MANURES. 



MANURES. 



which would be lost by that of broadcast, 

 would be sufficient to maintain all the Euro- 

 pean subjects of Great Britain." 



In a communication to the Board of Agri- 

 culture, dated at Junacondah, December 31, 

 1 795, Captain Halcott says, "The drill-plough, 

 I find, is in general use here, and has been so 

 time immemorial, in the culture of all grain 

 (except horse grain), and also of tobacco, cot- 

 ton, rice, and the castor-oil plant." 



The first drill introduced into Europe seems 

 to have been the invention of a German, who 

 made it known to the Spanish court in 1647. 

 (Harte's Essays on Husbandry.') The Roman 

 farmers endeavoured to attain the advantages 

 of row-culture by ploughing in the seeds. 



It is useless to search in the works of Jethro 

 Tull for any recommendation of the drill as a 

 means of applying manure; for all Tull's 

 arguments and experiments are directed to 

 proving that the application of manure of any 

 kind is utterly needless. And yet he had the 

 discernment, when thus suffering his enthu- 

 siasm to carry him much too far, to make the 

 observation, that "almost the only use of all 

 manure is the same as of tillage, viz., the pul- 

 veration it makes by fermentation, as tillage 

 doth by attrition or contusion ; and with these 

 differences, that dung, which is the most com- 

 mon manure, is apt to increase -weeds, as much 

 as tillage (of which hoeing is chief) destroys 

 them." (New Husbandry, p. 166, 1st edit. 1731.) 

 The advantage, thus glanced at by Tull, of the 

 manure keeping the ground light and porous, 

 is much greater than the cultivator commonly 

 suspects, and this benefit is mainly owing to 

 the free access which is thus secured of the 

 watery vapour and gases of the atmosphere to 

 the roots of the plants. Now, for the vapour 

 of the atmosphere, all well-pulverized fertile 

 earth has a strong attraction : the richer and 

 the better divided the soil, the more copiously 

 does it absorb vapour ; but the power of the 

 richest cultivated soils in this respect is very 

 much inferior to that of even the most ordi- 

 nary manure. In my own experiments, I have 

 never found, in a given space, sa3 r three hours, 

 that 1000 parts of the richest soil, previously 

 dried, absorbed more than from 14 to 20 parts 

 of jnoisture ; but in the same time, under simi- 

 lar circumstances, 1000 parts of horse-dung 

 absorbed 145 parts; cow-dung, 130 ; pig-dung, 

 120 ; sheep-dung, 81 ; pigeons' dung, 50. (My 

 Work " On Fertilizers,'" p. 41.) It is evident, 

 therefore, that for the mere purpose of with- 

 standing long-continued dry weather, those 

 plants whose roots have immediate access to 

 organic manures will be much better enabled 

 to absorb the necessary supplies of atmospheric 

 moisture than those merely vegetating in the 

 unmanured soil. 



The merit of the introduction of the drill to 

 general notice in England, is, however, to be 

 ascribed, in a great measure, to Jethro Tull. 

 Yet Jethro Tull certainly thought himself the 

 inventor ; for he tells us so very clearly, in the 

 preface to the first edition of his Horse-hoe Hxx- 

 bandry, published in 1731, and even whence 

 he derived the hint for his drill; he says, 

 "When I was young, my diversion was music; 

 \ had also the curiosity to acquaint myself 

 77* 



thoroughly with the fabric of every part of my 

 organ ; but as little thinking that I should ever 

 take from thence the first rudiments of a drill, 

 as that I should ever have occasion for such a 

 machine, or practise agriculture; for 'twas 

 accident, not choice, that made me a farmer." 

 But he was certainly not the originator of the 

 idea of thus applying the seed ; for, nearly a 

 century before his time, John Worlidge inef- 

 fectually, in 1669, laboured hard to draw the 

 English farmers' attention not only to the drill, 

 but to the manure-drill also. And little can be 

 now added to what, 175 years since, honest 

 John Worlidge urged in its favour, when he 

 said, after describing the seed-drill, " By the 

 use of this instrument, also, you may cover 

 your grain or pulse with any rich compost you 

 shall prepare for that purpose, either with 

 pigeons' dung, dry or granulated, or any other 

 saline or lixivial substance, made dispersable, 

 which may drop after the corn, and prove an 

 excellent improvement; for we find, experi- 

 mentally, that pigeons' dung, sown by the hand 

 on wheat or barley, mightily advantageth it in 

 the common way of husbandry : much more, 

 then, might we expect this way, where the 

 dung, or such like substance, is all in the same 

 furrow with the corn ; whereas, in the other 

 vulgar way, a great part thereof comes not 

 near it. It may either be done by having 

 another hopper on the same frame behind that 

 for the corn, wherein the compost may be put 

 and made to drop successively after the corn ; 

 or it may be sown by another instrument to 

 follow the former, which is the better way, and 

 may both disperse the soil and cover the ma- 

 nure and seed." 



Worlidge was well supported by Evelyn, 

 'who, in a communication to the Royal Society, 

 dated in February, 1669, urged the advantages 

 of a drill-plough, which, first invented in Ger- 

 many, had thence been introduced at Madrid 

 under the auspices of the Spanish monarch, 

 and had been forwarded from Spain by the 

 Earl of Sandwich, as the invention of a Don 

 Leucatilla. It is there described as " the Spa- 

 nish sembrador, or new engine for ploughing, 

 and equal sowing all sorts of grain, and har- 

 rowing at once." Leucatilla saw very clearly 

 the errors of the broadcast system: he ob- 

 served, "Even at this day (1669) all sorts of 

 seeds are sown by handfuls, heedlessly and by 

 chance, whence we see corn sowed in some 

 places too thick, in others too thin." 



It was between the years 1720 and 1740 that 

 Jethro Tull laboured thus hard, and with a 

 success little equal to his merits, to introduce 

 the drill system: the honour, however, was re 

 served for the present Lord Leicester, in the 

 early part of the present century, of inducing 

 its general employment, for which the soils of 

 the greatest portion of Norfolk are so very well 

 adapted. It then naturally followed, that vari- 

 ous manures were found easily applicable at 

 the same time with the seed. Powdered oil- 

 cake was one of the first substances that was 

 used as a manure, and the discovery of the 

 value of crushed bones as a fertilizer for tur- 

 nips, opened another wide field for the useful 

 i application of this invaluable machine. The 

 , manure-drill, in fact, thence received an im- 



