Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 353, March 1845. Various
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they entered upon their farms. But this feeling arises altogether from a want of familiarity on their part with the ordinary feelings of mercantile men and the transactions of mercantile business. The farmer's sole aim is to promote his own interest. If that interest is to be promoted by draining, let him do it immediately, and with all his heart; his own profit will not be a whit the less that the landlord comes in for a little profit too when the lease has expired. The builder who takes thirty or forty years' lease of a bit of land in the neighbourhood of London, is not deterred from planting houses upon it, by the reflection that at the end of his lease the houses will become the property of his landlord. Long before that time has expired, he hopes to have his principal and his profit both safe in his pocket. If he does not cherish these hopes, he is either a fool or a rogue.
On one other point connected with draining, we are anxious to quote Mr Stephens' own words. In reply to the question, is your land drained? we have so often received the answer – "Oh, sir, my land is dry, it does not require draining" – that we request the serious attention of such of our readers as are interested in the improvement of land, to the following passage: —
"Land, however, though it does not contain such a superabundance of water as to obstruct arable culture, may nevertheless, by its inherent wetness, prevent or retard the luxuriant growth of useful plants, as much as decidedly wet land. The truth is, that deficiency of crops on apparently dry land is frequently attributed to unskilful husbandry, when it really arises from the baleful influence of concealed stagnant water; and the want of skill is shown, not so much in the management of the arable culture of the land, as in neglecting to remove the true cause of the deficiency of the crop, namely, the concealed stagnant water. Indeed, my opinion is – and its conviction has been forced upon me by dint of long and extensive observation of the state of the agricultural soil over a large portion of the country – that this is the true cause of most of the bad farming to be seen, and that not one farm is to be found throughout the kingdom that would not be much the better for draining. Entertaining this opinion, you will not be surprised at my urging upon you to practise draining, or at my lingering at some length on the subject, that I may exhibit to you the various modes of doing it, according to the peculiar circumstances in which your farm may be placed." – (Vol. i. p. 483.)
With the substance of these remarks we entirely agree. We would only not put the point so broadly as to imply, that the want of draining was the only cause of the bad farming we see. We have, however, been over large tracts of Scotland, and we are quite sure that whole counties might be made to yield the double of their present produce by an efficient drainage, and proper subsequent management.
We pass over the very succinct and methodical description of the processes of threshing, winnowing, &c., and can note only one point out of the great mass of very interesting matter Mr Stephens has brought together, in regard to the composition, qualities, and uses of the different kinds of grain. The point to which we shall advert is the composition of oatmeal. Every country is naturally prejudiced in favour of its national food. We Britons look with real or affected disgust on the black rye-bread of the northern nations; and yet on this food the people thrive, are strong, healthy, and vigorous. The bread, too, is sweet to the taste. It is only disagreeable associations, therefore – connected in our minds with the darkness of the colour – that make us consider it disagreeable or unwholesome. In like manner, our Irish brethren are strong, vigorous, and merry, on their potato diet. Why should we condemn it as the lowest kind of diet, or pity those who are content to live almost wholly upon it? It is true that, from its being the main staff of Irish life, great distress ensues when a failure takes place in the potato crop. But such would be the consequence of a general failure in any kind of crop on which they might happen chiefly to rely. The cure for such seasons of suffering, therefore, is not to be sought so much in bringing about change of diet, as in introducing a better system of husbandry – an improved system of drainage especially – by which a general failure of any crop will be rendered a more rare occurrence. The spread of railroads will soon render it comparatively easy to transport even the bulky potato from one county to another, and thus to prevent the recurrence of famine prices.
But in South Britain the oatmeal of the Scottish peasantry – the national food – is looked upon with as much prejudice, and those who live upon it with as much pity, as the black bread-eaters of Germany and Sweden, or the potato-diggers of Ireland. But the health and strength of the Scottish peasantry, who live entirely upon oatmeal, is proverbial. On this subject, in speaking of the Scottish ploughmen, where the bothy system is practised – that is, where the single men all live together in a room or bothy provided for them, which serves them both for sleeping and cooking – Mr Stephens has the following characteristic passage: —
"The oatmeal is usually cooked in one way, as brose, as it is called, which is a different sort of pottage to porridge. A pot of water is put on the fire to boil, a task which the men take in turns; a handful or two of oatmeal is taken out of the small chest with which each man provides himself, and put into a wooden bowl, which also is the ploughman's property; and on a hollow being made in the meal, and sprinkled with salt, the boiling water is poured over the meal, and the mixture receiving a little stirring with a horn spoon, and the allowance of milk poured over it, the brose is ready to be eaten; and as every man makes his own brose, and knows his own appetite, he makes just as much brose as he can consume. The bowl is scraped clean with the spoon, and the spoon licked clean with the tongue, and the dish is then placed in the meal-chest for a similar purpose on the succeeding occasion. The fare is simple, and is as simply made; but it must be wholesome, and capable of supplying the loss of substance occasioned by hard labour; for I believe that no class of men can endure more bodily fatigue, for ten hours every day, than those ploughmen of Scotland who subsist on this brose thrice a-day." – (Vol. ii. p. 384.)
The quantity of oatmeal allowed to the ploughman —as his sole food– is two pecks, or 17½ lbs. in a week, exactly 2½ lbs. a-day – or ¾ lb. for each meal – and yet it often happens that a hard-worked ploughman cannot consume the whole of this allowance. Speaking again of oatmeal porridge, Mr Stephens says, "there are few more wholesome meals than oatmeal porridge, or upon which a harder day's work can be wrought. Children of all ranks in Scotland are brought up on this diet, verifying the line of Burns,
"'The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia's food.'"
As southern prejudices have a tendency to make their way northward, and, in the face of old experience at home, are leading many to undervalue the oatmeal, on which we trust our peasantry will long rely as their staple food, it is interesting to find that, on this point, science has at length come to the aid of reason and experience. Chemistry has already told us many remarkable things in regard to the vegetable food we eat – that it contains, for example, a certain per centage of the actual fat and lean we consume in our beef, or mutton, or pork – and, therefore, that he who lives upon vegetable food may be as strong as the man who lives upon animal food, because both in reality feed upon the same things in a somewhat different form. Now it appears, from analysis, that wheaten flour contains on an average not more than ten per cent of actual dry beef – of that which forms the living muscle of the animal that feeds upon it – with three per cent of fat, and fifty of starch. And because of this chemical composition, our southern neighbours think wheaten flour the most nourishing, the most refined, and the most civilized of all food.
But Professor Johnston, in the recent edition of his Elements,28 tells us, that, from experiments made in the laboratory of the Agricultural Chemistry Association of Scotland, it turns out that oats are far richer in all the three things above named than the best wheat flour grown in any part of England – that they contain eighteen or twenty per cent of that which forms muscle, five to eight of fat, and sixty-five of starch. The account, therefore, between shelled oats (groats) and fine wheaten flour stands thus. One hundred pounds of each contain —
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