I. 



128 THE PRINCIPLES OF 



get it into furrow previous to winter, we have done a great 

 deal towards securing that cleanness and that tenderness 

 and that moisture which are so highly desirable. Then in 

 the spring of the year we must touch it as lightly as we can, 

 whether it is light land, or whether it is heavy land, because 

 in the case of light land, cultivating it much in the spring- 

 loses moisture, and in the case of heavy land, late spring 

 ploughing and much spring cultivation buries the fine surface 

 of the soil, and brings up a great deal of tenacious stuff not 

 fitted for the use of the young plants. 



The advantages of autumn cultivation for roots are very 

 considerable indeed. It secures the performance of a work 

 which probably might be very difficult to resume in the 

 month of March or April. We know that clay land is often 

 scarcely fit to stand the pressure of horses and implements at 

 that season of the year. The second advantage is that we 

 break up the homes of entomological pests. Entomology is 

 an important subject for agriculturists to study, but I am 

 struck with the remedies which entomologists propose to us 

 agriculturists. They propose exactly what we should do if 

 there were no entomologists. These remedies generally come 

 in the ordinary course of good farming, and therefore they 

 lose a little of their significance. They tell us we must 

 autumn cultivate. Of course we must ; we do that, not for 

 entomological reasons, but for other reasons. We know the 

 habits of our insect enemies ; towards the autumn months 

 they penetrate the ground, and make their little cocoons. 

 They line their little cell-walls with beautiful material, and 

 they make up their minds for a pleasant winter. Then the 

 plough comes and turns them all out, exposes them to the 

 ravages of the birds, and to the mercies of the frost ; and 

 then, of course, we have a wholesale destruction of our insect 

 enemies. The exposure of the seeds and roots of weeds is 

 another advantage. They also are preyed upon by birds, and 



