PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Part III. 



the greatest Facility which a farmer possesses of cleaning his land 01 keeping it clean, under a green crop, 

 i? oj a turnip one, on ali : iting on an open bottom, in a dry season. This last instance amounts, 



in fact, to all the boasted possibility of keeping land clean by green crops, without the assistance of bare 

 Tallow, lint even this substitution U only an approximation to cleanliness; for every one knows, who has 

 ed light soils tor a -ei ies Of rotations, whatever hi- practice may be, that even the turnip crop cannot 

 be raised on them for an indefinite period without the land getting foul with root-weeds, such as quicks 

 and knot grass ; and no better mode of extirpating these formidable robbers of the artificial nourishment 

 of the cultivated crop-, than by hare fallowing, has vet been discovered. They are the rooks of the soil. 

 Indeed, the practice' of the best fanners of light land, however great their desire to curtail the extent of 

 bare fallow may be, is to have a portion of the land under fallow, though the extent of it may no doubt be 

 limited by the want of manure, from a desire to keep their land clean; and this is accomplished by 

 summer fallowing that portion of it winch had carried potatoes in the preceding rotation, and raising the 

 potatoes ami turnip- on that part which had been previously thoroughly cleaned by summer fallowing. 

 I hi- is a good practice, not only as a means of keeping land clean, but as following out that system of 

 alternate llusbandrj of white and green crops, which has, by abolishing a succession of white crops with 

 their scourging effects, tended more than any other to render the soil of these islands all alike fertile. 

 Hut will summer fallow keep land clean? Undoubtedly it will, if properly performed. It gives the op- 

 portunity of working land in dune and July, when every crop should be in the ground, and when the sun 

 i- -o powerful, and the atmosphere so warm and dry, as to kill every plant that has not a hold of the 

 ground. lite process already described, of ploughing, harrowing, and rolling, according to the state of 

 the ground, is admirably adapted for cutting the matted land in pieces, for shaking the detached lumps of 

 earth asunder, and for bruising to powder every hardened ball of earth into which the fibres or roots of 

 weens might penetrate ; and the hand-picking carries off" every bit of weed which might possess any latent 

 \ egetative power. Land that cannot be cleaned under such favourable circumstances as to season, must be 

 v foul, the season <■ ery wet and cold, or the fallowing process conducted with great slovenliness. 

 It mu-t be confessed, that fallowing is too often worked very negligently. It is thought by some, that 

 the land can he cleaned at anv time before seed-time in autumn ; and other things of less importance too 

 often attract the attention from the more important fallow; that weeds, though they do grow, can be 

 d down, and that the ploughing of them down assists to manure the land. Such thoughts 

 too often prevail over better knowledge ; and thev furnish a strong argument in favour of increasing, 

 rather than of diminishing, the means of cleanliness Hut such thoughts display, in their effects, great 

 negligence and ignorance: negligence, in permitting any weeds to cover the land, particularly the root- 

 grow in..' ones, by which the strength of the soil is exhausted, and in losing the most favourable part of 

 the season to accomplish their destruction ; and ignorance, in thinking that weeds ploughed down 

 afford nourishment to the soil, when that soil has been exhausting itself in bearing the crop of weeds. 

 These are facts which are known to every practical farmer, and the nature of which presses upon him 

 a conviction of the necessity of summer fallowing more strongly than all the arguments that can be most 

 speciously drawn, by analogy, from the practice of other arts. Reasoning from analogy is feeble when 

 opposed to experience. Gardeners, no doubt, raise crops every year from the same piece of ground ; but 

 their practice is not quite analogous to that of the husbandman. ' They apply a great quantity of manure 

 to the soil, and they permit few or no plants to run to seed, the bringing of which to perfection, in the 

 cereal crops, constitute- t he great exhaustion to the soil. Gardeners, however, do something like fal- 

 lowing their ground at stated periods, as everv three or four years they dig the ground a double spit of 

 the spade in depth, and lav it up in winter to the frost ; and they reserve alternate pieces of ground for 

 the support of late crops ; all which practices approach nearly to our ideas of summer fallowing." \,Quar. 

 Jour. Ag. vol ii. p.l(J5.) 



4949. Falloivs unnecessary on friable soils. However necessary the periodical recurrence of fallow may 

 be on retentive clays, its warmest advocates do not recommend it on turnip soils, or on any friable loams 

 incumbent on a porous subsoil ; nor is it in any case necessary every third year, according to the practice 

 of some districts. On the best cultivated lands it seldom returns oftener than once in six or eight years ; 

 and in favourable situations for obtaining an extra supply of manure, it may be advantageously dispensed 

 with for a still longer period. (Suppl. to Encyc. Brit. art. Agr.) 



4950. The operation of fallowing, as commonly practised in England, is, in usefulness 

 and effect, very different from what it ought to be. In most places the first furrow is 

 not given till the spring, or even till the month of May or June ; or, if it is given earlier, 

 the second is not given till after midsummer, and on the third the wheat is sown. Land 

 may rest under this system of management ; but to clean it from weeds, to pulverise it, or 

 to give it the benefits of aeration and heat, is impossible. The farmer in some cases pur- 

 posely delays ploughing his fallows, for the sake of the scanty bite the couch and weeds 

 afford to his sheep ; and for the same reason, having ploughed once, he delays the second 

 ploughing. It is not to be wondered at, that under such a system, the theoretical agri- 

 culturist should have taken a rooted aversion from what are thus erroneously termed 

 fallows. The practice of the best farmers of the northern counties is very different, and 

 that practice we shall here detail. 



! A proper fallav invariably commences after harvest ; the land intended to he fallowed getting 

 one ploughing, which ought to be as deep as the soil will admit, e» en though a little of the till or subsoil is 

 brought up. "This both tends to deepen the cultivated, or manured, soil, as the fresh accession of hitherto 

 uncultivated earth becomes afterwards incorporated with the former manured soil, and greatly facilitates 

 the separation of the roots of weeds during the ensuing fallow process, by detaching them completely 

 from anv connection with the fast subsoil. This autumnal ploughing, usually called the winter furrow, 

 promotes the rotting of stubble and weeds ; and, if not accomplished towards the end of harvest, must be 

 given in the winter months, or as carlv in the spring as possible. In giving this first ploughing, the old 

 ridge- should be gathered up, if practicable, as in that state they are kept dry during the winter months ; 

 but it is not uncommon to split them out or divide them, especially if the land had been previously highly 

 gathered, so that each original ridge of land is divided into two half ridges. Sometimes, when the land is 

 ea-ilv laid dry, the furrows of the old ridges are made the crowns of the new ones, or the land is ploughed 

 in the way technically called cr wm-and-furrow. In other instances, two ridges are ploughed together, 

 by what is called casting, which has been already described. After the field is ploughed, all the inter- 

 furrows, and those of the headlands, are carefully opened up by the plough, and are afterwards gone over 

 effectually bv a labourer with a spade, to remove all obstructions, and to open up the water furrows into 

 the fence ditches, wherever that seems necessary, that all moisture may have a ready exit. In everyplace 

 where water is expected to lodge, such as dishes, or hollow places in the field, cross or oblique furrows 

 are drawn by the plough, and their intersections carefully opened into each other by the spade. Where- 

 ever it appears necessary, cross cuts are also made through the head ridges into the ditches with a spade, 

 and every possible attention is exerted, that no water may stagnate in any part of the field. 



49.62. As soon as the spring seed-time is over, the fallow land is again ploughed end-long. If formerly 

 split, it is now ridged up ; if formerly laid up in gathered ridges, it is split or cloven down. It is then 



