FAL 



F AL 



129 



10 diminish or lighten the labours 

 of the following spring, when they 

 will have much work to perform 

 in a short time. Summer dung 

 and composts should be carted out 

 at this season. Fences should be 

 built or repaired, not only to pre- 

 vent having them to do in the 

 spring, but to keep cattle from in- 

 juring the lands with their feet. 

 All the ground should be ploughed 

 in the fall, that is to be seeded the 

 following spring. That which is 

 intended for spring wheat should 

 be ploughed twice. Though all 

 that is ploughed in the fall, for 

 spring tillage, must be ploughed 

 again before seeding, the fall 

 ploughing saves labour, as one 

 ploughing may answer in the 

 spring where two would be other- 

 wise needful. It is saving labour 

 at a time when teams are most 

 apt to be faint and feeble, ai»d 

 when there is too often a scarcity 

 of food for them. But ploughing 

 in autumn is of great importance 

 in a clay soil, as, by exposing it 

 to the frost, the cohesion of its 

 parts is much broken. 



Some prefer fall-transplanting 

 of trees. It would be very con- 

 venient if it could be done at this 

 season as well, but, however it may 

 answer in the middle and southern 

 states, experience has shown that 

 it will not do as well in the New- 

 England States. 



FALLOWING, is one of the 

 words which requires a more dis- 

 tinct definition than it has yet had, 

 because we are persuaded that the 

 term is differently applied in dif- 

 ferent countries. In England, it 

 invariably means a suspension of 

 17 



crops of any sort, for a greater or 

 less period of time, accompanied 

 by constant ploughing and harrow- 

 ing of the land, on which the crops 

 are so suspended, for the express 

 purpose of rooting out pernicious 

 weeds, and of dividing and pulver- 

 ising the soil more perfectly. 



There are also theoretical no- 

 tions, perhaps true, but of which we 

 have no evidence, that during this 

 repose from bearing crops, and by 

 the means of these repeated 

 ploughings, the land collects some 

 principles or elements from the 

 atmosphere, which contribute to 

 its fertility. A vast many obscure 

 remarks, and conjectures have 

 been made upon this subject, 

 which if they had not been incom- 

 prehensible would have been ad- 

 mitted to be nonsense. It seems 

 now to be generally acknowledg- 

 ed, that the principal benefit of 

 fallows, upon the British plan, 

 arises from the destruction of 

 weeds, and the more perfect divi- 

 sion of the soil — and it is a little 

 surprising that this idea never 

 suggested itself to the earlier 

 writers on this subject, when they 

 were so well acquainted with the 

 benefit of trenching, — a practice, 

 which seemed to lead to so direct 

 and necessary a conclusion, that a 

 minute subdivisioji of the soil, ren- 

 dering it not only more permeable 

 by water, and by the roots of 

 plants, but also more retentive of 

 moisture, was in truth the great 

 secret of the advantages of fallow- 

 ing, and of the frequent use of the 

 plough. Much idle speculation 

 might thus have been spared in 

 agricultural inquiries, and we 



