Ch. v.] GREG'S SYSTEM. 6> 



summer. Upon this, and the observations regarding the disadvantages 

 attending the similar plans of his neighbours, it is unnecessary that we 

 should here offer any remark, for we know that they liave been, in many 

 instances improved, and our more immediate object is to state the system 

 afterwards adopted by Mr. Greg, and since followed by his nephew, during 

 upwards of twenty years. 



Having, as he tells us, " established in his mind as a general principle, 

 that fertility was to be derived from pulverizing the soil, clearing it from 

 water, and keeping it clean, he proceeded to inquire how those objects were 

 to be obtained at the least expense ; and he found that the best method to 

 promote them was to reverse the whole system of the former cultivation." 

 Accordingly, instead of ploughing four or five times only in summer and 

 spring, and fallowing every third year, he formed the determination " to 

 plough only once for a crop ; to plough only in winter ; never to fallow the 

 land in summer; to practise the row-culture, and to use the horse-hoe." 

 The mode in which he carried his plan into execution was as follows. 



He divided the fann as nearly as possible into six equal parts, which are 

 cultivated in a six-course shift, consisting of turnips ; barley or oats ; 

 clover, standing two years ; pease or beans, upon the ley ; and lastly, 

 wheat. The ground is marked out by a drill into ridges of five and a half 

 feet in width, intersected by furrows of ten inches wide ; thus leaving only 

 fifty-six inches for each land, which is worked by a Suffolk swing plough, 

 formed upon a construction to cut a perfect trench of seven inches deep, 

 and requiring four bouts to complete the ridge, which is made sufficiently 

 convex to describe an inclined plane of three inches from the crown to 

 each furrow*. Thus water is prevented from remaining upon the land 

 intended to be cropped, by being drawn into the ten-inch furrow, which is 

 carried two inches deeper ; the horses never tread but in a furrow ; and by 

 the soundness of this ploughing Mr. G. states, that " when effected in the 

 autumn or before Christmas, a perfect friability is obtained in the tilth by 

 the influence of the frost during the winter, and the surface water may be 

 as effectually got rid of as by under-draining." 



As soon as the harvest is completed, the wheat-stubbles are haulmed, and 

 the lands are marked out and ploughed one bout : dung is then ploughed 

 in to the amount of ten loads per acre, and three bushels of winter tares 

 with a bushel and a half of winter barley are sown, to precede turnips, to 

 the extent of about half the ground intended for that crop, which, in 

 common seasons, it does not impede, as the tares are cut upon a moist 

 furrow for the turnip sowing. 



The tare sowing being finished, tlie bean and pea stubbles are prepared 

 for wheat ; which is a difficult operation on heavy land, when the object is 

 to get the seed early into the ground. The labour which they require from 

 the plough, roll, and harrow, was so great as to induce Mr. Greg to use a 

 powerful grubber, or scarifier, of a form which covers an entire land ; and 

 it performed so well that he has since continued to use it instead of the 

 plough, as he found that he could thus sow forty acres of wheat in a very 

 few days, regardless of weather, and at a sixth part of the expense. 



Having sown the wheat, the remainder of the land intended for turnips 

 is ploughed and dunged. The ploughing is also performed for pease and 

 beans ; and it is desirable that these operations should be completed before 



* Tims the first bouts are ploughed only four inches (lefp, which bouts are turned 

 into one, forming eight inches of soil in the centre of the lands. The second bout to 

 be ploughed up to it, should be five inches deep ; the third six. and the fourth nearly 

 eight inches. See the Frontispiece to Mr. Greg's Pamphlet descriptive of the process. 



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