AGRICULTURAL BOTANY. 



283 

 Some 



seven-tenths bushels per acre, and at the rate of two bushels to the acre, broadcast, 

 time previous to sowing, the ground was harrowed and rolled. 



For plot No. 1 there was no additional cultivation previous to the drilling. For No. 2 

 the ground was ploughed into oval-shaped ridges by a three furrow-plow, one-half being 

 made into ridges, five feet three inches wide, (the width of the drill,) and drilled with all the 

 seven tines or tubes of the drill, and the other half was made into four-feet ridges by the 

 same plow and drilled with five tines, the two outer tines being hooked up and closed. 

 The drills were nine inches apart. No. 3 was sowed by hand, very regularly, upon the 

 ground as left by the last-named harrowing and rolling, and was ploughed in flat by a three- 

 furrow plough, in lands sixty feet wide. For No. 4 the ground, as left by the last-named 

 harrowing and rolling, was marked or laid off into four-feet lands by a small single plow, 

 after which the wheat was sowed by hand and plowed in by throwing the land into four-feet 

 ridges with a three-furrow plow, in which operation the hinder plow was run in the furrows 

 made by the above-mentioned single plow, and therefore the wheat grew well into the fur- 

 rows subdividing the ridges. 



The ground being in fine tilth, the broadcast wheat was not harrowed or rolled after being 

 plowed in. The drilled wheat came up first by some days, and was greatly superior to the 

 broadcast throughout the whole period of growth ; so much so, that until the broadcast wheat 

 became high enough to hide the ground, it disfigured the appearance of the field, even when 

 viewed from a considerable distance. 



Throughout the winter and spring that drilled upon a level surface was superior to that 

 drilled upon the ridges ; and that drilled on five-feet ridges was superior to that on four-feet 

 ridges ; and during the winter and early spring, the drills that were near the tops of the 

 ridges were red, and quite inferior to those on the sides and near the bottoms of the ridges. 



In the narrow belt above mentioned, the broadcast wheat was entirely thrown out and 

 destroyed by frost, but the drilled wheat in the same survived the winter. 



In order to secure complete accuracy in keeping the different lots separate and distinct, 

 both in the harvesting and threshing, they were not harvested until all the other wheat in 

 the field was cut and shocked; and after the threshing of each lot, the ground around the 

 machine was swept clean, and the whole yield of each lot was put in a separate pile in the 

 barn, where it remained undisturbed until it was fanned, measured, and weighed. 



The difference in product between the drilled and broadcast would probably have been 

 less, if the winter weather had not have been so unusually severe, and if a hardier variety of 

 wheat than the Gale had been used, and also if there had been no land inclined to heave out 

 embraced in the ground selected. But the experiments show clearly that drilling as in No. 

 1 is vastly the most safe and reliable mode; and it is fairly to be inferred from them that in 

 any season and in land of average quality and description, a valuable excess of product may 

 be expected from drilled wheat over broadcast, of which indeed I had been entirely con- 

 vinced by the experience of the previous six years, in which the white blue-stem wheat was 

 principally observed. 



As the publication of these experiments may induce some farmers to purchase wheat drills, 

 I deem it proper to remark that in rather extensive observations I have not seen so great a 

 superiority of drilled wheat over broadcast where the drills were made closer than nine 

 inches. The slopes of such drill furrows are too steep, at least for this latitude, and there- 

 fore they fill up so rapidly by the action of rain and frost as to partially smother the wheat; 

 and as they become level, or nearly so, by the end of winter, the wheat loses the benefit of 

 being in a furrow or trench, a position which appears to be of all others the most genial to 

 its growth. 



