j3'2 AGRICULTURE ON THE RHINE.
points of view from which the stranger must judge of
them. The position of nearly every old village was usually
determined by flowing water, and the care bestowed
upon the stream that runs apparently disregarded in its
irregular meanderings through the mass of houses, whose
position has, by its course, been no less irregularly
fixed, is greater than a superficial glance would lead one
to suppose. Endless are the difficulties which the pre-
servation of this running water in its full purity opposes
to changes, and often to improvements. Prosaic as it may
seem, we are inclined to ascribe the early use of liquid
manure amongst the German peasantry to the obligation
enforced upon all neighbours to the stream to prevent the
issue of drains into it. This restriction does not apply
Io rivers, which in Germany, as elsewhere, arc made the
•means of impoverishing the people by ministering to their
wasteful convenience. But the brook, which is the centre
round which village arrangements revolve in their daily
homely course, is consecrated to cleanliness, being, we
are sorry to say, almost the only sacrifice on the altar of
that deity that is conspicuous. The details of the best
managed farm-yard suppose some portions of ground
devoted to what in its place is prized as highly valuable,
but out of its place is mere filth. A German village is
an assemblage of diminutive farm-yards, where the dung-
heaps, with all their accompanying odours and un=avoury
streams, subdivided like the land they are destined to
fertilise, are reproduced at every house ; and, as the neat
and ingenious contrivances to keep these matters out of
sight, which are practicable on a large scale, are out of
the question when they require to be repeated in innu-
merable varieties around every man’s tenement, they are
Agkicultuke on the khine.
93
of course dropped altogether. The multiplicity of small
dung-heaps, exposed to the heat of a Rhenish sun, un-
questionably taints the air and affects the health of the
villagers ; but it would be as hard to suppress the pleasure
with which every member of the family regards the heap
that is to supply their yearly food, as it is to drive the
Irishman’s pig out of the cabin of which he pays the rent.
As long as the peasant’s food in the one country de-
pends upon the dung he can accumulate, and the rent in
the other is only to be raised by his sharing his house-
room with his valuable four-footed companion, we fear
that dung-heaps will stand under the windows of Ger-
man cottages, and pigs run in and out of Irish cabins,
whatever philanthropic taste may preach to the contrary.
We know several books, well penned and full of good
advice, that are circulated at a cheap rate for the benefit
of Irish cottiers. In one we remember a tirade against
horses, the inclination to indulge in which is deeply im-
planted in Paddy’s nature. The author has calculated,
perhaps too moderately, the expense of the keep of a
horse, and show’s that a horse to five acres of land, as he
finds is kept in part of the county of Wexford, is a pal-
pable absurdity. But besides making no allowance for
the fact that five acres of land leave a man time enough
to earn money in other ways, and the trade of a carrier is
everywhere a profitable one, the account is summarily
balanced against the peasant without allowing anything
for the manure of his stable. How friend Martin
Doyle could overlook this point, as well as the fact that
horse-dung in the wet soil of Ireland is likely to be more
suitable manure than the dung of the cow, which he would
substitute for the horse, we cannot explain. In Ger-