T I L 



449 



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tilled rows will far exceed that of any of the others, while 

 the first will, by comparison, appear a poor and scanty 

 crop, however clear of weeds the surface may have been 

 kept. The soil best suited for fhis experiment is a good 

 light loam on a dry or well-drained subsoil ; for stagnant 

 moisture under any soil will chill the fibres and check the 

 growth of'the plants, however dry the surface may be. It 

 was this which led Tull, the father of drill husbandry, to 

 the conclusion that tillage was all that the soil required to 

 maintain perpetual fertility. He carried his conclusion too 

 far ; but we shall not be wide of the truth if we assert 

 that with proper tillage the soil will be gradually im- 

 proved, and a much smaller quantity of manure occasion- 

 ally added to recruit the waste produced by vegetation 

 will render the soil much more fertile than it would be 

 with more manure and less tillage : and as tillage can be 

 increased by mechanical contrivances where labourers are 

 scarce, whereas the supply of manure must generally be 

 limited, it follows that, as a general rule, the land should 

 be well and deeply tilled, due attention being paid to the 

 nature of the soil and its property of retaining or transmit- 

 ting moisture. Very loose sands should not be much 

 stirred until they are consolidated by the admixture of 

 marl, clay, chalk, or well-rotten dung ; but in all cases the 

 manure should be mixed as intimately as possible with 

 the soil, and as deep as the tillage has gone, not including 

 the stirring of the subsoil ; for the roots will always pene- 

 trate thus far, and find the nourishment which they re- 

 quire. Those plants which throw out roots from the 

 bottom of the stem, as wheat, barley, and oats, require the 

 surface to be most pulverised and enriched to allow these 

 roots to spread ; a spring tillage is therefore highly advan- 

 tageous, which can only be given when the seed has been 

 deposited in rows by drilling or in patches by dibbling. 

 This last method is found to give much finer crops, from 

 the circumstance that the hoe not only loosens the earth 

 between the rows, but also between the different patches 

 of the growing corn, by which the coronal roots are 

 strengthened and the tillering of the stems so much en- 

 couraged, that it is not uncommon to sec twenty, thirty, 

 or more strong stems a" bearing fine ears arising from one 

 tuft of plants, the produce of one or more seeds, whose 

 roots are matted together and send out fibres in every 

 direction. The crowding of several plants does not pre- 

 vent their growth, provided the fibres can spread around 

 in a rich mellow soil, weU pulverised, and admitting the 

 air and moisture readily. 



A* a perfect tillage requires much labour and minute 

 attention, and in many situations where the farms are large 

 labourers cannot be procured at moderate wages, nor can 

 ; !\v;iys be depended upon to perform the work with 

 mflicient care, mechanical ingenuity has been taxed to 

 invent implements oi' tillage by which it may be more 

 pel Cecily accomplished, and at a smaller expense, by using 

 the power of horses instead of that of men, and making 

 implements which will till a considerable breadth at once, 

 ami thus save time. 



The old plough, and which, however it may be improved, 

 still acts on the same principle of turning up a fresh por- 

 tion of the soil, burying that which has for some time 

 :it the surface, will probably always continue to be 

 hief implement of tillage ; but the minuter operations, 

 which are taken from garden culture, require particular 

 contrivances to effect them by instruments. The harrows 

 are but an imperfect substitute for the garden rake, and do 

 not stir the soil to a sufficient depth. Other implements 

 have therefore been invented, which by means of wheels 

 can be regulated so as to act at a greater or less depth. 

 These have received the different names of scarifiers, 

 grubbers, cats'-claws, or cultivators, according to the fancy 

 of the inventors. Many of these answer the purpose well, 

 and save labour. They can be used in all directions so as. 

 to pulverize the soil to any degree. Heavy rollers with 

 ami without spikes around them are used when many clods 

 require breaking; and, although not yet adopted in this 

 try, the Hclgian tniiiienit, a strong frame -of wood 

 boarded over, and loaded with weights if required, is a 

 most effectual instrument in levelling tho surface and 

 crushing duds, without pressing them into the soil as the 

 roller frequently does. 



It would be endless to enumerate all the implements of 

 tillage which arc daily invented : some of the most u 

 have been already described. [ARABLE LAND; PLOUGH.] 

 I J . C., No. 154 1. 



