378 On Spade Husbandry. 
subsoil by the horses’ feet, together with the action of the irom 
bottom of the plough, not having at first the miserable effect of 
making the bottom of the worked ground hard and firm, like a 
turnpike road; the continued successive use of the plough, how- 
ever, soon showed the bad effect, in the diminished health and 
vigour of the trees, &c. Fortunately this observation was made 
when men for spade work were easier to be obtained, than at 
the period when the use of the plough was adopted, and in part 
then, but entirely since, I have laid it aside in all my nursery 
operations. 
In the use of the spade J produce a depth of well-worked earth 
of nine to ten inches, which is more than twice that of the plough, 
as used in the counties of Durham and Northumberland; and 
instead of the hardened level bottom, not easily, if at all, pene- 
trable, in our strong clayey subsoils, by either superfluous mois- 
ture, or the roots of plants, I obtain a loose broken bottom, 
conceived to be a particularly favourable cireumstance in such 
soils. 
Soon after, or rather during the time that my practice was 
changing from the use of the plough to that of the spade, I re- 
ceived a letter from a gentleman of great respectability, and ae- 
eurate observation, in Yorkshire, expressing himself strongly im- 
pressed with an opinion, that if garden culture with the spade 
were introduced into farming, very great addition might be 
made to the produce of the said land as worked by the plough ; 
and that the full energies of the land will never be called forth 
till the spade is made to supersede the plough; asking for my 
opinion and any observations I might have made on the subject, 
detailing, at the same time, the particulars of an experiment in 
wheat with spade culture, which had been made a good many 
years before, at Nottingham, the produce of which was beyond 
all example. This information, so strongly corroborating my 
own observations, confirmed me in my practice of the use of the 
spade for nursery purposes, and stimulated me to the extension of 
it, and to the making of experiments of the same kind. The 
Nottingham experiment having been made with plants of wheat 
raised upon garden beds, and from thence transplanted into 
lines, [ began with an adoption of the same mode; I sowed the 
wheat in beds in the month of August, and transplanted the 
same in September and October,—the distance of the lines from 
each other was, in one experiment, nine, and in another twelve 
_ inches—placing, in both cases, twelve plants per yard in the lines. 
These experiments I made two successive years, and the least 
_ produce was fifty-two bushels, and the greatest sixtv bushels, 
Winchester, peracre. ‘The quantity of ground under these expe- 
riments was half an acre each year, which I think may be con- 
sidered 
