434 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



the air and the frost. The field, when done in the best possible 

 manner, as it often is, presents a beautiful example of artistical 

 skill. In the springing, preparatory to after cultivation, the whole 

 is broken up and levelled, by reversing the operation. I am not 

 able to see any decided advantage which this mode has over the 

 regular ploughing of the whole field at once, except in the saving 

 of time, and this saving is at the expense of only two thirds of 

 the land being ploughed. 



3. LAYING IN BEDS, OR STITCHES. There is another mode of 

 ploughing, or rather of laying the land, which prevails in Eng 

 land and Scotland to a great extent, and is nearly universal upon 

 low and wet soils ; that is, the practice of laying the land in 

 beds, or what are here commonly called stetches. In this case, 

 a ridge is formed in the centre, by laying two furrows back to 

 back, and then ploughing up to them on each side, until a suf 

 ficient land is gone over to form a bed. These beds vary much 

 in width, from five to eighteen and thirty-six feet. In some 

 cases, under a system of ploughing which is called two in and 

 two out, four beds are formed into one bed, of perhaps sixty feet 

 in breadth. In Essex county, on the lowlands, they are only 

 five feet in width. An open furrow is of course left for the 

 water to flow off, which runs down the sides of the beds. The 

 object is to lay the land dry ; but it is obvious there is a loss of 

 land in the furrows, and, while there is a constant accumulation 

 of rich soil on the centre of the bed, the mould must gradually 

 become thinner as you approach the furrow, and the furrow is 

 always indicated by an absence of product, or the growth of 

 coarse and worthless grasses. 



These ridges, in English cultivation, are seldom altered, but 

 (though often, far from being bounded by a straight, are bounded 

 by a winding or crooked furrow) remain the same as they have 

 been doubtless for a century. Indeed, they are in many places 

 regarded with a kind of superstition, as though the land would 

 lose its fertility if they were broken in upon ; and some writers 

 on English husbandry assert that water flows better in these 

 winding gutters than it would in straight furrows, which is cer 

 tainly a new philosophy. Though, where they are not properly 

 ploughed, there is liable to be a continual accumulation towards 

 the centre, yet I cannot say that I have ever seen so great an 



