426 Notes, Communications and Reviews. 



In order to facilitate the ploughing up of the stubble 

 immediately after the harvest, so essential in dry farming and 

 so important everywhere, Campbell, in America, is trying at the 

 present time to combine the disc harrow with the reaping 

 machine. M. Safary notes this with approval, and suggests a 

 machine in which the reaping machinery should be worked 

 by a gasoline motor, the horses simply furnishing the tractive 

 power. 



When th6 work on the stubble is done immediately after 

 the harvest, it is seldom that what the French aptly call 

 " before winter work " (travaux d'avant-hiver) cannot be carried 

 out in autumn. This work, M. Hitier says, is the best way of 

 storing up water for the succeeding dry season. 



M. de Kerpely, as the result of his experiments, tells us 

 that the land worked in autumn produced 2^ tons per acre 

 more beetroot than did the unworked part, and this although 

 abundant rain had fallen in May and June. This great 

 difference he attributes to rain-water failing to penetrate 

 into the unworked land. Other experiments have shown the 

 differences in moisture per acre, between stubble-worked and 

 unworked land, to be 60,000 gallons on March 6 ; 72,600 on 

 May 6 ; 95,700 on June 7 ; and 84,700 on June 28. He 

 also points out that not only has th'^ worked land a great 

 superiority in the amount of moisture it holds, but that the 

 plants on it can utilise this moisture much more readily than 

 can plants on the unworked land. All this confirms Deherain's 

 saying that the true object of working the land in autumn is to 

 lay up reserves of moisture. 



Such being the case, it may be asked why methods of work- 

 ing the stubble and of tillage before winter, as carried out in 

 the beetroot and other intensive farms of the north of France, 

 are so little known elsewhere. It is mostly for want of time 

 that they are neglected, though, as at the moment of writing, in 

 some years the land is too hard after sunny weather and high 

 winds. In one case, we are told, extra yokes of oxen are kept 

 for the work. 



In the Aisne Department of France co-operative societies 

 for steam cultivation have been started, and the Oise Depart- 

 ment is following suit. The heavy work is paid for at the rate 

 of \1. 6s. an acre. This seems high compared to the cost of 

 work done by oxen, but, as a first-rate farmer pointed out, one 

 should take into account the result as well as the cost of work. 

 He says, "If, thanks to steam cultivation, I can work all 

 my beetroot land before tlie winter, I can get 4 to 5 tons 

 more than I otherwise should, and the 16,s. to 24.s. spent on 

 steam cultivatioti result actually in a very considerable profit." 

 Epitomised and translated by R. J. M. 



