ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. Ill 



Subsoil ploughing is different to trench-ploughing. It is 

 not the bringing up of the subsoil, but the smashing of it 

 only. Sometimes it is called " knifing," when a deep coulter 

 is fixed upon a steam-plough and dragged through the sub- 

 soil, cutting it at intervals of every few inches. Subsoiling 

 does not contemplate mixing, so that many of the evils of 

 trench-ploughing are avoided in subsoil ploughing. It may 

 be defined as breaking the subsoil without bringing it to the 

 surface. Subsoiling facilitates drainage; it also does away 

 with " pans " of various kinds, whether ochreous pans, gravelly 

 indurated pans which have resulted from the constant traffic 

 of horses year after year upon some five or six inches depth 

 of soil, calcareous pans, or moorland pans. Wherever we 

 have one of these pans which prevents the water passing 

 through there we have a proper field for subsoil ploughing. 

 Moorband pans and other forms of indurated soil are well 

 known in Scotland. They occur a few inches beneath the 

 surface, on unreclaimed or newly reclaimed soil, and when 

 once broken up they do not form again. Therefore in such 

 cases subsoiling is of very great use. Subsoiling is generally 

 considered to be most beneficial on light, gravelly, chalky, or 

 rubbly subsoils, but is never considered to be beneficial oa 

 heavy soils because the clay rery quickly closes up again, and 

 relapses into its former condition, the ground is as plastic as 

 ever, and the outlay is wasted. 



Clay -burning is a beneficial operation for clay lands. No 

 ne was a greater advocate of this process than the late Mr. 

 J. Mechi. He was a very clever man, mistaken in some 

 hings, but he was not ruined by farming. People sometimes 

 11 us that Mr. Mechi was ruined by farming, but he was 

 ot ; he was a heavy loser by a Bank, Another very excel- 

 nt man whose name is associated with clay-burning was the 

 ate Mr. Charles Randall, who managed both, for himself and 

 the Duke d'Aumale. He greatly improved his farms near 





