122 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



XVI. SPADE HUSBANDRY. 



The spade husbandry, to which I have already referred, has 

 been undertaken by several gentlemen, in England, on a some 

 what extended scale, for the purpose of giving employment to a 

 numerous population in the vicinity of some large towns, suffer 

 ing for want of the means, or the opportunity, of earning a 

 subsistence. In one case, the extent cultivated by the spade has 

 been fifty acres j in two other cases, over two hundred acres 

 each ; and the crops produced have been the same as in other 

 field cultivation with the plough ; such as turnips, cabbages, beets, 

 potatoes, barley, clover, and artificial grasses, oats, beans, peas, 

 tares, and wheat. The crops have been cultivated at not an 

 unreasonable expense, and the yield has been fully remunerating. 

 Oats have given at the rate of forty and fifty bushels per acre, 

 and, indeed, very much more ; and wheat thirty, thirty-two, and 

 forty bushels. The instrument found by experience best for 

 use has been a three-pronged fork, fourteen inches in depth, 

 and seven and aTnalf inches in width. By this instrument the 

 ground has been stirred to the full depth of the prongs of the 

 fork, but only about nine or ten inches of the soil have been 

 taken out and inverted.* 



The principle upon which this practice is recommended is the 

 same with that of subsoil ploughing. The object desired is to 

 loosen the substratum or under soil, so that, in the first place, all 

 superfluous water may be drained off; in the second place, that 

 the soil may be brought into a finer tilth, and rendered more 

 permeable to the roots of the plants, in order that they may find 

 the easier access to the nourishment which they draw from the 

 soil ; and in the next place, that it may become enlivened, if the 



* Mr. Cruttenden has contrived a fork with a sharp blade of about 

 an inch in width, which seemed an improvement on the common form, 

 and which he deemed very useful. The annexed engraving exhibits 

 the shape of the implement. The blade, like a spade, cuts off the roots 

 with which it comes in contact, and the earth, when lifted, becomes 

 broken by falling through the open spaces between the prongs, com 

 bining the advantages both of a spade and a fork. 



