eam 
82 
clover getting too forward, by being sown at the season 
of seeding wheat. Yet.a comparison with that in the 
same field not plaistered, sufliciently shewed the effects 
of the gypsum. I have not repeated this mode of 
sowing clover, which I then practised to avoid the loss 
I had sustained from late frosts, which sometimes de- 
stroy the young clover, sown on wheat in the winter. 
Some farmers object to sowing plaister on the clo- 
yer sown on winter grain, while the grain is in the 
ground ;(g/ and do not strew the plaister till the next ~ 
season. Perhaps this may be best. But I have met 
with no loss by strewing the plaister on the clover and 
wheat, when the clover seed was sown on the wheat in 
February. On the contrary, in a dry spring, it has 
saved my young clover, and forwarded the grass, so as 
to enable me to mow a tolerable crop in the autumn 
next after the wheat harvest, which, being cut with the 
stubble, I have given, in the winter, to dry cattle. What 
they rejected, increased my dung heap. It has been, 
however, most common with me, to sow the plaister in 
the spring next succeeding the grain harvest.* 
(g) It is an opinion, perhaps founded in prejudice, among 
some farmers, that its quality of attracting moisture, assists 
in producing mi/dew. I have had fields plaistered, and those 
which were not, equally mildewed, and equally ‘ree from it, 
in the same seasons, according as the mildew prevailed or 
not, in the country surrounding my farms. 
* This is now, and haslong been, my practice. I have found 
sowing the plaister on the cloyer and wheat too hazardous. 
: 1; i". 
September, 1810. 
& 
