126 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



1. RESULTS or SUBSOILING AND DRAINING. The improve 

 ments effected by the process of thorough-draining and subsoil- 

 ing have been most remarkable. The manager of the farm of 

 Sir Robert Peel says, &quot; that he can confidently state, that the crop 

 of turnips, after the above treatment, was four times the quantity 

 in weight ever produced in the same field at any previous time.&quot; 

 Mr. Smith says, in an early treatise on this subject, that which 

 has been fully confirmed by subsequent experience, that, &quot;when 

 land has been thoroughly drained, deeply wrought, and well 

 manured, the most unpromising, sterile soil becomes a deep, rich 

 loam, rivalling in fertility the best natural land in the country, 

 and from being fitted for raising only scanty crops of common 

 oats, will bear good crops of from 32 to 48 bushels of wheat, 30 

 to 40 bushels of beans, 40 to 60 bushels of barley, and from 48 

 to 70 bushels of early oats, per statute acre, besides potatoes, 

 turnips, mangel-wurzel, and carrot, as green crops, and which 

 all good agriculturists know are the abundant producers of the 

 best manure. It is hardly possible to estimate all the advantages 

 of dry and deep land. Every operation in husbandry is thereby 

 facilitated and cheapened ; less seed and less manure produce a 

 full effect ; the chances of a good and early preparation for sowing 

 are greatly increased a matter of great importance in a preca 

 rious climate ; and there can be no doubt that even the climate 

 itself will be much improved by the general prevalence of dry 

 land.&quot; 



Mr. Smith further remarks upon the improvement of the 

 soil upon his own highly-cultivated and conditioned farm 

 at Doune. which I had the great pleasure of inspecting, that, 

 u when he commenced these operations upon his own farm, on a 

 part of it he had not more than from four to four and a half 

 inches of surface soil ; but having applied the system of thorough 

 draining to it, and used the subsoil-plough, he can now turn up 

 more than sixteen inches of good soil, and it is not more than 

 twenty years since he began.&quot; 



2. FAILURES IN SUBSOILING IN ADHESIVE AND HEAVY SOILS. 

 I cannot say that this process within my observation has been 

 without failures. Mr. Swarfield, the intelligent manager of the 

 beautiful estate at Chatsworth, informed me that it had not been 



