SPIRIT OF THE MONTHLIES. 329 



SPIRIT OF THE MONTHLIES. 



[From the (New-York) Farmers' Library.] 



FALL PLOUGHING : 



UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES TO BE RECOMMENDED. 

 On the ILL EFFECTS OF PLOUGHING LAND WHEN WET. 



There are few points of husbandry, about whicli fanners differ 

 more in practice, than about fall ploughing ; and this difference, like 

 most others, occurs from want of reflection on the principles that 

 should govern the particular case ; or rather, we might say, from 

 want of knowledge of the principles, or reasons involved in every 

 agricultural problem. You shall sometinnes see a farmer turning his 

 " glebe" at every odd time he can catch of open weather, in fall 

 and winter ; while another, his next neighbor, does not strike a fur- 

 row ; and yet both may be right, for both may have been taught by 

 experience that his system is the better one of the two. But were 

 they to exchange estates, they would, too probably, each carry his 

 practice along with him, because his action had been the result of 

 habit rather than of investigation ; and so they would proceed until 

 after some years of costly experiment, each would find that in 

 changing his land he should have changed habits also. The truth is, 

 that whether land should be ploughed up in autumn and exposed 

 for amelioration to the winter's frost, or whether left undisturbed 

 under whatever coating it may be wearing, depends on various cir- 

 cumstances, and especially on the natural texture and composition 

 of the soil. These circumstances are so well explained in the fol- 

 lowing essay, that we have concluded to preserve it in the Journal 

 of Agriculture. The reader will find in it also observations that can- 

 not be too well remembered, in reprobation of one of the grossest 

 blunders that a farmer can commit, that of plowing his land when 

 wet. We have long been so well satisfied, from personal observa- 

 tion as well as by the common-sense view of the case, of the very 

 pernicious effect of stirring land when wet, not only on the succeed- 

 ing crop, but on the land itself; effects from which it sometimes does 

 not entirely recover for years, that we take the first occasion, in a 

 sense of duty, to impress it upon the reader, by the following forci- 

 ble remarks on it in connexion with winter plowing. The rationale 

 in both cases is here made apparent : 



