310 Machine for laying Land level. 



the waste of time, or to the ease of cattle in the act of 

 ploughing, in order to get rid of crooked or unequal ridges 

 without either a summer fallow by cross ploughingj or else 

 by frequent repetitions of ploughing in the wuiter and 

 spring, which the humidity of our climate will not allow 

 in every kind of soil. 



I reduced fourteen acres of land last spring to a perfect 

 level, where the crowns of the ridges were above two feet 

 higher than the furrows, and where they were crooked and 

 of unequal breadths. Six acres of this is now under tur- 

 nips, a crop that gives sufficient time to ameliorate the 

 under strata of soil that had perhaps never before been ex- 

 posed to the influence of the sun and air; and by the adop- 

 tion of the Northun)berland mode of powing that root on 

 dunged drills, it is almost immaterial where the upper stra- 

 tum is, provided the seed vegetates, as it soon strikes into 

 the manure, and rapidly flourishes. 



My chief success, however, has been upon a field of 

 eight acres, which lay in the unprofitable state already de- 

 scribed. This land, which is a deep clay, and which had 

 produced a crop of wheat from an old lay scul the former 

 year without any manute, was winter ploughed, and lay in 

 that state until the leveller was introduced the first dry 

 weather in April. It was preceded by iv.'o horse ploughs, 

 taking perhaps a square of an acre at once : these loosened 

 the soil the depth of a common furrow, and twice the breadth 

 across the ridges. The leveller followed, drawn by two 

 oxen and two horses, with a man at each handle, to press 

 it down where the height is to be removed, and to lift i\p 

 the body by the handles where it is to be discharged. Thui 

 four men, one driver, and eight head of cattle, will more 

 eflectually level from half an acre to three roods in one day, 

 according as the earth is light or heavy, than sixty or eighty 

 men would accomplish with barrows and shovels, &c., 

 even with the assistance of a plough. In sandy ground, 

 where the depth of one furrow will bring all to a level, as 

 much will of course be done in one day as two ploughs 

 can cover; but my ground required to be gone over several 

 times. After this field was levelled, the backs of the ridges, 

 as they are termed, v;hich were stripped of their vegetable 

 mould, v^ere ploughed up, the furrows not requirmg it. 

 Tliey were also harrou'ed, and the fi"cld copiously manure^ 

 with lime compost; harrowed in, and broke into nine-feet 

 ridges, peifectly straight, in order to introduce Duckit's 

 (drill. It was sown under furrow, broad- cast, the last of it not 

 until the I3lh of May, and was cut down a reasonable crop 

 3 ' the 



