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poses of agriculture, the destruction of insects injurious to vegetable life, and the eradication of weeds.

5. To promote the discovery of new varieties of grain, and other vegetables, useful to man, or for the food of domestic animals.

6. To collect information with regard to the management of woods, plantations, and fences, and on any other subject connected with rural improvement.

7. To take measures for the improvement of the education of those who depend upon the cultivation of the soil for their support.

8. To take measures for the improvement of the veterinary art, as applied to cattle, sheep and pigs.

9. At the meetings of the Society in the country, by the distribution of Prizes, and by other means to encourage the best mode of farm cultivation, and the breed of live stock.

10. To promote the comfort and welfare of laborers, and to encourage the improved management of their cottages and gardens.

For the purpose of holding its country meetings, England and Wales are divided into nine great districts, and a place of meeting, in each, is fixed a year beforehand. At Derby, the show of agricultural implements consisted of 700 different articles, valued at £7,400, or 35,520 dollars. Under such a stimulus, it is needless to say that both husbandry, and the implements of husbandry, have vastly improved in the twelve years of the society's existence.

A reading room and library are attached to the society's house, and the Journal of the Society which commenced in April 1839, in less than five years, had a circulation of 10,000.

The great success of this Society, has given rise to numerous county societies, and to a great many farmer's clubs throughout the kingdom, which have done much good.

In France there are schools of agriculture, assisted by the State. Young persons, there, can be instructed in the art, or rather science, both theoretically and practically. At Grignon, one of the Royal Palaces, the domain attached to it consisting of 1185 acres of arable, pasture, wood and marsh land, has been devoted to the teaching of agriculture. The practical part of the education is conducted on the following system. The pupils are instructed, in succession, in all the different labors of the farm. Some perform operations of veterinary, under the direction of the Professor of that branch, others

work in the garden, woods, and plantations, inspect repairs on premises, make starch, cheese, butter, &c., attend to the manure, the compounding of drugs, the keeping of the books, &c. The Professor who presides over the practical part of their education, explains the proper manner of executing the field operations, while the pupils are at work. After two years training in the theory and practice of rural economy, to every pupil, who passes his examination before the Professors collectively, is granted a DIPLOMA, that he is capable of fulfiling the duties of what may be styled an "Agricultural Engineer." Simultaneously with instruction in practical details, theoretical knowledge is imparted by the professors, in courses of lectures, upon the following subjects:

1st. The rational principles of husbandry, and on the management of a farm.

2d. The principles of rural enonomy applied to the employment of the capital and stock of a farm.

3d. The most approved method of keeping farming accounts.

4th. The construction of farm-buildings, roads, and implements used in husbandry.

5th. Vegetable physiology and Botany.

6th. Horticulture.

7th. Forest Science.

8th. The general principles of the veterinary art.

9th. The law relating to property.

10th. Geometry applied to the measuring and surveying of land. 11th. Geometrical drawing of farming implements.

12th. Physics, as applied to agriculture.

13th. Chemistry, as applied to the analysis of soils, manures, &c. 14th. General notions of Mineralogy and Geology.

15th, Domestic medicine applied to the use of Husbandmen.

The pupils are of two grades, of which, one pays £48 a year, and the other £36. The Professors are paid by the Government.

The Austrian Government support agricultural institutions, at Vienna, Prague, and Pesth.

The King of Bavaria has given up the Domain attached to the Royal Palace of Schleissheim, to be used as a model farm. In 1840; there were 21 pupils who paid annually £15 each, and 11 who paid about £6. The latter were mere field laborers.

The King of Wirtemberg, has appropriated an old Palace, at Hohenheim, two leagues from Stuttgard, for an agricultural College. The land attached to the Palace is about 1100 acres. Lectures are delivered by 12 Professors on Mathematics and Physics, Chemistry and Botany, Technology, Tillage, and other operations of rural economy, Forestry and the veterinary art. Attached to the Institution is a small botanical Garden; a Museum of Zoological, Botanical and Mineral objects, skeletons of Domestic Animals; collections of seeds and woods, and a library of works on rural economy. There is also con nected with the establishment, a manufactory of beet root sugar, a brewery, a distillery of whiskey from potatoes, and a nursery of silk worms. The superior class of pupils pay for their board 120 florins, and for their instruction 300 florins a year, making in all £37, or about $177.

The late King of Prussia founded a most important Institution for the improvement of agriculture, at Mogelin, in Brandenburg, about 40 miles from Berlin. It consists of a college and a model farm of 1200 acres. It is under Professors who teach theoretically and practically, nearly the same branches as at Hohenheim; but each pupil has to pay £85 a year, or about $385. Besides, there are in Prussia a model farm and Academy of Agriculture, in nearly every Province.

