The Cambrian News and Merionethshire Standard

AGRICULTURE. (No. 2.) WELSH farmers are not less willing than Scotch and English farmers to make money, but they appear to be far less able to learn those lessons of thrift for which, at any rate, agriculturists in the more Northern portion of the Kingdom are favourably known. The Welsh farmer is not extravagant in eating, drinking, or clothing his daughters, who still wear homely stuffs, have not learnt boarding school accomplishments," which give them notions above the farm yard, nor have his sons set up hunters, or taken to canes and eye-glasses. Sir THOMAS PHILLIPS, thirty or forty years ago, gave a description of the Welsh farmer, which, in many respects, still holds good. Brown bread of any sort is now scarce, and barley bread is unknown, but how truly the following extract describes many parts of Wales those know best who are intimately acquainted with the country :— The Welsh farmer presents a stronger contrast than even the Welsh labourer to the same class in England. He occupies a small farm, employs an inconsiderable amount of capital, and is but little removed either in his mode of li: hi", 1 laborious occupation, his dwelling, or his habits, from the day labourers by whom he is sur- rounded feeding on brown bread, often made of barley, and partaking but seldom of animal food. The agricultural and pastoral population, is for the most part scattered in lone dwellings, or found in small hamlets, in passes amongst the hills, or on the sides of lofty mountains, or by the margin of a rugged sea-coast, or on lofty moors or table land, and oftentimes this population can only be approached along sheep tracks or bridle paths, by which these mountain solitudes are traversed." Railways and improved roads, have done a good deal towards breaking in upon this isolation, but many faults and deficiencies that still survive to vex the soul of the scientific cultivator are the remains of an old condition of things which is only slowly passing away, and which education will eventually kill. Agriculture in the Principality is hindered far more than is generally thought by superstitions and traditions which manifest sur- prizing vitality. For instance, a field is said to have been cursed, and any attempt to drain and cultivate it is therefore not only deemed to be a going in the face of Providence, but is, of course, sure to end in loss and failure. There is scarcely a farm where there is notatleastone "cursed" piece of land respecting which stories are told of disasters that will attend attempts at cultivation. With reference to bog lands there is a firmly-rooted notion that if they were drained the surface would dry into powder and be blown away. Another notion respecting bogs is that cultivation is im- possible unless the peat is cut or burned off, and as it is believed to be forty or sixty feet thick, this task is simply impossible-and, happily, unnecessary. This may be seen on the cultivated land round the edges of any undrained bog. Of course, if a few inches of turf can be ploughed into the clay, or if the surface peat can be turned into ashes, the processes of cultivation are greatly accelerated, but a bog only needs drains, jime and cultivation to bring it into a fair state of tilth. In addition to the notion that the cultivation of bogs is impossible there is another held by those who admit the possibility, that the labour cannot be remunerative. Once break up the skin of the turbary, they say, and another will never form. Experience shows that when a bog has been drained the best course to adopt in order to kill the water growths and to create earth growths is to plough the land fre- quently, and by this means expose it freely to the action of the atmosphere. That special places cannot be influenced by ordinary processes is commonly believed by numbers of men who would strongly repudiate an insinuation that they are superstitious. Not long ago we heard of a field which has the strange power of killing sheep if they are left on it more than a year This pecu- liar field is also said to have an unbroken pan" which defies the best plough, however strongly horsed. It is not difficult to see that a field with a subsoil so stiff that it cannot be ploughed will be sour, and will need draining. Farmers of the more thriftless kind, who are always most super- stitious, delight in nothing so much as in showing fruitful portions of their farms, which they say have received less liberal treatment than other portions where the crops scarcely pay for seed and labour. A suggestion that the barren land has nnly been recently brought under cultivation, or that it has been exhausted by a ruinous system of crop- ping, is received with pitying smiles and assur- ances that the barren and fertile lands are of the same kind, and have been dealt with in the same way for several generations. Sometimes the superiority of one portion of a farm over another can be accounted for to the satisfaction of everybody except those who are best pleased when they imagine they have found a supernatural, or, at least, very mysterious condition of things. In discussions about the fertility of land nothing is oftener heard in the Principality than that on this hill side, or on that sheep walk, sheep and cattle will fatten moie quickly than on other lands, which, as far as can be judged, are of the same soil. Not only does one farm in Wales differ from another, but unenclosed and uncultivated land on the same farm varies greatly in its power to produce nutritious grasses. The farmer, ignorant of the past condition of the country, asks how this difference is to be accounted for, and is so sure no answer can be given that he does net wait for a reply. Let us see if there is no answer. Apart from the indications given along the sea shore, and in bogs, that Wales in ancient times was covered with forests, there are laws, compara- tively modern, which show that down to a very recent date the hills of Wales were covered with timber. