298 EXPERIMENTS ON Part UT. 



■" the misfortune, it rained incefiantly for five days after this corn 

 " was cut, which made many of the ears fprout in the riclc. Not- 

 '' w-ithftanding all thefe accidents, my crop yielded 5139 pints of 

 " good clean barley : which is as much as I could have expedled in a 

 " middling year, if the field had been fown in the common way.- 



" The crop would certainly have been greater, i . If I had fown 

 " the barley fooner; the heat having hurt only the late fown grain : 

 '* and, 2. If the beds had been larger: for then the fommer culture 

 " might have been given the alleys more conveniently, and without' 

 *' tearing up or burying any part of the rows." 



M. Duhamel, amorig many other experiments communicated ta» 

 him by different correfpondents, mentions the following made on; 

 oats, in a climate refembling that of Provence, as an inflance of the. 

 advantage of fowing thin. 



A field, bordering on a meadow was fown with oats. The owner,, 

 before he fowed it, dug a fmall ditch of 8 or 10 inches between thic. 

 field and the meadow, to carry off the water intended for watering 

 the meadow. The earth thrown out of this ditch was laid on the 

 fide of the field, where it made a little bank 18 or 20 inches wide,, 

 on which oats were fown, as on the reft of the field which had been 

 well plowed. Some grains of oats fell all along the Hoping Aide of 

 this bank, next to the ditch, and, in general, at the diftance of fix, 

 feven, or eight inches from one another. They produced 18, 20, 

 and 25 ftalks a piece, taller and ftronger than thofe which grew upon, 

 the bank, though thefe were much fuperior to any in the reft of the 



field. 



To be the more exad in his comparifon, he picked out one of the 

 fineft ftalks he could find in each of thefe three places. That which he 

 took from the middle of the field was two feet five inches and one- 

 third long, and had 91 grains of oats on it : that from the top of the 

 bank was three feet nine inches and one-fixth in length, and bore 

 165 grains : and that from the fide of the bank next the ditch was four 

 feet nine inches long, and yielded 214 grains. The ftrav/ of this 

 iaft was much ftronger, r.nd the grain larger and better rilled, than 

 ■ any that grew in the field. The difference was fo great that he 

 thinks a third fewer of thefe grains would have filled a uufhej, than 

 of the others. 



Mr. Miller is fo fenfible of the advantages of fovv'ing thin^ that he 

 ftrongly recommends to farmers, inftead of four buihels, vvliich is. 

 the common allowance of barley, to an acre, to fow even lefs than 



half 



