OF PLOUGHING. 225 



will not plough at all, being so hard and tenacious, and 

 they ought not to be ploughed when wet, as the land would 

 be ruined by poaching. This circumstance renders the 

 cultivation of clayey soils so extremely difficult. Mr Joseph 

 Burns of East Craig, has found from actual experience, 

 that when land can be ploughed dry in autumn, harrowed 

 and water-furrowed, (after cross-harrowing), that land will 

 always be in a state sufficiently dry for ploughing in the 

 spring, or perhaps for sowing, without spring-ploughing at 

 all, but merely scarifying. 



3. In preparing land for a crop, water-furrowing is a 

 very important operation, more especially in wet soils and 

 climates ; indeed, not only are these water-furrows, or sur- 

 face-drains, made and dressed by the plough, but a spade- 

 man is also employed, in all the well-cultivated districts of 

 Scotland, to clear them out, as soon as the ridge is plough- 

 ed: the land is thus never injured by surface-water.* 



4. Mr Blackie of Holydean has sent me the following 

 statement of the number of miles his ploughs travel in a 

 day. An English acre of land, he observes, is ten chains 

 long, and one broad j one chain is 66 feet : divide that 

 into 80 furrows, which is as narrow as any body ploughs, 

 the whole furrows, in one acre, measure no more than 10 

 miles.f An acre in one day, is very good work for two 



* Hints from Mr Peter Jack of Moncur. This plan is very strongly 

 inculcated, and minutely described, in the Berwickshire Report. 



t Mr John Shirreff remarks, that the distance travelled by the horses 

 ploughing an English statute acre, with 80 furrow-slices to the chain of 

 66 feet, is certainly ten miles, exclusive of turnings. But there are 88 

 furrow-slices, nine inches wide each, in 66 feet ; so that the horses 

 ploughing a furrow-slice of that width, travel 1 1 miles in ploughing a 



VOL. I. P 



