A Walk from London to John OGroats | Page 8

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 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