i4 Retrospective View of AgricidturC'—Tivecdale , Feu. 



o-round, and afterwards sown with suitable grasses, to remain 

 in permanent pasture. It is to be hoped, that these spirited 

 undertakings, set on foot within these half dozen of years, shall 

 properly reward their authors. 



The turnip and soum grass husbandry, might have begun to 

 rear its head among some of the tenantry in this parish, pro- 

 bably twenty years ago ; its so universal prevalence cannot be 

 dated back for more than ten or a dozen years, tlie enterprises 

 upon the hills being of still later date. When turnips first be- 

 gan to prevail, they were singled in the drill by tlie slow 

 and expensive, operation of cautious hand weeding ; now, 

 all the 3^oung people of the parish are accustomed to sin^ 

 ^A^ (in English, j-c-/^ out^ with speed and dexterity, from the time 

 their arms are sufliciently strong to manage the hand hoe. In 

 the similar former slow operation of hand weeding, the weeds, in 

 the intervals, often got a head before the singling was completed; 

 and the only instrument and operation used to humble them, 

 was the paring of the ridges by the plough, which exposed the 

 narrowed drill to drought ; and if you went near enough to cut 

 the weeds ch)ss from the plants, endangered the oversetting 

 them, together with the earth they stood upon, or the over- 

 whelming of them by the mouldering earth spewing out to the 

 . left hand of the plough ; now, tiie intervals are neatly cleaned 

 <>t weeds by a horse hoe, with a thin triangular sock, to cut 

 tlie weeds at tlie bottom of the furrow, and v/ith two cquI- 

 ters, or shaving irons, converging below, and diverging above, 

 with a regulator to straiten or widen tiiem to any dimension 

 of later va], which shaves off the weeds, withou: taking off al- 

 most any earth from the sides of the two drills, betwixt which 

 it is drawn along. 



Having taken tiiis special notice of Eddlcstone, to which you 

 have already attracted public^attention in your last, I have to 

 observe a few things in regard to Tweedale husbandry in ge- 

 neral. — Be it known, then, to you and your readers, that the 

 progression of the improved husbandry, must soon lead to a 

 great change in the arrangement of Tweedale farming economy: 

 While less prevalent, the hav crop v/as ever considered as a 

 marketable })art of the farmer's produce, and there was sufii- 

 cient demand for tlie whole ; the market, however, seems now 

 overstocked ; the annual produce exceeds the annual demand ; 

 and probably the farmer must betake himself to the consum- 

 ing of this article in the house by bullocks ; or, to depastur- 

 ing it by sheep, from the starting, without cutting it at all, 

 after the manner of East Lothian. A considerable part of this 

 year's crop is winter stacked for want of demand ; several 

 farmers have upon liand the crops of both this and last year, 



bavin or 



