and shelter, cannot possibly produce results similar to the culture of the spade, at least no farmer will believe it; and if they put no confidence in experiments, of what avail will experimental farms be? Announcements of such results may gratify curiosity, but no benefit would be conferred on the country by experiments confined within the inclosures of an experimental farm. No doubt, a few of the most unprejudiced of the farmers will perform any experiment, with every desire for its success, and there is as little doubt that others will follow the example; and some will be willing to test the worth of even a suggestion; but as these are the usual modes by which every new practice recommends itself to the good graces of farmers, no intervention of an experimental farm is therefore required for their promulgation and adoption. It is the duty of the promoters of experimental farms, to disseminate a proved experiment quickly over the country, and the most efficient mode of doing so is to secure the confidence of farmers in it. To insure their confidence, it will be necessary to shew them, that they can do the same things as have been done on the experimental farm by the usual means of labour they possess, and they will then shew no reluctance to follow the example. Take the risk, in the experimental farm, of proving results, and shew the intrinsic value of those results to the farmers, and the experiments, of whatever nature, will be performed on half the farms of the kingdom in the course of the first season.

For this purpose it is necessary to ascertain the size an experimental farm should be, which will admit of experiments being made on it, in a manner similar to the operations of a farm. The leading operation, which determines the smallest size of the fields of an experimental farm, is ploughing. The fields should be of that size which will admit of being ploughed in ordinary time, and at the same time not larger than just to do justice to the experiments performed in them. I should say that five acres imperial is the least extent of ground to do justice to ploughing ridges along, across, and diagonally. Three acres, to be of such a shape as not to waste time in the ploughing, would have too few ridges for a series of experiments, and to increase their number would be to shorten their length, and lose time in ploughing. But even five acres are too small to inclose with a fence; ten acres, a good size of field for small farms, being nearer the mark for fencing. Taking the size of an experimental plot at five acres, the inclosure might be made to surround the divisions of a rotation; that is, of a rotation of four years, let twenty acres be inclosed; of five years, twenty-five acres, &c.; but in this arrangement the experiments would only prove really available to small tenants, who frequently cultivate all their crops within one fence, and

the subject thus experimented on would not be individually inclosed within a fence, as is the case with crops on larger farms.

The whole quantity of land required for an adequate experimental farm may thus be estimated. New varieties of seeds would require to be increased by all the possible modes of reproduction. Old varieties should undergo impregnation,-be subjected to different modes of culture,— be preserved pure from self-impregnation,—and be grown in different altitudes. Each variety of seed already cultivated, such as wheat, barley, oats, potatoes, turnips, &c., to undergo these various modifications of treatment on five acres of land, would, including the whole, require an immense extent of ground, and yet, if each kind did not undergo all these varieties of treatment, who could then aver that all our seeds had been subjected to satisfactory field experiments? Only one kind of grain, treated as variedly as might be, on five acres for each modification of treatment, would occupy seventy acres; and were only five kinds of seed taken, and only five varieties of each, and the whole cultivated on both low and high ground, the quantity of ground required altogether would be 3500 acres. The extent of ground thus increases in a geometrical progression, with an increase of variety of plants. Besides, the numerous useful grasses, for the purposes of being cut green, and for making into hay, would require other 1000 acres. The whole system of pasturing young and old stock on natural and artificial grasses in low grounds and on high altitudes, and in sheltered and exposed situations, would require at least 3000 acres. Then, experiments with foresttrees, in reference to timber and shelter in different elevations and aspects, would surely require 1000 acres. Improvements in bog and muir lands should have other 1000 acres. So that 9500 acres would be re

quired to put only a given proportion of the objects of cultivation in this country to the test of full experiment. Such an extent of ground will, no doubt, astonish those who are in the habit of talking about 200 acres as capable of affording sufficient scope for an experimental farm. Those people should be made to understand that the plough must have room to work, and that there is no other way of experimentizing satisfactorily for field culture, on an experimental farm, but by affording it a real field to work in. If less ground be given, fewer subjects must be taken; and if any subject is rejected from experiment, then the system of experimentizing will be rendered incomplete. The system of experimentizing should be carried out to the fullest extent of its capability on experimental farms, or it should be left, as it has hitherto been, in the hands of farmers. The farmers of Scotland have worked out for themselves an admirable system of husbandry, and if it is to be improved to a still higher pitch of skill by expe

rimental farms, the means of improvement should be made commensurate with the object, otherwise there will be no satisfaction, and certain failure; for the promoters of experimental farms should keep in mind, that the existing husbandry, improved as it is, is neither in a stationary nor in a retrograding, but in a progressive state towards farther improvement. Unless, therefore, the proposed experiments, by which it is intended to push its improvement still farther towards perfection, embrace every individual of the multifarious objects which engage the attention of agriculturists, that one may be neglected, which, if cultivated, would have conferred the greatest boon on agriculture. I come, therefore, to this conclusion in the matter: that minute experiments on the progressive developments of plants and animals are absolutely requisite to establish their excellence or worthlessness, and these can be performed on a small space of ground; but to stop short at this stage, and not pursue their culture on a scale commensurate with the operations of the farm, is to render the experimental farm of little avail to practical husbandry, and none at all to interest the farmer.

