ALIWAL,

THE PROPERTY OF SIR HARRY SMITH, BART.

ENGRAVED BY J. SCOTT, from a paINTING BY A. COOPER, R.A.

Every artist has his favourite subject, by which you may almost invariably identify the man, and trace out his rise and progress. Abraham Cooper is no exception here; for though excellent in delineating animal life of every variety, he must yet take for his crest one especial kind of the genus horse. In a hunting scene, or "the portrait of a favourite hunter" per se, some, though very few, might vie with him; at a Derby horse, or slashing set-to, one man perhaps excels him. At a battlepiece, however, or in giving the form and character of the charger, none can claim to be his equal. It is here that he is perfect, and it is for that reason we selected him to paint the companion portrait to that of the Hero, whose likeness this month graces the pages of our work. It would, may-be, look better, considering the succession of subjects we have to produce, to avoid all comparison of one with the other; but still we must confess our pride in seeing this print "turned out" in the manner it is. Our desire was to have as good and effective a portrait of the horse as possible; and we believe we are entitled to say that our object has been fully attained. In every respect we look upon it as one of the most beautiful and perfect engravings we ever had the good fortune to offer to the public.

The Arab is always a good model, whether taken individually or made part in the grouping of a picture. The quick eye of a workman might occasionally show up a weak point or defective feature in his anatomy; but on "the general reader" these would seldom intrude, and at any rate would be balanced by many of a more catching and fashionable character. The really beautiful head and expressive eye; the light, elegant, blood-like neck, good forehand, small clean leg, well set-on and wellcarried tail, make him truly what the dealers term "a picture" to look at ; and appearance, with many of us, goes a great way. To the ladies the Arab is "the dearest love of a horse;" to the exquisite “a nice neat hack;" to the turfite perhaps little in his purity but a leather plater; while to the soldier, who calls in his services on his own native soil, he is the highest-couraged, best, and gamest of chargers. It is in this last and most favourable character or capacity we have now to speak of him-as one of the highest-couraged, gamest, and best of chargers. His very name tells his story; and "Aliwal" is known at once from his appearing here as one who did good service on a glorious occasion. For sixand-twenty hours, from 3 o'clock on the morning before until 5 o'clock on the morning after, did he carry him on whose direction hung the fortune of the day; until at length, in the words of Sir Harry himself, "he began rolling about and looking round, as much as to say, 'You have had nearly all you can out of me now.' In fact it was time for relieving guard, and our only wonder is how he stood out so long.

Aliwal is a pure Arab of fine symmetry and immense power, as the worthies word it at Hyde-park Corner. In the opinion of his gallant owner-no mean judge-he is particularly good in the back, loins, and hocks. He was first called Mischief, an appropriate title itself, but changed to the more honourable one as the mark of merit, and in commemoration of the horse, as well as his rider, having on "that day done his duty."

BY J. TOWERS, MEMB. R.A.S., H.S. OF LONDON, &c.

The close of the late glorious summer witnessed in our calendars; but to the observant eye it has the termination of a harvest equally superb and presented phenomena which cannot be passed over that has seldom been equalled. The character of in silence. the weather during the comparatively short period which passed between the barren appearances of the fields at the commencement of May and the end of August (which, to all intents, comprises the entire summer of husbandry) has been registered

During more than a quarter of a century it has been my lot to reside among farmers and gardeners in four different counties, remote from each other, and varying much in qualities of soil, and in the mode of tillage to which that soil has been subjected.

Seasons have varied to a corresponding degree; be, I think, any reasonable objection. Here, it is but in no instance have I witnessed results so extraordinary and instructive as were those which claimed attention during the course of the late agricultural summer.

