72 THE CULTURE OF WHEAT. Parti. 



creafe. A whole farm cannot indeed be fo perfedUy cultivated as a 

 fmall fpot in a garden may be, where only a few plants are raifed : 

 but by means of the new hufbandry, 30, 40, or at mod 50 grains, 

 fown in a fquare of nine feet, have yielded 250 ears; and of thefe 

 ears fome were eight inches long, and contained 109 grains. If all 

 the ears had been equally fruitful, the increafe would have been 6000 

 for one : but as all ears are not equally furnifhed with grain, we may 

 reckon, that if one grain in the common hufbandry yields ten, in the 

 new hufbandry it will yield an hundred. 



There are other confiderable advantages attending the new 

 hufbandry. Little or no dung is employed : the earth is not refled : 

 it is not taken up with grain of lefs value, nor is the expence in- 

 creafed ; for the culture which is beftowed upon the corn whilfl 

 growing, prepares the ground for the enfuing crop, and only two 

 thirds of the ground are plowed. This horfe-hoeing anfwers the end 

 of the four plowings given during the year of fallow : they are even 

 more beneficial : for it has been obferved, that the third crop of a 

 field which was fowed with wheat five years running, was a twentieth 

 part greater than either of the preceding crops, and that the fifth 

 was the befl: of all. 



The farmer muft: not therefore repine at the feeming lofs of the 

 alleys, feeing that his lands are conflantly employed, and that the 

 wheat branches out into fo many flalks, that, if fpread equally 

 over the whole field, as in the common hufbandry, they would 

 nearly cover all the alleys. 



CHAP. XIV. 



Of the advantages of the New Hufbandry. 



TO form a jufl: idea of the advantages of the culture which 

 Mr. Tull propofes, we mufl not confider whether each grain 

 of corn that is planted in the new way, produces a greater number 

 of grains, than it would do by following the old way. 



This comparifon would be too favourable to Mr. Tull. Neither 

 mufl we content ourfelves with examining whether an acre of ground 

 cultivated according to the new principles, produces much more 

 than the fame quantity of land cultivated in the common wav 

 would do. In this, the new hufbandry might perhaps not have 

 any great advantage over the old method. 



I The 



