CROPS. 459 



early-sown wheat is far advanced in the spring, it is sometimes 

 mowed ; but this practice is not approved. It is sometimes fed 

 down by sheep, and with great advantage ; but it is advised not 

 to put horned cattle upon it. This feeding of the wheat should 

 be done, however, only when the crop is very luxuriant, and 

 before May. 



The wheat is sometimes manured in the spring on the surface, 

 where liquid manure is easily obtained. Ashes, wood ashes, 

 either crude or leeched ashes, are applied to wheat with the 

 greatest benefit. This is done in the spring, when the wheat is 

 harrowed. The harrowing of wheat in the spring, when it is a 

 few inches in height, is practised and strongly commended by 

 the best farmers. I have full confidence from experience in its 

 utility. In England, where the wheat is cleaned and cultivated 

 by a horse-hoe or scarifier, this is an effectual substitute j but 

 where wheat is not cleaned by a machine, or where it is sown 

 broadcast, the practice of harrowing it with an iron-tooth harrow 

 of considerable weight, and that two or three times, is strongly 

 commended. This practice is said to have been suggested by 

 accident to a common farmer, who, having sown clover upon his 

 wheat in the spring, was afraid that in some cases the seed would 

 not take, and ventured to harrow it in. He found, to his surprise. 

 that the wheat which he had harrowed was much superior, in the 

 end, to that which the harrow had not passed over. It is a gen 

 eral practice, in some of the districts of France, to sow clover in 

 the spring upon the wheat. This is a well-known practice in 

 parts of New England, where it is sown upon the snow : and. I 

 am sorry to add, sown in many cases in the chaff from the barn- 

 floor, when, of course, a variety of weeds and worthless plants 

 are sown with it. The dung of domestic birds, pigeons, or barn 

 door fowls, where it can be obtained, is sown with much advan 

 tage upon the growing wheat in the spring. 



Where spring wheat is sown upon land ploughed in the 

 autumn, which has not suffered from wetness, it is not necessary 

 to replough it, but to put the seed in simply with a harrow and 

 a roller. It has seemed to me that the European farmers some 

 times labor their lands too much, as in turning in a clover or 

 stubble crop, or a grass sward, they take pains to break the sward ; 

 and bring all the vegetable matter to the surface, to be burnt in 

 some cases, or to be dried and exhaled in others, instead of leav- 



