0(5 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



We then go to the cider-mill and the sheds to look at 

 some implements ; next to the ground, at some distance, 

 where the labourers are all at work ridging for turnips, 

 (Swedes, or Ruta-baga.) The larger pdrt of the field is 

 already planted, and in some other fields the young plants 

 are coming up. The crop of the farm this year is to be 

 grown on one hundred acres, the whole area of the farm 

 being less than three hundred. 



The soil of this field is a fine, light, pliable loam. It has 

 been the year previous in wheat; the stubble was turned 

 under soon after harvest with a skim-coulter-plough, an instru 

 ment that pairs off the surface before the mould-board of the 

 plough and throws it first to the bottom of the furrow : the 

 operation may be described as a superficial trench-ploughing ; 

 cross-ploughed and scarified again the same season with one 

 of the instruments described at page 182, Vol. I. In the 

 spring, ploughed again, (eight inches deep,) harrowed fine and 

 smooth, thrown into ridges with double mould-board plough, 

 rolled, and finally drilled with a two-horse machine that 

 deposits and covers manure and seed together. The manure 

 is ground bones, costing in Hereford 60^ cents a bushel, 

 mixed with sifted coal-ashes. The expense of this application 

 is about $12 an acre, but it must be remembered that the 

 ground is already in high condition. The drills are thirty 

 inches apart. The crop is principally used to fatten sheep, of 

 which 500 are kept on the farm ; the breed, Cotswold and 

 Leicester. 



We next went to a paddock in which were six Cotswold 

 &quot; tups,&quot; (bucks,) as handsome sheep (of their kind) as I ever 

 saw. One of them I caught and measured : girth behind the 

 shoulders, exactly five feet ; length from muzzle to tail, four 

 feet and eleven inches. 



Then to the wheat, of which there was also about one 



