THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



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texture as regards soil— that is, neither remarkably stifif, 

 and hence difficult to work, nor much the reverse — shall 

 be assumed. Such a soil, a pair of good horses, drawing 

 a well-constructed plough, will turn over, at the rate of 

 one acre a day of two yokings of 5 hours each. To do 

 this, we shall compute that the animals must step out at 

 the rate of one mile an hour. But, on the other hand, 

 it is certain that to keep up this pace unintermittently 

 would be impossible without injury to the team; and 

 accordingly the practice of frequent rests is everywhere 

 resorted to ; the act of turning at the end ridge being 

 the opportunity usually chosen for the purpose. But 

 whatever seeming propriety there may be in this arrange- 

 ment, the end ridge may nevertheless be, and often is, 

 an extremely improper spot at which to halt ; for this 

 reason — that the true prognostic for pulling up, is on the 

 animals' respiration betokening distress ; because by 

 universal assent it is allowed that every step continued 

 after the stage of excitement of their muscular system, in- 

 dicated by laborious breathing, has set in, is a wasteful 

 overdraught on their physical powers ; hence it follows 

 that to push on the animals after they are blown, simply 

 to reach the end of the furrow, is alike irrational and inju- 

 rious. Yet to stop midway would, on various ac- 

 counts, be a very slovenly and inexpedient alternative; 

 and, therefore, the necessary induction from this 

 practical reasoning is, that every judicious agriculturist, 

 engaged in re-forming the subdivisions of his farm, 

 ought to give to each a dimension along the line of 

 ploughing, such as will — taking texture of soil and decli- 

 vity, if any, into account — make the act of turning just 

 anticipate the incipient stage of over-continued exertion 

 in the horses, and no more. Accordingly, under ordi- 

 nary circumstances, from 270 to 300 yards have by good 

 authorities been pronounced a very expedient length of 

 ridge. But may not the field, very fitly, be made of only 

 half the length here argued for, and thus cause the rest- 

 ing to occur at the termination of each bout or second 

 furrow ? Here, however, an objection on the score of 

 waste of both land and time occurs ; for, first, a field 

 short in the direction of the ridge involves a dis- 

 proportionate excess of comparatively unproductive 

 forehead ; hence loss of land. Secondly, although the 

 time occupied in turning the team even, without stopping 

 to breathe, may seem unimportant, taken individually, i^ 

 reality it amounts in the aggregate to a very considera- 

 ble share of the day's work. To demonstrate this, let us 

 take, for_instance, a field extending to the everyway ex- 

 pedient length of 274 yards between end-ridge and end- 

 ridge, and ploughed in furrow-slices of eight inches each. 

 According to these dimensions, 79 farrows must be 

 laid over to complete an acre. Hence, in the ploughing 

 of a single acre, the horses, plough, and man must go 

 through the unproductive process of turning on the fore- 

 head, head-ridge, or end-ridge (all synonymous terms) 

 the same number of times as there are furrows. Now, 

 it has been determined by tentative experiment (Sin- 

 clair's Code of Agriculture, p. 306) that apart from 

 rests, a minute of time is consumed between the 

 unearthing of the plough at the extremity of 

 one furrow, and the again earthing it at the 



commencement of the next; and thus, in the work- 

 ing of each acre, upwards of an hour and a quarter 

 (or, exactly 79 minutes) are spent in what in itself is an 

 absolutely unprofitable operation. It follows, therefore, 

 that if the ridges were no more than the half of 274 

 yards in length, the time spent in turning would be 

 twice as great ; and thus by an easy eff'ort of computa- 

 tion, the cultural unthriftiness of small arable fields is 

 manifestly exposed. By a very experienced land- 

 surveyor and able agricultural writer, it has been calcu- 

 lated that, on an average, the farm enclosures through- 

 out England do not exceed nine acres each. Assuming, 

 then, this area to be reduced to the form of an exact 

 square, the length of ridge would only be 210 yards, 

 giving rise to 945 turnings in the laying out of the fur- 

 rows of the entire nine acres. At the rate of one minute 

 lost at every turning, this gives ISJ hours squandered in 

 the operation ; whereas, assuming the case of a field of 

 300 yards each way, and containing nearly^lO acres, the 

 turnings would be only 405 more than in the other of 9 

 acres. As respects saving of land in the matter of head- 

 ridges, the relations of these two instances stand thus : 

 In the field of nine acres the two foreheads, taking 

 each at 15 feet in breadth, would be 2,100 yards ; and 

 in that of 19 acres, only 900 more. 



Having thus arrived at certain conclusions respecting 

 what ought to be the length along the strike of ridge, 

 let us next reason shortly what should be the width 

 across. Here the operation of cross-ploughing comes 

 to be the guide ; and, inasmuch as this implies the 

 working of loose land already turned over, a consider- 

 ably greater length of furrow may be adopted. Now 

 we have seen that a field 300 yards in length along the 

 ridge, and 144 yards in width, gives an area of 9 acres. 

 Again, an area 30O yards square would contain 18 J 

 acres. But by throwing an inclosure into a parallelo- 

 gram 300 yards along the ridges, and 400 yards the 

 other way, a space would be embraced of 25 acres, and 

 a cross-furrow obtained neither more nor less in stretch 

 than what a good team may turn over without incon- 

 venience. 



At this point, let us next see how good agricultural 

 authorities have expressed themselves on the subject 

 matter in hand : ' ' When a whole farm is divided into fields 

 of various sizes, it is difficult to form a plan so as to suit 

 a regular rotation of crops, or to keeping accurate ac- 

 counts; whereas, by having the fields in general of a large 

 size, the whole strength of a farm and the whole attention 

 of the farmer are directed to one point, while an emula- 

 tion is excited among the ploughmen, when they are thus 

 placed in circumstances which admit their work to 

 be compared" (Sinclair's " Code of Agriculture," as 

 cited in Loudon's "Cyclopedia of Agricultitre," p. 

 687). *' If fields are of a regular shape, and the ridges 

 of a proper length, five ploughs may do as much as six 

 in fields of a small size and of an irregular shape ; while 

 every other branch of labour (such as dunging, sowing, 

 harrowing, reaping, and carrying in the harvest) can be 

 executed, though not altogether, yet nearly, in the same 

 proportion" (art. " Agriculture," Encyc. Brit., vol. i,, 

 p. 41, and Supplement). Again: «' It must be borne 



