o be threshed and
sent to market before there is any return. Here is a whole year
spent in elaborating one single crop, which may, after all, be very
unprofitable if it is a good wheat year, and the very wheat over
which such time and trouble have been expended may be used to fat
beasts, or even to feed pigs. All this, however, and the great
expense of preparation, though serious matters enough in themselves,
are beside our immediate object. The length of time the land is
useless is the point. Making every possible allowance, it is not
less than one-third of the year--four months out of the twelve. For
all practical--_i.e._, monetary--purposes it is longer than that. No
wonder that agriculturists aware of this fact are so anxious to get
as much as possible out of their one crop--to make the one
revolution of their machinery turn them out as much money as
possible. If their workshop must be enforcedly idle for so long,
they desire that when in work there shall be full blast and double
tides. Let the one crop be as heavy as it can. Hence the agitation
for compensatory clauses, enabling the tenant to safely invest all
the capital he can procure in the soil. How else is he to meet the
increased cost of labour, of rent, of education, of domestic
materials; how else maintain his fair position in society? The
demand is reasonable enough; the one serious drawback is the
possibility that, even with this assistance, the idle earth will
refuse to move any faster.

We have had now the experience of many sewage-farms where the
culture is extremely 'high.' It has been found that these farms
answer admirably where the land is poor--say, sandy and porous--but
on fairly good soil the advantage is dubious, and almost limited to
growing a succession of rye-grass crops. After a season or two of
sewage soaking the soil becomes so soft that in the winter months it
is unapproachable. Neither carts nor any implements can be drawn
over it; and then in the spring the utmost care has to be exercised
to keep the liquid from touching the young plants, or they wither up
and die. Sewage on grass lands produces the most wonderful results
for two or three years, but after that the herbage comes so thick
and rank and 'strong' that cattle will not touch it; the landlord
begins to grumble, and complains that the land, which was to have
been improved, has been spoilt for a long time to come. Neither is
it certain that the employment of capital in other w