THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



421 



narrow point. Tliey work the last tool with a horse 

 among the beaus, even when they are in full blossom, 

 and find tliat tlicy receive no damage I'rom it. After 

 harvest, they cut the stubble with a skim 2 feet wide, 

 which answers the purpose of the great Isle of Thanet 

 skim for preparing the land for ploughing. They 

 esteem beans the best preparation in the world that 

 wheat can receive.' I was assured that the prac- 

 tice of sowing beans in rows was in use here above 100 

 years ago, and it was brought from East Kent at that 

 time... . From Canterbury to Howletts I saw, all over 

 the country, horses drawing skims through the crops, 

 that reached to their sides. After cutting, and some- 

 times ^before carrying, they plough the stubbles, with a 

 very broad-shared plough without a mouldboard, across, 

 in order to cut the weeds remaining, to harrow fine be- 

 fore ploughing for wheat. This is the second con- 

 trivance I have met with for this purpose; and in 

 Thanet they have a third." Young urges the value of 

 the hoed beau crop instead of a bare fallow ; the latter, 

 he says, in Foulness, are " ploughed very often, even to 

 ten times, therefore do not give the weeds time to grow 

 enough to kill them." 



As early as the year 1768, a Mr. Fiske, of Shimpling, 

 near Bury, introduced beans in place of fallow on a wet 

 loam, sowing 16 acres, with " 2 rows upon a three-feet 

 ridge, upon an oat stubble, ploughed at Michaelmas, 

 and mucked before the setting." Arthur Young ob- 

 serves upon this : " The culture of dry land by means 

 of turnips is well understood, but the management of 

 wet soils is yet (1785) in its infancy, except in certain 

 corners of the kingdom little known, and in the farms 

 of enlightened individuals. I hazard nothing in assert- 

 ing that the great desideratum of Kentish agriculture is 

 the discovery of fallow crops for clays and wet foams, by 

 means of which summer fallows may be as completely 

 banished from these soils as they are from_ sands. Mr. 

 Fiske's practice, now the common management of his 

 farm, is a very satisfactory and important step towards 

 the introduction of this system," 



In the "Annals of Agriculture" for 1788, a Mr. 

 Mure describes his drill-plough, which brings us still 

 nearer to the Woolston husbandry than the above au- 

 tumn tillage of stubbles. The implement is either fitted 

 as a horse-hoe or as a double-mouldboard plough, with 



two coulters standing up from the share like a V, in 

 order to hoe the slojjing sides of ridges ; it has also a 

 wheel fulling in the furrow, with a revolving seed-barrel 

 attached, for drilling the ridgts as they are made; and 

 a marker for scratching a small furrow for the seed 

 along the top of the ridge. He explains what gave 

 birth to the plough in question ; " The frequent disap- 

 pointments I have met with by the failure of a crop of 

 turnips, even after some months of apparent health and 

 vigour, made me more attentive to the present mode of 

 culture ; I soon saw that the great length of tap-root 

 that plant has bears no proportion to the depth of culti- 

 vated soil prepared for its reception, and therefore that 

 the plant must greatly depend on the substratum for its 

 nourishment : if a moist season and a loose soil, its roots 

 will penetrate it, and from thence procure sufficient 

 sustenance ; but if the reverse, after its having lived 

 luxuriously and in high health, the roots having got 

 through the cultivated soil will from necessity be 

 obliged to crawl about for food on the hard surface 

 of the substratum, where nothing but starvation 

 and all her train of ills is to be expected. I had 



lately a turnip root measuring 27 inches long , 



My first object, therefore, in the formation of this 

 plough, was to give a much greater depth of cul- 

 tivated soil to the roots of the plant; this it not only 

 does, but at less exjiense ; for having drawn one furrow 

 the whole length of the field, after it had been prepared 

 and the dnnt/ ij^read as usual, every sttbseguent turn 

 will form a ridge, gather the dtmg and bury it in the 

 middle of that ridge ; it will make a drill, sow the seed 

 in it, and afterwards cover it, making every ridge of the 

 same height and exactly similar. And the plants having 

 been set out at proper distances by drawing the common 

 hoe across the drill, the plough will, with a man and 

 any old horse, hoe four acres per day, paring the sides 

 and bottom of the furrow, mix the soil and lay it up as 

 before, and no weed to be seen." He adds: " Began 

 this morning with three of my own drill ploughs, to sow 

 barley, 2 bushels per acre." It appears also that seve- 

 ral agriculturists at once adopted this ridge-and-trench 

 culture, with this admirable implement. 



We shall see, in future papers, still further proof of 

 there being " nothing new under the sun." 



THE PRESENT SPRING — THE YOUNG WHEATS. 



The last harvest has undoubtedly proved a bad one 

 for the good farmer, or for those who farmed rich or 

 fertile soils. The produce was far too abundant, and 

 for once, the better the farmer, the worse his fate. It 

 is generally the fact that a large crop of straw fails to 

 produce a pmfitable crop of grain: this was the case 

 last year to an unusual extent. All the best soils proved 

 very defective, in weight of grain more especially ; but 

 they were also deficient in quantity and quality to a 

 remarkable degree, particularly in the wheat crop. 

 This crop, under good culture and on good soils, was a 

 signal failure. The barley crop was also a very 

 irregular and unsatisfactory one, and the early rains in 

 harvest did immense damage in sprouting it, so that 

 "the wheat-grower" and "the barley-grower" know 

 full well how to sympathise with each other from similar 

 unfortunate causes. 



The winter was fine. The spring and summer were 

 luxuriant and productive ; every department of spring 

 culture as applied to these crops was carried out to per- 

 fection, and up to the month of July even a more pio- 



mising appearance never presented itself to the anxious 

 and expectant cultivators. With what gloomy fore- 

 bodings did they view their prostrate crops, fallen from 

 sheer inability to stand, owing to their enormous bulk ! 

 added to this, the torrid heat of several days in the 

 month of July completed their dismay, by producing a 

 simultaneous and premature ripening. This, again, 

 threw them into further difficulties, in having such an 

 accumulated amount of work to do, that the customary 

 number of labourers could by no means accomplish it ; 

 hence prices rose considerably, their perplexities were 

 daily augmenting, and great losses resulted. It was 

 only the goodness of God, in granting such propitious 

 weather for the ingathering of the latter harvest, that 

 prevented numbers of our highly-prized cultivators 

 giving way to despair. 



My object in writing this paper is to aid, if possible, in 

 palliating, if not in preventing, a recurrence (so far as 

 the cultivator is concerned), of this distressing state of 

 things. The winter has, upon the whole, been a fine 

 one, and a full average plant of wheat has been secured 



