SUBSOIL-PLOUGHING CONNECTED WITH THOROUGH-DRAINING. 137 



drought of several weeks duration. Mr. Read s pulverizer was 

 put into the furrow opened by a plough, and set to work about 

 six inches under it. The effect was perfectly beautiful? to 

 use the judges words. The old floor was split up into frag 

 ments, like broken tiles j the soil was separated and pulverized, 

 not heaved up in great masses, and let fall again to its original 

 berth the common defect of the ponderous subsoil-ploughs ; the 

 depth was maintained invariably uniform, and a holder for the 

 implement would be nearly unnecessary but for the circumstance 

 of its coming out at the end of a furrow, and of setting in again. 

 The uniformity of depth and regularity of motion are owing to 

 the construction of the implement, which is as simple as it is 

 novel. A straight beam, furnished with the usual pair of 

 handles, is carried on four wheels, the leading pair being placed 

 near the bridle, and the following pair near the after end of 

 the beam. The stirrer or miner is let down through a mortise 

 in the beam, immediately behind the after pair of wheels, and 

 fixed to cut at any required depth. By this arrangement, the 

 entire weight is carried on the wheels, which also preserve the 

 action of the stirrer at all times parallel with the bottoms of the 

 furrows on which they travel. This instrument required con 

 siderably less force of draught than any which had come under 

 the observation of the judges. A mole-share has been applied to 

 this implement, and used in Kent with excellent effect in making 

 mole drains with a force of four horses ; and by reason of its 

 manageableness and accurate working, the implement has been 

 found, by farmers in the same county, to facilitate drainage in 

 clay soils, in a remarkable manner, if used with due caution. 

 They recommend that newly-drained clays be not broken up, in 

 the first instance, to a depth beneath the furrow greater than six 

 inches ; that the share be set another season two or three inches 

 lower, and so on gradually deepening the pulverized mass, rather 

 than disrupting the whole at once.&quot; 



Since this report was made, this implement has been much 

 more extensively brought into use, and with universal approba 

 tion. It is a much less costly instrument than the subsoil- 

 ploughs before described. It seems to me quite worth consid 

 ering how far the application of such wheels to a common 

 plough would be practicable and desirable. It would seem 

 likely to facilitate very much the even holding of the plough, to 

 12* 



