existence of no appliance for obviating the effects of wet during the obnoxious and exposed condition of our reaped cereal crops in harvest, is scarcely a compliment to our inventive skill. The good old maxim, "what the rain weets lat the win' dry," still obtains in all its primeval integrity. True, under the drill system there will be less occasion for such an expedient, but its use in our variable climate will never during this period be entirely dispensed with.

But the condition of nothing is permanent, and the time will come when this state of things we have referred to will in its turn pass away. The disturbed equilibrium betwixt demand and supply will again call for a readjustment of the balance. The rowculture, from its normality, its individualism, preciseness, and unity-especially viewed in

contrast with the empiricism and recklessness of the system it replaced-will probably remain a permanent institution. But its condition will be modified. The horse-hoe will now be laid aside, and agriculture will be resolved into a species of gardening. The quality of the grain will then not be judged of in the aggregate, but each seed will, in planting, be subjected to the same scrutiny as a suspected shilling. And then, in all things, will be observed the true practice of the science of economics, all arising from the imperious demands of a grim and rigid necessity.

Such has been, is, and, probably, will be the state of agriculture in Scotlandthe science taking its shape and form from the existing and changing conditions of society.

N°

OF

OTHING seems more difficult than to estimate, with anything approaching to certainty, the course of prices in the grain market. This seems all the more difficult since 1846, for now the mind that would seek to form any just conception of the quantity of grain available for consumption in the course of a year, extending from one harvest to another, requires to obtain reliable statistics from quarters so numerous and so varied, that even the very shrewdest and most far-seeing produce-merchant finds very often that some error has upset all his calculations. Of one thing all feel certain that the price in Mark Lane regulates, to a very great extent, the price of grain in the Northern hemisphere, for the surplus production of other countries finds there its natural market. Those who have made any study of the wheat products and consumption of Britain, are aware that about two-thirds of her annual necessary supply is grown within her own bounds, but that for the remaining third she is dependent on foreign supplies. A large portion of that comes, no doubt, from

the Baltic and Black Seas; but, on an average, England must look for the half of her imported wheat to the North American continent. And it can scarcely, we think, fail to be interesting to agriculturists to learn something of the routes by which some 30,000,000 bushels of wheat find their way from the prairies of the far west to the seaboard, some 2000 miles, before it is shipped in its ocean vessels.

Those who have any knowledge of the American continent are aware that the Eastern States have long ago ceased to yield any surplus grain, but, on the contrary, have become vast grain-consuming communities, deriving their supplies from the great West. The Eastern States are now inhabited by a manufacturing population, obtaining their bread-stuffs from the West and sending their manufactured goods in exchange. It is almost impossible to conceive with what rapidity these Western States have developed. Fifty years ago they contained only a few straggling forts and trading points, now they contain about one-third of the whole population north

ocean steamers of 3000 tons, drawing 20 feet of water, are ready to meet the grain which has been brought from the West by barge or steamer. With their usual ingenuity and ability, the Americans have, however, sought to gain a large share of the benefit of this western produce, and have tapped the current at Buffalo on Lake Erie, and at Oswego on Lake Ontario, and by a canal of 569 miles have connected Erie with the Hudson River and New York. A large portion of the western produce thus finds its way through the Erie Canal to the East, and more especially to New York as an exporting port. From various causes ocean freights are generally lower in New York than Montreal, but the cost of inland transport from the West is greater to the former than the latter city. There are other water communications of lesser importance. But besides these there are five great trunk lines, of an aggregate of 8000 miles, extending to the Atlantic seaboard. And it is by these that in winter grain has to be transported, and not unfrequently in summer also, when the inland shipping companies are unable to forward produce fast enough. The termini of these railway lines are Quebec, Portland, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. But mere railway termini can never compete as ocean ports with cities at the mouth of inland navigation. This is seen, even during the past year, in the fact that the Cunard line have withdrawn from Boston to New York; and a steam shipping company which made an attempt last year to establish a line between England and Boston were glad, after a few months trial, to dispose of their property at prices immensely below prime cost. We therefore look to New York and Montreal as the great shipping ports for the west. And if Canada be true to her duties, and at once enlarges her canals and locks to the largest convenient capacity for steamers of 800 or 900 tons, Montreal should be the great summer shipping port for western produce. The great disadvantage of the small-sized locks is, that the produce has to be either carried in small quantities or else transhipped at the canals, in either case adding very materially

VOL. I.

to the cost of transport; but that immense volume of produce will soon burst these narrow channels, and force one for itself to meet the wants of the European markets.

