a cattle-man are not of a high order. In summer and autumn, when the cows are at grass, it is his duty to bring them into the byre or to the gate of the field, as the case may be, to be milked at their appointed times; and it is also his duty to ascertain that the cattle in the fields are plentifully supplied with food and water. He should see the cows served by the bull in due time, and keep an account of the cows' reckonings of the time of calving. He should assist at the important process of calving. As his time is thus only occasionally employed in summer, he frequently undertakes the superintendence of the field-workers. In harvest, he is usefully employed in assisting to make and carry food to the reapers, and may lend a hand at the taking in of the corn. As cattle occupy the steading in winter on all kinds of farms, the services of the cattle-man appear indispensable; but all his functions may be performed by the shepherd, where only a small flock of sheep are kept. The office of the cattle-man is not one of trust nor of much labour. An elderly person answers the purpose quite well, the labour being neither constant nor heavy, but well-timed and methodical. The cattle-man ought to exercise much patience and good temper towards the objects of his charge, and a person in the decline of life is most likely to possess those qualities.

(253.) Field-workers are indispensable servants on every farm devoted to arable culture. They mostly consist of young women in Scotland, but more frequently of men and boys in England; and yet, there are many manual operations much better done by women than men. In hand-picking stones and weeds, in filling drains, and in barn-work, they are far more expert, and do them more neatly, than men. The duties of field-workers, as their very name implies, are to perform all the manual operations of the fields, as well as those with the smaller implements, which are not worked by horses. The manual operations consist chiefly of cutting and planting the sets of potatoes, gathering weeds, picking stones, collecting the potato crop, and filling drains with stones. The operations with the smaller implements are pulling turnips and preparing them for feeding stock and storing in winter, performing barnwork, carrying seed-corn, spreading manure upon the land, hoeing potatoes and turnips, and weeding and reaping corn-crops. A considerable number of field-workers are required on a farm, and they are generally set to work in a band. They work most steadily under superintendence. The steward, the hedger, or cattle-man, should superintend them when the band is large; but when small, one of themselves, a staid person, who is capable of taking the lead in work, may superintend them well enough, provided she has a watch to mark the time of work and

But field-workers do not always work by themselves; being at times associated with the work of the horses, when they require no particular superintendence. On some farms, it is considered economical to lay the horses idle, and employ the ploughmen at their labours rather than engage field-workers. This may be one mode of avoiding a little outlay of money; but there is no true economy in allowing horses “to eat off their own heads," as the phrase has it; and besides, ploughmen cannot possibly do light work so well as field-workers. In manufacturing districts field-workers are scarce; but were farmers generally to adopt the plan of employing a few constantly, and hire them for the purpose by the half year, instead of employing a large number at times, young women would be induced to adopt field-labour as a profession, and become very expert in it. It is steadiness of service that makes the field-workers of the south of Scotland so superior to the same class in other parts of the country.

(254.) The duties of the dairy-maid are well defined. She is a domestic servant, domiciliated in the farm-house. Her principal duty is, as her name implies, to milk the cows, to manage the milk in all its stages, bring up the calves, and make into butter and cheese the milk that is obtained from the cows after the weaning of the calves. The other domestics generally assist her in milking the cows and feeding the calves, when there is a large number of both. Should any lambs lose their mothers, the dairy-maid should bring them up with cow's milk until the time of weaning, when they are returned to the flock. At the lambing season, should any of the ewes be scant of milk, the shepherd applies to the dairy-maid to have his bottles replenished with warm new milk for the hungered lambs. The dairy-maid also milks the ewes after the weaning of the lambs, and makes cheese of the ewe-milk. She should attend to the poultry, feed them, set the brooders, gather the eggs daily, take charge of the broods until able to provide for themselves, and see them safely lodged in their respective apartments every evening, and let them abroad every morning. It is generally the dairy-maid, when there is no housekeeper, who gives out the food for the reapers, and takes charge of their articles of bedding. The dairy-maid should be an active, attentive, and intelligent person.

(255.) These are the duties of the respective classes of servants found on farms. You may not require all these classes on your farm, as you have seen that some sorts of farms do not require the services of all. You have seen that a pastoral-farm has no need of a steward, but of a shepherd; a carse-farm no need of a shepherd, but of a steward; a farm in the neighbourhood of a town no need of a hedger, but of a cattle-man;

and on a dairy-farm, no need of a shepherd but of a dairy-maid; but in the case of a farm of mixed husbandry, there is need of all these classes.

(256.) And now that you have seen how multifarious are the duties of them all, you will begin to perceive how intricate an affair mixed husbandry is, and how well informed a farmer should be of every one of these varieties of labour, before he attempts to manage for himself. To give you a stronger view of this, conceive the quantity and variety of labour that must pass through the hands of these various classes of work-people in the course of a year, and then imagine the clear-headedness of arrangement which a farmer should possess, to make all their various labours coincide in every season, and under every circumstance, so as to produce the most desirable results. It is in its variety that the success of labour is attained: In other words, it is in its subdivision that the facility of labour is acquired, and it is by the intelligence of the labourers that perfection in it is attained. And vain would be the endeavours of any farmer to produce the results he does, were he not ably seconded by the general intelligence and admirable efficiency of his labourers.

