POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS. A WORD ON FARMING. We have been favoured with the following communication from one who has had much experience as a practical agriculturist, and whose remarks on the relation of crops to soil, and vice versa, will, we believe, be of value to many of our readers. PRICE 13d on limestone, turnips will probably form the most lucrative crop. If he is on the fertile New or Old Red Sandstone, he will know that wheat may be grown again and again, with artificial help, without the soil being materially impoverished. What the average farmer does not know is, the chemical element or combination of elements his land is rich in, and the manurial dressings that he ought to apply or withhold. Nor does he know what his soil is deficient in, and what it therefore specially wants. Scores of farmers have applied nitrate of soda to land that had an inexhaustible supply of soda, and while thus throwing away their money, have condemned artificial manures! Hundreds have land that is infertile simply because soda is absent, or present in deficient quantities; and they yet fail to apply it. Lime is continually being added to land that has enough in itself; other lands want it so badly that they produce poor crops and grasses of inferior nutritive value, only wanting lime to be made productive and have their produce changed. Almost all soils contain more silica than will ever be removed, yet landlords insist and farmers consent-that straw, which in the market would bring money to its owner's purse, shall be rotted into a manure of no particular value! There are various things that farmers presently wish for. Most of them desire a reduction of rent, better seasons, higher prices for farm-produce, and the American anywhere out of the world,' or at least out of the British market. Reduction of rent many have got already; but the necessity for importing foreign grain will never grow less till farmers themselves learn to 'make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before.' Better seasons we cannot command; and our only hope is that Meteorological Science may in time enable us to foresee with a tolerable degree of certainty the kind of seasons that may be expected. Higher prices we are not likely to have, and nobody wishes for them but the farmers; and their wishes in this particular, therefore, will not help them out of their troubles. What farmers want is not only sunlight, but the light of science. A country man and a cultivator of the soil, we have all our life What the farmer wants to know is the chemistry long associated with farmers, land-agents, and of the plants he grows; the animals he feeds, and landlords, and we unhesitatingly say that the the foods they eat; the soil he cultivates, and present amount of farm-produce taken from the the manures he uses. It is, for instance, a sad soil is not more, and we think less, than two-waste of capital to apply nitrate of soda to plants thirds of what it might and ought to be. What the farmer wants to know is the geological formation on which his farm rests. He knows that some soils are naturally fertile and others barren. He may have heard that wheat demands phosphoric acid; potatoes, potash; and turnips, lime; but whether he be on trap soil, calcareous soil, or, better still, a combination, he may not know; but he ought to know. If he is on trap, or on a soil having trap for its basis, he will know that potatoes will prove a paying Crop rather than turnips; and that if he is that require potash; or potash to plants that want lime; or phosphoric acid where it may already exist. It is failing to make the most of everything, to feed hard-working horses on fattening foods, while their muscles starve; and full-fleshed fattening beasts on highly nitrogenous food, instead of on food that would cause a rapid gain in weight. Farmers, landlords, and land-agents need to learn that plants take only mineral matters and nitrogen from the soil, and therefore need only these added, to maintain them in continued and increasing fertility. It is a tremendous and a that on large breadths of land, corn may be grown profitably at a minimum of expense, because only a few substances need to be applied artificially, the soil furnishing the rest. Above all, they need to learn that what is carried off in the grain cannot be returned to the soil in the straw. They need to know that phosphoric acid, potash, lime, &c., have been for generations carried away and never returned; and that superphosphate of lime, sulphate of potash, and nitric acid, in small quantities, along with the waste products of the farm, would in ever so many cases restore what has been taken away, much better and more economically than by the application of strawmanure, which simply means the destruction of straw. The straw furnishes chiefly what the soil is in all probability already rich in-silica. It follows then, that the money which stablekeepers in towns, paper-manufacturers, &c., pay over to the Dutchman for straw, might be divided between the landlord and the farmer, to the advantage of both; and their want of knowledge alone prevents the consummation of this desirable state of matters. Then the landlord's rents would go up, and the farmer's capital increase, thus enabling the former to work improvements which now stand over. The farmer would be able to furnish abundance of the plantfood wanted, and so secure better crops-thus profiting doubly. 