, seldom more than es inches high. The leaves are entire. The flowers are flesh-coloured, with short, liuz spurs.

3. Great wild valerian (V. officinal perennial, found in marshes, and about the banks of pools and rivers, flowering in June. The roots are attached to a creping rhizome; the stem four feet high, bea coarsely serrated leaves, broad and below, and becoming linear as they rise the stem. The flowers are in corym panicles, and of a pale black colour. The odour of the root is strong. It contum oil, resin, and an acid: being considered eminently antispasmodic, it is very re quently prescribed with success hyste rical cases.

The unpleasant flavour of valerian is best counteracted by a smal addition of mace; but this flavour is use in hysterics.

4. The heart-leaved valerian (V. F naica) grows in various woods in Scotland It is not so tall a plant as the last, the stea is furrowed, and the stem-leaves heartshaped, serrated, and the upper ones downy footstalks. The flowers are of a light rose colour, with a short spur. Ite hales nearly the same odour as the la species. (Paxton's Bot. Dict.; Smith's Eng Flor. vol. i. p. 42.) VALERIAN, GREEK. See Jaco's LADDER.

VALUATION. See APPRAISEMENT,
VEGETABLE CHEMISTRY is that

VEGETABLE CHEMISTRY.

ranch of the science of chemistry which elates to vegetable substances. Under he heads ANALYSIS, CHEMISTRY, ORGANIC HEMISTRY, GASES, EARTHS, WATER, SALTS, EMPERATURE, &c. I have endeavoured to clude all the facts supplied by this imortant science for the assistance of the armer with which I am acquainted; I shall, herefore, merely insert in this place the hemical analysis of the inorganic subtances found in several of the commonly ultivated crops of the farmer; and this I ake from p. 318. of the valuable Lectures n Agricultural Chemistry and Geology, y J. F. Johnston; see also Liebig's Oranic Chemistry.

Besides the elements of the organs of lants, other substances, obtained from inrganic nature, are necessary for certain rgans destined to special functions pecuiar to each family of plants. In the ashes of the plants left after burning them, these ubstances are found. Almost all plants contain acids, in combination with soda, poassa, lime, alumina, or magnesia. The quanity of these salts varies at different periods of the growth of the plant: thus unripe rasses contain more bitartrate of potassa than the ripe, and the potato more potassa before it blossoms than afterwards. The nature of a soil, as has already been detailed, alters the quantity of salts found in plants. The Salsola Kali, raised from seeds of plants near the sea, in an inland garden, contains both potassa and soda; but the plants from the seed of this contain potassa only. But these facts I have detailed under the head SALTS, &c.; I shall therefore only subjoin the following tables.

In examining the results of these analysations, the farmer must remember, that the acids and their bases do not exist in plants in an uncombined state, but in combination with each other; that is, as salts.

1. Of the Ash of Wheat. According to the analysis of Sprengel, 1000 lbs. of wheat leave 1177 lbs. and of wheat straw 35.18 lbs. of ash, consisting of

Grain of Straw of Wheat. Wheat.