58 



Weeds. 



Vol. V. 



To the Editor of the Fanners' Cabinet. 

 Weeds. 



Sir, — There is nothing' which strikes a 

 traveller so forcibly, as the difference which 

 he witnesses in the mode of culture, in the 

 sections of country through which he passes, 

 and which is more perceptible at the present 

 season of the year than at any other, for, now 

 that the grain is carried, the state of the land 

 is open to view, and the crops of weeds, 

 which meet the eye in almost every direction 

 in many districts, are a caution to behold ! 



I was the other day constrained to urge a 

 farmer to turn down a thundering crop of 

 rag-weed, about a foot and a half in height, 

 on one of his wheat-stubbles, on which the 

 crop had been cut at that height to avoid 

 them, thus robbing his cattle of their winter 

 bedding and the dunghill also, when he stop- 

 ped me by asking what he should do for the 

 want of that pasture for his cows and horses'! 

 which was, I confess, a question which I v.'as 

 not prepared to answer, for I declare I should 

 not know what I should do with it, and no 

 one would believe that any animal this side 

 of starvation would touch it ! And for this 

 miserable pittance he leaves this enormous 

 crop of weeds on his land, to draw out what 

 little heart remains in it, after having brought 

 a crop of wheat to maturity, and afterwards 

 to perfect its seeds and sow them by tens of 

 thousands to fill up the measure of liis ini- 

 quity the next year! And yet this man, on 

 my recommending him to take an agricultu- 

 ral journal, had the face to tell me he did not 

 like theory ! Now, what can he call his mise- 

 rable management 1 practice, I wonder '] If 

 so, theory is against him, that's certain, and, 

 as the old maxim says, no man is against 

 theory until he finds that theory is against 

 him. 



It is, however, refreshing to find there are 

 many noble exceptions to this too general rule 

 of bad farming, and I am free to confess that 

 I have witnessed, of late, much more excel- 

 lent management than I had ever expected 

 in a country where " land is cheap and labour 

 dear;" but one thing is evident, the good 

 managers have generally been met with in 

 sections or districts ; is it that they encour- 

 age each other in the practice of good farm- 

 ing, or that one good manager sitting down 

 in a neighbourhood of bad farmers, they be- 

 come shamed into a better system of cultiva- 

 tion? I sometimes believe the latter, and 

 consider such a man therefore a public bene- 

 factor. 



On a late visit to an industrious young 

 man, who was regretting that, in consequence 

 of the small numbers of acres he possessed, 

 he was compelled to work his land harder 

 than he approved ; I found him ploughing up 



his stubbles and sowing the land with buck- 

 wheat, for a crop of seed ; I, too, regretted 

 that he could not afford to turn down these 

 crops, while green, for the benefit of his fu- 

 ture crops; but, really, I do not believe that 

 his land will be at all more impoverished by 

 such management than will that of his neigh- 

 bour, whose stubbles, choked with weeds of 

 every description, and all just perfecting their 

 seeds, are preserved as pasture for his half. 

 starved horses and cows, and about a dozen 

 miserable drag-gled sheep, which he must kill 

 off for soup after the weeds are consumed 

 and before winter ! Now, such conduct ought 

 not to be called management — and yet one is 

 at a loss to conjecture hovi' such a man man- 

 ages to make both ends meet — but there can 

 be no theory in it, it must be all practice, and 

 that too of the very worst order. 



On this subject, I find an excellent article 

 in the Cultivator, which 1 pray you to trans- 

 plant to your pages, to open the understand- 

 ings of these men, should Jjiey by chance get 

 a sight of them, and oblige your reader, 



John Belby, Jr. 

 Dutchess Countj', N. Y. 



" Few are aware how much weeds or 

 grasses growing in a grain-crop detract from 

 its growth and yield, and how much its value 

 is lessened at Iiarvest : a vigorous root of 

 charlock, or other strong weed, will draw 

 from the earth the nourishment that would 

 have given fullness to halfa-dozcn ears of 

 wheat, and where these are permitted to re- 

 main in a growing crop, that is sure to suffer 

 in proportion to the quantity of the foul ma- 

 terial present ; weeds injure a crop in many 

 ways, by the space they occupy, to the exclu- 

 sion of valuable plants, but much more by 

 robbing them of their proper nutriment while 

 growing ; and this is not all, for, after harvest, 

 the fields will be found covered with millions 

 of large and strong weeds, where they are 

 permitted to stand and to perfect their seeds 

 during the autumn, under the miserable pre- 

 text of affording a bitter bite to the more 

 miserable cattle, during that season and the 

 coming winter! 



We have often seen wheat maintaining a 

 dubious struggle with the red-root, charlock^ 

 rag-weed, and thistle, and where both the 

 straw and the ear showed how much they 

 needed relief from such crowding and unwel- 

 come neighbours! On the best cultivated 

 farms in England, not a plant or weed of any 

 description can be found in a growing crop^ 

 and, in some years, the Earl of Leicester (Mr. 

 Coke, of Ilolkham) has offered a reward, but 

 without success, for the smallest weed that 

 could be found in hundreds of acres of his 

 turnips or wheat. It is recorded that during^ 

 the time of one of his public sheep-shearings,, 

 while making the round of his enormous 