'Waste not, want not,' is a trite and forcible expression which is in the mouth of every one. As a nation, we are guilty of a frightful amount of waste. The farmer and the whole nation want the sewage-which now abominably pollutes our rivers, which generates disease-raising germs in the sewer-pipes, and frequently makes victims of men The wealth of every landlord consists in the particular minerals his estate affords; and the farmer as truly works up and removes the mineral wealth, as does the lessee of a coal-seam, a bed of paraffin shale or a vein of iron ore. The idea that land-wealth consists in the amount of the farmyard manure in the soil, and that the land would be useless and valueless if it were gone, is a mistake that impoverishes the nation to the extent of millions yearly. Land-wealth consists partly of the various salts on which plants feed, and this depends on the geological constitution of the soil. The amount of plant-food available on any turned upon our half-barren fields, in order to given soil is very small; and whether soil is change them into fields of the greatest fertility. naturally poor or rich in this plant-food depends Dried clay and charred peat not only deodorise on whether the soil contains-locked up in the but render altogether innoxious any unpleasantgrains of rock of which all soils are composed-ness possessed by sewage, and in themselves are much or little sustenance for plants; and whether what it does contain can be readily liberated by cultivation, exposure to the elements, or dissolved out by the acids in the soil, or the acids which the roots of plants secrete. The yearly amount thus liberated is all a farmer can take from the soil; hence it is a great mistake to suppose that particular ways of cropping permanently impoverish soil. Unless what the soil is deficient in be put there by the farmer, he, rather than the landlord, will be made poor. 'Condition' is only temporary enrichment; hence a poor soil cannot be permanently enriched. Till the landlord has ascertained by chemical analysis the amount his soil contains of potash, phosphoric acid, lime, soda, magnesia, and the other less important elements found in plants, he will never exactly know the letting value of his farms. And not, till then, will he be able to say to his tenant what manures must be bought and what crops raised; neither till then, will the farmer know what he is buying, nor be able to lease a farm on sound commercial principles. Till then, he will never know what to buy and what to raise; for he will hardly be sure whether his land can grow potatoes continuously, or grain continuously, or whether the old-fashioned rotation will suit best. Farmers and landlords generally require to learn valuable improvers of soil. Many soils pay badly for want of clay in their body to hold the applied manurial matter-the sand allowing the rain to wash it out. What better manure or permanent improver could any one invent than clay-treated sewage? Much clay land is ill to work because of its adhesiveness-what better corrective could be invented than charred peat? Moreover, sewage contains the very matters which our fields want; that of which they have been so long robbed ; and for want of which, they are below a proper standard of fertility; the very essence of grain, and in great part formed from it. Till science and economy go hand in hand in farming, it will never pay; with these, no farmer need fear competition, and the landed interest will again look up. The present state cannot continue, for it is not paying. A better state of things must ensue, for it, though on far too small a scale, is paying even now; and continued adversity will cause the farmers and landlords to adopt a system they could once, but cannot now, afford to neglect. The farming interest demands a Minister of Agriculture, and the establishment of Agricultural Colleges to impart a scientific education in the principles of agricultural chemistry. At present, there are few schools for farmers' and landlords' sons; hence the landed interest, and still more the nation, suffers. New land-laws may be needed; security from the ravages of game is needed; freedom of contract; free trade in land and in farm-produce is needed; but above all, and beyond all, farmers and landlords need more light.' Free trade in land means much more in reality than it does in the mouths of those who repeat a mere parrot cry. The light shines now that would guide British riculture into a profitable course, but only a few walk in it. Meanwhile, it is for farmers to gather from books which deal with agricultural science and these are plentiful-the knowledge that ought to be spread broadcast by teachers; and when once he knows his wants, his wishes will be listened to, and the necessary alterations in the law will in all human probaMility be granted. VALENTINE STRANGE. A STORY OF THE PRIMROSE WAY. encountered Mary, standing at the door with a 'I sat up to see you,' she said hesitatingly, to ask you' 'Yes, my dear,' said Hiram, taking the candle in his hand-'To ask me' 'Oh, Mr Search,' she whispered, in such evident distress that it pained him to see it, 'I scarcely know how to ask you. You have been so good, and we have tried your kindness so often' 'Mary,' said Hiram, putting his arm round her waist, don't you lose my respect for you. I won't have you talkin' nonsense. You air naturally the wisest as well as the prettiest little gell in London, an' I don't want you to fall into any ridic'lousnesses.