On the Culiure of Turnips. 139 



expensive spring-ploughing without tares. But even this is only 

 half the benefit which this system confers ; for^ by obtaining such 

 a redundancv of green food by the latter end of April and all 

 May, the man who follows the tare system is enabled to hain, 

 during May, all his summer pastures for his sheep ; which, by 

 having such a provisio?i in tares, he may bite as closely as he 

 pleases, without any reserve, during all March and April, until 

 his sheep go to tares : thus will every man be enabled to enlarge 

 his flock, on this system, to an extent of which no one, who has 

 not tried it, can have anv conception; and thus will he be enabled 

 to apply all his farm-yard and stable dung to his Swedes, his 

 potatoes, and, above all, to his pasture land ; the ability to do 

 which, from the high condition of the tillage land, by means of 

 green crops and good tilth, not needing the dung, I consider to 

 be the highest pinnacle on which any man can stand in the art of 

 agriculture. 



Again, the man who pursues the tare system, and can apply a 

 large portion of his dung to his pasture land, will have grass on 

 such manured pasture land, by winter haining the same, that 

 shall rival in the month of March any water-meadow in the king- 

 dom in verdure, and surpass it in proof for his couples : this en- 

 ables him to maintain a larger flock than he could do on any 

 other system, and that will enable him, by folding his lands, when 

 in fallow for wheat after clover, in addition to the consumption 

 of so many green crops on his tillage lands, to bring those to 

 equal fertilitv, and superior cleanliness, to w?iat he can do by any 

 other method, even if he had the manure of the metropolis at 

 command for his tillage lands. In exact proportion, therefore, 

 as every agriculturist approaches to, or recedes from, the tare 

 system, reported to be pursued in the county of Middlesex, and 

 his ability to apply a great portion of his dung to his pasture 

 lands, I consider him to be in the infancy, youth, or manhood 

 of agriculture; and that those farmers, I will not call them agri- 

 culturists, who continue to apply farm-yard or stable dung as 

 a dressing for their wheat fallows, whicli many do at this day, 

 are onlv begotten, and not yet born to the light of agriculture. 



Having cast so strong u reflection on so numerous a body of 

 men as still contiime, in variaus parts of the kingdom, to apply 

 their farm-yard and stable dung to their wheat fallows, it seems 

 incumbent on me to state the reasons of my dissent froni this 

 practice. This I will do in very few words: All dung applied 

 to fallows nmst generate weeds, and, therefore, it ought imiver- 

 sally to be applied on lands of all dcscrii)tions immediately pre- 

 ceding a green crop, by which, and the hoc, they may be well 

 subdued, before we trust a crop of grain to a competition with 

 weeds, on the same land. 



S 2 Dinig 



