CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE. 1. AGRICULTURE. AT length, after twenty months of a disastrous experience, we can report a week of entire freedom from the Cattle Plague. During the week ending March 2nd, no case was reported at Whitehall; and it only needs three weeks' continuance of this good fortune, and (excepting our liability to the reimportation of the poison) we may hope that we shall have finally got rid of the disease. That the infection is as virulent as ever when it occurs, appears, however, in the recent experience at Islington, where Mrs. Nicholl's herd was a second time attacked. The plague first appeared here in June, 1866, ran through the sheds, and spread throughout the country: it reappeared in February of this year, again ran through the herd, but was confined within the premises by the precautions which, not possible twenty months ago, are now enforced by law. The President of the Royal Agricultural Society did well, in his Annual Address in December last, to insist upon the need of considering the disease as a conflagration; urging upon the Government that, just as the whole machinery of fire-engines and firemen is maintained where there is no fire, to extinguish it should it arise, so the existing machinery for stamping out the Cattle Plague should be maintained in readiness to deal with it, should it again attack us. The other points to which Mr. Thompson's address referred are also of first-rate agricultural importance, including the difficulties of the labour question, the need of developing those departments of farm practice which result in the production of animal food, and the call for an improved agricultural education. On the first of these topics he declared the impossibility of carrying out the so-called co-operative system in farm practice; recommending, however, as a much more likely expedient for retaining the existing agricultural labourers, that farmers generally should adopt what is already a common practice in some counties-the plan of either letting land to their labourers, or otherwise providing them with a cow's keep. A man who can ensure regular work at fair wages, with sufficient land to keep a cow and a pig, and obtain even a moderately good cottage among the friends and neighbours whom he has known from childhood, will seldom be found willing to change his position for the crowded courts and alleys of the large towns, even by the temptation of considerably higher money wages. Add to these domestic advantages offered to married labourers a system of piecework payments, by which young men shall be remunerated according to the actual value of their services, and it is probable that the ranks of the agricultural labourer may not be so rapidly thinned as, to the great inconvenience and difficulty of the farmer, of late years, they have been. The increased supply of animal food-meat and milk-which was the next topic referred to in Mr. Thompson's address, is rapidly becoming a more important branch of English agriculture. Cattle food is being grown in larger quantity, not by the laying down of ploughed lands to permanent pasture so much as by the better cultivation of green crops on arable farms. Rotations of crops are altered to suit the demands for an increased live-stock. Two green crops are cultivated in succession, and clovers and grasses, taken in alternate husbandry, are kept down more years than one; and the smaller portion of each farm which may thus sometimes be devoted to corn-growing, yields, nevertheless, an increased quantity of grain, owing to the fertilizing effect of the larger flock of sheep or herd of cattle which is thus maintained. An instructive paper "On the Application of Manures" was read by Dr. Voelcker before the London Farmers' Club in December, in which he argued for the immediate application of farmyard dung to the land, not on the ground that loss is incurred during fermentation in the dungheap, but because there is considerable loss of soluble substances during that process by the exposure of the dungheap to rain. The unprofitableness of the old-fashioned dungheap is alleged to be owing, not so much to evaporation, as to the washing effect of rains. There is as much actually of ammonia in the reduced mass of the rotten heap, as there was "potentially," to use Dr. Ure's phrase, in the original bulk of the fresh manure there hauled together. The recommendation to put the manure at once upon the land, even though it be autumn, and for a spring crop, is perhaps hardly safe on very light land, where the soil has less ability to retain the products of its slow decomposition. The remedy for the immense loss of fertilizing material, which takes place under the ordinary management of the dungheap, on such farms, is to adopt the plan of covered yards, where the manure is allowed to accumulate under shelter until it is carried out in the spring. Another urgent recommendation of the Professor's, in connection with the application of all kinds of manures, was to take care that they were thoroughly mixed with the soil. It is doubtless owing to the perfect distribution of their fertilizing matters through naturally fertile soils, that a good season is, on such soils, able to produce an excessive crop. And the aim should be, whether in applying bone-dust, guano, or nitrates, so to triturate, reduce, or dissolve them, that, after application, every portion of the land through which a root can penetrate shall contain its share of the application ready as the food which that root requires. The recent publication of the agricultural statistics collected by the Board of Trade does not materially alter the conclusions, to which students of that subject had already been led as to the actual and relative areas of the different crops cultivated in Great Britain. The wheat crop in England and Wales was formerly estimated at 3,800,000 acres, it is now declared to be 3,274,000. The total corn crops of the country occupied 7,920,000 acres in 1866, against 8,437,000 at which they were estimated in 1857. And the green crops (food for cattle, &c.) are put at 2,890,000 acres, against about 3,000,000 which was the estimate ten years ago. returned as permanent pasture now is 10,255,000; it was formerly estimated at 10,166,000 acres. The area A clever pamphlet by Mr. Heywood, of Dunham Massey, Cheshire, points out to farmers that, as the cultivators of living plants and animals, they cannot do just what they please, as they might if they were the manufacturers or manipulators of merely dead material. Living creatures follow their own natural laws, and our efforts for the promotion of their health and productiveness must be obedient to their nature. Indeed, as stated in the 'Agricultural Gazette' when reviewing Mr. Heywood's pamphlet, the keeper of a living thing must be its most humble servant if it is to prosper in his hands. The nature of the creature, not the arbitrary will of its master, must