THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



539 



year, the intervals being gradually tilled deeper until a 

 depth of 15 to 18 inches is attained. About twenty 

 men are required to dig the fallow stripes of 58 acres, 

 so as to complete the work in seasonable time, the cost 

 being 28s. to 30s. per acre, A light forking is needed 

 in the spring, at 5s. per acre ; and two or three scarify- 

 ings, to keep the surface open— these being executed by 

 a lad and a one-horse implement. The total cost for 

 labour, allowing 3s. a day for a horse, is about £4 10s. 

 per acre, including harvesting. The first field of 7 

 acres, which has had three crops, was originally very 

 foul and undrained, and owing to its bad condition has 

 not yielded more than 3 j quarters per acre. The field 

 of 24 acres, which has had one crop, produced only 3 qrs. 

 per acre — a low result — owing to the wheat having been 

 sown after barley, and the field being over-run with wild 

 oats. But the field of 7 acres, which has borne two 

 crops, produced 5 quarters per acre the first year, and 

 4i quarters per acre the second year. The straw stood 

 up well. 



At present pricea the corn is worth per acre say. .£900 

 Say 1^ tons of straw at 20s., the price iu the dia- 



trict 1 10 



Total returns .. .. .. 10 10 



Expenses, labour, and thrashing, &c., say £5 ; 

 rent, rates, &c., say £2 10s. . . . . . . 7 10 







Nett profit per acre 



£3 



This is at the present low prices, without the application 

 of any manure. The difficulty in the way of an exten- 

 sive adoption of this plan is the large amount of labour 

 required at one time to effect the digging ; and as I 

 shall show, my own method of horse-power cultivation 

 obviates this difficulty, while still bringing enough produce 

 to give a good profit. Before coming to my experience 

 however, I must allude to the trial of Lois-Weedon 

 wheat-growing at Rothamsted, which has told power- 

 fully against the system with some people. Our chemi- 

 cal agriculturist, Mr. Lawes, assisted by Dr. Gilbert, 

 devoted several years of experiment to the subject ; and 

 the somewhat unfortunate results were published in the 

 Royal Agricultural Society's Journal, vol. xvii. But 

 Mr. Lawes there says — " My investigations must not be 

 taken to disprove the general applicability of Mr. 

 Smith's husbandry, because I did not strictly follow his 

 rules, and my management differed considerably from 

 his." The trial was made upon 2 acres of heavy loam, 

 with a subsoil of stiff reddish-yellow clay; and the 

 average yield during four years was only a miserable 7^ 

 bushels up to 15^ bushels per acre. The failure arose 

 partially from the excessively [scanty-seeding of i up 

 to 1 peck per acre, and the undue width of the fallow in- 

 tervals, but principally from the commencement of the 

 system upon a piece of bare fallow in too rich a condi- 

 tion to bring a healthy crop on the system ; the imme- 

 diate trenching 14 or 15 inches deep (thus burying the 

 5 or 6 inches of good soil underneath 8 or 9 inches of 

 raw clay), instead of gradually deepening the staple, and 

 the neglect of grubbing and horse-hoeing the fallow in- 

 tervals, which are the chief means of feeding the grow- 

 ing crop. 



3. I now come to the relation of my own experi- 

 ence. The great practical objection to wheat-growing 

 on the Lois-Weedon system has been the supposed 

 necessity for hand-labour in digging ; which it is impos- 

 sible to employ on a large scale in ordinary business. 

 Jethro Tull used the plough ; his immediate successors 

 did the same ; Mr. Smith also employs the plough be- 

 tween the wide rows of his green crops ; and I deter- 

 mined to see whether the improved horse -implements, 

 now so exact and effective in the hands of every farmer, 

 could not be made to answer the purpose of the 

 labourer's spade. Especially as this point only re- 

 quired to be ascertained in order to make way for the 

 steam-plough and cultivator, which will accomplish the 

 tillage so much more cheaply and efficiently. Permis- 

 sion to try a moderate breadth of wheat on Lois-Weedon 

 principles was readily granted by the agent of the estate 

 on which my experiment is being conducted ; and I 

 mention this because I hopethat other liberal and intelli- 

 gent stewards will promote, rather than do anything to 

 retard, a wide-spread investigation of this novel intro- 

 duction into farm practice. My piece is just 10 acres 

 in extent, low-lying, flat, and naturally wet ; but re- 

 lieved of excessive moisture by a few thorn under-drains. 

 These are common in the Lincolnshire marshes — a dead 

 level district, with no *' fall'* for scouring-out perma- 

 nent pipe-drains ; and they answer tolerably well for 

 several years together, some of those just mentioned 

 still remaining open, though laid 22 years ago. Tiie soil 

 is an alluvial loam ; rather too clayey to have had a 

 good character ; in fact, the field has always been one 

 of the lowest and worst on the farm. The subsoil is 

 adhesive for a loam, and rests at considerable depth upon 

 silt, or anciently-deposited tidal sand. Mr. Smith 

 cautions us against commencing upon ground in too 

 productive a condition ; as the number of rows being 

 less than half what would occupy the land in any usual 

 crops, the wheat is almost sure to be damaged by its 

 own over-luxuriance. In my case, however, the pre- 

 paratory exhausting was miserably overdone ; and in- 

 deed Mr. Smith's caution is only against commencing 

 upon land in a really rich state, as after a dead fallow, 

 or a heavy manuring. On my piece the last fallow had 

 been for turnips in 1850 ; and the last application of 

 any species of manure whatever was for beans in 1854. 

 A heivy wheat-crop on the ordinary plan followed in 

 1855 ; succeeded by barley in 1856 ; and my first year's 

 Lois-Weedon wheat was grown in 1857. Now, to ex- 

 pect a yield of wheat sown after unmanured barley, 

 which itself had followed unmanured wheat, was not 

 reasonable; particularly as, beginning operations too 

 late in the season, I had no time for cleaning one 

 half of the piece ; and the hard clods made such 

 a bad seed-bed that the drillman said to sow three pecks 

 an acre like that was "mocking the land." Still I 

 put faith in Mr. Smith and the Tullian tillage ; and, 

 without an ounce of any manurial dressing, the 10 acres 

 produced within a trifle of 30 quarters, or 24 bushels 

 per acre. Yet this was the third white-straw crop on the 

 same land. The harvest of 1858 gave just 30 bushels per 

 acre of dressed corn. The crop of IP 59 was the largest 



