OF WEEDING. 363 



truth of which has been proved by experiment. Some years 

 ago, a farmer raised an excellent kind of rye-grass from his 

 garden walks. These walks, being always kept short, had not 

 a single seed dropped on them for twenty years, of course, 

 the produce was purely perennial, and free from every ad- 

 ventitious mixture. This valuable grass was almost an 

 evergreen, having the peculiar qualities of being both ear- 

 lier and later than other grasses. In order to give it a fair 

 trial, it was sown upon one half of a field, the other half 

 of which was seeded with the best common rye-grass that 

 could be procured, two ridges of each sort alternately. 

 While in pasture, the ridges sown with the fine seed, 

 were so much of a darker green, as to make the field as- 

 sume a striped appearance. But since the field has been 

 two years in tillage, it is quite easy to observe, that the 

 ridges which were sown with the best seed, are much 

 cleaner than the others, though the common seed was se- 

 lected with a good deal of attention. This plainly shews, 

 that seed can hardly be procured in the seed-shops, free 

 from adulteration ; for if one pickle of such impure seed 

 is found amongst five hundred, it is sufficient to pollute a 

 well-dressed field ; and if a person of judgment chuses to 

 go into seed-shops in the sowing season, he will find a 

 number of such seeds in a sample, capable of being con- 

 tained in a snuff-box of ordinary dimensions. 



It must, on the whole, be admitted, that the process of 

 weeding, is too much neglected in Scotland, even in dis- 

 tricts which are in other respects exceedingly well culti- 

 vated. Mr Kerr justly observes, that extensive tracts of 

 excellent arable land, capable of bearing heavy crops of 

 grain and cultivated herbage, are to be seen in many pla- 

 ces, disgracefully overwhelmed by vast quantities of weeds, 

 especially by varieties of rape and mustard, besides other 

 more humble plants, as chick-weed, yarrow, fat-hen, bind- 



