SUBSOIL-FLO JGHING. 



SUBSOIL-PLOUGHING. 



hold the plough, and another to manage the 

 horses, to do the work effectually. This ope- 

 ration should be performed in turning over the 

 winter furrow preparatory to a green crop, and 

 the sooner the work is performed after harvest 

 the better. In estimating the expense of this 

 operation, the horses may be charged at 4s. each, 

 to cover all expenses, tear and wear, &c., 

 which will amount to 24s.; two men, 2s.=4s. ; 

 and an attendant lad to pick out stones, Is. ; 

 in all 29s. As the work is heavy, the motion 

 of the horses is necessarily slow, and it will, 

 in general, take 8 hours' working to accom- 

 plish one statute acre. The expense of this 

 operation may appear alarming; but when it 

 is considered that one such ploughing will be 

 more effectual in killing weeds, and in expos- 

 ing the soil to the air, than two ordinary plough- 

 ings, we may deduct the cost of two such=20*., 

 leaving 9s. to be charged against the deep 

 working. 



" When land has been thoroughly drained, 

 deeply wrought, and well manured, the most 

 unpromising sterile soil becomes a deep, rich 

 loam, rivalling in fertility the best natural land 

 of the country; and from being fitted for rais- 

 ing only scanty crops of common oats, will 

 bear good crops of from 32 to 48 bushels of 

 wheat, 30 to 40 bushels of beans, 40 to 60 

 bushels of barley, and from 48 to 70 bushels 

 of early oats per statute acre; besides potatoes, 

 turnips, mangel-wurzel, and carrots as green 

 crops, which all good agriculturists know are 

 the abundant producers of the best manure. 

 It is hardly possible to estimate all the advan- 

 tages of dry and deep soil. Every operation in 

 husbandry is thereby facilitated and cheapen- 

 ed; le^s .seed and less manure produce a full 

 effect ; the chances of a good and early tid (a 

 Scotch term for that slate of the ploughed soil 

 which is most suitable for receiving the seed, 

 neither too moist nor too dry) for sowing are 

 greatly increased, a matter of great importance 

 in our precarious climate; and there can be 

 no doubt that even the climate itself will be 

 much improved by the general prevalence of 

 land dry." 



In this instance, as in most other novel agri- 

 cultural efforts, the zeal of its promoters has 

 sometimes carried them too far; they have 

 even confidently contended that in most situa- 

 tions subsoiling will render draining unneces- 

 sary; a result which would hardly have been 

 arrived at by the most sanguine subsoiler, if 

 he had paused to recollect that deepening the 

 soil, however it may promote the absorption 

 of atmospheric moisture, can in few situations 

 enable land-springs and stagnant waters to 

 escape. The objects to be attained by these 

 operations are, in fact, diametrically opposite. 

 The one is adopted to increase the gradual 

 healthful supply of food and moisture by the 

 earth to the roots of the crop, in the degree 

 the most grateful to its habits. The other ex- 

 pensive practice is to remove that moisture 

 when (from any cause) it becomes too abun- 

 dant for healthful vegetation ; this removal can 

 only be obtained in very peculiar situations by 

 the mere use of the subsoil-plough, and then 

 to a very limited extent; such, for example, as 

 when the crust or subsoil is of such a degree 

 128 



1 of thinness as to be completely penetrated by 

 ! the plough, and thus the upper soil brought, by 

 i breaking up the separating crust, into imme- 

 diate contact with a substratum of earth of 

 greater absorbent properties than the pan-crust 

 ! which has hitherto separated them. 



The farmers of the chalky soils of Sussex, 

 Dorsetshire, Wilts, and Hampshire, very ad- 

 vantageously raise the substratum of chalk ex- 

 isting under their lands, and spread it in con- 

 siderable quantities on the surface. Those of 

 Essex and Suffolk in many places do the same 

 with the under-stratum of clay or marl on 

 which their surface-soils immediately rest; and 

 they find this a very profitable practice, because 

 the earths which constitute all fertile soils 

 being also the necessary constituents of the 

 commonly cultivated grasses, are gradually 

 and incessantly carried off from thence by con- 

 tinual cropping, and consequently in time an 

 advantageous opportunity is afforded for their 

 being replenished with the earths, perhaps con- 

 tained in the subsoil, in which they may have 

 become deficient. 



The chemical effect of pulverizing and break- 

 ing up a subsoil is certainly advantageous to 

 the plant in two ways, besides others with 

 which we are very likely at present unac- 

 quainted; first, it renders the soil penetrable 

 to a much greater depth by the roots, or minute 

 fibres of the plant, and consequently renders 

 more available any decomposing matters, or 

 earthy ingredients, which that substratum may 

 contain ; and, secondly, it renders the soil much 

 more freely permeable by the atmosphere, ren- 

 dering, in consequence, a greatly increased 

 supply, not only of oxygen gas to the roots of 

 the plants, but also yielding more moisture, not 

 only from the soil, but from the atmospheric 

 air; which moisture, let it be remembered by 

 the cultivator, is in all weathers as incessantly 

 absorbing by the soil as it is universally con- 

 tained in the atmosphere, abounding most in 

 the latter, in the very periods when it is most 

 needed by the plants that is, in the warmest 

 and driest weather. 



It is, perhaps, needless to prove, that the 

 roots of commonly cultivated plants will pene- 

 trate, under favourable circumstances, much 

 greater depths into the soil, in search of mois- 

 ture, than they can, from the resistance of the 

 case-hardened subsoil, commonly attain. Thus 

 the roots of the wheat plant in loose, deep soils, 

 have been found to descend to a depth of 2 or 

 3 feet, or even more ; and it is evident, that 

 if plants are principally sustained in dry wea- 

 ther by the atmospheric, aqueous vapour ab- 

 sorbed by the soil, that that supply of water 

 must be necessarily increased, by enabling the 

 atmospheric vapour and gases, as well as the 

 roots of plants, to attain to a greater depth ; for 

 the interior of a well-pulverized soil, be it 

 remembered, continues steadily to absorb this 

 essential food of vegetables, even when the 

 surface of the earth is drying in the sun. 



And by facilitating the admission of air U 

 the soil, another advantage is obtained, that of 

 increasing its temperature. The earths arc 

 naturally bad conductors of heat, especially 

 downwards ; thus it is well-known, that, at the 

 siege of Gibraltar, the red-hot balls employed 



1017 



