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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



bring before you on this occasion some extraordinary 

 results of the mechanical tillage of soil, I have no wish 

 to disparage the equally important art of manuring ; 

 and while I hope to show the advantage of growing 

 wheat in annual succession on the same field, I shall not 

 dispute the importance of a judicious rotation of crop- 

 ping, or the value of alternate husbandry. My purpose 

 is simply to describe in a few words (1 ) what is being done 

 at Lois-Weedon, (2) what has been accomplished in other 

 instances, and (3) what are the results and deductions 

 from my own experience ; and I shall then offer (4) a 

 brief explanation of the principles on which Lois- 

 Weedon wheat-growing is founded. The importance of 

 the subject is of course fully recognized and felt by the 

 Farmers' Club ; and, therefore, I need not dwell upon the 

 necessity for some means of augmenting our yield and 

 diminishing expenditure, now that prices are so un- 

 promising, rents and public burdens so heavy and 

 threatening, while guaao is becoming so scarce and 

 dear, and th^ tantalizing town sewage still flowing to 

 waste. Happily, however, the new power of cultivating 

 by the steam-engine has been given to us just as the 

 productiveness of mechanical tillage is being demon- 

 strated on a great scale, and at a time when the expen- 

 siveness of manual labour, and the defective ns well as 

 costly character of horse-power culture, are being gene- 

 rally acknowledged. So that if " wheat-growing on 

 the Lois-Weedon system " should be found advisable, 

 we shall certainly have ample means for carrying it into 

 practice, whether by steam or horse-power. 



1. The Rev. Samuel Smith, the vicar of Loia Wee- 

 don, near Towcester, in Northamptonshire, published 

 his first " Word in Season " ten years ago ; he had then 

 thrashed his third successful harvest, and was warranted 

 in expecting that his extraordinary and profitable experi- 

 ence, in spite of low prices, would be tested at once in 

 every part of the kingdom, seeing that farmers were at 

 that time in a condition of distress, and almost despair- 

 ing of ever being able to grow wheat, or any other crop, 

 remuneratively. But so slow is the progress of a novelty 

 in farm -management, that Mr. Smith has had to plod 

 on, patient and undiscouraged, through all the long sea- 

 sons of sowing, culture, and harvest, during thirteen 

 tedious years, with a success ever increasing, and falsify- 

 ing all the forebodings of incredulous individuals^ both 

 scientific and practical. And still he finds only a few 

 imitations here and there, and comparatively small in- 

 terest taken by the agricultural public in the results of 

 his marvellous cultivation. Strange apathy, surely, on 

 our part ! because Mr. Smith bad nothing to gain by 

 the extension of his mode of husbandry. He reaped a 

 handsome profit himself, and generously invited others 

 to do the same ; but it seems that English farmers have 

 not had the boldness to try the plan in its integrity, or 

 the ingenuity to imitate, by horses and implements, a 

 tillage described to them as performed mainly by the 

 spade, which tool of course could never be employed in 

 general business. I trust that the practical members of 

 this Club will bring this discussion to a really practical 

 issue, and not let the year 1S60 pass away without sow- 

 ing, in various districts, a considerable number of experi- 



mental pieces of the three-row stripes of wheat. I have 

 inspected the astonishing crops on Mr. Smith's little 

 farm more than once, and did the limits of my 

 subject permit, I could tell of winter beans, m sm- 

 gle roios five feet apart, branching so as to meet 

 across the intervals, with stalks bearing 40 or 50 pods 

 each, and yielding over six quarters per acre ; while in 

 the fallow spaces between were raised eight or nuie tons 

 of carrots besides. I could tell of 27 tons per acre of 

 swedes, also grown in single rows 5 feet apart, with 

 their leaves touching across the intervals, and their 

 bulbs flattening each other's sides, though singled with 

 a 12-inch hoe — of prodigious weights of mangold 

 wurzel, and enormous drumhead cabbages 401bs. in 

 weight, cultivated with the same wide spaces. For the 

 iutercultural tillage is indeed a marvellous promoter of 

 the growth of vegetation, the trenching being deep, as 

 well as the manuring heavy, farmyard dung being buried 

 15 inches below the surface, and artificials plentifully 

 supplied. And latterly Mr. Smith has placed the ma- 

 nure along the middle of the fallow intervals, 2i feet 

 from the rows of plants which are to profit by it when 

 they have matured their growth, and spread out their 

 network of root-fibres like spider's webs for some feet 

 on all sides. But our business is with the wheat crops, 

 which are not manured, for the simple reason that they 

 are quite heavy enough to stand their ground as it is ; 

 though both corn and straw are abstracted every year 

 without any manurial return. A somewhat unexpected 

 circumstance this, that wheat will answer the call of 

 judicious deep and surface tillage without asking for 

 guano or nitrate, or even the " good old stuff/' while 

 beans, and roots, and green crops want, and will respond 

 handsomely to, any amount of both tillage and manur- 

 ing. Perhaps a hint may be drawn from this by 

 managers of labourers' allotments. Mr. Smith's land 

 is just what his publications have told you it is : one 

 field is the ordinary heavy wheat soil of the oolite for- 

 mation, generally rented at not more than 30s. an acre ; 

 the four acres of lighter soil have chiefly a gravelly sub- 

 soil. The same qualities of land exist over tens of 

 thousands of acres; and, undoubtedly, any tolerably 

 fair wheat land may be brought by the same means to a 

 similarly fertile condition. I said that the wheat land 

 has not been manured; but the light piece has had a 

 moderate dressing of clay, because this contains in 

 abundance, and is able to acquire in abundance, the 

 pabulum on which the wheat plants feed. This dressing 

 wa3 not expensive, and has lasted well for a good many 

 years. Many people feared that when Mr. Smith ceased 

 to deepen his staple his crops would cease to flourish ; 

 in fact, that he was exhausting the goodness of each ad- 

 ditional inch of subsoil as fast as it was brought into 

 play by the trenching-tool. What is the fact ? On the 

 light land dressed with clay the fork has never pene- 

 trated below 13 inches, yet the average yield for nine 

 years is about 34 bushels per acre. The history of the 

 clay piece is as follows : Fifteen years ago it was in 

 grass, which was pared and taken off the land : it was 

 then ploughed the full depth of the 5 -inch staple for 

 oats, followed hj vetches After this came the first 