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries laws were passed to enable all the king's sub- jects and friends on horseback or on foot to pass freely through all or any of the forests of Wales." The forests of Wales four or five hundred years ago were dreaded by the Saxons who were compelled to travel through them, and the foresters of Wales were evidently a suffi- ciently numerous body to be legislated against. Without entering into the interesting question how it happened that the forests of the Princi- pality were destroyed, it is clear that those moun- tain sides which for a century or two were thickly covered with timber, would after the fel ing of) the trees grow richer herbage than hill sidet which had never been planted, or which, lsere cleared two or three centuries earlier. Just as it is necessary to go back a century and a quarter, to the time when Montgomery land- owners imported sires, in order to understand how it happens that the horses of that county are better than Cardigan horses, so it is necessary to go back still further to account for the supe- riorpasture on one hill side over another. Where the land has been long under wood, it is, of course, richer than where it has been always naked. For the last century or two, however, there has been no timber growing, and the question natur- ally rises whether districts thickly planted in the time of Henry VIII. would still manifest indica- tions of superiority over districts which at that time, and ever since, were bare mountain land. To say nothing of the protection from heavy rains afforded to the soil by timber, the yearly accretions of vegetation, and ultimately the decaying roots of the trees would be sufficient to give the sites of old plantations great advan- tage over open pieces of ground in the same locality. It will thus be seen that the supe- riority of one piece of land over another in Wales is not due to some awful and mysterious super- natural influence over which man can exercise no control, but to the very common-place fact that for a century or two the land was planted with trees, and was fed by the decaying vegetation of two centuries, and was at last left in possession of thousands of roots, which after loosening the earth were left to rot into manure. This is a common-place and very prosaic explanation of a difference in the productiveness of soil, and difference in the productiveness of soil, and those who feel desirous of clinging to more poetic but less reasonable explanations are at liberty to do so. If Welsh farmers could once be persuaded that the soil may be deepened and permanently enriched by cultivation, and that agriculture is an honourable and may be made a profitable business, the Principality would not be long in taking a position more in accord with the 0 boasted superiority of Welshmen over every other nationality.

THE PAYMENT OF GUARDIANS. THE existence of no corrupt practice is more generally known perhaps than that of paying Guardians of the poor out of the rates for their attendance nt the fortnightly Board meetings, j 11 These payments used to be charged more or less 0 openly until auditors declined to pass the accounts which contained them, and then, instead of dis- continuing them, iliey were lumped with the assistant overseers' accounts. The common plan is to give- assistant overseers two or three pounds a year which they put down as salary, but which is, in fact, handed over to the Guardians of the parish. Not only is the law avoided in this way, but Boards are demoralized and public life is lowered and degraded to an extent that cannot easily be measured. In the first place the guardian does an illegal act which utterly pre- vents him from ever calling in question the illegal or extravagant acts of the officials who o hand over to him his corrupt wages. In the second place the officials themselves, knowing the dishonesty of the guardians, are tempted to manipulate public money for their own personal advantage as well as for that of the Guardians. The difficulty of proving cases in which Guar- dians are paid is of course necessarily great; but there can be no question that Mr. Jomf JONES of Tre'rddol was right at the last meeting of the Aberystwyth Board of Guardians in the remarks he made respecting the payment of Guardians. Aberystwyth Union is far from being alone in this matter; and it is very doubtful, indeed, whether the practice can be altogether stopped except by the widespread cultivation of a ion more independent and honourable feeling among those who sit as Guardians. It is some consola- tion to think that nothing like as many Guardians are paid now as were paid ten years ago, and every time the custom is publicly attacked its hold is loosened. The payments probably were first made, and are doubtless in many instances still continued, because in certain parishes a seat on the Board, so far from being appreciated s ;m honour, is deemed a disagreeable duty which 0 y nobody will undertake unless his expenses are paid. This may appear strange, but the manage- ment of some Boards in Cardiganshire and Merionethshire is not yet calculated to impress the average Guardian with