38G 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



and the commencement of the hinev quarter ; a larger i 

 number than five nails can never bo required in any 

 shoe, of any size, or under any circumstances, excepting 

 for the sole purpose of counteraciiug defective and 

 clumsy fitting." 



The result of this is, that on the affirmative reading 

 of the " no foot no horse," the animal turns out to 

 bo much longer lived than people generally suppose 

 him to be. In November last, Mr. Miles had in work 

 in his own stable six hor?es — the oldest of the lot, now 

 forty years old, he hiis had just twenty years. " He 

 woiild i)ass muster for nine or ten years old, " and ap- 

 pears only to have the slight failing ol not allowing 

 any stranger to enter his box — Mr. Rarey, of course, 

 excepted. The next, twenty-niue years old, is " the 

 best hack" Mr. Miles ever rode. He bought him 

 seventeen years since, when on the point of being shot, 

 the smith having declared his feet so far gone that he 

 could not shoe him ! The third is twenty-one years 

 old, and has been in his present place sixteen ; the 

 fourth sixteen years old, nine of which he has been 

 with Mr. Miles; and number five, at thirteen, has 

 passed eight years in the same service. The sixth was 

 recently destroyed at the age of twenty-six. 



This question thus grows upon us in importance. 

 There is, perhaps, no other horse-keeper who could 

 say as much, simply because no other man has paid 

 equal attention to his horses. At ten or twelve years 

 old the animal is now frequently condemned outright; 

 whereas with only proper care there may be quite an- 

 other ten or twelve years' wear in him. We can say 

 from our own experience that the best horse we ever 

 had was fifteen or sixteen when we bought him, 

 and that after three seasons' good work, he sold 



for more than double the price he came in at. But then 

 he was well cared for — shod in liis own box by the 

 best man in the district, his feet regularly stopped, 

 and his somewhat battered legs soothed and saved — 

 especially at first— in every possible way. We must 

 let one more extract from the article before us tell how 

 this is still to be done : — 



" If I were asked to account for my horses' legi and feet 

 beint; in better order than those of my neighbours', I should 

 attribute it to the four foUowiog circumataucea : first, that they 

 are all shod with few r.aila, ao placed iu the shoe as to permit 

 the foot to expand every time they move; secondly, that they 

 all live in boxes instta'l of stalls, and can move whenever they 

 please ; thirdly, that they have two hours' daily walking 

 exercise when they are not at work ; and fourthly, that I have 

 not a headstall or rack-chain iu my stable: these four cir- 

 cumstaoces coaiprehend the whole mystery of keephig horses' 

 legs fine, aud their feet in sound working coudition up to a 

 good old age." 



There is no one, we think, who will say such a 

 paper as this is out of place in the Journal of an Agri- 

 cultural Society. On the contrary, we believe it will 

 be more read and better remembered than almost any- 

 thing that has been published by the same channel. 

 It is a'ready issued as a shilling pamphlet; so that 

 such of our readers who are not members may readily 

 obtain it in this form. They must in no case be con- 

 tent with our mere opinion of its excellence. The 

 essay is not distinguished as a prize paper, neither do 

 we gather whether it was a volunteer contribution or 

 written at the request of the editors. On any sho .ving, 

 it is worthy of soirie especial distinction. To a horse- 

 rearing, horse-riding people like ours, a cure for lame- 

 ness and lost shoes is indeed a blessing. 



LOIS-WEEDON" WITHOUT THE SPADE. 



"Why have not farmers in every county tested the 

 system ot wheat-growing in triple rows, with fallow in- 

 tervals between ? Mainly, we believe, because of the 

 hand-labour digging it involves. It would require four- 

 *^cn to twenty men, according to the nature of the land, 

 to trench the intervals upon a hundred acres in the 

 course of three months ; and where shall we find the 

 extra hands to do it ? — not such as may always be had 

 in winter for steam-thrashing and odd jobs, but stout, 

 clever, and honest spademen. We say " honest" men; 

 for the difficulty of getting a number of labourers to 

 perform the task faithfully in every respect is a serious 

 obstacle, even were the right sort of hands obtainable 

 on such a large scale. 



Are there no means, then, oi modifying the system 

 so as to dispense ivilh manual digging] and yet realize 

 the promised profit per acre ? Huw tar Mr. Smith has 

 now advanced in freeing himself from dependence upon 

 the spade and fork we do not know ; but two years ago 

 his little volume on " Lois-Weedon Husbandry" pro- 

 posed to open a furrow by two turns with the plough in 

 the middle of each interval, subsoil the furrow bottom, 

 and after a winter's exposure, raise the crumbled sub- 

 soil and turn the pulverized furrow-slices undern.ath by 

 means of a machine he has invented for the purpose. 

 This ingenious " rotary digger," drawn by horses, was 

 constructed, tried, and found to answer ; but to what 

 extent it has been employed in superseding manual fork- 

 mg we have not yet heard. Li the absence of such a 

 machine, could cur ordinary plovghs, subsoUers, and 

 cultivators be ni .,le to fulfil the object in view— which 

 IS, " to pulverize a certdtn small portion of the subsoil, 

 year after year, and then mix it with the staple "? We 



thought it worth while to try, and accordingly com- 

 menced operations the year before last. Yet before we 

 describe our management, consider how important is 

 the experiment. For look at Mr. Smith's extraordinary 

 results. He lays out in total expenses (including £2 an 

 acre for rent) £b IGs. per acre on the "clay piece," 

 and clears ^^5 Hs. net tenant's profit — when wheat is 

 at forty shillings a quarter : and on light gravelly land 

 (clayed) gets £4: 14s. clear profit from an expenditure 

 of £G IGs. per acre. The average yield on the light 

 land is thirty-four bushels per acre, and on the heavy 

 land considerably more ; in both cases ivithout 

 mamiring. The straw is sold at forty shillings a ton ; 

 but as we cannot "dispose" of our straw at all, and 

 should find farm -yard manure a costly article were a 

 couple of sovereigns paid for every ton trampled down 

 as litter or eaten by our stock, we deduct considerably 

 from the above items, and take the prospective profit on 

 good land (neither clay nor gravel) at say .£'3 lOs. per 

 acre. That is, a hundred acres permanently under 

 wheat would gain us .£"'350 clear annual profit, when the 

 price is at the low figure of only 40s. per quarter; and 

 at 50s. a quarter, the same presumed yield of thirty- 

 four bushels is to bring us £b 10s. an acre, or £,550 

 altogether. This was worth thinking about ; for we 

 doubted whether many agriculturists of our acquaintance 

 could show a clear annual income of either ^550 or 

 £,"350 from every hundred acres they occupied. 



Let us see how the scheme would work. Take a 

 farm having three hundred acres arable, of very good 

 friable loam, producing four-and-a-half or five quarters 

 of moderately good red wheat per acre as a very fine 

 crop, and of course less as an average ; rent, forty sbil- 



