QUANTITY OF SEED. 109 



it is here called, by leesing, riot infrequently collect four or five 

 bushels of grain. I have met with instances, where even more 

 has been collected. Such are the fruits of the most exact 

 frugality. 



XIV. QUANTITY OF SEED. 



The quantity of seed proper to be sown has been a subject of 

 much debate. There may be an excess : and an error may be 

 committed by sowing too small a quantity. An intelligent 

 farmer makes the following calculation of the advantage and 

 saving which would come to the country, if, instead of sowing 

 two and a half bushels of seed to the acre, it should be found, as 

 he maintains from his own practice and experience, it is sufficient 

 to sow one bushel to the acre. 



Allowing,&quot; he says, &quot; that, upon a fair calculation, 7,085,370 

 acres are annually sown in the kingdom, in wheat, at the rate of 

 two and a half bushels per acre, which is the ordinary allowance, 

 there would be required 2,214,178 quarters (eight bushels per 

 quarter) for seed. But to sow one bushel per acre, only 885,671 

 quarters would be required ; so that the annual saving of seed 

 would be 10,628,056 bushels, or 5,901,192 bushels more than 

 the average importation of foreign corn the last fourteen years. 

 Though I merely take the instance of wheat, I am at the same 

 time proving what may be done with all other corn ; for the 

 saving of seed, which I practise, is in equal proportions with all 

 other kinds of grain, and with equal success.&quot; 



The testimony of this farmer is so important that I shall be 

 excused for speaking more at large on this subject. This gentle 

 man has been a practical farmer of more than seven hundred 

 acres of highly-rented, poor land ; and what he recommends, he 

 says, he has long and successfully practised that he grows crops 

 much larger than the general average, and on soils of inferior 

 description, and with less than the ordinary expenditure of labor 

 and manure. 



I will allow him to speak for himself; and the results with 

 him, and the account of the proportion of seed for an acre used at 

 Horsham, in the experiment which I have detailed above, afford 

 10 



