THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



347 



urge it as a settled truth, we must expect to meet with 

 incredulous and closed ears ; but when you have quietly 

 tested a system for three long years, accurately booked, 

 weighed, iind measured, and calculated your profit with 

 the certainty of demonstration, it is natural to suppose 

 that the proposal of a simple though novel series of til- 

 lage operations, promising so handsomely in a time of de- 

 spondency and bad prices, would be eagerly caught up, 

 and (with the best kind of gratitude, appropriation, and 

 imitation) at once tried in every province of the king- 

 dom, and applied with ready and clever adaptations to 

 all soilu and varying circumstances. Now, Mr. Smith 

 has no " interest " in the extension of his husbandry : 

 he has never pushed it before public attention by any 

 form of advertising, but simply given us annually his 

 most telling, because most truthful, statement of the 

 facts of his management and success ; and it must seem 

 hard to him to find only a few instances of Lois-Weedon 

 husbandry here and there, after all these years of ad- 

 vising agriculturists for their own good. However, he 

 has persevered with bis own cultivation with the hap- 

 piest success, and an ample profit ; and if others do not 

 choose to venture on the practice, they themselves are 

 the losers. Mr. Smith has not been obliged to dig 

 deeper for every succeeding crop ; but tlie last two 

 years' crops have been much greater than the previous 

 average, though the double digging had been discon- 

 tinued, and the fork worked only 10 inches deep. In 

 fact, there is not one of the numberless objections, sci- 

 entific as well as' practical, raised against the system, 

 that has not been proved untenable. It remains true, 

 that wherever the plan has been found to fail, the rules 

 have been violated — unless we except Mr. Piper's case, 

 about which more particulars are desirable ; and we have 

 instances of success to corroborate the original testi- 

 mony. Mr. Jones, of Lois-Weedon, published the sa- 

 tisfactory results of his practice ; and Lieutenant 

 Goi'diff, of Granard, in Ireland, also made known the 

 success of his trials on a small scale. In the winter 

 of 1854-5, Mr. H. Dixon, of Witham, Essex, was 

 doubie-trenching five acres for the purpose ; but whether 

 his wheat-growing answered, the world has not yet 

 heard. R. Calwell, Esq., of Belvedere, county Down, 

 tried 14 acres in the year 1854, and extended the 

 breadth to 29 acres in 1855, the first year's crop leaving 

 about £3 10s. per acre over and above the expenses, 

 rent, profit, &c. In 1854-5-6-7 an acre of dry gravelly 

 land near Reading was under a modified form of the 

 Lois-Weedon system ; and, though found to yield three 

 quarters annually, would not have been remunerative 

 except for the high price of produce. One or two quarters 

 less than the land would grow in ordinary good culture 

 is of course unsatisfactory ; but in this case, some of the 

 most important conditions of management were ne- 

 glected. Mr. Piper's lately-published results are very 

 unfavourable, as he got only five sacks of corn and half-a- 

 ton of straw per acre ; but the details of his manage- 

 ment are not at present forthcoming. Lord Rayleigh 

 has grown two acres of Lois-Weedon wheat, near 

 Witham, for five years successively, without manure ; 

 the average yield being 44 bushels. Mr. Lawes has 

 made the system fail at Rothamsted on a good loamy 

 soil ; but merely, we believe, in consequence of not ad- 

 hering to Mr. Smith's instructions. We remember to 

 have seen a large field of three-row wheat in Kent, last 

 year. In Lincolnshire we knew a cottage plot under the 

 same system ; and last spring passed a field by the road- 

 side where the farmer was rolling his triple rows with 

 the wheels of a cart, the horse walking along the fallow 

 intervals. A spirited agriculturist in Norfolk has for 

 several years grown wheat on a plan much resembling 

 that of Lois-Weedon. On a strong loamy soil he had 

 wheat in triple rows, with a row of potatoes planted in 



each interval ; but this was too troublesome in cleaning 

 of couch, &c. Ills crops of wheat, with intervals fallowed 

 for bearing wheat the next year, have been very heavy 

 and productive ; and there is no doubt they are abun- 

 dantly profitable. He ap|)lies manure besides tilling the 

 intervjils; and is so satisfied with the practice (having 

 tried it in portions of many difi"erent fields), that this 

 year, we understand, he has sown nearly all his wheat 

 land in tlirce-row stripes. Accurate accounts of work 

 done, and other items of expense, he has not be:n at the 

 trouble to keep faithfully ; but tt.e produce has been so 

 large and obviously remunerative, that his experience 

 and management ought to be described in detail fur the 

 example of others. Let us hope he will come forward 

 with a letter or address on the subject. 



No doubt many cases of Lois-Weedon husbandry are 

 known to Mr. Smith ; but the above list, together with 

 six acres in France, which alluded to below includes all 

 we have yet heard of, with the exception, indeed, of a 

 piece begun last year by ourselves. 



In the following extmct, have we lighted upon a 

 foreign disciple of the Rev. Mr. Smith, of Lois- 

 Weedon? or a contemporary and independent expounder 

 of Tull's principles applied in the same manner to the 

 culture of wheat ? In Mr. Musgrave's " Ramble 

 through Normandy," published in 1855, and describing 

 a tour made in the autumn of 1854, occurs this pas- 

 sage : " While on the subject of foreign husbandry, it 

 is worth noticing the fact that in the heart of Nor- 

 mandy I saw upon land of no very rich quality a 

 heavy crop of wheat grown upon a tract of six acres 

 that had not been ' mended' for nearly as many years. 

 The owner himself occupied it. He was not a needy 

 man ; but being a breeder of sheep and a grower of 

 fruit, he laid no great stress upon arable land, and cul- 

 tivated his grain crop scientifiquenient. The science 

 lay in the preservation of a width of well-tilled unsown 

 intervals of three feet, marking out the corn ; and in 

 constant resort to spade labour, which, the wages being 

 low, had, in this instance, superseded the customary 

 employment of horses and ploughs. The horse-hoe, 

 spade, fork, and presser, turning up the clods to 

 crumble, year after year, under tlie action of winter's 

 wind, rain, and frost, had been followed up by supernal 

 aids in spriiig and summer ; for man having found 

 laf)Our, his Maker had contributed softening dews and 

 balmy breezes, charged, as they must have been, with 

 the treasures of nitrogen, and penetrating deeply the 

 porous soil. Nothing but this winter and summer 

 fallow, under the advantages of depih and constant pul- 

 verization, and such aid from the stores of heaven, 

 could, in the absence of all manure, account for the 

 self-same breadth of land yielding successive white crops 

 in the abundance apparent in every part of it. 



" I dare say the English tenantry would laugh at the 

 bare mention of land yielding abundantly without 

 manure ; and the proprietor's face would leuL'then if he 

 surmised his broad acres were held by an occupier tliat 

 never sent a tumbril of dung into the stubbles. But 

 there is one party in the country who would be only too 

 happy to see the system perpetuated ; I mean the 

 labourers, who, being sent on to the p'oughed field to 

 trench it with the spade, bury the exhausted top-soil, 

 and bring the lower stratum of fresh soil to the surface, 

 would throw all the worn-out loam to the bottom, and 

 bring clean, fresh, vegetative mould to the surface ; the 

 depth and quality of the active soil being hereby won- 

 derfully improved, and t!ie number of hands employed 

 being triple of the average amount of labour. An aid 

 like this to ordinary tillage would reclaim the most un- 

 promising pieces. But, in our variable climate, the 

 process of cultivation must necessarily be expedicioua, 



