mstance because it enables me to
give the substance of certain statistical details which were
communicated to me, in the course of our walk, by the son-in-law. This
latter, a remarkably athletic fine-looking fellow, who volunteered to
give us a convoy, and direct us the nearest way to Schlukenau, had seen
something of the world. He was in Strasburg in the year 1813, when a
corps of English artillery manned the works, and he spoke in high
admiration of the appearance and perfect discipline of the men. Now,
however, he cultivated with excellent skill a farm of eighty or an
hundred acres, of which he was the proprietor; and while he led me over
his land, and pointed out with honest pride, the order in which it was
kept, and the enormous crops which it produced, he very readily
answered such questions as I put to him on the subject both of the
Bohemian system of agriculture and of the profits arising out of it.
Wheat, as, indeed, my own previous observation had shown me, is not
much cultivated in Bohemia. Here and there, where the soil is
particularly favourable for it, the seed is sown; but rye is the staple
commodity, with which, indeed, the fields were loaded. Out of rye, as I
need scarcely mention, the Germans manufacture, not only the bread that
is commonly in use among them, but almost all their ardent spirits, of
which I have tasted very little, but which, whenever I did taste it,
seemed to be execrable. Oats they likewise rear for their horses, as
well as barley for malting; but these grains bear no proportion, in
point of abundance, to the rye crops.

When the rye is removed, they sow the ground with clover; not, as with
us, that they may feed it off, and so enrich the soil while they
extract something from it, but for the purpose of securing a supply of
dry fodder for their cattle, which, all the winter over, and throughout
a considerable portion of the spring and summer, are kept in their
stalls. Then come potatoes, then a season of fallow; after which a good
coat of manure, to be followed by rye again. Whenever flax is grown,
and next to rye it is, both here and in Saxony, more cultivated than
any other grain, fallows are more frequent; for flax, as every child
knows, drains the soil of all its nutritious qualities.

The implements used in agricultural operations seem to be ruder, and
far more inefficient, than among us. The plough is precisely such an
instrument as I recollect to have seen represented in my De