THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



519 



and leave the lands or stitches in excellent order for the 

 drill-machine to follow and deposit the barley-seed, the 

 farmer, during the whole of these operations, being as 

 little liable to be thrown out by unfavourable weather as 

 it is possible he should be, and much less so than if he 

 had ploughed the land." 



Let us now make a more detailed inspection of some 

 advanced farming in the olden time. Going back a 

 hundred years, we meet with Mr. Ducket's improve- 

 ments in tillage, first at Petersham, and afterwards at 

 Esher, in Surrey, on a sandy soil. The mind of this 

 practical agriculturist was fertile in resources, and his 

 management was original, and at that time unrivalled in 

 mechanical husbandry. For more than thirty years his 

 farms were the resort of every man who figured in the 

 agricultural world ; and even His Majesty, King George, 

 visited Mr, Ducket in 1769, on the farm at Petersham, 

 which he rented of Lord Dysart. Mr. Ducket astonished 

 his contemporaries by starting novel notions, the fruit of 

 his sensible observance of nature. He never stirred 

 sandy soil in hot dry weather. " At such a time," he 

 said, " every stroke of the hoe does mischief: my hoe- 

 ing, if possible, is done in wet weather." And he de- 

 monstrated how totally contrary the management of wet 

 and dry soils are. Lady Dalkeith, whose house looked 

 on a part of his farm, thought him mad for apparently 

 cutting-up and absolutely destroying a very fine-looking 

 field of rye, by carting clay or loam upop it in winter, 

 till nothing green was to be seen ; and was more sur- 

 prised afterwards to find the crop recover, and prove a 

 great one. He became famous by his trenching-plough, 

 consisting at first of one plough-body above and before 

 the other, and afterwards taking the form of a single 

 plough preceded by a strong skim coulter. For this 

 invention the Society of Arts awarded him fifty guineas, 

 and the Board of Agriculture presented him with a gold 

 medal. The following is curious in these days of Bedford 

 ploughs and steam cultivation. The Board say, " The 

 offer of fixing the skim-coulter to any plough sent him 

 is a very valuable one, as it takes away the necessity of 

 buying an expensive tool, and requires only that a coulter 

 be sent to Mr. Ducket with the measure of distance from 

 the share to the beam ; he can then fix the skim to it- 

 This tool is perhaps the most important invention in 

 agriculture for the last fifty years." 



The Petersham farm, when he first entered on it, was 

 a hungry sand, and several acres covered with gorse and 

 brambles ; yet his course of husbandry for nineteen years 

 rendered it flourishing in his hands, though his three 

 predecessors had failed on it. Tn describing the manage- 

 ment, a Mr. Robinson, writing to Arthur Young, in 

 1787, says: "As I find that Mr. Ducket's great 

 modesty prevents his standing forth among your corres- 

 pondents, I will attempt to describe his mode of cultiva- 

 tion rather than it shall remain unnoticed in your 

 annals." His course of husbandry was to employ clover, 

 turnips, and rye, as fallow crops, and as intermediate 

 ones between wheat, barley, oats, and rye, changing 

 these occasionally according to the nature of the land ; 

 and he would sometimeg gain thus four or five good 

 tvhlte com crops in luccession. Hit implements were— 



1st, a trench-plough, as above-mentioned, for ploughing 

 two furrows deep, requiring fuur to six horses, according 

 to the depth ; 2nd, a double-furrow plough, ploughing 

 two acres a day ; and 3rd, a drill plough. The double- 

 furrow or two-share plough was not new, as Ellis pub- 

 lished a print of one in 1732. It was a common imple- 

 ment in Warwickshire for many years before Mr. 

 Ducket ; was known in Somersetshire, and afterwards 

 brought into extensive use by Lord Somerville. He in- 

 vented many other tools, and "^oung eulogises him as 

 " certainly one of the great agricultural geniuses jiro- 

 duced in the present reign to carry the husbandry of the 

 kingdom to something of that perfection which manufac- 

 tures have so rapidly attained. Arbuthnot, Ducket, 

 Bakewell ! — three men that were equal to the improve- 

 ment of an empire, had there been as much industry to 

 copy as they exerted talents in setting example. Much 

 has been done in live stock, but tillage has not advanced 

 with equal steps." 



Mr. Ducket gave one deep ploughing with the trench- 

 plough to every other or third crop, with very shallow 

 intermediate ploughings with the two. share plough. By 

 deep ploughing fresh earth is brought up for the 

 nourishment of the plants ; by not repeating it too 

 often the moisture is retained in the soil, being not too 

 loose to draw off the wet, and yet not too hard to impede 

 the penetration of the roots of the plants into it. The 

 shallow ploughings with the two-share plough loosen the 

 soil sufficiently for the seed to take root, until it has 

 strength enough to penetrate into the first broken earth. 

 Arthur Young observes upon this — " There is something 

 very masterly in this practice, and not absolutely re- 

 quiring any other than the trench plough ; for, having 

 once stirred of a sufficient depth, and buried all sponta- 

 neous growth, scuffling alone would do all the rest, till 

 another trench-ploughing became necessary." 



Mr. Ducket thought that frequent ploughings brought 

 up the buried seeds of annual weeds so abundantly, that 

 in a grain crop it was difficult to destroy them ; and 

 that when the land is constantly ploughed to the same 

 depth, the rain water is lodged between the loosened and 

 unmoved earth, where it stagnates and injures, instead 

 of assisting vegetation. He preferred furrows of nine 

 inches breadth ; sowed all crops, except turnips, broad- 

 cast, upon drills opened with his drill-plough ; drilled 

 clover among the corn, and hoed his wheat with a horse- 

 hoe having ten hoes. He had no fixed rotation of crops, 

 thinking that every farmer ought to study what grain 

 will pay him best, which was the only rule he followed, 

 except in bad seasons. All he required was to get a 

 feeding crop between those of grain, and renew his soil 

 by alternate deep and shallow ploughings. He did not 

 object to wheat after oats ; but wheat after barley, or 

 oats after oats, were always weak crops : whereas, barley 

 following barley he made answer well, with proper 

 dressings, for ten years in succession. If land required 

 rest, he laid it down with grass seeds, which prepared it, 

 after proper culture, for producing the grain most called 

 for in the market. He grew wheat three years in guc- 

 cession, sowing turnip-seed broadcast among the grow- 

 ing crop when in full ear ; thus getting an intermediate 



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