THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



Wi 



discovered, for we cannot say bow much the trampling of the 

 horses' feet favour weeds, how much shallow culture, how 

 much the unloosened subsoil, and so forth. Neither can we 

 saj', on the other hand, how far the removal of this trampling 

 of the horses' feet promotes the greater fertility of the soil; 

 while we know very little trustworthy, on either side, as 

 to the many chemical and physiological questions involved 

 in the subject. 



The best of all schoolmasters is abroad, however, and 

 the daily experience now being acquired in steam culture 

 cannot fail very shortly to establish something like prac- 

 tical data for our guidance, as to the benefits gained by the 

 absence of trampling with horses' feet, while the present 

 season may possibly illustrate more forcibly than some are 

 at present thinking, the actual damage done by horses'-feet, 

 with the other details of the old system, that exist as co- 

 operative causes affecting the fertility of land and the growth 

 of certain plants. 



But a late season, whether the autumn is wet or dry, is 

 always accompanied with those conditions of tlie atmos- 

 phere and soil that produce it, and the present season is 

 very remarkable in this respect: spring and summer having 

 been both more than ordinarily wet and cold, so that we 

 commence the work of autumn cultivation under circum- 

 stances demanding special consideration — circumstances 

 that manifest themselves the moment we enter a field, what- 

 ever may be the nature of its soil. 



The excess of moisture during the past season has pro- 

 duced an unfavourable efiect upon the drainage and aera- 

 tion of land at present. This is more especially the case 

 with strong tenacious clays whose soil and subsoil this year 

 are mauy of them in a very unpropilious state for successful 

 cultiyalion. Superficially examined the furrow, to the ordin- 

 ary depth may turn over readily, and please the ploughman, 

 who has no other interest directly in the matter than an 

 easy-going plough and a fine " square furrow slice," better 

 than when the soil is torn from the subsoil with a little 

 cracicling, tearing, smashing up action, and consequent 

 shaking of liis elbows. Although not very easily explained 

 upon paper, yet those who have held the plough cannot but 

 be familiar with the difference in the amount of " elbow- 

 grease" required in wet and dry seasons ; as it is the legs 

 that pay for it in a wet season, the elbows in a dry. 



The consequences of working land under such circum- 

 stances by horses, on the old plan, will he favourable to tlie 

 growth of weeds, and unfavourable to that of corn and root 

 crops. We are at present examining the subject from a 

 mechanical point of view, and the rationale by which we 

 arrive at this unfavourable conclusion relative to weeds, 

 is the consolidation of the soil, destroying its drainage 

 aSration, disintegration, fertilization, and temperature. 



This long, dark catalogue of grievances may be disposed 

 of at one stroke of the pen, aa the reader must be familiar 

 with the trampling and consolidating effects of the feet of 

 horses on the subsoil, and also those of the pelting rains 

 of autumn on the ploughed land, when the furrow-slices are 

 squeezed together like wet unbnrnt bricks at any of our 

 exliibitions, where the clay has to be moulded and moulded 

 again as often as demanded by sight-seers. In a dry sea- 

 son, when clay soils are rent with fissures several feet in 

 depth, the subsoil in autumn is yet hard and capable of 

 supporting the feet of the teams, so that hardly any in- 

 jurious consequences from consolidation are experienced. 

 The staple soil may be soaked to the depth of the furrow- 

 slice ; and one of the most important elements of successful 

 autumn tillage by horses, is to get the ground turned over or 



smashed up before the process of soaking descends farther ; 

 but where soil and subsoil are both soft, the clay having im- 

 bibed its maximum of water, an article for which it has 

 a strong affinity, the damage done ,by horses' feet is incal- 

 culable, the drainage properties of impervious tenacioua 

 clays being often totally destroyed until they (clay-soils) are 

 again rent by the fissures of another summer. And when 

 once percolation to the drains is thus prevented, and the rain- 

 water begins to stand to the surface and flow off in the fur- 

 rows, the injurious work of consolidation is soon completed^ 

 the atmosphere excluded, and heat carried off by evaporation 

 from a continually moist surface throiif^hout the whole of 

 Winter, and not unfrequently the greater portion of Spring. 



From a chemical point of view, the cold wet season is also 

 favourable to the preparation of the land for the growth of 

 weeds, aud unfavourable to that for the growth of corn and 

 other cultivated crops, and iu this case on all kinds of soil. 

 In the last case we had to trace consequences to consolidation : 

 in this we have to trace the injurious effects produced through 

 a two-fold channel — chemical change at a low temperature, 

 and chemical change with a deficiency of atmospheric air. 

 Now, although chemical science has not made sufficient pro- 

 gress in the analytical investigation of the peculiar changes 

 that take place in either case, yet we do know from ex- 

 perience that in both cases the result or produce is weeds, and 

 also that decomposition of animal, vegetable, and mineral 

 matters in the soil takes place, and that the products formed 

 must of necessity be different as manure or food for plants 

 from that formed under a higher temperature, and with a suit- 

 able supply of air from the atmosphere. To a certain extent 

 chemistry has already confirmed this conclusion directly by 

 analysis, aud we can have no henitation in saying that the 

 analytical investigation now being set on foot in connexion 

 with this important branch of agricultural science will prove 

 that the proper cultivation of land has more to do with the 

 chemistry of manures than the ammoniacal and phosphoric 

 theories of the day ; in other words, that the increased fer- 

 tility of Woolston and Lois-Weedon is more due to improved 

 systems of culture than to the quantity of manure applied to 

 the land — these two " experimentalists," economising their 

 superphosphate and guano by converting them into the food 

 of corn and root-crops, instead of into food for weeds, as they 

 both once did under the old system. 



From a physiological point of view it is equally interesting to 

 contemplate the seed of a weed lying dormant in a well-culti- 

 vated soil, and a seed of corn springing into life simply because 

 touched by certain vitalising principles constitutionally adapted 

 for its physical wellbeing and maturity of growth. 



It is hardly leas interesting, although not quite so profitable, 

 to think of our guano and bone-dust and farmyard manure 

 being metamorphosed into the food of weeds by a process not 

 yet exactly known, and to see them (the weeds) thriving 

 luxuriantly amidst sickly corn and root-crops, and even in our 

 grass fields and fallows ; bo prone are they to grow where cir- 

 cumstances suit them. 



On entering upon the autumn-cultivation of laud this year 

 there are many other circumstances peculiar to the season 

 which farmers are called upon to experience— all acknow- 

 ledging, as it were, the ten-fold superiority of steam in com- 

 parison with horses. But our space will only permit of merely 

 enumerating a few of these — such as the shortness of the day. 

 We have not only fewer days to do the work, but those daya 

 are shorter. Next, the teams are now soft and unfit for sharp 

 driving, even on extra com. Thirdly, the land is heavy to 

 cultivate. Fourthly, from the softness of the ground, the root 



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