Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 401, March 1849

What are the functions of the animals you rear – what the composition of their several parts – what the nature of the food they require – what the purposes it serves – what the proportions in which this or that kind of food ought to be given – what the changes, in the kind and proportion, to adapt it to the special habits and constitution of the animal, and the purposes for which it is fed? Are these questions deep? Yet they have all been thought over and long considered, and discussed and disputed about, and volumes have been written upon them; and the chemist, and the physiologist, and the anatomist have, unknown to you, all laboured zealously and without wearying, in your service. And what you now find so simple only proves how much their sciences have done for you. They have fitted the machinery together, you but throw in the fuel and keep up the steam.

With the rearing of stock, and the improving of breeds, practical men are, or fancy themselves, all more or less conversant. How much warm and persevering genius, guided by purely scientific principles, has been expended upon our improved shorthorns and Leicesters! Are the whole lives of a Collins, or a Bakewell, or a Bates, nothing to have been devoted to pursuits like this? That these were practical men, and not scientific, and that what they have done is not a debt due by agriculture to science, is the saying of many. Men who have never read a book can do, by imitation, what the patient services and skill of other men discovered, and perfected, and simplified. But in this they are only stokers. The improvers were sound and cautious experimental physiologists, guided by the most fixed and certain principles of animal physiology; and it is the results at which these men arrived that have become the household words of the stokers of our day, who call them practice in opposition to science . If science could forget her high duties to the Deity, and to the human race, she might leave you and your art to your own devices.

Need we allude to the conditions of animal life – in a state of health, and in a state of disease; to the varied constitutions of different races and varieties; to the several adaptations of food, warmth, and shelter which these demand; and to the extensive course of study which is now required to furnish the necessary resources to the accomplished veterinary surgeon? Yet would any breeder be safe for a moment to invest his money in stock, in a country and climate like ours, had he not, either in books, or in his own head, or in that of a neighbouring veterinarian, the results at which the long study of these branches of knowledge, in connexion with animal health, had discovered and established?

We pursue this topic no further at present. We fearlessly assert – we believe that we have shown – that as much intellect has been scientifically expended in elucidating and perfecting the various operations of rural life, by which those magnificent cattle have been produced by art, as has gone to the elaboration of that wonderful wave-subduing ship. The vulgar mind, awed by bulk and sound, and visible emblems of thought, may dissent – may say that we have not so much to show for it. But the laws of life are sought for and studied – they are not made by science. The Deity has forbidden human skill to develop a sheep into an elephant. Living materials, as we have said, are not plastic like wood and iron; and to change the constitution and character of a breed of animals may require as great and as long-continued an exercise of inventive thought as to perfect an imposing piece of machinery. The real worth of a scientific result is the amount of mind expended in arriving at it, as the real height of an animal in the scale of organisation is measured by the proportionate size of its brain.

But we have our more palpable and sense-satisfying triumphs too. Look at that wide valley, with its snow-clad summits at a distance on either hand, and its glassy river flowing, cribbed and confined, in the lowest bottom. Smiling fields, and well-trimmed hedge-rows, and sheltering plantations, and comfortable dwellings, and a busy population, and abundant cattle, cover its undulating slopes. For miles industrious plenty spreads over a country which the river formerly usurped, and the lake covered, and the rush tufted over, and bog and mossy heath and perennial fogs and drizzling rains rendered inhospitable and chill. But mechanics has chained the river, and drained the lakes, and bogs, and clayey bottoms; and giving thus scope to the application of all the varied practical rules to which science has led, the natural climate has been subdued, disease extirpated, and rich and fertile and happy homes scattered over the ancient waste.

Turn to another country, and a river flows deeply through an arid and desolate plain. Mechanics lifts its waters from their depths, and from a thousand artificial channels directs them over the parched surface. It is as if an enchanter's wand had been stretched over it – the green herbage and the waving corn, companied by all the industries of rural life, spring up as they advance.

