23 AUGUST 1845, Page 2

While agricultural societies are dining, and practical agricul- turists are

listening to lectures and instructive speeches hortatory of improvement, the precarious state of the weather and the harvest remind them how little art has done to secure the pro- duce of agriculture against the chances of the seasons. Do they' know what style of agriculture is best, not for a fine or a bad season2 but to secure the largest probable mean amount of pro- duce in any case ? Scarcely. Do they know the extent to which machinery might be applied to the business? Quite the reverse ; for many a new application of machinery brings to light such unexpected advantages as to show that the knowledge and expectation of practical men lag far behind the probable results r. most likely, the ultimate results on a bold and thorough applica- tion of machinery, so as to convert agriculture into a real process of manufacture by mechanical tools and chemical materials, would defy the imagination of any "practical" man relying on, present methods. All improvements in manufactures tend to change from small separate tools with rude and wholesale methods, to large engines with minute and careful methods. The huge engine of a cotton-mill and the vastness of the whole establishment are in an inverse ratio to the minute and elaborate care with which every single stage of the process is prepared, so that every thread pursues its destined course. An experiment some time back, in multiplying wheat by a very minute method of culture, was marvellously successful. What is done in a few feet of ground may be done over a field, by applying proportionate labour to the larger surface. That would demand au enormous access of agricultural labour—greater, no doubt, than the supply : at present the supply exceeds the demand. Thus applied, then, machinery would be a substitute for living labour without super- seding it; and at the same time, presuming success, augmented means would be found for the support and payment of that labour. Considering the principle which has regulated improve- ment in all human production, we look forward to the day when corn-growing will be an unprotected manufacture; and the. presentlecturings and conferences are a step in the right direc- tion, although the neophytes scarcely guess whither the new path may lead them.