and communicate with a drain. The more solid matters are removed with the least possible labour, by means of a shovel which exactly fits the trench. The fore parts of the animals lie on the natural ground. The feeding beasts are as prone to recumbency as in any well-littered stalls, and, except on the east coast, we have seldom seen a cleaner cow-house. The arrangement for bullocks is more complicated, involving the necessity of a drain covered by a bored flag or grating into the middle of each stall. We are bound to admit that the tails, to the great injury of their cleanliness, are apt to slip into the trench when the animals lie down. We wish we could suggest a remedy short of docking that ornamental member. On this farm the proportion of arable land is very small, and every straw is cut up for cattle keep. The cow-house which we have described is a great favourite of ours, because it solves a difficulty which very much perplexes every improving Midland and Western farmer, namely, scarcity of litter. We are inclined to think that the sphere within which this difficulty is felt is extending; the tendency of modern agriculture being to longer courses, and to a less frequent recurrence of straw-giving crops. The real vocation of straw on farms having a large proportion of grass-land, if not on all others, is to give bulk to more nutritive articles of cattle keep. When it is cut up and properly sugared, cattle will eat it to the stumps. Box-feeding is a recent practice, and highly commended. It must involve a liberal use of straw or other litter. The idea that the animal should be confined for months in a loose box, from which nothing is removed, is not very comfortable; but the practice is connected with the consideration of the injury which manure may suffer by exposure to the weather. We know one spirited experimentalist who has gone to a very material expense in roofing, in order that he may have the whole of his manure under cover until it is laid on the land. This is a strange innovation on the practice which prescribed repeated heapings and turnings before the manure was brought into use. Some years ago we read in an agricultural journal, that to mix up a large quantity of snow with a heap of manure was highly beneficial, and philosophical reasons, which we have forgotten, were given for the practice. Should the doctrine of a dry lair now prevail, the liquid-manure tanks will be deprived of their principal source of supply. Till very lately flesh-meat in general, and beef in particular, had its seasons of plenty and low price, succeeded by scarcity and high price, just as regularly as summer and autumn are succeeded by winter and spring. The extremes were from August to December, when naturallyfed beasts poured into the market, and from February to June, when those which were fed artificially came in by driblets. Those who have watched the markets for the few last years will have observed, first a tendency to equalization, and then to a complete turning of the tables, which has been fully developed in the season now in progress. The first-named period gave, in the year 1848, to Smithfield, for the Monday's market, from 2000 or 2500 bullocks, with a price for the first quality from 3s. 10d. to 4s. 4d. per stone. The second period, now in progress in 1849, is giving from 3200 to 3600 bullocks, with a price for the first quality from 3s. 4d. to 3s. 8d. Nor do these figures represent the full difference of the supply of meat, because there can be no doubt that a larger amount of dead meat comes in by railway in the cold months than in the warm. This is a great revolution, which we have no doubt will be in some degree counteracted by an increased prevalence of artificial feeding in summer, either as auxiliary to grassfeeding, or as independent of it. We have now brought to a close the principal remarks which have occurred to us as bearing on that vocation of the occupier of land, in pursuance of which he furnishes a supply of animal food to his country. We take leave of our cattle-loving friends, and we hope they will not think us less friendly to them because we have omitted any pro minent mention of the distressing position in which we and they are placed by the unprecedentedly low price of this article of agricultural produce. Whatever measures they may consider it incumbent on them to take with reference to protection or to taxation, general or local, we think it must be wise to keep these matters quite distinct from the question of the most efficient practice. We cannot look around us and doubt that, in order to maintain our position, to the most efficient practice we must resort; and if our remarks can assist any struggling farmer in discovering and adopting it, we shall have attained our object. We had hoped to have included in this article some remarks on draining, a subject so intimately connected with artificial feeding that it may almost be called its foundation. But time and space forbid. A few memoranda which we had made must be returned to our desk, perhaps to be re-produced on some future occasion. D AGRICULTURAL DRAINAGE. CONTENTS. PAGE Preface to Second Edition Results of personal observation of Drainage during four years 54 55 57 57-72 73 Earliest notice of English Draining 73 Andrew Yarranton Captain Walter Blith. Sluggish Rivers and Water-Mills; injury done by them Joseph Elkington, Drainage of Springs Smith of Deanston Cause of coldness of Retentive Soils 81-85 Drains-Reasons . Effect of depth and direction of Drains Under-drainage, definitions and terms Josiah Parkes, C.E., his Works on Drainage. Their temperature raised by Draining Four feet, where attainable, prescribed as a minimum depth for Mode in which Water of Drainage enters Drains 85 85-88 88 90 91 95-97 97-99 99-101 Materials of Conduit, Sticks, Straw, Clods, and Mole-plough Introduction of Cylindric Pipes for Land Drainage Resistance from friction to Water entering Drains, how overcome, Operation of deep Drains in the most retentive Soils, the stiffest Clays Reasons for presuming that deeper Drains than four feet now in use are not generally required . |