128 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



clayey land cannot be permanently improved by subsoil- 

 ploughing.&quot; 



I have felt bound to give these statements of intelligent prac 

 tical farmers, though I might show many opposite results, which 

 would lead one to suppose that there may have been something 

 peculiar in the execution of the work. The same result has 

 followed to a degree at Wimpole, the estate of the Earl of 

 Hardwick3, a farm, which, in many respects, for careful manage 

 ment, and especially for the admirable arrangement and order 

 observed in every thing connected with the farm premises, is not 

 surpassed by any which has come under my observation. 



It may, however, be considered as to a degree settled, that the 

 very strong and adhesive clays in the application of this system 

 of thorough-draining and subsoiling are to be looked at with a 

 good deal of distrust j yet the certain success which has attended 

 many attempts to drain a strong soil, by very deep and frequent 

 draining, and by giving a fair opportunity, after the drains were 

 opened, for the operation of excessive heat or excessive cold, in 

 loosening and rending the soil, scarcely permits us to despair of 

 some improvement in almost any case. 



3. SUCCESS IN SUBSOILING SANDY AND LIGHT LANDS. The 



application of this mode of improvement to light, sandy land 

 may excite some surprise ; and yet its beneficial effects, in such 

 cases, have been, within my own knowledge, so fully established, 

 that I think proper to dwell upon them at some length. 



At the estate of Sir John Easthope, in Surrey, where many 

 discouragements in the way of soil have been skilfully and suc 

 cessfully contended with, I saw the beneficial effects of subsoil- 

 ing and draining strongly exemplified, in a soil of a sandy, grav 

 elly, thin, porous character ; the part so operated upon presenting 

 a striking and beautiful contrast to another part of the field under 

 the same cropping, which had not been so managed. To this 

 experiment I have already referred. But more fully to illustrate 

 this subject, I shall quote from a communication made by Mr. 

 Denison, of Kilnwick Percy, Yorkshire, to H. S. Thompson, Esq., 

 and given by him to the public in a valuable paper on subsoil- 

 ploughing, in the Transactions of the Yorkshire Agricultural 

 Society for 1840. 



l( Few have been hitherto met with who would not ridicule 