the fact that he is part of a system that for good or ill exercises peat power in the country. Probably all he knows or cares about the Board is that applica- tions from his parish for additional out-relief must be supported by him, and that as a good friend and neighbour he may also support appli- cations from neighbouring parishes. That he has a right to question and discuss the general policy of the Board perhaps has never entered his P J 13 f Tm+uer,°f the Assessment Committee he naturally thinks of his own farm first and then of his own parish, but beyond that rarely troubles himself. A man of this kind is not a common labourer merely by accident, and no more feels humiliated or degraded by accept- ing money he is not entitled to than he feels honoured by being chosen to represent his parish at the Board. A good deal might be done to bring about a better state of things if ex-officio Guardians attended Board meetings more regularly. Some ex-officio Guar- dians, it is true, at first might be in favour of out- relief, but they would soon diseover how neces- sary it is to give as little out-relief as possible, and to assist the poor in every other possible way to live without having recourse to parish assis- tance. An occasional reference, similar fA f),at. I -t. ,,11..1 ,U(..II' made on Monday last by Mr. JONES, Tre'rddol, to the practice of paying Guardians, tends gradually to bring about a healthier state of things by creating public spirit and teaching men who have few opportunities of serving their fellows that to take money for that service is to rob themselves of that which money cannot purchase—the sense of having voluntarily sacrificed something for the good of other people. If the otner people do not recognise the sacrifice, then all the greater is the sense of satisfaction tn having been able to make it. He is a poor citizen who does not now and then work without fee or reward in order to promote some movement intended to benefit those about him who have no legal claims upon his services. The Guardians who are paid for attend- ing Board meetings suffer far greater loss by re- ceiving the money than is inflicted upon those who pay it.

THE SUMMER SEASON. EASTER is generally recognized as the becrinning of the holiday season, but in Wales visitors do not begin to arrive until considerably after Whit- suntide. Every year lodging-house keepers complain that the season is short, but no attempt is made on their part to lengthen it. From no* until the end of May is frequently the pleasantest part of the year on the Coast, and is areatly enjoyed by the few visitors who happen to have discovered those beauties and advantages which it ought to be the business of the inhabitants to make widely known. In London, Wolver- hampton, Birmingham, Liverpool, and Man- chester persistent efforts should be made to secure for the towns between Pwilheli and AberaeroO that constant publicity without which they are sure to be forgotten iu the keen competition for support ever going on among the more accessible watering places of Lancashire an-I Yorkshire. It is often said that nothing can be done until the local railways have passed into the hands of the great companies. Certainly there is much that can only be done with great difficulty as long its the interest of the great companies clearly lies 1? promoting the success of summer resorts on their own lines but still it is far from true thftt nothing can be done. In the towns themselves b by making them bright and clean by a strict 'en- forcement of sanitary regulations by procuring abundant supplies of pure water; by providing at- tractions in the shape of music, entertainments an<* excursions, much can be done to enhance prost perity by inducing visitors to extend and to repellt their visits, and to report favourably to their friends and acquaintances. The Aberystwyth medic officer's excellent report on the good health 0 the district during the past twelve months ought to be circulated by tens of thousands all over the county. The best thing Barmouth could do woul¡l be to circulate views of its scenery, make kuotf11 the rapidity of its growth, and show how favor- ably it is situated. on the railway. What J" wanted, first of all, is to bring the people into the district, and ihen each town might compete iot its share of them. The Local Boards, Parocbi^ Committees^ and Town Councils in district might do something if unit^ unofficially to consider this question, wbicb is of far more importance than is generally sup' posed. To make the name of Barmouth or Abet' ystwyth, Towyn or C'riccieth, well known in Li"et. pool, Manchester, Birmingham, or London is tI work that will cost a large sum of money and ell' tail a good deal of hard, obscure labour. After t'1'1 money and labour have been expended the restllt." are of such a nature that they cannot be d nitely measured. This is probably the chief re^0" why nothing is done on a scale large enough make itself felt. There are in our distrl tradesmen who spend a larger sum every year I advertising their private business than is spell ( in making known the beauties and the watering places in this neighbourhood' The large railway companies promote excltI" sions to Scarborough, ^outhport, Blackpool,Mo1*j cambe, but they do not trouble themselves agr^' bI,t1 deal about the towns Wbldt can only be reac¡ "It' 11" over the Catubiian and Manchester and Mitf(U\ linc. Barmouth, to some extent, is assisted :;1 the Great Western, bat Aberystwyth h inju^1, by that company. London excursionist wisbi1^ to visit Aberystwyth arc tf.ken round bv Kuab^1'*