110 THE PRINCIPLES OF 



four or it may be five years. The extra depth of furrow- 

 should be given in the autumn or winter, so as to allow the 

 frost to weather the newly brought up soil, and in this way 

 the depth of the soil will be gradually deepened without 

 injury. I have a great horror of heroic methods with refer- 

 ence to agriculture ; they bring discredit on science, and they 

 bring ruin on the people that adopt them. There is nothing 

 so dangerous as when a man gets hold of notions and begins 

 to figure as a scientific agriculturist in his neighbourhood. 

 He is sure to bring ridicule on science, and injury and loss 

 to himself. We must remember that " various motives fire 

 the strife," and that journalists and agricultural writers of 

 the day, implement makers, and seedsmen are all alive to the 

 importance of publicity, and push certain things before us 

 which great Agricultural Societies are compelled to recog- 

 nize in some measure or incur the imputation of being 

 ''behind the times." Consequently we get a great many 

 things introduced to our notice and paraded in the news- 

 papers which must be guarded against carefully, and only 

 allowed to filter very gradually indeed into our farming 

 practice. Of one thing we may be sure, that it is the most 

 difficult thing in the world to introduce new methods into 

 an old business. We have heard of putting new cloth into 

 an old garment, and it is just as difficult to engraft new 

 notions upon an old-established pursuit like agriculture it 

 is exceedingly difficult. I could enlarge upon how few of the 

 new-fangled ideas which I have seen brought out during 

 the last thirty years have been adopted and really taken a 

 place in our system of agriculture. They serve their purpose ; 

 they often do more good to the men who propose them than 

 to anybody else. 



The foregoing remarks arose out of my suggestion that 

 we should gradually deepen our soils instead of resorting to 

 trench-ploughing. 