-Now, my dear.' 'Hiram,' she began again—and he, with a nod of bright approval and a little pressure of the arm which encircled her waist, bent down to listen'mother is ill, seriously ill.' 'Dear, now!' said Hiram gently, drawing her nearer to him. "The doctor the girl, speaking softly still, but with difficulty 'And I had to pawn a jacket and some other things to get them; and now they are gone; and more money, and nothing left to I have no take' 'My darlin',' said Hiram pitifully. And will you,' she whispered, sobbing still, let us have the week's rent in advance, this once? drawn away from him; but his arm restrained I am so ashamed to ask you'-she would have her 'you have been so good and generous ever HIRAM went back to work, and plotted all day how to force Fortune to his own pattern, and I thought of many ways, though none of them emed to answer. In his studies of the daily papers, he came again and again upon the phrase, Plans and particulars sent free on application;' and as an example of the direction his thoughts continually took, I give the scheme which this suggested to him. 'S'posin' now,' said Hiram to himself, hanging behind his 'bus, and turning this fancy over, I was to take a bureau, and make list of every one of these coons, and send a letter to each of 'em.-"SEARCH & Co.'s Advertring Office.-MISTER. Be so good as send to us in future all plans and particulars of sales by your noted firm.-Yourn truly, HIRAM K. SEARCH & Co." Reckon theer's a thousand on 'em. That takes five pound to post 'em all. One expense cheek again, I wish I was a millionaire; but 'Now, now, now,' said Hiram, patting the wet an' done with. Reckon, again, theer's an average I ain't. of one sale a day, an' each packet weighs four You wait a minute, an' I'll be down unces, what with postin'-bills, auctioneers' cata- again.' He left her, and mounted the stairs with res, an' wrappers. That's two hundred an' long silent strides, and returned in a few minutes with a lean chamois leather purse. 'It's only fty pound-weight; fifteen hundred pound-weight a week. Sell it for waste to the paper-mills at nine shillin',' said he mournfully; but I shall farthin' a pound-that's a trifle over thirty her lips, when she would have thanked him. have more by-an'-by.' He placed his hand above shillin' a week, English money.' Having completed this calculation, Hiram smiled. Thirty 'You just leave a note for me, if you should want Sellin' a week. That's so. An' when you've me in the mornin'.-How long has she been leared your expenses, if you do, you air pro-vided A week after the holiday, he went home to his dgings at the usual hour, and was surprised to find a light in two of the front windows. Entering with a presentiment of evil on his mind, he *The following are examples of works which may with advantage be consulted: Johnston's Agricultural Chemistry; Manures, how to make, buy, and use them; and Professor Tanner's First Principles of Agriculture. since you came.' ailin'?' 'Ever since the day we went out together,' the girl answered. 'Mebbe a bit tired,' said Hiram soothingly.'Don't you fret, my pretty. An' if you want anythin', ask me fur it, an' if I can get it, you shall have it; an' if you don't, I'll never forgive you, not if you was to love me all your lifetime as well as I love you.-An' that,' added Hiram to himself, you never will, because why on airth and mounted again to his own room, where, by should you?' He left her there with a kiss, the light of a single dim candle, he sat solemnly down at a small green-painted deal table, and inches by six. It. was not vanity which taught surveyed himself in an oblong mirror some eight him thus to gaze upon himself. "Tain't your face an' figger, Hiram, my lad, that makes the לח. little gell cling to you, you fortooitous concourse of disadvantageous anatomical circumstances! Wall, that's a pretty phrase, I vow, an' it has the merit o' bein' fairly descriptive. Yes, sir. It pokes you up in the identical cave you live in. You air a fortooitous concourse of disadvantageous anatomical circumstances. That, sir, is your personal ticket. An' yet, Hiram,' he continued, laying down the mirror, and rubbing his lean cheek thoughtfully with the tips of his fingers, it ain't the prettiest men as the best gells care for. No, sir. Grit tells. An' Hiram, you're takin' noo responsabilities, an' grit is wanted. Now I tell you, sir, an' I tell you straight, that if theer is in your ugly figger one soft place, it's got to be macadam'd; fur I am not goin' to let that poor little creetur mire her feet by walkin' over any swampy spots in you. That may be figgerative; but my meanin's clear. You air not a sentimental party, Hiram, an' so fur as I know you, you never wrote a set o' verses in your life; but you know as well as I do, theer's nothin' in the world, no blessin' in it, like a good woman's love. An' how you got it, I dunno, but got it you have. Take care of it; be worthy of it, Hiram, an' your personal appearance will not count. An honest man, if he's as ornery-lookin' as Zebedee Pitman, can give Apoller p'ints, an' then knock chunks off him.' And with this moral reflection, Hiram began slowly and gravely to disrobe, and in a few minutes was sound asleep. There was no note for Hiram in the morning; but he wrote and left upon the kitchen table a small missive, asking that news of the patient's progress should be left for him at night. Just three words answered this, 'Mother is better,' written in a thin hand, upon a scrap of letterpaper; but in the very dead and hollow of the following night, Hiram, always a light sleeper, was awakened by a creaking sound; and sitting upright in the dark, listened. Light footsteps went hastily to and fro, and were lost on the carpeting of the lower room. Then Hiram heard a voice groaning; and having struck a light, he hurried on his clothes, and went out to see what was the matter. Mary, with a scared face, was coming up the stair when she caught sight of him. 