THE LATE MR MECHI.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3016, 24 February 1881, Page 4

THE LATE MR MECHI.

There are not a few colonists in Australia and New Zealand who will learn with deepest regret of the death of Mr Mechi, the well-known English agriculturist. His Tiptree Hall farm, in Essex, was one of the sights to be seen by colonial farmers, on visiting England, and the genial and kindhearted old uian was profuse in his explanations as to the true reason why so much of the land cultivated did not pay the cost of cultivation. He used to enumerate the chief points of his system in the following words : —" Tile draining, deep cultivation, thin seeding, covered and ventilated stock-yards, no hedge-vow timber, plenty of Btraw as feed for stock, steam power whenever it can be used, utilise your farm produce to the utmost, waste no seed by too thick sowing, keep yonr land clean, and be sure that the manure used doee not loose its virtues by unnecessary exposure." At first Mr Mechi was regarded as a quack and an emperic. He was assailed with letters of all kinds, some interrogatory only, others depreciatory, many abusive. But he persevered along the lines which he had marked out for himself, and those who consulted him and followed his advice found that he was no mere pretender. About twenty yeara ago he began to publish his farm balancesheets, find it was clear that his By stem paid. Since then its merits have been extensively recognised. If it has not been exactly reproduced many hints from it have been taken by our most considerable agriculturists, and altogether Mr Mechi's Tiptree Hall c xperiment maybe said to mark an epoch in the history of English farming.