316 SOILING. [MAY. 



in stalls and when at grass, and I found that in 

 soiling they throve better than when abroad. If 

 the world will reason upon every question of farm- 

 ing, they should do it without prejudice, and then 

 their reason would, to my apprehension, agree with 

 these fach. Every one knows how tormenting 

 flies are to cattle when abroad : ride into a field in 

 summer to look at stock, and where do you find 

 them ? Not feeding, but standing or resting un- 

 der trees, in ponds, in rivers, and, if there is no 

 better shelter, in ditches under brambles ; in a 

 word, any where but feeding in the open air. 

 What they graze, is in the morning and evening; 

 and in many cases they lose in the heat of the clay 

 all they gain at those moments of their comfort. 

 To this superiority we must add that of the main 

 object, which is the dunghill : in one case this is 

 accumulated in a degree even superior to what is 

 effected in winter ; in the other it is scattered 

 about the pastures, and nine-tenths of it carried 

 away by the flies, or dried almost to a caput mor- 

 tuum by the sun. The warmth of the season in 

 summer promotes the fermentation in a mass, and 

 speedily prepares it for use, in whatever state the 

 fanner wishes to have it. The prodigious superi- 

 ority of thus raising a large and very valuable 

 dunghill in one case, and none at all in the other, 

 ought to convince any reasonable man, that there is 

 not a practice in husbandry so decidedly superior 

 this of soiling, were there not one other reason 

 for it than what have already been produced. 



Those 





