use; for it can be kept in order without the
help of a skilled mechanic.

The history of the reaping-machine, from the
days of Pliny to the contrivance of the Scotch
minister, Bell, is too large and interesting to
be dismissed in a paragraph. It must for the
present be enough to say that in the field-trials
at Lincoln there was nothing more exciting
or comical than the straggling competition
between the machine reapers, when they
charged into the standing corn, and cut and
laid it down ready for the binders at the
rate of at least two acres per hour. But
some other time the story of the reaper—a
real romance—must be told.

Passing now from the field to the rick-yard,
the rick-stand must not be overlooked. It
is a pillar and mushroom cap of stone or
iron, to lift the rick from the ground; and to
cheat—as we learnt at the late Durham Assizes
—rats and mice of no less than forty per cent
of the grain per annum; yet hundreds of
farmers will not spend a few shillings on rick-
stands.

From the rick the next step is to the
barn machinery; and what a step!—from the
clay thrashing-floor, and the flail stupifying
the thrasher and wasting the corn; and the
rude winnowing-machine dependent on a
breezy day, to the beautiful steam-driven
thrashing- machines, by which corn is
thrashed, winnowed, sacked and weighed,
while the straw is hoisted to the straw-
loft, to be there, if needful, by the same steam
power, and by one operation, cut into chaff
for cattle. At Lincoln there were upwards
of twenty-five thrashing-machines exhibited,
the greater number of which would thrash
corn at about ninepence a quarter, or less
than half the cost of hand-labour. Yet it is
only within the last five years that this
machine driven by steam-power has invaded
some of the best corn-growing counties in
England.

Last in the list come steam-engines; which
steam food, cut chaff, pulp roots, thrash grain,
raise loads, pump water, and drive liquid
manure through pipes, at an insignificant expense;
permitting a farmer to be always ready to send
his crops to market at short notice. Without
pretending to examine those bewildering
conjunctions of cranks and wheels, the mere
fact of five-and-twenty steam-engines entered
for agricultural use, at prices beginning at
one hundred pounds, shows the road the
British farmer is now marching. Ten years
ago, half-a-dozen agricultural steam-engines,
consuming double the quantity of fuel now
required, were gazed upon in England,
though not in Scotland as curiosities. Now
it pays twenty-five makers to send these
weighty specimens as showcards to farmers
whenever and wherever the Royal Agricultural
Society holds its meetings.

The criticism of the practical men who
travelled from all parts of the kingdom to
review the implement show at Lincoln, proved
that a large number of farmers had fully
discovered the value of coal and iron—that
coal and iron are as effectual in producing
motive power for agricultural operations, as
for driving spinning jennies, and propelling
steam vessels. There is still at least one
hundred years of darkness and prejudice between
the districts where such sentiments are
held, and where the wooden wheelless plough,
the clumsy harrow, broadcast sowing, hand-
hoeing, flail-thrashing, undrained land, and
ill-housed stock, are the rule. Not that any
number of implements, or the study of any
number of books, will make a farmer. Science,
to be useful, must be sown on a practical and
fruitful soil. The keenest steel axe must be
wielded by a practised hand.

Having raised our crops by a good use
of the implements in the Lincoln yard, we
must now turn to the live-stock.

The short-horns—arranged in order, bulls,
cows with calves, and heifers, in the rich
variety of colour peculiar to the aristocracy of
the ox tribe—come first in view. Some strawberry
roan, some red and white, some milk-
white; but all so much alike in form and face,
that to the uninitiated, the roan bulls might be
all brothers, and the white cows all sisters.
Short legs, vast round carcases, flat backs;
not an angle nor a point, except at the muzzle
and the horns—are the characteristics of the
descendants of Collings' Durhams. A little
farther on, the bulls, quite as large, are the
Herefords, red, with white faces, and here
and there white bellies; the cows smaller,
with less of a dairy look than the short-
horns. Third in order appear the Devons,
in colour one deep red, with deer-like heads;
plump but delicate and small in stature.
These three breeds, of which a hundred and
seventy one specimens were sent, represent
the best beef that England, after about a
hundred years of pains and experiment,
can raise. All English herds of cattle
maintained on first-rate farms are one of
these three breeds—short-horns, Herefords,
or Devons. Scotland has breeds of its
own. The Argyle ox, in his improved
shape, is one of the legacies of Duke Archibald,
Jeannie Deans's friend, bred on the
hills and vales of the Highlands, and which,
fattened in the private yards of Lincoln,
Norfolk, and Bedford, produces beef second
to none. The Ayrshire cow is unrivalled for
dairy use. But, as these are not bred in
England, they do not come into competition
in a show of English breeding stock.

The sheep shown for prizes are subject to
as few divisions as the cattle. There are
pure Leicesters (once called the New Leicesters;
but the old have all died out); the long-
wools, not being Leicesters, of which the
prime victors are all Cotswolds; and the short-
wools, or South Downs, a class under which
rivals from Wiltshire and Norfolk compete
with Sussex, the cradle of the improved
breed. As for pigs, they are divided into