My own native land Scotland, has long been famed for the excellence of its husbandry. That excellence is the more creditable to Scotland, that it does not depend either upon the superiority of soil or of climate. It is owing to the societies which from a remote period have existed there and conducted the mind of the Scotch farmer to improvements not thought of, even in England, till long afterwards. The nobility and gentry of Scotland were patrons of agricultural improvements, within their own estates, for a period far back. But the first regular society was established in 1723, under the name of "The Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture." The Society continued to publish its transactions till 1755, when it ceased to exist, and was succeeded by a new society, known under the name of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland. This Society publishes quarterly a journal of its transactions, which has a high reputation and enjoys an extensive circulation.

The Scottish Agricultural Chemistry Association was established in

1843, and is an admirable institution. It can be extended to any district where there are sufficient subscribers to command the services of a competent chemist. Landed proprietors who subscribe twenty shillings, (about four dollars and forty cents) yearly, and tenants who subscibe ten shillings yearly, are entitled to have performed analyses of soils, manures, &c., according to a scale fixed upon. Advice without analysis is given by letter, for a charge of two shillings and six pence. Thus, in every county in Scotland, the farmer can be instructed in the exact description and quantity of manure, which he ought to apply to any field that he is about to cultivate, so as to enrich it with what the soil most wants. In the University of Edinburg there is a Professore ship of Agriculture, where all theoretical knowledge is taught. There is a Lectureship, on the same branch, in the University of Aberdeen, and it has long been customary to perfect young men, in the practical details of farming, by sending them to exercise it, for a few years, among the incomparable farmers of the Lothians.

In Ireland, a Royal Agricultural Improvement Society was establishlished in 1840. Since its establishment, numerous local societies have been established throughout the counties, in connection with the parent societies. It has an Agricultural Museum in Dublin, for the reception of implements of husbandry, seeds, grasses, &c.

It contemplates the establishment of an Agricultural College, and has already spread throughout Ireland much useful information, by the diffusion of cheap publications. But the good effects of the Society are greatly counteracted by predial outrage, sectarian partizanship, political agitation, and defects in the tenure of land.

With, our now, near neighbors of the United States, the land laws are admirable, but except in the vicinity of great cities, where land is of great value, a very laborious and scientific agriculture is not to be expected. The necessity of a precarious climate, a poor soil, and little choice of land, has made the Scotch farmer the best in Europe; but the same necessity does not operate upon the American. What operates with him is how to countervail the high price of labor, and in his contrivances to attain this object, he surpasses the husbandman of all other nations. Another influence that operates upon him, in an extraordinary degree, is to travel over the world westward. Thus we have the late proprietors of farms on the rich soils of Ohio, Indiana,

Illinois, and Missouri, with axe in hand clearing out new farms on the far inferior soil of Oregon; and so irresistible does this occidental propensity appear to be, that soon after the establishment of a trans-Pacific line of steamers, we may expect to hear that Jonathan, axe in hand, is at Jeddo or Pekin. He has, therefore, no time to stop to experiment upon, and manure his land; and why should he, where by shifting a little westward, he can so easily change an exhausted soil, for one of virgin richness? Still, of all men in the world, the Americans are the men to break up a new soil, and overturn the forest; and I should not be sorry to see some thousands of them here, if they would only bring their axes and leave their rifles. But their arrival, here, is not to be expected, for their course like that of Phoebus him self, is straight westward, and the Hawaiian Islands lie to the south of their track.

Sorry indeed would I be to do our enterprising neighbors injustice. If I have done so in regard to their agricultural societies, and the increased fertility that they have given to the soil, of which they have so much, I stand in the presence of my friend the United States Consul, Mr. Allen, lately one of the law-makers of that mighty confederation, and who, I am sure, will correct my errors with that ready courtesy which ever distinguishes him. There are many other citizens of the United States, now present, who can speak of the state of the agriculture, in their respective states, much more correctly than I can, though there are few states in which I have not eaten, and heartily too, of their "wheat cakes and chicken fixings, corn bread and common doings,” which I consider proofs rather substantial, that they know how to make mother earth yield her treasures, of which discovery the famishing Irish have been made participators, without having gone so far to make it, as I did.

I have thus digressed, in order to show from what has been done by agricultural societies, elsewhere, what may be expected to be done by them, here, where a virgin soil invites them to experiment; where the most intelligent men in the community rank in the Provisional Committee, whose members are now present, and where the King himself patronizes their association. I must confess I anticipate an incalculable degree of good, from the Society, which I hope I may consider now formed; and I have no doubt that the just judgment of pos

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