168 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



which so largely subtract from the total yield of a farm ; the 

 earlier ploughiug provides a stale set'd-bed for spring corn — 

 another sure source of increased produce ; and, considering 

 these and other more technical points of improvement and 

 management, no one will challenge as extravagant our judg- 

 ment that the iucreaae of com, roots, and artificial grasses will 

 yearly be equivalent to eight bushels of wheat per acre upon 

 half the farm ; and, taking this at 40s. a quarter, it will ap- 

 pear that Mr. Langston has probably improved ths surj.lus 

 income or clear profit to arise from his 800 acres arable by 

 nearly £1,500 a year, or about 378. per acre. 



Steam cultivation is not limited to large holdings. Years 

 ago, among thobe who pondered to good purpose over the 

 splendid results of deep tillage, as manifested in the Marquis 

 of Tweeddale's experience, and more especially in the long- 

 continued succession of exuberant cropping at Lois Weedon, 

 excavated by the trenching tool out of unpromising clay with- 

 out an ounce of manutial applications, was Mr. William 

 Smith, of Woolston, near Bletchley — a hona fide British 

 yeoman, farming his own patrimony, and now developing the 

 inherent merits of an obdurate soil with the same vigorous 

 energy that once distinguished him in the Buckinghamshire 

 chase, though his new system of culture gives no favour to 

 the spoftamau's birds, and provides a staple too soft for the 

 foxhunter. Woolston is a corollary from Weedon, and, with- 

 out following the Tullian method there pursued, successfully 

 obtains on a wider scale and with the aid of steam-power the 

 grand advantages there found to accrue from opening down 

 into a soil with the spade. The locality is between the Dun- 

 stable chalk range and the Brickhill and Leighton Buzzard 

 sand hills, the farm (the first whole farm ever cultivated by 

 steam power) resting partly on a stiff calcareous clay, a mixture 

 of lime and mud, containing chalk n ;dules and veins of sand, 

 and partly also upon a drift of gravelly clay. The arable 

 portion thus consists of two sorts of soil, about 40 acres of 

 heavy, and about 70 acres distinguished as " light" — although 

 turnips never grew well on it for want of thorough tilth, and 

 four horses were used in turning a five-inch furrow. A good 

 under-drainage has long been completed ; but dead-fallowing 

 every fourth year, still the system of the neighbourhood, was 

 obliged to be practised. Mr. Smith has succeeded, however, 

 in producing a grubbing implement, which rives and breaks 

 up the soil without under-cutting the whole breadth of its 

 work, thus operating much more economically of power than 

 the plough (which carries such a weight of earth upon its fric- 

 tional mouldboard), escaping the damaging pressure of the 

 plough-sole upon the subsoil ; and muck more effectually pro- 

 viding for the extirpation of weeds — by exposing their roots 

 upon the surface, provoking them to germinate for their own 

 destruction, and never burying their seeds and shoots. A 

 double-mouldboard plough is employed for throwing up the 

 ground in drills or ridges of a yard width, exposing a maximum, 

 of surface to the atmosphere, while the raw clay, bared at the 

 bottom of the intervening trenches, is broken into and crumbled 

 with an admirable subsoiling implement. Indeed, the deep 

 " smashiug-up" of land for cleansing, and the growth of pulse 

 crops as well as roots upon the trench-ridges, form the pecu- 

 liarity of the husbandry, the implements being actuated by 

 steam-power with windlass and wire ropes. A six-course 

 rotation is adopted, the tillage being as follows : — The wheat 

 stubble being little pestered with couch, and so requiring no 

 previous cleansing, receives a covering of 10 tons of farmyard 

 manure immediately after harvest, the manure having been 

 long before carted from the homestead and stacked near the 

 field. The steam trench plough then throws the land into 

 yard-wide ridges, covering in the manure in the interior of the 

 ridges, and baring thesubsoil at a depth of 9 inches from the 

 original surface. After lying six weeks to mellow, a double 

 mouldboard plough, drawn by four horses, deepens the 

 trenches to a further depth of four to six inches, and heightens 

 the crests of the ridges, and the fallow lies in this form until 

 spring. Thus we viewed the extraordinary spectacle of the 

 land for next year's root crop,',lying Tor winter weathering, cor- 

 rugated with ridges of sharp triangular section, which divide 

 the entire area of the field into parallel trenches three feet 

 wide, and no'less than two feet deep down the sloping sides, 

 with a torn and crumbled bottom of four to six inches more. 

