AGRICULTURE. 



for worms, the only effectual way to clear 

 the ground from which is to burn it ; the 

 old and the young, together with their 

 eggs, being thus destroyed or smothered. 

 The ashes procured by paring and burn- 

 ing will furnish manure for several crops. 

 The lessening of the soil by this husband- 

 ry was long apprehended ; such a conse- 

 quence, however, may be safely and po- 

 sitively denied, unless, perhaps, in cases 

 in which the practice is carried to great 

 excess. In poor soils, peat and sedgy 

 bottoms, the process is universally admit- 

 ted to be a proper one. With respect 

 even to clay lands, it produces not only 

 the common manure found in vegetable 

 ashes, but a substance which acts me- 

 chanically to the utmost advantage, loos- 

 ening and opening the stubborn adhesion 

 of the soil. In loam itself, the ploughing of 

 rough pastures to the depth of eight or 

 nine inches, and burning the whole fur- 

 vow in heaps of about thirty bushels each, 

 has been attended with most decided and 

 durable improvement ; and even though 

 this depth be nearly twenty times the 

 depth of common paring, the soil has not 

 been supposed to be wasted eventually 

 by the practice. Its texture has been 

 rendered less stiff'; the redundance of 

 water has been expelled ; and the imme- 

 diate fertility attending this method of 

 treatment fills it speedily with far more 

 vegetable particles than it previously pos- 

 sessed. Sandy grounds are as improve- 

 able by this method as those of a dif- 

 ferent description, and chalk lands, in 

 every part of England, have been so treat- 

 ed, and most profitably been brought into 

 culture. In Gloucestershire, Yorkshire, 

 and Lincolnshire, in Hampshire, Wilt- 

 shire, and Kent, the consequent crops of 

 wheat, barley, oats, and sainfoin, have 

 been of sufficient value to buy the land at 

 more than forty years purchase, at a fair- 

 ly estimated rent, before these improve- 

 ments were applied. But whatever dif- 

 ference may exist, with respect to the 

 practice on such lands as have been just 

 mentioned, and which is rapidly vanishing 

 before obvious and impressive facts, no 

 one, as already observed, doubts the pro- 

 priety of it on peat. From the fens of 

 Cambridgeshire to the bogs of Ireland, 

 the moors of the north, or the sedgy bot- 

 toms abounding in almost every part of 

 the united kingdom, paring and burning 

 ure universally employed, on their being 

 broken up, by men of real experience and 

 observation. The method of doing it by 

 fallow is completely abandoned by all 

 persons of this description, after the most 



regular and decided experiments of ils 

 results. In Cambridgeshire the work is 

 performed by a plough, purposely con- 

 structed, and admirably adapted for it, 

 which reduces the expence considerably. 

 With respect to meadow and pasture 

 land, it is performed by what is denomi- 

 nated a breast-plough, which, requiring 

 great strength and labour in its applica- 

 tion, much increases the cost. With re- 

 gard to the general practice, it may be 

 observed, that the heaps should not con- 

 sist of more than twenty bushels, as, if 

 they are much larger, the turfs will be 

 too much burnt. Their size must be 

 regulated, in a great degree, by the na- 

 ture of the weather and the thickness of 

 the paring. When the ashes are spread, 

 which should be completed as soon as 

 possible, the land, as is usually the case, 

 should be thinly ploughed. In almost all 

 circumstances, the ashes should be left 

 ploughed in for sowingturnips upon lands 

 burnt in the months of March and April. 

 If potatoes are desired, this preparation 

 is excellently adapted to them, and they 

 should be planted in April on lands burnt 

 in March. 



T/ic Culture of Grasses. 



A close and sound turf may be consid- 

 ered as the best manure yet discovered, 

 on which account it is justly remarked, 

 that those who have grass can at any time 

 have corn, the reverse of which is by no 

 means true. Excellent grass lands, there- 

 fore, are valuable, not only directly, for 

 the food of cattle, but indirectly, as con- 

 taining ample means of raising grain, 

 never failing, upon being broken up, to 

 produce, for a time, a succession of va- 

 luable crops, whether of grain or roots. 

 The small degree of labour and hazard 

 attending the pasture of land recom- 

 mends it to many ; and also the opportu- 

 nity it supplies of laying out considerable 

 property to great advantage in stock. 

 Lands are preserved by it in good condi- 

 tion, and large estates may be managed 

 under it with peculiar ease. 



Grass lands, designed to be cut for 

 hay, arc to be distinguished from those 

 on which the herbage is intended to be 

 consumed by cattle on the spot: In 

 fields of the latter kind, properly called 

 pastures, manure is supplied by the cat- 

 tle ; in the others it must be applied ar- 

 tificially, as large crops of hay exhaust 

 the land, and always in proportion to the 

 maturity which the herbage is suffered 

 to attain before cropping, while nothing is 



