FALL AND SPRING PLOUGHING. 141 



as good for the crop, especially if you are going to put in corn. 

 I think the corn crop is quite as good upon a piece of ground 

 turned over twice in the spring, as it will be upon a piece of 

 ground turned over in the fall. But there is a great deal 

 of advantage in fall ploughing. Our teams are generally then in 

 full strength, and in much better condition to do this work than 

 in the spring, when the warm weather is coming on. They 

 have been in the barn all winter, and when you take them out 

 to exercise them, it takes them a good while to get the use of 

 their limbs and recover their wasted strength, and they feel this 

 work much more in the spring than in the fall. Therefore, I 

 think fall ploughing, where it can be done, is very much better 

 than to let it alone until spring. 



Mr. Thompson. I called up this subject to learn instead of 

 to teach. When I was a boy, I carried on farming, and worked 

 at it until I was seventeen years old, but it is but recently— 

 within three or four years — that I have commenced handling 

 the plough again, and I do ;iot mean to handle it much myself 

 now, but I like to know the best way that it should be handled, 

 and the best season of the year to handle it, because it is 

 the duty of the man who either holds or drives, to know all the 

 minutiie of ploughing. 



In my younger days, we ploughed, usually, quite early, and 

 with the best ploughs we could get in those days, and along 

 through my later life, up to within three or four years, I have 

 read a great deal on ploughing, from every source that I could, 

 and it has been " deep ploughing," it has been " top dressing," 

 and it has been " get the manure down as deep as you can ; no 

 fear but that it will come to the surface." Now, it comes to 

 about this : Every man should seek to know the capacities of 

 his soil, and the requirements of the crop which he intends to 

 put upon the piece of ground which he ploughs. My expe- 

 rience has been, in the last three years — and everything I do is 

 a sort of experiment, because I. look at the result of everything 

 I do — the result of my observation and experience is, that if 

 you have a pretty tough piece of land, your team, as the gentle- 

 man who spoke last said, is in good condition to turn over that 

 tough piece of land in the fall, and I would turn it over as deep 

 as six inches. Of course, on your tough piece of land, the soil 

 is a little deeper than it is on a light piece of land ; therefore, I 