So large an extent of farm would most probably embrace all the varieties of soil. It should, moreover, contain high and low land, arable, bog, and muir land, sheltered and exposed situations, and the whole should lie contiguous, in order to be influenced by the climate of the same locality. It would scarcely be possible to procure such an extent of land under the same landlord, but it might be found in the same locality on different estates. Such a farm, rendered highly fertile by draining, manuring, liming, and labour, and plenished, as an experimental farm should be, with all the varieties of crop, stock, implements, and woods, would be a magnificent spectacle worthy of a nation's effort to put into a perfect state for a national object. What a wide field of observation would it present to the botanical physiologist, containing a multiplicity of objects made subservient to experiment! What a laboratory of research for the chemist, amongst every possible variety of earths, manures, plants, and products of vegetation! What a museum of objects for the naturalist, in which to observe the living habits and instincts of animals, some useful to man, and others injurious to the fruits of his labour! What an arena upon which the husbandman to exercise his practical skill, in varying the modes of culture of crops and live-stock! What an object of intense curiosity and unsatisfying wonder to the rustic labourer! But above all, what interest and solicitude should the statesman feel the appliance of such a mighty engine, set in motion, to work out the problem of agricultural skill, prosperity, and power.

* Paper by me on the subject in the Quart. Jour. of Agri., vol. vii. p. 538.

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9. A FEW WORDS TO YOUNG FARMERS WHO INTEND EMIGRATING AS AGRICULTURAL SETTLERS TO THE COLONIES.

"Such wind as scatters young men through the world, to seek their fortunes farther than at home." TAMING OF THE SHREW.

For some years past the tide of emigration has set very strongly towards the shores of our colonial possessions. To attempt to ascertain the causes of this emigration, or to speculate on the probability of its success, would be quite irrelevant in this place; suffice it to be cognizant of the fact, that many people, of late years, have gone from Great Britain to settle for ever in America and Australia. Whatever Whatever may have been their former pursuits, almost the whole have emigrated with the view of becoming agricultural settlers,-either to become owners of land, or continue to be what they were in this country, agricultural labourers.

In all new countries, the price of labour for a time is high, and in consequence skilful labourers, in every department of industry, as long as they choose to engage in employment, cannot fail to earn money; for although certain sorts of provisions, that require much preparatory labour to produce them, may be dear in a new country, yet others, being more easily raised on account of their suitableness to the climate, are not exorbitant in price; and, at all events, the prices of both range comparatively lower in the circumstances than the rate of wages. Labourers, prompted by premature ambition to become owners of land,-" who hasten to be rich," entail insurmountable misery on themselves and families. Expending the little capital they had earned as servants in purchasing land, they possess no means to employ the dear labour of others; and ere the fruits of their own industry can afford them sufficient sustenance, they suffer real privations, or are obliged to obtain assistance from others on very disadvantageous terms. But however imprudently they may act in regard to their finances, and short-sightedly with respect to their future welfare, the labouring class, in all circumstances, possess the advantage of being brought up to a profession, and thus, though agricultural labourers may not have the means of employing others, they know well how to labour the land for their own advantage.

The same eulogium, I fear, cannot be pronounced on most of the emigrants who leave this country with the professed determination of becoming owners of land. Many have had no opportunities at all of be

coming acquainted with agriculture; whilst others who profess to know it, know so little of it that their knowledge avails them very little when they engage in active husbandry on their settlements. Notwithstanding these exceptions, no doubt there are many emigrants who understand farming quite well. Now, I think, emigrants intending to pursue agriculture in the new country, injure their own interests very materially, by adopting the irrational plan of neglecting to learn the business they are about to engage in. They should all, without exception, know farming before they leave this country. I say without exception, for though some may, perhaps, be pretty far advanced in life, before they determine on emigrating, and though grown up persons dislike to encounter the supposed shame of learning a new trade, whilst others grudge the time and money that would cost them to learn it,-imagining that the money would be better laid out in their new speculation,— yet worse-founded opinions could not be entertained; for although advanced in life, and thereby enfeebled before leaving the land of their nativity, their new profession would be far more pleasantly acquired amidst the comforts of home, than the unavoidable inconveniences of a first settlement in a foreign land; and no man, of whatever age, should display the folly of being above learning the business he intends to pursue in future. Emigrants may be assured that they will be obliged to learn farming abroad, for it cannot come to them intuitively, and then they will discover it, when too late, to be much easier for them to exercise an acquired skill to bring in land from a state of nature to tillage, than to acquire that skill at the risk of starving their infant colony, by most probably misdirecting their efforts,—the injurious effects of which they may feel for many years to come. This is what they would term learning farming by experience, but it is very dearbought experience, far more expensively acquired than by a little money judiciously laid out at home in learning it on another's farm. If they had learned it so, not only money, but much misdirected labour, which is equivalent to money, as well as much uneasiness of mind, would have been saved them. If emigrants possessing land are entirely ignorant of farming, they must chiefly trust to the skill and honesty of their servants, who, receiving high wages and board, and thereby being more independent in circumstances than their masters, soon become indispensable persons in their peculiar situation; and, who, imagining themselves beyond the power of the law and the chances of detection, are strongly tempted to aggrandize themselves rather than attend to the interest of their masters. Thus circumstanced, a handful of corn can be easily concealed, a drop of milk purloined every day from the