19. OF THE WEATHER IN WINTER.

"See Winter comes to rule the varied year,

Sullen and sad, with all his rising train;

Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme."

THOMSON.

(257.) As the weather, at all seasons, has undeniably a sensible power to expedite or retard the field operations of the farm, it becomes an incumbent duty on you, as pupils of agriculture, to ascertain the principles which regulate its phenomena, in order to anticipate their changes and avoid their injurious effects. It is, no doubt, difficult to acquire an accurate knowledge of the laws which govern the subtile elements of nature; but experience has proved that accurate observation of atmospherical phenomena is the chief means which we possess of becoming acquainted with those laws.

(258.) In saying that the weather has power to alter the operations of the farm, I do not mean to assert that it can entirely change any great plan of operations that may have been determined on, for that may

be prosecuted even in spite of the weather; but there is no doubt that the weather can oblige the farmer to pursue a different and much less efficient treatment towards the land than he desires, and that the amount and quality of its produce may be very seriously affected by the change of treatment. For example, the heavy and continued rain in autumn 1839 made the land so very wet, that not only the summer-fallow, but the potato-land, could not be seed-furrowed, and the inevitable consequence was, that sowing of the wheat was postponed until the spring of 1840, and in many cases the farmers were obliged to sow barley instead of wheat. The immediate effect of this remarkable interference of the weather was restriction of the breadth of land appropriated to autumnal wheat, and the consequent extension of that intended for barley and spring wheat, a change that caused so much work in spring, that it had the effect of prolonging the harvest of 1840 beyond the wished-for period, and of otherwise deranging the calculations of farmers.

(259.) Now, when such a change is, and may in any season be, imposed upon the farmer, it becomes a matter of prudence as well as of desire to become so acquainted with usual atmospherical phenomena as to anticipate the nature of the weather that is to come. If he could anticipate particular changes of weather by observing peculiar phenomena, he could arrange his operations accordingly. But is such anticipation in regard to the weather attainable? No doubt of it; for, although it is not as yet to be expected that minute changes of the atmosphere can be anticipated, yet the kind of weather which is to follow-whether rainy or frosty, snowy or fresh-may be predicted. We all know the prescience actually attained by people whose occupations oblige them to be much in the open air and to observe the weather. In this way shepherds and sailors, in their respective circumstances, have acquired such a knowledge of atmospherical phenomena as to be able to predict the advent of important changes of the atmosphere; and to shew that the sort of knowledge acquired is in accordance with the circumstances observed, it is obvious that, even among these two classes of observers, great difference of acquirements exists on account of diversity of talent for observation. For example. A friend of mine, a commander of one of the ships of the East India Company, became so noted, by observation alone, for anticipating the probable results of atmospherical phenomena in the Indian seas, that his vessel has frequently been seen to ride out the storm, under bare poles, while most of the ships in the same convoy were more or less damaged. As an instance of similar sagacity in a shepherd, I remember in the wet season of 1817, when rain was predicted as inevitable, by every one engaged in the afternoon of a very busy

day of leading in the corn, the shepherd interpreted the symptoms as indicative of wind and not of rain, and the event completely justified his prediction.

(260.) I conceive that greater accuracy of knowledge in regard to the changes of the weather may be attained on land than at sea, because the effects of weather on the sea itself enters as an uncertain element into the question. It is generally believed, however, that seamen are more proficient than landsmen in foretelling the weather; and, no doubt, when the imminent danger, in which the lives of seamen are jeopardized, is considered, the circumstance may reasonably be supposed to render them peculiarly alive to certain atmospherical changes. To men, however, under constant command, as seamen are, it is questionable whether the ordinary changes of the atmosphere are matters of much interest. In every thing that affects the safety of the ship, and the weather among the rest, every confidence is placed by the crew in the commanding officer, and it is he alone that has to exercise his weather wisdom. On the other hand, every shepherd has to exercise his own skill in regard to the weather, to save himself, perhaps, much unnecessary personal trouble, especially on a hill-farm. Even the young apprenticeshepherd soon learns to look out for himself. The great difference in regard to a knowledge of the weather betwixt the sea-captain and the farmer, though both are the sport of the same elements, consists in this, that the captain has to look out for himself, whereas the farmer has his shepherd to look out for him: the sea-faring commander himself knowing the weather, directs his men accordingly; whilst the farmer does not know it nearly so well as his shepherd, and probably even not so well as his ploughmen. See the effects of this difference of acquirement in the circumstances of both. The captain causes the approaching change to be met by prompt and proper appliances; whereas the farmer is too frequently overtaken in his operations from a want of the knowledge probably possessed by his shepherd or ploughmen. You thus see the necessity of farmers acquiring a knowledge of the weather.

(261.) It being admitted that prescience of the state of the weather is essential to the farmer, the question is, how the pupil of agriculture is to acquire it? No doubt it can best be attained by observation in the field; but as that method implies the institution of a series of observations extending over a long period of years, a great part of the lifetime of the pupil might pass away ere he could acquire a sufficient stock of knowledge by his own experience. This being the case, it is but right and fair that he should know what the experience of others is. This I shall endeavour to communicate, premising that he must observe for himself,