'Is she worse?' he asked. 'You want a doctor. Tell me where he lives?' Armed with the doctor's address, he was away at full speed, rang up the medical man, and brought him home. The doctor kept a small dispensary in a poor and crowded neighbourhood. Poverty and sickness were so common in his locality that he had grown somewhat hard. 'My fee,' he said, as they walked together, five shillings.' give you a mixture.' Again they passed into the streets together. 'Relatives of yours?' asked the doctor as they walked, nodding his head backwards towards the house. 'No,' said Hiram; 'I'm only a lodger there. How is she?' 'It's a gone case, I should say,' returned the doctor. There's just a chance for her, and that's all.' Hiram made no answer; and they reached the dispensary in silence; and there, from his meagre store of drugs, the doctor made up the best prescription his means allowed. Five shillings, he said, as he handed the bottle to Hiram. 'Keep that till I bring the money to you,' said the 'bus conductor, detaching his imitation gold chain from his waistcoat, and drawing forth the showy cheap aluminium or oroide watch. I haven't got it with me.' The doctor took it reluctantly and with some grumbling; and Hiram sped away with the medicine. A police officer looked suspiciously at him as he raced along; but, reflecting probably on his own inability to compete with Hiram's lengthy legs, forbore to pursue him. Running all the way, Hiram burst breathless into the street he lived in; and there, lest his hurried footsteps should disturb the patient, subdued his haste and walked on tiptoe. Having given up the medicine, he whispered: 'I shall be in the kitchen if you want me ;' and before the girl had time to remonstrate, he was gone. He sat alone in the darkness, thinking, until the house had dropped once more into midnight stillness, and at last fell uncomfortably to sleep, awaking every now and again with great nods, which seemed almost to shake him from his chair. At the usual hour, he lit the fire, guessing the time by the look of the outside air, performed all the small household duties he had taken upon himself, and went out. The morning was raw and foggy, and as the day went on, the fog deepened. His anxieties grew so, that at mid-day, finding a temporary substitute, and promising him payment for his services, he pleaded illness, and went home again, and heard worse news than ever of the patient. Going to his own room, he opened a little drawer, and taking out a small bag, made search within it until he found, in a corner, amongst odds and ends of thread and a score of buttons of various patterns, the half-sovereign which Gerard Lumby had given him, carefully treasured until now. 'I don't like parting with it,' he murmured as he turned it over. If I'd ha' spent it in a racket of any sort, I should ha' felt like flyin' in the face o' Providence. But it's a good cause 'isan' yet I don't like partin' with it.' Suddenly his face brightened; and putting the coin carefully in his pocket, he left the house, and walked the streets, with curious glances at the shop-windows and the signs, blurred with the fog. Coming at last to a pawnbroker's, he entered, pushed aside a swinging-door, and found himself in a wooden box with a counter before him. 'Very well,' said Hiram sadly. 'I can't afford,' said the poor medico, 'to come for less at such a time of night.' 'Very well,' said Hiram again; and they walked on in silence through the sleeping streets. Reaching the house, Hiram opened the door with his latchkey, and sat down in the darkness of the lower room to wait. In a few minutes, he heard the medical man descending, and went into the narrow hall, faintly illumined by a street lamp, to meet him. How is she?' 'Come with me,' was the answer, 'and I will 'What do you want?' asked the boy behind the counter. 'What will you give me on that?' asked Hiram, producing the half-sovereign and laying it on the counter. 'Why, wodder yer a talkid about?' asked the 1 ture. April 15, 1882] boy, who was probably of Hebraic extraction. 'That's half a thick-ud. Get out!' He said this playfully, as if in response to a humorous overBut Hiram's face was grave. 'That's a half a sovereign,' he said solemnly; 'worth ten shillin', ain't it? What will you lend on it? I wouldn't part with that coin for five pound. It's all the money I've got, an' I want to realise on it; an' when I can get it back, I shall come for it.' 'Are yer id eardest?' asked the boy.-Hiram nodded with funeral solemnity. All right,' said the boy, with his beady Jewish eyes a-glitter. Nine shillings.'—Hiram nodded again."What's yer dame?' 