164
λgkicuituke ox the rhine.
third, adjoining a public walk, is devoted to expe-
riments on various seeds and plants, hops, vines, &c.
The buildings join a spacious farm-yard, although
only milch cows are kept, the labour being all done by
contract.
The slender fund of the agricultural society still suffices
to afford a distribution of prizes to agricultural servants
for good conduct, and to keep up a small collection of
models and a library. A veterinary hospital is kept in
one part of the buildings, to which the farmers of the
neighbourhood and the people of the town resort. The
influence of the establishment has been great; chiefly
because the government has made it the direct organ for
encouraging improvements. The Director M. Albrecht
is not only encouraged to suggest improvements, but has
been employed as commissary for years together in the
carrying out a grand plan formed for improving the state
of the heights of the Westerwald, the name of which is
already familiar to the reader. The brooks and little
streams of a large district in those mountains have been
united where practicable, and led into situations that
allow them to overflow and irrigate a large extent of
meadow land in the fashion of the meadows of Siegen.
Besides the meadows attached to the farm, there are
others near Wiesbaden which bear testimony to the gain
resulting from the small exertion required to let the water
run over the land occasionally.
Wiesbaden is a good station to observe the two sides
that have been po⅛I out in the present condition of
agriculture in Germany. The little town, which is not
much more than a considerable village, has also its two
sides. What may be called the aboriginal inhabitants
AGRICULTURE ON THE RHINE.
165
are all villagers living on the produce of their own lands
which they for the most part till in person. Some ex-
ceptions are found in landowners who have made money
by the sudden rise in the value of land for building, occa-
sioned by the removal of the court from Biberich, and
the rapid increase of the annual visitors to the waters.
Both these changes have occurred within a few years,
and have unhinged the steady revolving activity of the
husbandman, without having as yet introduced the more
refined and larger sphere of action that belongs to towns.
The small landowners possess their grounds invariably
on three sides of the town ; and the nearest arable land
is at least a quarter of a mile distant from the owner’s
house, while the “ gemarkung” or parish extends five
miles in breadth, without having outlying farms to them
with the few exceptions that we shall notice. The ob-
server who notices the march of dung-carts, ploughs,
harrows, and other implements at five o’clock in
the morning often to perform a distance of two miles of
road, and to return after work to a twelve o’clock dinner,
will not be at a loss to calculate the amount of labour that
is annually wasted by this arrangement. The visitor has
constant occasion to wonder at the village appearance of
great part of a town in which 20,000 fashionable strangers
congregate from all parts of Europe during three months
of the summer. Were any one, strangers or domestic spe-
culators, or even the authorities of the country, to project
a change that would make farming a valuable occupation,
while the town would answer the purpose for which
towns were intended, in consequence of the alteration it
would be found altogether impracticable. It may be
assumed to be matter of utter impossibility to purchase at
any price one hundred acres of contiguous land, even in