564 OF WEEDING. 



weed, together with different kinds of thistles and other 

 plants ; by all which the grain crops are deprived of a 

 large proportion of the moisture and nourishment they 

 would otherwise derive from the soil, to the manifest and 

 large diminution of useful produce, both in regard to 

 quantity and quality of grain and straw. Were husband- 

 men fully aware of the great injury they sustain from a 

 profusion of weeds, and the profitable advantages which 

 must necessarily accrue to them, by the extirpation of 

 these robbers of the soil, both by the amelioration of the 

 individual crop among which they grow, and by prevent- 

 ing them from maturating and shedding their seeds to in- 

 jure future crops, they would surely see the propriety, of 

 exerting their own superintending industry, and of sparing 

 no moderate expence, to cure the evil. It is not the ope- 

 ration only of the best-worked fallow or fallow crop, once 

 in a rotation of four or six years, that will free land that is 

 much infested by annual weeds, from this pertinacious 

 host of enemies to the profitable crops. The seeds of these 

 plants, when allowed to ripen, and scatter themselves over 

 the surface of arable land, are known to remain for many 

 years torpid within the soil, till circumstances, favourable 

 to their growth, call them into action. 



No husbandman would dream of permitting the live 

 slock of his neighbours, to feed perpetually in his pastures, 

 as the diminution of food to his own stock, by that cir- 

 cumstance, would be perfectly obvious. A little serious 

 consideration might surely convince any rational being, 

 that the mischievous effects of a multitude of weeds, 

 among crops of any kind, are perfectly analogous; for a 

 given extent of land, fs only able to bring a certain limited 

 quantity of vegetable growth to maturity, proportioned to 

 its staple or natural fertility, and to the manure which it 

 contains. 



