A Walk from London to John OGroats | Page 9

the horses, cows, and sheep would be
frightened to death at the very sight of the monster, and never could be
brought to lie down in peace and safety by his side, even when his
blood was cold, and when he was fast asleep. To think of it! to have a
tall chimney towering up over a barn-gable or barn- yard, and puffing
out black coal smoke, cotton-factory-wise! Pretty talk! pretty terms to
train an honest and virtuous farmer to mouth! Wouldn't it be edifying to
hear him string the yarn of these new words! to hear him tell of his
engineer and ploughman; of his pokers and pitchforks; of six-horse
power, valves, revolutions, stopcocks, twenty pounds of steam, etc.;
mixing up all this ridiculous stuff with yearling-calves, turnips,
horse-carts, oil- cake, wool, bullocks, beans, and sheep, and other vital
things and interests, which forty centuries have looked upon with
reverence! To plough, thresh, cut turnips, grind corn, and pump water

for cattle by steam! What next?
Why, next, the farmers of the region round about
"First pitied, then embraced"
this new and powerful auxiliary to agricultural industry, after having
watched its working and its worth. And now, thanks to such bold and
spirited novices as Mr. Mechi--men who had the pluck to work steadily
on under the pattering rain of derisive epithets-- there are already nearly
as many steam engines working at farm labor between Land's End and
John O'Groat's as there are employed in the manufacture of cotton in
Great Britain.
His irrigation system will doubtless be followed in the same order and
interval by those who have pooh-poohed it with the same derision and
incredulity as the other innovations they have already adopted. The
utilising of the sewage of large towns, especially of London, has now
become a prominent idea and movement. Mr. Mechi's machinery and
process are admirably adapted to the work of distributing a river of this
fertilising material over any farm to which it may be conducted. Thus,
there is good reason to believe that the very process he originated for
softening and enriching the hard and sterile acres of his small farm in
Essex will be adopted for saturating millions of acres in Great Britain
with the millions of tons of manurial matter that have hitherto
blackened and poisoned the rivers of the country on their wasteful way
to the sea. This will be only an additional work for the farm engines
now in operation, accomplished with but little increased expense. A
single fact may illustrate the irrigating capacity of Mr. Mechi's
machinery. It throws upon a field a quantity of the fertilising fluid
equal to one inch of rainfall at a time, or 100 tons per imperial acre.
And, as a proof of how deep it penetrates, the drains run freely with it,
thus showing conclusively that the subsoil has been well saturated, a
point of vital importance to the crop.
Deep tillage is another speciality that distinguished the Tiptree Farm
regime at the beginning, in which Mr. Mechi led, and in which he has
been followed by the farmers of the country, although few have come

up abreast of him as yet in the system.
Here, then, are four specific departments of improvement in
agricultural industry which the Alderman has introduced. Every one of
them has been ridiculed as an impracticable and useless innovation in
its turn. Three of them have already been adopted, and virtually
incorporated with agricultural science and economy; and the fourth, or
irrigation by steam power, bids fair to find as much favor, and as many
adherents in the end as the others have done.
He has not only originated these improvements, or been the first to give
them practical experiment, but he has laid down certain principles
which will doubtless exercise much influence in shaping the industrial
economy of agriculture hereafter in different countries. One of the best
of these principles he puts in the form of a mathematical proposition.
Thus:--As the meat is to the manure, so is the crop to the land. Tell me,
he says, how much meat you make, and I will tell you how much corn
you make, to the acre. Meat, then, is the starting point with him; the
basis of his annual production, to which he looks for a satisfactory
decision of his balance-sheet. To show the value he attaches to this
element, the fact will suffice that he usually keeps 65 bullocks, cows,
and calves, 100 sheep, and a number of pigs, besides his horses,
making one head to every acre of his farm. With this amount of live
stock he makes from 4 to 5 pounds worth of meat per acre annually.
Perhaps it would be safe to say that no other 170 acres of land in the
world