ment, it remained in the rudest state down to the commencement of the seventeenth century. To the same period, also, the barbarity lingered in Ireland, formerly common in other parts of the kingdom, of attaching the animals to the plough by their tails. In 1634 the Irish parliament enacted, "that whereas there has been for a long time practised in this country a barbarous custom of ploughing, harrowing, drawing, and working with horses and other animals by the tail, whereby the breed of animals in the kingdom is much impaired, and great cruelty perpetrated," such practices were henceforward to be considered illegal, and offenders subjected to fine and imprisonment. The ploughs

now in use are no longer such as a village artisan can construct, but highly scientific machines made upon mathematical principles, and manufactured by the most skilled workmen. Still, ingeniously modified as the implement has been, it is considered defective with reference to the task required from it—that of loosening and turning over the top-soil without injurious pressure upon the stratum below.

In the great agricultural districts, the steam-engine has to some extent superseded the horse, as the motive power of threshing and other machines; and some experimentalists are sanguine respecting the practicability of ploughing by steam. But though of little avail at present in agriculture generally, steam-power is of great service in one of the most fertile parts of the kingdom, the fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire. The surface, which is liable to be flooded after heavy rains, could formerly only be relieved of its surplus water by means of wind-mill pumps, which are still extensively employed. But this mode of operation is always uncertain; and it sometimes

happened that the farmer lost the entire fruit of his year's labour, when it was almost within his grasp, or only gathered it in a damaged state. Abundant rains falling near the time of harvest, without a breath of wind to put the machinery in action, deluged the fields in which the corn was ripening for the sickle— a disaster which is now averted by the substitution of steam-power for the uncertain agency of the atmosphere. The plan has the additional advantage of providing for the irrigation of the fields from the drains in long-continued drought, without waiting for the breeze, or incurring hazard in the event of subsequent heavy showers.

The progress of agriculture in Scotland has been much more surprising than in England, as it remained in a very backward condition to a much later date. Fallowing, a practice common in early times on the south of the Tweed, was not introduced on the north till some time after the last century had commenced, when one of the first persons who tried it was pronounced by his neighbours to be either insane or bankrupt. The fields were scratched over rather than ploughed; and yielded the scantiest crops of oats and barley. No cattle were fattened; no green crops of any description were raised; and for want of nourishment in the winter, the half-starved animals were scarcely able to move when the vegetation reappeared in spring. The peasantry subsisted on oatmeal, milk, and a few garden vegetables, never tasting meat, unless it was in a condition unfit to be brought to market. They were often altogether in want of food; and had to repair to the shores to pick up the scanty provision afforded by shell-fish and sea-weed. Their houses were hovels of stone and mud, thatched

with fern and turf, filled with smoke, and black with soot, not having chimneys, while small holes served for windows, which were stuffed with straw or rags to keep out the biting blast. At present, in the very districts to which these statements applied at a date so recent as the middle of the last century, farming is conducted with a skill which is nowhere surpassed, and scarcely anywhere equalled, while the labourers are well fed, clothed, and housed. Through the length and breadth of the land, in the same space of time, the material comforts of the poorer classes have been greatly enhanced, though it is difficult for the existing generation rightly to appreciate the improvement, not having had any sensible experience of the scant fare and sore straits which marked the daily life of their progenitors. It is certainly true, with reference to the supply of the necessaries and comforts of existence to the great mass of society, as compared with that of former times, that we are much favoured, and have great cause for devout thankfulness.

Scotland gave birth to the great improver of agriculture, James Smith, of Deanston, whose reforms have been mentioned, and whose career deserves a notice. He was born of respectable parentage at Glasgow, in the year 1789; and received his education at the university of that city. Upon completing his studies, young Smith, though only eighteen years of age, was appointed to the important post of manager of the Deanston cotton-works,situated in the vale of the Teith, in the south of Perthshire. In this station, which he occupied for more than thirty years, he amply justified the confidence placed in his character and ability, by reorganizing a vast establishment, improving the

morals while securing the affections of eleven hundred work-people, and distinguishing himself by mechanical inventions in the cotton manufacture. To these avocations he added practical agriculture; and soon established upon most unpromising land the correctness of his theories respecting thorough-draining, and subsoilploughing. The farm he took consisted of about two hundred acres, chiefly composed of the drifted débris of the old red sandstone, with a very thin stratum of active soil. It was studded with rushes and waterplants in the hollows, while the knolls were covered with heath, furze, and broom. But under intelligent management, this wilderness exhibited in a few years the cultivation of a garden, with an active soil, nearly a foot and a half in depth, neatly fenced fields, luxuriant crops and thriving plantations. It acquired the character of a model-farm; and became a show-place. Strangers from afar visited the vale of the Teith, and returned to their homesteads to adopt the plans which had proved so successful. General attention was called to them by Mr. Smith's evidence before a committee of the House of Commons in the year 1834. His connexion with Deanston terminated in 1842, upon which he removed to London, and was appointed on the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the sanitary condition of large towns. The idea was now seized by his active mind of applying the waste sewage water of towns to agricultural purposes, which he strenuously urged as likely to double the produce of the land. The problem of its application-confessedly a difficult one-still remains to be solved. Mr. Smith died suddenly, while on a visit to the north, in June, 1850.

A striking change for the better has been effected in

the character of the British landscape by the labours of the husbandman. We are not in circumstances fully to estimate it, because, though eye-witnesses of its present features, we have only report to guide us with reference to the aspect it once wore, with a memorial in some significant local names, still retained, though no longer applicable to the sites they designate. Thus the so-called "heath" near Lincoln has lost every trace of its barrenness which the name suggests, and become one of the finest cultivated tracts in the kingdom, with evidences of agricultural opulence everywhere apparent, in carefully trimmed hedge-rows, ploughed lands that scarcely show a pebble, ample homesteads and farm-buildings, and rows of long, high, saddlebacked ricks and stacks. But a remarkable monument remains of its original condition in Dunston Pillar, erected to serve the purpose of a lighthouse to guide the wayfarer at night across the sloughs of the trackless waste. Even by day the heath was once so impassable, that when Lady Robert Manners wished to visit Lincoln from her seat at Bloxholme, a pioneer was previously sent forward to examine some path, and report upon the one that seemed most practicable. "This Dunston Pillar," observed the late Mr. Pusey, who visited the district to inspect its farming, "lighted no long time back for so singular a purpose, did appear to me a striking witness of the spirit and industry which in our own days have reared the thriving homesteads around it, and spread a mantle of teeming vegetation to its very base; and it was certainly surprising to discover at once the finest farming I had ever seen, and the only land lighthouse that was ever raised." This may be taken as an illustration of the change which a large portion