360 OF WEEDING. 



yet when fallowed, lirned, and dunged, and sown with 

 wheat, on the wheat being cut, the young broom was 

 found to be as thick on the ground as the wheat stubble. 

 This was probably owing to the fallow, which turned up 

 soil containing these seeds, which till then had been buried 

 below the vegetative influences of the sun and air. \In 

 this case, a very moderate attention to have the seedling 

 plants pulled up by the hand, in the first and second year 

 of the lay, will secure the land from again running wild, 

 although kept in grass for a good many years. This ope- 

 ration, however, must always be performed when the soil 

 is saturated with moisture, as then only can the roots of 

 these shrubs be pulled up without breaking. In every sub- 

 sequent rotation, at least fora good many years, the same 

 attentions must be renewed, to eradicate the successive 

 crops, which will arise from the dormant seeds remaining 

 in the ground. 



3. Where docks are very numerous, either among grain 

 crops, or in cultivated herbage reserved for hay, these 

 ought to be pulled up by hand after heavy rains, when the 

 soil is soft enough to allow their long tap-roots to be easily 

 pulled without breaking, and before the seeds of these 

 plants approach towards ripeness. 



4. In many parts of Scotland, the only mode adopted of 

 clearing the crop of thistles, is by cutting them close over 

 to the ground, by means of a very simple implement, call- 

 ed a weed-hook ; and even this is performed in rather a 

 careless and superficial manner, perhaps at the expence of 

 a shilling, or less, per acre. But in other districts, more 

 especially the south-western counties, instead of the weed- 

 hook, the weeders are provided with a more effective im- 

 plement, a pair of forceps, or nippers, with two long 

 handles, by which the thistles are effectually pulled up by 

 the roots. 