Another country, and a green oasis presents itself, busy with life, in the midst of a desert and sandy plain. Do natural springs here gush up, as in the ancient oasis of the Libyan wilderness? It is another of the triumphs of human industry, guided by human thought. Geology, and her sister sciences, are here the pioneers of rural life and fixed habitations. The seat of hidden waters at vast depths was discovered by her. Under her directions mechanics has bored to their sources, and their gushing abundance now spreads fertility around.

Such are more sensible and larger triumphs of progressing rural economy – such as man may well boast of, not only in themselves, but in their consequences; and they may take their place with the gigantic vessel of war, as magnificent results of intellectual effort.

But it is after these first ruder though more imposing conquests over nature have been made, that the demand for mind, for applied science, becomes more frequent, and the results of its application less perceptible. And it is because, in ordinary husbandry, we have not always before us the striking illustrations which arrest the vulgar eye, that prevailing ignorance persists in denying its obligations to scientific research.

The waters which descend from a chain of hills become a striking feature in the geography of a country, when they happen to unite together into a large and magnificent river: they escape unseen and unnoticed if, keeping apart, they flow in countless tiny streamlets to the sea. Yet, thus disunited, they may carry fertility over a whole region, like the Nile when it overflows its banks, or as the river of Damascus straying among its many gardens; while the waters of the great river may only refresh and fertilise its own narrow margins, as the Murray and the Darling do in South Australia, or the deep-bedded rivers of Southern Africa.

Thus much we have devoted to the introductory portion of the Book of the Farm . Those of our readers who wish to follow up farther these scientific views may study Johnston's Lectures, and Elements, of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology : and by the way we would commend, for applied science, these works of Johnston's, and for practical knowledge, the book of Stephens, to the special attention of our emigrating fellow-countrymen, of whom so many in their foreign homes are likely to regret the overflowing sources of information on every conceivable topic with which their home literature and home neighbours supplied them.

Let us now take a look at the body of Mr Stephens' work. These are the days of pictorial embellishment – of speaking directly, and plainly, and palpably to the eye. We have accidentally opened the book at the 217th page. What letterpress description could – so briefly we do not say, for that is out of the question – but so graphically and fully, explain the practice of eating off turnips with sheep, and all its appliances of hurdles and nets, and turnip shears, and feeding troughs, and hay racks, as the single woodcut which this page exhibits? And so the practice of bratting and of stelling sheep is illustrated, and all the forms and fashions of stells in high and low countries (pp. 231 to 236;) the pulling, dressing, and storing of turnips, (190 to 195;) the various modes of ploughing, with their ups and downs, and turnings, and crossings, and gatherings, and feerings, and gore furrows, and mould furrows, and broad furrows, and cross furrows, and samcastings, and gaws, and ribs, and rafters, and slices, and crowns, and centres, and a host of other operations and things familiar to the farmer, but the very names and designations of which are Greek to the common English reader. All these the woodcuts explain beautifully and familiarly to the uninitiated readers, and most usefully to the incipient farmer. How is the rural economy of Great Britain and Ireland, in its best forms, stored up, not only for modern and immediate use, but for the understanding of future ages, by these illustrations! We would specify, in addition to those already referred to, the steam-boiling apparatus in page 320; and the taking down of a stack of corn in page 401; and the feeding of the threshing machine in page 406; and the hand-sowing of corn in page 553; and the pickling of wheat, ( chaulage of our Gallic neighbours,) page 536; and the measuring of the grain in the barn, &c., page 419; and the full sacks, as they should be , in the barn, in page 423. To the foreigner, how do these pictures speak of English customs, costumes, and usages; to our Trans-atlantic brethren, of the source of those modes and manners which have at once placed them on an elevation in agricultural art, to which 800 years of intellectual struggle had barely sufficed to lift up their fathers and cousins at home; and to the still British colonial emigrant the precise practices, and latest rural improvements, which it will be his interest, at once, and his pride, to introduce into his adopted land!