We had intended to go into much more minute details and statistics, but we fear the difficulty of interesting our farmers in American matters; and yet they find in American farmers their stimulus, and to some extent their rivals. But has the British farmer much to fear from the western producer? Seriously, we think that he has not. In the first place, the prairie farmer has expensive labour and little skill; then he has the expense, in many cases no small item, of getting his grain over bad roads, with an imperfect railway system, to Milwaukie or Chicago. He has then to pay 6s. to 8s. per quarter to get his grain to sea-board. He has ocean freight, varying from 4s. to 8s. a quarter, to be added to previous expenses, before his produce reaches the market, which the British farmer has at his own door. If, with systematic farming, a comparative command of labour, the advantage of improved machinery, artificial manures, and a ready market, the farmers of Britain cannot compete, and that remuneratively, even when paying comparatively high rents, with proprietors of small holdings in the far west, working their own lands, then the sooner they turn to some other occupation the better for themselves and for the agricultural world.

The Norfolk or East-Lothian farmer, who can enjoy the pleasure and satisfaction of viewing the level field of full-eared wheat, swaying in undulating waves beneath a bright sun, giving to the grain a last golden tinge, before the reaper enters on its clattering work, can almost to a nicety tell you that there he will thrash from that field his 50 or his 60 bushels an acre. And so long as he can do that, with even a tolerably high rent, he is able to set at defiance all the competition of the Baltic or Black Seas, as well as the not less formidable rival of a young western world, where many will perhaps be astonished to learn that the average yield per acre, over the whole wheat-producing breadth, is only about 15 bushels per acre.

may either be perfectly sound or equally rotten, for anything they know of the matter: to such, a few cautions relative to the economical parts of their new business cannot be unimportant. In one respect the consequences may be exceedingly beneficial; a little prudent attention may prevent losses and ruin, which will bring discredit, however unjustly, on the business in general; a circumstance which all who love agriculture should do their utmost endeavours to prevent.

The first and grand evil to which adventurers in husbandry lay themselves open, is the want of money to conduct their farm properly. In this respect they mistake worse than common farmers, who never proportion their land to their fortune as they ought; but gentlemen should apply a much larger sum of money to it than farmers, for reasons obvious to all the world.

No human power can control or remedy this error while persisted in; it must inevitably grow every day worse and worse till utter ruin succeeds. And here I speak of the most common practice, without going into any expenses but those usual in agriculture. But if any account is taken of experimental husbandry, or the practice of what is met with in books, all this becomes ten times stronger. As this matter is the most important of all others in the conduct of young beginners, I shall beg leave to enter a little more into the nature of the case.

The great error of common farmers is the hiring too much land in proportion to their fortunes. We constantly, through threefourths of their lives, see the effects of this, notwithstanding their practising the most severe economy, notwithstanding their constant attention to their business, and their even labouring very hard themselves. The inconvenience must in necessity be much greater with a person who can neither labour, practise a regular economy, nor give a constant attention to his business, and who, added to all this, knows nothing of the matter. If he depends on the advice and assistance of another person, that person must be paid: so that in whatever light we view the case, he is undoubtedly under a stronger

necessity of having a sufficiency of money than any common farmer.

A gentleman of small fortune walks over a farm of perhaps two hundred acres of land; he sees an old waggon or two, three or four carts, some ploughs and harrows, seven or eight shabby-looking horses, a cow or two, and a few ragged sheep. He goes into the house and sees the men feeding on fat pork, or bread and cheese: he views nothing that gives him any idea of expense. Very possibly all he sees might be purchased for a hundred pounds, and this apparent want of but little money must give him a notion that a trifling sum will stock such a farm. Nothing is further from his head than conceiving the prodigious expense dependent on every thing he sees. If he looks at an old rotten plough that lies in the yard, it never occurs to his mind what a train of expenses that instrument, which may not be worth five shillings, draws after it. If he asks advice, it will probably be of some farmer or bailiff he designs to employ: now, the event is too much their interest to undeceive him, however mistaken, for his ruin cannot ensue without their being much the richer for it. These suppositions may appear somewhat far stretched, but not to those who have had experience of the lower kind of country life.

There is no doubt but a gentleman may turn farming to good account, and yet be cheated for some time by the people around him. He pays for experience, but then he gets it, and that will, with good management, afterwards pay him again; but then large sums of money are requisite for this, and in the stocking a farm good allowances ought to be made for such unseen expenses.

After the view of such a farm as I now supposed, which convinced the gentleman that a small sum of money would do for farming, we will say he hires it. From that day he will be very busy in viewing his land, in pointing out improvements, and talking the whole matter over with his assistant or adviser. Every hour (if he has the least genius) will disclose something or other that wants to be done. His men will tell him, very plausibly and sensibly too, that such a ditch