power, under the care of a ploughboy, which
put in motion the barn machinery, thrashed
and winnowed the corn, separated it into
wheat, first and second, tailings, cavings,
and chaff, and carried the straw into the
straw house, and the wheat into the granary.
The same engine also put in motion stones
for grinding corn or linseed, or crushed beans,
and worked a chaff-cutter.

The steam-driven barn apparatus has more
advantages, and creates more profit to the
farmer, than can be explained in a few words.
Under the hand flail system, a great barn
was needed, where it was necessary to thrash,
not when you wanted to send to market, but
when thrashers could be had, and then very
slowly, with great loss by imperfect thrashing
and systematic pilfering. Our Bedfordshire
farmer having had the building provided by
his landlord, put up the steam-engine and
machinery himself, at a cost of five hundred
pounds; and now, with coals costing fifteen
shillings per ton, his steam-engine thrashes and
dresses two hundred bushels of wheat in one
day, at a cost of one penny a bushel, which,
with horse-power, would cost fourpence, and
with flail thrashing, sixpence a bushel.
Besides this economy in time and money, there
is an economy in space, as the corn can
remain in the rick in the field, until wanted.

Some very pretty things have been said
about the flail; and thrashing does make
a very pretty picture, although it is a
most soul-deadening occupation. But to
a thoughtful mind, there is something much
more beautiful in the regularity with which
the sheaves, delivered from the cart, are
consumed and distributed. The steam-driven
barn machinery was not a complete piece of
work until linked, by the railway, with the
corn-market. In Scotland machine-thrashing
has long been universal, but in England it
makes way slowly, and is introduced with
excuses in some counties—our poor-laws
having been in the way.

We next mounted our friend's hacks and
climbed the hill to take a bird's-eye view of
the farms before descending into details.

On our way we crossed a broad belt of grass
fields which surround the house and garden,
and are always mowed, other fields farther off
being always grazed; by this arrangement it
is thought that the best kinds of grass for
feeding are cultivated on the one, and the
best for mowing on the other; while the hay
so grown near the yards where it is to be
consumed, and near the manure heaps
which restore fertility to meadows.
Meadows round a house are, it must be admitted,
much more agreeable than ploughed land,
besides having the advantage of keeping
the cattle and horses grazing within an easy
distance if not within sight. After ascending
a hill, considered steep in the midland
counties, we stood upon a sort of inland
promontory, marking the division of the farm,
all above being sand-land of the character
well known as Woburn sand, and nearly all
below stiff clay, being part of the rich valley
which runs on to the sea at King's Lynn in
Norfolk.

From this promontory we could review, as
in a panorama, the farmer's crops—wheat in
great fields of forty, fifty, and sixty acres—a
golden sea, fast falling before the scythe and
the sickle; barley not so ripe, some of it
lying here and there in rucks as if a great
flood had rolled over it; too much manuring
swelled the ears without stiffening the straw
enough, and so anxiety to raise a large crop
had defeated itself. There were oats too,
verdant and feathery; beans, dark ugly
patches on the landscape; mangold, with
rich dark green luxuriant leaves; and fields
of something that was not grass, though like
it in the distance, being, what is called in
farmer's phrase, seeds, that is to say, artificial
grasses, such as Italian rye grass, red clover,
or white clover and trefoil mixed, which
form a rotation crop only to be grown once
in four or in eight years, according to the
soil.

Experience and scientific investigation have
but slightly and slowly added any new crops
for the use of the farmer. When any one
loudly announces a new crop, which will
supersede all others in utility and profit, we
may as safely set him down as a quack
as if he announced a universal medicine.
For England wheat, barley, and oats, are
the best cereal crops; rye, except green to
feed stock, is not in demand; wheat in many
varieties fits itself to suitable soils, the finest
kinds cannot always be carried to a distant
country without degeneration. The finest
barley for malting is grown in a few counties
on light soil, while oats attain a perfection in
Scotland and Ireland rarely to be found in
districts where oatmeal is not the food of the
people.

The proportions which a farmer should
grow of each crops will depend on his soil
and on his market, supposing always that
the landlord is, like our friend's landlord,
sufficiently intelligent to allow his tenant to
make the best of his land. For instance,
having six fields on his clay land of about
fifty acres each, he has found it convenient to
adopt the following rotation:—First year,
either a fallow or a fallow crop, such as cole-
seed, tares, early white turnips, mangold, &c.;
second year, wheat; third year, beans; fourth
year, barley; fifth year, clover; sixth year,
wheat, instead of the Scotch rotation, in which
beans stand fifth, and the land becomes
too full of weeds for a good crop. On the
sand land the rotation is—first, turnips;
second, barley; third, clover; and fourth,
wheat; white and red clover being used
alternately.

It will be observed that root crops form
the foundation of this style of farming. Root
crops do two things for the farmer; they
prepare the land for corn crops, and they supply