318 



Time of Entry on Farms. 



session at Michaelmas is, in fact, when February arrives, in the 

 position of one who has been long resident upon the ground. 

 He is on terms with his land, and has the satisfaction of being a 

 year sooner in the thick of the fight. 



The only. substantial argument in favour of an entire entry in 

 spring, is the fact that a farmer can then start loith less capital : 

 that he will have quicker returns, and be enabled to drift on to 

 the winter, when, if he be enterprising, he will undertake what I 

 have mentioned above as fitting improvements. One year's 

 advantage of those improvements he will, however, lose by the 

 side of a farmer of equal enterprise who has had entire entry in 

 the autumn. 



The most convenient mode of entry for farmers generally is, 

 we repeat, to the houses and grass at Whit-Sunday, and to the 

 land at the separation of the crop from the ground.* 



The contents of dung-heaps, clay-heaps, &c., are easily calcu- 

 lated thus : — 



1. Find the mean area, i.e. J the sum of the area of the top and 



the area of the ha.se. 



2. Find the mean depth, i.e. the sum of several depths divided hy 



the number of the depths taken. 

 The mean area multiplied hy the mean depth will give the solid contents. 



In the case of dung-heaps, when the base is rectangular, the 

 area is easily found by multiplying the length and the breadth 

 together, and the solid contents are found thus : — 



Fie. 1. 



A 



D 



P C 



Note. X means midtiplieil into. 



(1.) If the form be as in Fig. 1, where the breadth A C and the length C D 

 are known : 

 The contents of the heap = -J A C X B P X C D, in cubic yards. 



* There is one rather important point connected with the Michaelmas entry 

 not specially adverted to by the avithor. It is, that at that season of the year 

 the land tells the tale of its productive powers, and of its condition in point 

 of cleanness, in a waj' which the practised eye cannot very well mistake, or be 

 misled in. The grain is all seen in stack, and was probably seen by the in-comer 

 on the ground : the stubbles are open to the eye, and between harvest time and 

 Michaelmas-day exhibit their state and temlcnci/ in reference to the weed-crop, if 

 any. In fact every crop is off the ground ; the plough and the harrow have as 

 yet concealed nothing, and the farm is, so to speak, naked to inspection. The 

 argument of less capital required for the spring entry is clearly temporary and 

 fallacious, and, rightly viewed, is an argument against it. — C. W. H, 