 A superficial area, equal to at least a third more than the di- 

 mensions of the field would allow on the flat, is thus left in 

 open contact with the air, which ia at the same time permitted 



the freest possible access into the ridges and down into the 

 subsoil ; and before sowing-time in April and May the frost 

 and other agencies will have changed several inches' thickness 

 of the hard unkindly clay into a powdery mould. The only 

 further process required is cutting the annual weeds from the 

 tops of ;,the ridges with the hand hoe, and then drilling the 

 mangold or turnip seed, which from the absence of all spring 

 tillage possesses, instead of a dried-up seed-bed, a mould 

 replete with the moisture repisite to force its young germs 

 past the reach of the fly, added to a depth which secures the 

 maturity of a weiglity crop. Such is the difference between a 

 fine mould wrought down by slow natural weathering and a 

 tilth obtained by the mechanical librasion and disintegratwa 

 of scuffling and clod-crushing, that ^while the^latter,quicsi^ 

 closes again into a homogeneous mass under a flooding rain snd 

 hardening drought, the former (if spared the consolidating 

 pressure of spring cultivatior.) continues for a long season in 

 its beautiful pulverulent state. Having relieved his lantr ei 

 the heavier horse-power operations, Mr. Smith is not oniy 

 enabled to grow the finest crops of roots on his fallow, but 

 also to feed off the turnips with sheep carefully folded (with 

 daily shiftings) upon the land ; and then by breaking up tne 

 soil with the steam trench plough, and afterwards working a 

 horse-grubber across the ridges in spring, the ground is in 

 good order for drilling barley without further preparation. 

 The next year's crop is clover, which is ploughed by horses 

 for the following wheat. The wheat stubbles are manured and 

 tilled in the same manner as for roots ; and each ridge is 

 dibbled in spring with two rows of beans, which are preserved 

 from weeds during the summer by horse and hand hoeing. 

 The bean stubbles are prepared for the wheat (forming the 

 final crop of the course) by one smashing up with the 

 steam cultivator, and one (or rarely two) cross grubbings by 

 horses, and after this crop again comes the fallowing for 

 roots as before. Now, according to Mr. Smith's carefully 

 kept accounts, the whole outlay for preparatory tillage from 

 first to last throughout the six years' rotation amounts to 

 only £3 per acre ; while under the ordinary system of 

 management onlj' a single year's fallowing (without any 

 crop) costs fully as much. Of course, this enormous saving 

 of expenditure would not be possible if the land were in 

 a foul condition ; but, in spite of the first two years of in- 

 numerable weeds which annoyed and threatened Mr. Smith 

 at the outset of his non-inversion husbandry, his farm is 

 now as clean as a garden, and his workmen have ample 

 opportunity for looking over the Winter trenches as well 

 as the Summer crops from time to time to destroy such in- 

 truding enemies. Until tha land becomes clean (which the 

 experience just related shows it will do under this culture) 

 the expenses are somewhat greater, owing to a few more 

 grubbings, splitting the ridges, hand-picking the couch, 

 &c , being rendered necessary. The economy being found 

 so prodigious in the long run, we need not stop to detail 

 the performances of Mr, Smith's eight-horse engine, beyond 

 saying that the labour of 185.9 has been 74 acres of various 

 operations in 14 days of working, or an average of about five 

 acres and a-half per day ; and, seeing that by horse labour 

 no effective tillage could have been accomplished at all, it 

 is of no moment to ascertain whether or not the engine 

 could compete with a strong team in the amount of hauling 

 power put forth during a day. The condition of the farm, 

 after seven years' commencement of " cultivation," instead 

 of ploughing, and four j-ears of actuating the implements 

 by steam power, is such that a stranger would pronounce 

 the soil to be plethoric with high manuring; whereas 

 mechanical tillage alone is the secret of the present abun- 

 dant productiveness. Mr. Smith uses no artificial manure, 

 tave for purposes of experiment ; purchases little oilcake, 

 except to keep his sheep healthy; consumes corn for only 

 a moderate quantity of live stock, and the three horses and 

 pony, which are all the team force needed, and sells off his 

 clover hay. And so far from there being any signs of im- 

 poverishment, the most magnificent yields of wheat, beans, 

 and barley are obtained every year, as well as very heavy root 

 crops of most superior quality, the increased produce of corn 

 being considered by Mr. Smith to have been no less than 

 12 bushels an acre— that is, say, £2 to £3 per acre annually 

 over half the farm. And the practical agriculturist will 

 readily understand that this augmentation of yield, added 

 to the power of keeping live stock created by the new 