It has been a painful duty to observe and report the great, the unpardonable loss of ground by uncultivated wastes, superabundant, and ill-placed hedge-rows, fences, ditches, and patches of land covered with brambles, stunted bushes, and vile herbage. Furthermore, I have seen corn-fields, the nurseries of every sort of weed, ill-laid-out, and productive (as a natural consequence of inefficient husbandry) of little more than two and a half or three quarters of wheat per acre. There is much blame somewhere-in more quarters than one; but as knowledge of causes and of science extends, the vices of a selfish system will ere long produce their own remedy, and lead to the adoption of a liberal system, which will enable the grateful earth to yield in abundance "its fruits of increase."

sown in the early spring, on one side of a field; and there are two varieties—one white, or palish green, the other purple, which has also purple mid-ribs to the leaves. These varieties are sown four rows of each alternately, according to the breadth and extent of the plantation contemplated. The plants are thinned, and the spaces sufficiently hoed from time to time. The first or winter crop is set out early in summer, on ridges, over manure, in the manner of the Scotch turnip culture, twenty-seven inches asunder, the plants fifteen to eighteen inches apart in the rows. They are put in by the dibber, the labourers being guided by the correctness of the ridges. If the ground is just moistened by a recently-fallen shower, and the root well firmed by the tool, the plants (which ought to have four leaves, and be at least six inches long) rarely flag, except under the influence of a powerful sun; and then they rally during the night. I saw such a plantation made about Midsummer, on a very high plot, the soil stony loam over chalk, which now is full of bulbs, the leaves attached to them spreading so as to cover the spaces. It forms a beautiful sight; for the mass of food raised on the invulnerable pedestal-like stem is enormous. If com

conclusion would, as respects bulk, be inevitable.

In order to establish what has been advanced above, a comparison of the calendars will prove that there has been little rain of any consequence since the middle of November, 1846; and yet the fields and gardens, even in the parched districts of Surrey, have by opportune, yet very trifling sup-pared with a neighbouring field of turnips, the plies of rain, been enabled to produce in rich abundance. In 1846 the rain fell abundantly, The second transplantations for spring food ap and in gluts; the storms were terrific; yet such pear to be just completed: the rains of September was the power of the sun during long-protracted and the first week of October have started the whole intervals, that crops were parched, fruits perished, into activity; and, as the workmen say, "nothing, and potatoes failed far more, and to a greater ex-no severity of weather, can hurt them.” One positent, through the loss of substance by drought than by the influence of disease.

Turnips and swedes form an exception to the general richness of the season: they are poor in number and quality, and in some places are said to be devoured by grubs-that is, by a larva, which I believe to be the caterpillar of a moth that emerges from the ground in April. The great liability of the turnips to failure from a variety of causes, and the fact, which cannot be denied, that in our loamy and warm counties the turnips never succeed so as to be compared with the noble crops produced in the north, lead us to consider seriously whether it would not be wise to adopt some other plant as a general substitute. Since I have resided in Croydon, I discover reason to believe that, had Kohl rabi been largely cultivated, there would at this moment have been fifty times the bulk of food for cattle and sheep, and that of first-rate quality. Mangold also affords proof that, in common with the Kohl, it can grow in almost any soil that is deeply tilled, and produce abundantly in very dry seasons. Mangold may not properly enter into the rotation; but to the turnip-cabbage there cannot

tive fact is of very great value, and such offers itself. Within a quarter of a mile of my residence is a field of about forty acres, the property of a wealthy person, and who is liberal toward his land, which is a rather light, sandy loam, over gravel, lying at the depth of two feet. This field bore three crops of corn, say ten of wheat, the earliest ripe and first harvested in the county. By the west side of this portion was a small belt of lucerne; within that, eight or more rows of purple and white seedling Kohl rabi. When the wheat was carried, and so soon as the ploughs could work, the ground was turned and re-turned on the flat (there is no water-furrow), manured, and the manure ploughed in. The lucerne belt was also ploughed up, and the whole plot planted by degrees with the Kohl, which now (Oct. 12) has taken secure root, the first-set portions horse-hoed, and in vigorous growth. The second portion of this fine piece of land is covered with young clover, and that which was under oats manured with the refuse of old Kohl-roots, left to decay after being fed off, is now a mass of verdant rye for spring fodder. I have thus arrived at a point where an

tween them for autumn, as by Mr. Davis's practice.

improved course of rotation may be suggested, and
which will obviate the necessity of summer-fallow
in every case excepting that of absolutely strong 5. Wheat, in drills twelve inches asunder.
clay.

