The Farmer. The Mediæval English Farmer.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1842, 26 April 1884, Page 6 (Supplement)

The Farmer. The Mediæval English Farmer.

Both horses and oxen were used on the land; wheat, barley, oats, rye, and beans and peas were grown. The mediaeval farmer was entirely dependent on his hay and straw for the winter keep of his stock, for there wero no winter roots, and the hay was only the prodace of native grasses, artificial grasses being unknown for 300 years longer. Cattle and sheep were fattened in the summer and killed at its close, and their flesh salted for winter use; for few could be kept in condition, pave at great expense, through the winter months. The old song of " Summer is y-cumin in," meant much more in thpse days than it does in ours; the return of spring and Bummer meant a return to fresh meat and fresh vegetable diet. Onions, garlic, and mustard vere grown, but the profusion of garden produce of the present day was quite unknown, and food, though abundant, was coarse, and wanting in variety. Professor .■Rogers has noted only one instance of the purchase of a quarter of a pound of " cabeche " seed in 1458, by King's College, Cambridge, at the enormous rate of 4s. per pound, and this was probably an experiment. The cultivation of the hop was introduced from the low countries early in the sixteenth century, and somewhat later sheep farming began to take the place of agriculture, and was the subject of complaint and of legislation. " The practice appears to have arisen from two causes —the deficiency of capital, owing to the general impoverishment of the country, and the high prices of wool." In 1532, some flockmasters had 20,000, (3,000 or 5,000 sheep, and it was enacted that in future no one should have more than 2,000. Wheat and rye from the Baltic were imported in quantity sufficient to attract the notice of the Legislature, so that the English farmer was exposed to competition in corn, while he had the practical monopoly of the wool market. As a consequence, land was laid down in grass, and vast inclosure3 were made from the common field; and it was this practice, and the injury done to the poor by depriving them of their curtilages, that were the chief cause of Ket'a rebellion in 1519, which is " remarkable as being the last attempt which English labourers have made to secure what they believed to be justice by force of arms." Poultry and geese were everywhere reared, and must have been very welcome luxuries in winter. The price was low, a capon or goose averaging 4d. during the fifteenth century. It should be noted, though the remark is a trite one, that a low money value by no means indicates cheapness, which is relative to prices then current, and cannot be compared with the prices of to-day. The purchasing power of money in the fifteenth century was extremely great. The average price of an ox was 18s., of a good saddle-horse 50j., while wheat averaged ss. 7^d., and oats 2d. Id. a quarter; but the wages of an ordinary labourer were barely 4d. a day, and the rent of arable laud did not exceed 6d. an acre. The yield was very p-nall, not more than a fourth of that ef the piesent day; and it may be put down that the average yield of wheat was not over seven bushels to the acre. When, in 1544, the debasement of the coinage began, a notable but variable rise was effected in every commodity but one, the exception being glaS3, the manufacture of which had been greatly improved. Taking the average price of the first 140 years as unity, the rise in the price of provisions was 2 r71, but the price of labour rose only 1-62, a difference which sufficiently explains the evil times that fell on the peasant. —London Spectator. \ ( j

The Scientific American contains an interesting account of recent discoveries made in the manufacture of sugar from sorghum. According to the account there given, the formidable obstacles in the perfect conversion of syrup of sorghum into sugar have been overcome. The lesults were obtained principally Irom experiments made in the chemical division of the Agricultmal Department at Washington. The principal results are covered in the following paragraphs :—: — " Commencing in the late days of July, we see that the glucose exceeds the sucrose in quantity, but this condition ceases about the first of August. From this time the sucrose increases rapidly, though not uniformly, partial retrogressions occurring, of brief duration. When the seeds begin to harden, say about the middle of September, the increase is checked until the seed is nearly ripe ; then it goes on, and at the full maturity of the seed it has reached its maximum, which it maintains with only, at the most, a small waste. This maximum is equal, as a schedule shows, to the average sucrose of sugar cane, and in Borne varieties goes decidedly above it. " While these changes have taken place in the amount of sucrose, precisely the opposite has been going on with the glucose. It has as steadily grown less and less, and at the time of maturity it has fallen to very nearly the average of the glucose of sugar cane, and in some varieties is even below it. "We have then this condition : When the Borghum cane is fully mature, its sucrose has reached its maximum and its glucose its minimum, and each of these is in about the same quantity and the proportions in which it exists in average sugar cane. We may therefore infer that it will yield a return of sugar of equal weight and value to that of sugar cane, and will do it as surely and as readily. If this were absolutely true, we should have the key of the situation in our hands, but our sugar is not yet certain, though, fortunately, we are able to make it so. Sorghum juice is not sugar cane juice. It is unstable in its chemical character. Its sucrose, though so largely in the ascendency, has a strangely perverse tendency to take to itself another equivalent of HO2 and thus become at once glucose. Unless this tendency is arrested every grain of available sugar may have disappeared, and probably will, within twenty-four hours from the commencement of the change, that is, from the time of the cutting of the sorghum. The transformation can be prevented by the use of lime, but practically this is best done by boiling. Here then is the mystery laid bare ; the key is now fairly in our hands. Perfect maturity of the cane, and prompt boiling of the juice ; these are the two essential points. With them success is sure ; without them we may expect failure ; we shall have a glucose syrup, and nothing else. Nor are these assertions made at random. Dr. Collier proved in the laboratory, it is true, the points which we have seen, and it is scarcely possible to award to him too great credit for his skill and the truly practical results at which he arrived. But we can now go beyond him, to that which his researches have secured in actual field work. Sugar from sorghum cane has begun now to be a reality, and not as it was before a chance shot only. The return is a matter of business certainty ; as much so as that from sugar cane. We cannot here detail the crop reports of 1882, but they fully justify all the statements we have made. "It is easy to undeistandnow the capricious character acquired by sorghum in previous years. It was merely a thing of chance, so to speak. Every now and then maturity and promptness would combine, and as a matter of course beautiful sugar showed itself; if either of these two were wanting, beautiful isyrup was the only reward. " Admitting the statements here made to be substantially true, and the real difficulties in the way of making sugar from sorghum have been overcome, what is essential in the discovery is the certainty with which sugar of good quality can be made from sorghum. A quarter of a century of failures have disgusted most people with all further attempts to make sorghum a success. This is a good illustration of the value of agricultural chemistry. Presuming that the results already noted nave actually been obtained, the wealth added to the country would be beyond present computation. It would exceed the amount of the National debt in a very few years. It is well to Jnote, also that there are hundreds of chemists in connection with the agricultural departments of the various colleges of the country, who are constantly engaged in mak-

ing experiments, some of which may turn out to bo quite as important as the one here recoided. These men are working patiently from year to year, quite aside from public observation. But never before was so much attention given to ohemistry in connection with agriculture, and never before were such important results obtained.