240 OF FALLOWING. 



fallows often take place once every three or four years, but 

 that in such cases the land is so imperfectly worked, that the 

 process has an equal tendency to promote the growth of 

 weeds, as to destroy them. The Scotch husbandman, on the 

 other hand, is more energetic, for he cultivates his fallows 

 thoroughly, with five or six or seven ploughings, and thus 

 converts the soil of a field into the soil of a garden. This 

 insures fertility throughout a whole rotation of six years, 

 with a certainty not otherwise attainable. 



Another correspondent maintains, that naked fallows 

 upon a strong clay, incumbent upon a retentive bottom, 

 can alone enable the farmer to pay a high rent. And he 

 contends, that upon strong stubborn clays, newly brought 

 into culture, it is for the interest of the farmer to fallow 

 every fourth year, instead of every sixth. Deep plough- 

 ing, naked fallow, lime, and every other species of manure 

 that can be procured, are indeed the groundwork of that 

 system, which enables our farmers to pay such high rents, 

 with an inferior soil and a precarious climate. As a proof 

 of the advantages of fallows on day soils, he refers to the in- 

 ferior produce of land in the Carses of Gowrie and Falkirk, 

 before the introduction of summer-fallow ; and to the pre- 

 sent state of clay land in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, 

 where the great command of manure induces the farmers 

 to follow the system of constant cropping, though on farms 

 but a few miles distant from their own, better crops are 

 raised, upon the same description of soil, without the aid 

 of the dung of Edinburgh, but with a fallow. 



Mr Hennie of Kinblethmont is decidedly of opinion, 

 that fallow upon wet-bottomed land is quite indispensable 

 every sixth your, and that any attempt to get quit of that 

 useful and necessary operation, upon strong clay soils, must 

 always be attended with ruinous consequences. The only 

 effectual substitute for iullow ib turnips, but that crop can- 



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