70 AGRICULTURE. 



leguminous and cruciform families form the best 

 possible preparation for winter crops, and render 

 unnecessary more than one additional ploughing. 

 After all, any proper answer to this question must 

 necessarily be qualified by considerations of soil, 

 weather, season, crop, and culture ; influences which 

 cannot but exist in all cases, and over which we 

 have no control. Wheat, for instance, requires 

 more preparatory ploughing than rye, and rye more 

 than oats. Clay ground demands more tillage than 

 calcareous earth, and calcareous earth more than 

 sand. Wet or dry weather makes frequent plough- 

 ings, according to circumstances, either useful, in- 

 jurious, or impracticable ; and the shade of a horse- 

 hoed crop is, perhaps, in itself, of more importance 

 to that which succeeds, than would be the fallowing 

 of a whole summer. 



3d. What depth of ploughing is most to be recom- 

 mended ? 



This question, though less complicated than the 

 last, requires, like it, an answer qualified by circum- 

 stances. Tap-rooted plants require deeper tillage 

 than others : fall ploughings may be deeper than 

 those of spring, and spring than those of summer. 

 If the vegetable soil be deep, deep ploughings will 

 not injure it ; but if it be shallow, such ploughings 

 will bring up part of the subsoil, which is always 

 infertile, until it receive new principles from the atmo- 

 sphere. " They who pretend," says Arthur Young, 

 " that the underlayer of earth is as proper for ve- 

 getation as the upper, maintain a paradox, refuted 

 both by reason and experience." 



Where, however, it becomes part of your object 

 to increase the depth of the surface soil, deep 

 ploughing is indispensable ; and in this, as in many 

 other cases, we must submit to present inconve- 

 nience for the advantage of future benefit. But even 

 here it is laid down as a rule, that, " in proportion as 



