334 -WEEDS OF AGllICULTLRE. 



It is true, however, that certain constituted soils are more 

 obnoxious to particular kinds of weeds than to others; and, 

 vice versa, also that the same proportion of labour, skill, and 

 attention, which, when employed, shall keep clean and in 

 oood heart one kind of soil, shall not be found adequate to 

 produce the same effects of clean and perfect husbandry on 

 another soil differently constituted, but that increased pre- 

 caution and industry are required to produce the same effects. 

 Precaution here is of great importance, for if the seed-corn 

 be not clean, the crop will be foul, whatever care may have 

 been employed on the land ; on the other hand, should the 

 land itself be clean, and the seed-corn hkewise, yet, if the 

 hedoe-rows are neglected, and suffered to harbour these 

 weeds, the evil will be found only lessened in a degree, not 

 removed. 



To extirpate these weeds, therefore, clean corn-seed must 

 be used, not a single plant of these weeds suffered to perfect 

 seed in the hedge-rows, and a judicious rotation of crops 

 adopted, so as to admit of the unsparing use of the horse- 

 hoe, as well as of the hand in weeding; by which means, 

 these noxious and disgraceful pests of corn-fields will be 

 overcome, and banished fiom the soil. 



The corn-poppy particularly accumulates upon gravelly 

 soils of low quality, also on dry sandy soils, and generally 

 on all dry and shallow lands which are over-cropped and 

 neolected. But much better soils, as loamy gravel, &c. are 

 infested with it, only here the crops are generally good 

 enough to keep it under; and being less abundant, it is 

 much easier subdued by weeding. But the corn-poppy is 

 never so triumphant as in a hot and dry season, in which 

 case, raanv fields, which should have been corn, are wholly 

 covered with it. The misfortune, and that which is borne 

 with wonderful patience by old-fashioned farmers, is, that 

 such a prodigious increase of seeds is added to the soil with 

 every crop. It seems astonishing that the farmers do not 

 think it time now to begin to destroy, rather than propagate 

 them. But they probably reflect that the land is as full of 

 seeds as it can be, or that a bigger crop of the weeds than 



