166 OF RIDGING. 



than if they had been perfectly straight. That does not 

 imply, however, that there is more land in the field. No 

 form of ridges can alter the quantity within the same 

 boundary; but their form tends to impede the operations 

 of the plough as much as that addition to the land. In 

 ploughing such ridges, every farmer who has had a plough 

 in his hand, knows how awkwardly the plough moves in 

 them. In the convex side it constantly inclines to take 

 too narrow a furrow, and in the concave side the reverse, 

 owing to the direction of the draft being different from the 

 direction of these sides. 



In regard to crooked ridges, many ridges, in the best 

 cultivated parts of Scotland, were formerly very broad, 

 much raised, and greatly curved. Levelling such ridges, 

 in stiff wet clays, was a very difficult operation, and unless 

 executed with considerable skill and judgment, productive 

 of loss. It should never be attempted but in a year of 

 fallow, and the straightened land should get a full dose of 

 calcareous manure, and much cross ploughing, to mix the 

 old and new staple, and to rouze the fertility of the soil 

 brought at that time into action. An account of an im- 

 proved mode of straightening and levelling ridges, by Wil- 

 liam Ward Jackson, Esq., near Stockton, will be given in 

 the Appendix. 



4. Height. It is highly necessary that ridges, on wet 

 land, should be well rounded, so as to form the segment 

 of a circle. This is effected by gathering the soil once or 

 twice, according to its dryness or wetness, in the course 

 of ploughing the ridge. Indeed, Mr Rennie of Phantas- 

 sie has often gathered the soil thrice, with much success, 

 especially for a spring crop, as it not only lays the land 

 dry through the winter, but enables the farmer to get 

 sooner at it in the spring. The height, however, should 