'Hiram Kysarchichus Search,' responded the client gravely. chronicled, and then the silent watches of the night; and for Hiram in his loneliness, and Mary in her terror-stricken watch, as for Garling in his sleep, with every passing second the warp and woof of Circumstance shot in and out, and not one of the three had any knowledge of the web which Time's swift shuttle was weaving. What?' said the boy.-Hiram repeated it.-ness. 'Here,' said the boy, pushing the pawn-ticket and the pen across the counter. Write it dowd yerself.' Hiram wrote it in a clerkly hand; and the boy, having demanded and received a halfpenny for the ticket, handed over nine shillings, and the transaction was complete. 'That coin is marked,' said Hiram seriously. 'I shan't take another.' The boy turned it over, and looking sideways at Hiram out of the corners of his eyes, passed his thumb and finger across each side of it. His trained and cunning touch detected the mark; and fixing a watchmaker's glass to his eye, he read, 'G. L. to H. K. S.' 'All right,' said he, folding it into a little parcel, and tossing it into a drawer, after pinning it to its ticket duplicate. PROCRASTINATION. THERE is a standard work of English literature which, though deservedly popular with our grandfathers, has been but little read by a later generation. We allude to Young's Night Thoughts, a poem of sustained merit, in which the philosophic student cannot fail to find a mine of suggestiveIf the book be new to him, he will probably smile, and be reminded of the individual, unread in Shakspeare, who, taken to see one of his plays, declared it was all made up of quotations; for such a reader will find in the Night Thoughts many a line, many a phrase that has taken deep root in the English language as an expressive familiar quotation. Not every one who talks of Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep,' knows whence the passage is taken; and perhaps fewer persons still credit Dr Young with the true and pithy saying that Procrastination is the thief of Time.' Yet the line is imbedded like a gem in his poein. How true that saying is, we rarely find appreciated by youthful minds; and yet procrastination the putting off till to-morrow what ought to be done to-day-is one of the most fatally bad habits the young can acquire. When the thing to be Hiram then left the shop, and again made his done has been fully considered, and a clear deciway to the dispensary, where, the doctor being at sion arrived at, nothing remains but to fix on the that time abroad, he left word for him to follow right time for action, and if, as often happens, that on his return. It was already late in the evening right time is the 'now,' the wise man acts promptly, when the doctor again reached the house. He does the deed, whatever it may be, without further spent but a brief time in the sickroom, and then parley, and very often is able to throw the whole descending, took Hiram by the sleeve and drew affair behind him, and so have his energies free him into the street, where the fog drove in visible for fresh tasks. But the procrastinator talks of billows across the bleared flicker of the lamps. 'plenty of time,' of 'by-and-by ;' or if pressed, 'It will be all over in a few hours,' he said. maybe of 'to-morrow'-that to-morrow which is 'She asked me, and I told her so. There is some- ever a morsel of the veiled future which no human body she wants to see, and I have sent her being can have any certainty about, but which is daughter to her. Have you got the five shillings? pretty sure to bring with itself its own burden of Here's the watch. I shan't charge cares and duties. for this visit, because I've not been able to do anything. I shall come round to make out the certificate in the morning.' It was an everyday matter with him, and practice had taught him -Thank you. an outer hardness. Hiram went back to the little front room, and sat there until Mary came down. 'My dear,' he said, 'you must get a nurse.' He dreaded what he knew was coming, and could not bear to think of the helpless girl alone at such a time. Our next-door neighbour is a nurse,' said the irl I can ask her to come in. But I want ༢༠ to Fleet Street. My-my father lives there, and mother says she must see him.' 'You call in the nurse, while I go to Fleet Street,' said Hiram. Give me the number.' It is hardly too strong an assertion to declare that no decided procrastinator was ever really successful in life. Perhaps if he belongs to the limited band of people who are independent of active employment, the habitual procrastinator may seem a comparatively harmless and inoffensive person. His affairs are so small, that we are apt to think that he cannot greatly injure others or himself; but even he sometimes frets his friends by delays and neglect and unpunctuality, which act as clogs on the social wheel; and a life that seems to have no higher purpose than to get over time, can hardly be considered a happy or successful one. But a vast multitude of persons are so constituted, that the habit of procrastination early She gave him full instructions; and he set acquired and long continued, or its opposite, ut, and remembering the doctor's words, 'It will that of prompt action, will make all the differbe all over in a few hours,' he leaped into a ence between partial failure and real success in cab, forgetful of his scanty store of money, and life. Observe, how 'unlucky' the dilatory person drove hastily. Then came the interviews already is often considered, or at any rate considers himself; |