A Walk from London to John OGroats | Page 8

Two teams were at
work turning up the other, which had already been cropped once or
twice. One of two horses went first, and, with a common English
plough, turned an ordinary furrow. Then the other followed, of twice
the force of the first, in the same furrow, with a subsoil plough held to
the work beam-deep. The iron-stones and ferruginous clods turned up
by this "deep tillage" would make a prairie farmer of Illinois wonder, if
not shudder, at the plucky and ingenious industry which competes with
his easy toil and cheap land in providing bread for the landless millions
of Great Britain.

The only exceptional feature or arrangement, besides the irrigating
machinery and process, that I noticed, was an iron hurdling for folding
sheep. This, at first sight, might look to a practical farmer a little
extravagant, indicating a city origin, or the notion of an amateur
agriculturist, more ambitious of the new than of the necessary. Each
length of this iron fencing is apparently about a rod, and cost 1 pound,
or nearly five dollars. It is fitted to low wheels, or rollers, on an axle
two or three feet in length, so that it can be moved easily and quickly in
any direction. It would cost over fifty pounds, or two hundred and fifty
dollars, to enclose an acre entirely with this kind of hurdling. Still, Mr.
Mechi would doubtless be able to show that this large expenditure is a
good investment, and pays well in the long run. The folding of sheep
for twenty-four or forty-eight hours on small patches of clover, trefoil,
or turnips, is a very important department of English farming, both for
fattening them for the market and for putting the land in better heart
than any other fertilising process could effect. Now, a man with this
iron fencing on wheels must be able to make in two hours an enclosure
that would cost him a day or more of busy labor with the old wooden
hurdles.
On the whole, a practical farmer, who has no other source of income
than the single occupation of agriculture, would be likely to ask, what
is the realised value of Alderman Mechi's operations to the common
grain and stock-growers of the world? They have excited more
attention or curiosity than any other experiments of the present day; but
what is the real resume of their results? What new principles has he laid
down; what new economy has he reduced to a science that may be
profitably utilised by the million who get their living by farming? What
has he actually done that anybody else has adopted or imitated to any
tangible advantage? These are important questions; and this is the way
he undertakes to answer them, beginning with the last.
About twenty years ago, he inaugurated the system of under-draining
the heavy tile-clay lands in Essex. Up to his experiment, the process
was deemed impracticable and worthless by the most intelligent
farmers of the county. It was more confidently decried than his present
irrigation system. The water would never find its way down into the

drain-pipes through such clay. It stood to reason that it would do no
such thing. Did not the water stand in the track of the horse's hoof in
such rich clay until evaporated by the sun? It might as well leak
through an earthenware basin. It was all nonsense to bury a man's
money in that style. He never would see a shilling of it back again. In
the face of these opinions, Mr. Mechi went on, training his pipes
through field after field, deep below the surface. And the water
percolated through the clay into them, until all these long veins formed
a continuous and rushing stream into the main artery that now furnishes
an ample supply for his stabled cattle, for his steam engine, and for all
the barn-yard wants. His tile-draining of clay-lands was a capital
success; and those who derided and opposed it have now adopted it to
their great advantage, and to the vast augmentation of the value and
production of the county. Here, then, is one thing in which he has led,
and others have followed to a great practical result.
His next leading was in the way of agricultural machinery. He first
introduced a steam engine for farming purposes in a district containing
a million of acres. That, too, at the outset, was a fantastic vagary in the
opinion of thousands of solid and respectable farmers. They insisted the
Iron Horse would be as dangerous in the barn-yard or rick-yard as the
very dragon in Scripture; that he would set everything on fire; kill the
men who had care of him; burst and blow up himself and all the
buildings into the air; that all