CROPS. 



213 



roller, if so it may be called, or the rim, being V 7 thin at the 

 edge, and growing wider above the edge, thus, \ / , and form 

 ing, as it revolves, two furrows, hardened by its weight, into which 

 the grain drops as it is sown ; and when it comes up, it appears as 

 if it had been regularly sown in drills of eight or nine inches apart, 

 according to the width of the revolving presses from each other. 

 &quot; The seam-presser is, in fact, an abstract of a drill-roller, con 

 sisting of but two cylinders of cast iron, which, following the 

 plough in the furrows, press and roll down the newly turned-up 

 earth.&quot; 



Seam-Presser. 



On heavy or clay soils much more work is rendered necessary 

 to bring them into condition. The first of all requisites is, that 

 the land should be thoroughly drained or freed from wet. In all 

 cases of heavy land, it has been the custom to throw the field up 

 into beds, or, as they are here called, stitches, with an open fur 

 row between them. In many cases which I have seen, these are 

 even less than six feet wide ; and wherever they are made by every 

 sixth furrow or every eighth furrow, it is obvious that every acre 

 in six, or every acre in eight, is lost ; for nothing grows in the 

 intermediate drains. The practice of cultivating in beds or 

 stitches is, I may say. almost universal throughout England and 

 Scotland ; in general, however, these beds are from three to six 

 yards wide ; on dry lands, more than this. Since the introduc 

 tion of the Deanston system of thorough-draining and subsoil- 

 ing, it has been shown that they are not at all necessary for carry- 



