88 BRITISH HUSBANDRY. [Ch.VL 



sound land, on which the difficulties in the management are not c^reat ; 

 but wet, strong, tenacious soils, that are apt to poach if not tilled with 

 much care and attention, are not easy to manage, and liave been thought 

 peculiarly unfavourable to the practice. Those wlio have had much to do 

 with heavy soils, and consequently know tliat they can only be ploughed in 

 the spring, when the land is dry on the surface, must be sensible that 

 very favourable weather must occur, or the farmer will be exposed to 

 great inconvenience ; for, if turned up when wet, it dries into hard com- 

 pact clods, and much time may be lost before a tool can stir on it. 

 To make use of the original friable surface — which once lost is not to be 

 easily regained — and thereby secure not only a favourable matrix for the 

 seed, but also an early sowing, is an object which cannot be valued too 

 highly, and which appears to have been attained on some large clay farms 

 in Suffolk, of a verv wet and adhesive nature, by putting in the crops upon 

 a stale furrow, with the drill, and without ajiy spring ploughing. 



The management consists in giving the necessary degree of preparation 

 to the land intended for spring crops, and ploughing it into the usual form 

 before the winter frosts. The most customary ridges are five feet three 

 inches broad — for one movement of the drill machine, though some farmers 

 make stitches of nine or ten feet, for a double bout ; but, in either case, 

 the horses go only in the furrow. Whatever the preparation by til- 

 lage — whether many ploughings in a fallow, two or three after tares, or 

 one after beans — nothing is left wanting in the spring but to scuffle and 

 harrow, and then drill in the seed. The only difficulty is on the turnip 

 land, which should be cleared as early as possible for the chance of late 

 frosts, to obtain a friable surface, which, once gained, is never ploughed 

 again, but, when in the right temper, is scuffled and drilled. Some farmers, 

 indeed, have found their account, when the weather has been favourable, 

 in only scarifying and scuffling, and then harrowing the turnips. But 

 season must govern the practice ; which, however, proves the great 

 importance attached to the avoidance of spring ploughing on strong 

 land*. 



It is a trite observation, " that the cleaner any land is kept, the less care 

 is requisite to continue it so ;" to which remark we have only to add, that if 

 crops are preserved from weeds in their infancy — which is the period of 

 their greatest danger— their produce will be increased ; and that no method 

 can be recommended as more certain to attain those objects on soils which 

 admit of the alternate growth of corn and roots than the operations of the 

 drill and horse-hoeing husbandry. 



Regarding the process of dibbling, an experiment is recorded in the 

 Essex Report f as having been made upon a clover ley, which was ploughed 

 in the month of October into four-ridge stitches. Two acres of it were 

 rolled, and wheat dibbled in — one acre with about three pecks of the com- 

 mon white rivets, and the other with two pecks of small American red 

 wheat. The remainder of the field, containing three acres, was sown broad- 

 cast, in separate pieces, with seeds of similar qualitv. During the winter, 

 the broad-cast had vastly the advantage, while the dibbled, on the contrary, 

 wore an indifferent appearance ; and both continued in the same state 

 until March, during which month and that of April, the dibbled wheat was 



* A very interesting account of the practice and experiments — though too long for 

 extraction here — may be found in the Appendix to the third edition of Arthur Young's 

 Survey of Suffolk. 



t Vol.i. p. 273. 



