172 Progress of Agricultural Knowledge 



accumulates ; yet when the favourable moment arrives, in which 

 all the work must be done at once, he requires more horses for 

 each plough than the light-land farmer, while he has less time 

 for doing that work. In a wet autumn he must sow his wheat 

 too late ; perhaps not sow it at all. If he does sow wheat, and 

 the rain continues, the seed sometimes rots in the ground ; or if 

 it has come up well, winter soaks the hollows thoroughly, if it 

 does not fill them with standing water ; and in spring, on each 

 side of the furrow, large blanks are seen in the crop.* 



In fact a perpetual struggle is going on between the plough- 

 man with his horses on one side, who endeavours to reduce this 

 stubborn clay into mould, and the rains which render it solid again. 

 There are some such farms, so hard in dry weather, so tough in 

 their best state of moderate moisture, so deep and impassable in 

 wet winters, so cold and backward in spring — I have one such 

 farm myself — that farmers who are accustomed to warm, sound 

 land, fit at all times for stock and for labour, say they would not 

 occupy such ground free of rent. No one who knows the effect 

 of thorough-draining can see without regret such farms, and the 

 starveling crops which they bear. If the occupier be a bad 

 farmer, his own circumstances are probably in proportion to the 

 poverty of his land ; if a good one, half his exertions are lost, and 

 he does not obtain the fair reward of his industry and enterprise. 

 If I were a working- farmer, nothing would induce me to enter 

 on a cold wet farm, unless there were a fair prospect of its being 

 drained, either with my own money under a long lease, or with 

 the aid of my landlord. Our Society has wisely abstained from 

 entering into questions between landlords and tenants ; and I will 

 therefore merely mention that sometimes in Scotland, on a lease 

 for nineteen years, the tenant pays for the draining himself; some- 

 times the landlord finds materials, and the tenant the labour, or 

 the landlord pays for the whole, receiving interest for his outlay. 

 The landlord, however, may not find it convenient to make heavy 

 advances over a large property ; but, as Lord Stanley recom- 

 mended, he may borrow the money for such a purpose. In dis- 

 tricts, indeed, where under-draining is still unknown, the tenant 

 may not be aware of its advantage, and therefore may not meet 

 his views. In that case a few fields may be drained at first, in 

 order to prove the advantage ; or if a poor wet farm should fall in, 

 it may be taken in hand and reclaimed, which is mora useful and 



* I have also heard from a farmer on a very stiff clay that the wetter the 

 winter the more rain is required on such land by the wheat in the following 

 summer, the more consequently it suffers in a season of drought. The rea- 

 son, I think, must be this, that the water lodged in winter condenses the 

 soil, destroying the looseness which the plough had produced in it, and thus 

 rendering it when dry once more a close clay, through which the roots of the 

 plant cannot make their way, and which moderate summer rains cannot 

 penetrate ; but this is not generally applicable to clay lands. 