Mangold is properly a detached crop. I find it wonderfully prolific about Croydon this year, notwithstanding the extreme drought of the spring and summer; and now, boys are in the fields collecting the lower leaves for swine.

Farmers plough the wheat-stubbles too late. Were the work done immediately after harvest, rye for spring feed could be sown in August and September, and tares for the like purpose much about the same period. Wheat also is sown too late in the year to admit of a fair trial of thin sowing. Much must be unlearned ere we can expect to succeed in the adoption of new principles. Everything must undergo reform, from landlords' covenants to tenants' practice. Time and suffering begin to instruct and to make converts of those who were once the most strenuous opposers of whatsoever presented even the shadow of a change; there is, consequently, some hope of amelioration.

Peas may take the place of beans; and, as a There are two very important considerations preventive of the wire-worm after clover, a liberal which refer to the courses of cropping generally, dressing of soda-ash may precede the potato or or with very few exceptions as to locality or soil-beans. first, that some green crop should precede that of grain, whether it be wheat, barley, or oats; and to this green crop the manure should be applied in sufficient quantity to carry through a rotation, at least if it extend only to four courses. Second, that clover, to say nothing of its liability to deteriorate, tends to harbour the grub or larva called wire-worm, if not those of the "crane-fly" or "long-legs," and the cockchafer or rook-worm, a marauder of the very worst description. Now, then, considering that, by the consentient evidence of the noblest agriculturists of the day, the turnip in the south of England cannot vie with that of the northern counties and of Scotland, I propose to abandon it in the course which I beg to suggest as worthy of probation; and again, for the reason above offered, I would repudiate in toto, as a rule, the practice of sowing any grain crop whatever immediately after clover-ley. Of potatoes some doubt remains, especially as respects the late or winter varieties. Our experience of the failure of this in- On the subject of manure, I have recommended, estimable tuber, followed by its partial restoration, as above, the addition of a phosphate, in the form must have satisfied every just person that we have of bone-dust; that of a salt with an alkaline base, no substitute for it; and therefore that, so far from common salt; and of a salt of ammonia combined abandoning the culture, we ought to consider it an with much carbon, in the state of soot. Had anaabsolute duty to cherish and protect it to the ut-lyses proceeded so far as to determine with precimost. There is not any crop that more effectually sion the organic and inorganic constituents of all cleans a plot of ground; and as the present year the plants of the farm, and those also of all earths (1847) has given unerring proof that all the early and soils, we might manure and crop upon unvarieties of potato, from the first spring kidneys to erring principles; but such is not our position. those of the highly-prized shaws which are housed We are not far advanced. Experiments and rein August and September, have been taken up in sults are at variance; and so they must be if soils sound condition, we ought to confine ourselves for and treatment vary. However, we progress; and, the present to those early and middle-early va- by patient assiduity and close observation, can asrieties. suredly hope to arrive at a prosperous issue.

The order of rotation, founded upon general principles-which may, however, admit of local modification and extension-appears to be the following:

1. The green crop (Kohl, or field-cabbage) to take
the lead; the ground previously enriched with
a liberal supply of farm-yard manure, with
which is incorporated about a peck of fine
bone-dust, and half as much common salt and
coal-soot, to every ton of the dung.
2. Barley or oats, with clover.
3. Clover, for hay.

4. Potatoes, as a cleaning crop; or beans, twenty-
seven inches between the rows, turnips be-

If, from anomaly of position, it will be perhaps impossible to attain to a certain and trustworthy knowledge of atomic structure, we are sure that drainage, labour properly directed, generous, timely manuring, and a strict attention to cleanliness of culture will effect wonders; and if with these there co-exist a kindly feeling between landlords and tenants, agriculture must prosper and remunerate.

As I have said so much upon the turnip, I propose in my next to treat rather at large upon it and the varieties, more especially as respects the yield of the crop, when in a state of health, in a climate which it affects.

Oct. 13.