himself to thrive by farming, but to show
others how they may do so. He walks before
over uncertain ground, and bids men look
and see where he treads safely, and on such
ground follow him, but where he trips or
gets into quagmire he desires that they take
warning by his mishap, and keep away.
Tiptree receives with open arms all promising
ideas on agriculture, but promise and
performance do not always sing in tune together.
An energetic temper of experiment must
therefore cost its owner something for a little
while, but in the end it will assuredly attain
to results that reward every adventure. A
squire of the old school does not expect to
reap a sudden harvest when he plants oaks:
that sort of gain he designs for posterity.
In like manner, the capital sunk in the
Tiptree soil cannot be realised in one or in a
dozen harvests. In calculating profit and
loss we must spread them over years, not
only past years, but future years; and we
shall find that instead of laying out his
improvement money upon a present annual
loss, Mr. Mechi is assuredly paying towards
a good deferred annuity—a better one than
could have been attained in three successive
life-times on the old follow-my-leader
system.

We are now, however, following our leader,
among barley, wheat, and clover, noticing
occasionally little pipes crossing our path,
and men here and there sprinkling jets out
into the sun from gutta percha hose, of a
liquid that conveys its name in scents upon
the breeze—liquid manure. A gentleman,
laudably curious to ascertain the strength and
quality of this fertilizer as employed on
Tiptree Farm, takes up a little of it in the
hollow of his hand and places it in contact
with his nose. Here, near the farm buildings,
is the great tank, to the mouth of which we
mount up the side of a rough mound. A
couple of trap-doors being opened, we look
down into a gloomy vault of the size of a
small cottage, wherein there sleep, in a dull,
heavy way, the remains of a great many
things. Every atom of manure upon the
farm, all offal, every dead dog or sheep, is
buried here. Cattle dead of disease are
skinned, cut into quarters and thrown down
this trap-door. "What is the density of this
mass, Mr. Mechi?" "If we were all to
jump in it would float us all, and an elephant
or two into the bargain." This is a country
supply of Mechi's Magic Paste intended to
improve the blades of grass and corn. Any
gruel so thick and slab never was yet
concocted in a witch's cauldron: a frog would
be a ridiculous drop to throw into such a
bucket; and the farm labourers who "round
about this cauldron go," if they read Shakspere,
must think him far from having attained
sublimity in his ideal of a filthy mess. This
is the filth collected on a single farm, every
grain of which the seed upon the farm,
fulfilling its appointed office in the scheme of
nature, is ready to convert into corn, cabbage,
clover, and the like, which will again pass
into flesh. This pool is not Slough of
Despond, but a true Bethesda to the sickly
land about it. Over this pool we may well
think how large a tank would be required to
hold the filth of London, and of many another
city. Such filth lies partly stagnant under
towns, and partly pours into their rivers; it
ripens crops for undertakers in the city, and
yields crops for butchers and for bakers in
the field.

If we look down into the tank we shall
perceive, now that the pool is stirred, no solid
wheel could move in the thick mass to mix it
properly; what iron could not manage is
done by the impalpable substance of the air.
Powerful streams of air are forced in from
below by the adjoining engine; these make
their way upward, and slowly the huge mass
stirs, the scum breaks upon its surface, and
strange shapes of corruption rise to the top,
slowly pass aside, and sink again. Water,
drained from the farm—the water that once
puffed the land up as a diseased excrescence
—a bog tumour, flows into the tank, is mixed
with the more solid matter, and having
thinned it to the due consistence, passes with
it, in the form of liquid manure, through a
pipe that lies under the strong thumb of a
steam engine. Through a pipe five inches in
diameter, the steam engine forces the fertilising
stream into a series of tubes, which run under
the brown skin of the soil as arteries run
under our own skins, charged with nourishment.
The blood-vessels of a farm are, of
course, pipes of iron, arranged in a net-work
not particularly close. It is only necessary
that they should run to supply plugs fixed at
regulated distances, from which a stream may
be poured at will, as from a fire-plug in the
street, through gutta percha hose. The force
of the current at Tiptree, urged by an engine
of very moderate horse-power, sends through
a hose two hundred yards in length, a stream
which is propelled to a distance of sixty feet
from its point of escape into the open air. With
such a piece of hose, therefore, the liquid
manure may be made to fall in showers over a
circle of soil having the plug for its centre,
and a radius of two hundred and sixty feet.
Fifteen plugs, with the help of gutta percha
hose, suffice therefore to place every portion
of the Tiptree Farm under the influence of
this new system of irrigation. Of course
there will be no manure heaps on a farm
contrived upon this system, which has been in
operation for the last seven or eight months
at Tiptree; there will be no labour required
for carting and spreading manure about the
fields; above all there will be no loss of any
particle of matter. Whatever rots in the
tank to-day will probably be growing in the
field to-morrow; there is no waste of matter
and there is no waste of time. The manure
heap might be transformed twice over into
growing vegetables, and be back in the shape