As the cultivation of the soil approaches more to that of 

 the garden, more perfect instruments will be used ; such as 

 can be directed with great accuracy between parallel rows 

 of growing plants without danger of injuring them. When 

 the width of the stetches or beds accurately corresponds 

 with the width of the instrument, so that the wheels will 

 run in the intervals and the horses step in the same, the 

 soil may be tilled perfectly, although the rows of plants 

 have but a small interval between them : and the largest 

 field will thus present to the eye extended seed-beds or 

 equal rows of growing plants, as we are accustomed to see 

 in a kitchen-garden. The result will be the same as when 

 for the sake of experiment we sow the common grains and 

 leguminous plants of the fields in a plot of garden-ground 

 in such case the produce is so far greater, that it quite baffles 

 our calculation when extended to a large surface, and hence 

 the incredible results which we continually meet with in the 

 reports of experiments on some new produce lately intro- 

 duced : everything is on a magnified scale, owing to supe- 

 rior tillage. No doubt many fields possessed of fertile 

 soils might, by attentive tillage, be made as productive as 

 the Uest garden-ground. The Chinese have, as we are 

 told, already accomplished this by their incredible num- 

 bers and indefatigable labour ; but science and mechanical 

 contrivance are a substitute for millions of labourers when 

 judiciously applied- as our manufactures fully prove. 

 The same ingenuity applied to tillage might increase the 

 produce of the earth, if not indefinitely, at least far beyond 

 what we may now suspect. 



In the early ages of agriculture tillage was almost con- 

 fined to the ploughing of fallows to clean the land, which 

 was very imperfectly executed, and in ploughing the 

 stubble of one crop to prepare for the seed of another, as 

 long as the land would give a return for the labour. The 

 idea of tillage for the sake of a permanent improvement of 

 the soil was only entertained by a few men who reflected, 

 and that of encouraging the vegetation while the crop was 

 growing was not even thought of. The plough to stir and 

 the harrows to cover the seed were the only instruments in 

 use, and they were very rude of their kind. A return of 

 three or four times the seed sown satisfied the farmer and 

 the landlord ; and yet the first was hardly repaid for his 

 toil, and the landlord received for rent what now would 

 scarcely satisfy the tithe-owner. Trie present state of agri- 

 culture may be contrasted with this, and perhaps hereafter 

 the comparison may be as diaadvanfogeoui to us as it now 

 appears in our favour when we look back a few centuries. 



TILLA'NDSIA, the name of a genus of plants belong- 

 ing to the natural order Bromeliacese. Linnaeus says of 

 the plants belonging to this genus, 'Tillandsise cannot bear 

 water, and therefore I have given this name to the genus 

 from a professor at Abo, who in his youth having an un- 

 propitious passage from Stockholm to that place, no sooner 

 set his foot on shore than he vowed never again to venture 

 himself upon the sea. He changed his original name to 

 Tillands, which means ore Or by land; and when he had 

 subsequently occasion to return to Sweden, he preferred a 

 circuitous journey of 200 Swedish miles through Lapland 

 to avoid, going eight miles by sea.' Dr. Elias Tillands, 

 whose name and idiosyncracy have thus been perpetuated, 

 was professor of physic at Abo, and died in 1692, at the 

 age of fifty-two. He published in 1683 an alphabetical 

 catalogue of plants in the neighbourhood of his residence, 

 which was afterwards followed by wood-cuts of 158 of the 

 plants in the catalogue. 



The genus Tillandsia of Linnaeus comprehends the plar.ts 

 described by Sloane as viscuin caryophylloides, and by 

 Plumier as Caragata, and is characterised by possessing a. 

 persistent calyx divided into three oblong, lanceolate, 

 pointed segments ; a corolla tubular, longer than the calyx, 

 with the limb divided into three segments ; six stamens not 

 so long as the corolla, and inserted into it, and the anthers 

 sagittate ; the ovary superior, surmounted by ; a style with 

 a trifid obtuse stigma; the fruit, a trilocular capsule con- 

 taining several seeds, each of which is supported on a long 

 stalk of aggregate fibres, which in the end constitutes a 

 feathery wing. The species are most of them parasitical, 

 and are natives of South America. 



T. utriculata, the Wild Pine of the colonists of Jamaica, 

 has linear, channelled, recurved, dilated leaves, inflated at 

 the base ; stein closely panicled. It is found growing on 

 old and decaying trees in the forests of Jamaica. The stem 

 is three or four feet high, and the leaves are a yard long, 



VOL. XXIV. 3 M 