determine the treatment it receives. And the fact that animals, and even plants, are not mere machines, capable of producing a double quantity of the manufactured article from a double quantity of the raw material supplied to them, rebukes a great deal of that exuberant and urgent, and often wild advice, which is frequently addressed to practical agriculturists by the amateur. They know by long experience the limits of this kind which are imposed by nature, and against which, or over which, no man ever went uninjured. Within those limits, however, it is the part of a wise and energetic man thoroughly to cultivate the field which is his own; and thus successful high farming consists in selecting animals and plants for cultivation which have great natural powers of assimilating food, and in treating them fully up to this their precocious nature. The new organization of Chambers of Agriculture, to which reference has been made in previous Chronicles, has gradually developed during the past quarter. Such chambers now exist in almost all parts of the country, and there is a central institution in London professing to act as a common mouthpiece for them all, through which the voice of the agricultural world may be urged upon the Home Secretary, in connection with any amendment or enactment of law that is desired. The consideration of the Turn pike Trusts, with the maintenance of roads otherwise than by the outrageously expensive toll system, is the topic selected for their first attempts to move the government of the country. There are several other agricultural topics being urged in Parliament, which are equally deserving of attention with this; and they are being taken up by individual members in the House of Commons with great ability. Thus, Professor Fawcett urges the more general enforcement of the Factory Laws, which limit the hours of labour in the case of children under a certain age, and require them to attend school during certain hours of the day. Certainly the application of these laws to the case of children employed in the field would be very difficult, chiefly owing to the immense labour of inspection which would be necessary to see that they were duly carried out; but it cannot be doubted that compulsory education would ultimately be most beneficial in the agricultural districts, as elsewhere. The severity and impolicy of the Game Laws is another topic which has lately been urged very effectively upon the House of Commons. And these and other topics of agricultural interest will, no doubt, form the subjects of discussion before the newly constituted Chambers of Agriculture throughout the country. It will be our duty, in July, to report the place which agriculture has occupied in the great International Exhibition at Paris. The preparations for its due representation there are on the largest scale. 2. ARCHEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY. MR. ENGELHARDT's important work, entitled 'Denmark in the Early Iron Age,' forms a worthy sequel to the publications which, treating of earlier epochs, we noticed in our last Chronicle. The Iron age of Denmark has been divided by Professor Worsaae into three periods: "the Early Iron age, from about 250 to 450 A.c.; the Transition period, extending to the close of the seventh century; and the Late Iron age, terminating with the introduction of Christianity about the year 1000." The Early Iron age commences with the introduction of three very important elements of civilization, in advance of those which characterized the Bronze age immediately preceding it. These are (1) the use of Iron; (2) the employment of horses for riding and driving; and (3) the possession of an alphabet of Runic letters. A comparison of the antiquities belonging respectively to the Bronze and Early Iron ages exhibits very remarkable contrast, of which it will be desirable to mention a few. The weapons and cutting instruments of the Early Iron age were invariably made of iron, and present a high degree of finish: instead of the cast bronze swords of the previous period we now have to deal with damascened and welded swords of iron. Bronze, or more properly brass, was, however, in use; but zinc was mixed with the copper instead of tin. The use of gold is common to the two periods; but silver, ivory, glass, agate, and porcelain beads appear to have made their first appearance during the Early Iron age. The ornamentation of the manufactured article differed very strikingly in the two periods: in the Bronze age it was geometrical, stiff, and monotonous; in the Early Iron age it consisted of heads and figures of animals, human figures, stars, pearls, &c., and not unfrequently of a religious device known as the fylfot. Boats of considerable size were built during this period, one found in Nydam Moss measuring seventy-seven feet in length. Roman antiquities have been found mixed up with those belonging to the inhabitants of Denmark at this period; but they rarely occur alone, and not a single Roman sepulchre has been met with. Now, contrasting these characteristics of the two periods, it becomes an interesting question whether they lead to the inference that the transition from the Bronze to the Early Iron age was gradual: the result of an advancing civilization, and of peaceful intercourse with other nations; or whether they point to the conclusion that, at the termination of the Bronze period, Denmark was invaded by a more highly civilized people? Mr. Engelhardt discusses this question very clearly, and accepts the latter alternative. There is no connecting link between the swords of the Bronze and those of the Early Iron age; we have to do with "new ornaments as well as new materials, and a different composition and treatment of those formerly known." The artistic ornamentation does not indicate the infancy of art, and, what is remarkable, there is observable "a decline of art from its comparatively high development in the early period of the Iron age, to a much lower standard towards its conclusion, with regard to style and form, as well as to technical skill in metal-work." Then the sudden appearance of horses, already domesticated, and the equally sudden possession of an alphabet point in the same direction. Another question now arises: Who were the invaders? Mr. Engelhardt observes, "The Romans, we know, never conquered Denmark. Their armies, assisted by their fleets, came as far as the Elbe, but never beyond it;" but we cannot find that he endeavours to come to any conclusion on the subject, or even that he raises the question. Indeed, perhaps the only passage in the book bearing on it is a footnote, in which it is stated that Dr. L. Müller considers the religious symbol termed the fylfot "to have originated in Eastern Asia, from whence it spread over a great part of Europe." At present it would probably be futile to enter into any argument on this point, but as our knowledge of the antiquities of the same |