CHAPTER VIII. "O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint, ANY memoir of my father would be imperfect which did not give some prominence to the pursuit the science he justly called it—to which the greater part of his life was devoted. I wish that I may be able, by a brief and slight sketch of the subject, to enlist the attention for a few minutes of non-agricultural readers, in the hope of suggesting to them that agriculture is no narrow or isolated, nor necessarily dry and technical matter; for I know how natural it is that certain readers should pass over these pages with the comment, "I know nothing of farming; this will not interest me," and that even thoughtful people who ponder over theories of the existence of man-moral, social, and political-sometimes do not sufficiently remember that on the cultivation of the soil and the supply of the necessaries of life depends the upholding or overturning of all their ideal fabrics. My father's writings and speeches on agricultural subjects were lately much read in France, Germany, Holland, and Sweden. I have been told that philosophical men on the Continent valued his utterances, and those of other experienced men of late years on the same subject, not so much on account of practical instruction contained in them, as because they exhibited the successive steps of a great science or art still in its youth, and the efforts which private individuals and Government were forced to make in order to meet the problem of our enormously increasing populations. My father's speeches are too many and too long to admit of much quotation from them here. Taking them as a whole, I think that, apart from many local and practical details treated, they, generally, exhibit agriculture in its connection with physical science on the one hand, and with political economy on the other. It was a question which pressed heavily on the minds of men during a long period before the repeal of the Corn-Laws, how the increasing millions of England were to be supplied with food. In continental countries, if there is too dense a population or a scarcity of food in one district, there is at least the possibility of migrating to less populous regions. With comparative ease the overflowings of one continental country can be received by another. But Britain has the sea all round it. It is the poorest who want to emigrate. They cannot cross the sea without money. Emigration has as yet only supplied a partial outlet for our surplus population, and it would appear that there need be no emigration from our country if the science of production, of the distribution. and the rewards of labour, were better understood. Practically, enormous difficulties still surround this matter, and at present most English people stay at home; and how our augmented numbers are to be provided for at home, was a question first anxiously asked some forty years ago. The progress of agricultural science has in some degree answered it. Men saw "that no society can hold long together in which industry fails, as it does with us, to obtain a sufficiency of the comforts of life," and this conviction stimulated inquiry and experiment. As the connection between agriculture and chemistry became developed, it began to be conceived that that which produces pestilence and fever, which shocks our senses and destroys life, might be used towards the very support of life, and that "our sanitary researches might provide an ample supply of the first requisite of increased production." And indeed, not long after this was understood, and a hardpressed agricultural community began to see that the development of the resources of the land was becoming the grand economical feature of the day,- urged by great necessities into that rank, we read that some kinds of manure reached "famine prices," so eagerly were they sought, and so hard was it for the supply to keep pace with the demand. Bones and other portable manures became so much in request that in Sweden it was complained that bones were not to be had by the home farmer, because of the high price given for them by English importers. But further wants began to be felt. The great diversity of soils has to be taken into account in the application of fertilizing substances, and independently of the geological structure, the physical geography of a district affects the actual chemical composition of the soil, and consequently modifies the chemical treatment of it. A farmer can see with his own eyes that one side of a hill much exposed to rains, which wash away part of its saline substances, or to prevailing winds, will yield a different crop from the side which is more sheltered; but he needs science to teach him how to make each side equally develop to the utmost its own capabilities. Thus it was seen that the sciences of geology, mineralogy, botany, and meteorology, were all Dealers in The whole needful handmaids to agricultural progress. The higher the farming became, and the greater the surface of land reclaimed in elevated districts, the greater became the demand for extraneous and light portable manures, as it was difficult to cart up to high grounds the heavy farmyard refuse. All known manures were first eagerly sought. The refuse of the currier, the maltster, the tanner, the sugarboiler, the glue-manufacturer, were all bought up, and every bone-mill had its staff of humble scavengers, who sought through all the towns and villages. When these were exhausted we turned to foreign countries. foreign manures sprang up in all the seaports. seaboard of Europe was put under requisition. Fleets of merchant-ships crossed the Atlantic and brought back their precious cargoes from Buenos Ayres and Monte Video. So great became the demand for these manures that they rose, as I have said, to "famine prices," and at one time it was only the farmers who lived nearest the sea-shore who could afford to buy them. Commerce and agriculture worked. together, and carried a good influence to distant countries, the inhabitants of which wondered how the refuse of their coasts, and the droppings of the sea-birds which whitened their rocks, should be held of such high value in England. This awakened their minds to new ideas, and stimulated them to an unwonted industry. Each step in the advancement of agricultural science seemed to become more difficult, and perhaps it may continue to do so. My father was not one of those persons who believe that science, or rather man's power of applying it at every fresh emergency, will so keep pace with the increasing necessities of the world as to afford a complete answer to our ever-recurring social difficulties. He did not think, with certain modern philosophers, that man can perfect his own present existence, and drive away, by the aid of science, sickness, disease, poverty, crime, and every existing evil from the land. He availed himself, and continually urged others to avail themselves, of the aids which God has placed at our disposal, powers, known or hidden, in the natural world, for the diminution of evil and pain; but he believed in no reign of peace short of the final destruction of the principle, deeply seated in the soul of man, which is the primary source of the perturbation of all beneficent social laws, nor of prosperity short of the advent of the "Desire of all nations." That trouble upon trouble will block our way, that every matter planted by us will, however careful we be, "grow up with the unseen seeds of its own decay within it," he was prepared to see. He was a man of a somewhat mournful cast of mind; he was a man of progress nevertheless, sustained by a constant hope. Even the large importation of foreign manures not being sufficient for increasing needs, chemists began to work more closely at the subject. Professor Johnston, of Durham, was a great benefactor to the North of England. Manufactories of artificial manures sprang up. It was needful that theory and experiment should go hand in hand. On the side of the farmers there was at first some jealousy of the chemists and their theories, and "book-farming" was spoken of with contempt, while the "theorists" were too apt to look on the farmers as a thick-headed race, so long used to be guided by empirical rules that science might knock in vain at their door. But when it was found that a multitude of quacks sprang up, who imposed upon the farmers by their vaunted stuffs for doctoring soils, the farmers perceived that they must arm themselves against these by some knowledge of their own |