152 



Fi7'st Principles of good Ploughing. — Fruit. 



Vol. V. 



half-a-dozen or a dozen acres, but farms of 50 

 or 100 acres; full employment for a pair of 

 good horses, or there is created by their keep 

 an undue charge for labour, which is a seri- 

 ous preventive of success : but where there 

 is that full employment, the small farmer 

 may live and prosper: small concerns, having 

 small establishments and no dignity to sup- 

 port, nor other cares to divert the attention, 

 find, in these sole resources, frequently an in- 

 come far more than equal to the expenditure. 

 The truth of the matter, as regards the most 

 profitable size of farms seems to be, that 

 there should be some of various sizes, that 

 various degrees of capital and capacity of 

 management may be accommodated, that 

 there may be a chance for those beginning, 

 who have little to begin with, and a chance 

 of the active and enterprising rising, as ac- 

 tivity and enterprise should. This seems the 

 only system by which the healthful tempera- 

 ment of a community can be kept up, and 

 that ascending scale of advantages main- 

 tained, by which not merely the wealth but 

 the real happiness of a state is promoted," 



First Principles of good Plonghing. 



The season is now opening to commence 

 your ploughing; every farmer, and every 

 farmer's boy feels perhaps as if he knew how 

 to hold and drive the plough, better than the 

 man who writes; all this may be true; he 

 knows that he should never turn his furrow 

 wider than the plough-share will cut clean ; 

 but always as much narrower as stiffness of 

 the soil shall render necessary, to lay his fur- 

 rows smooth and light, and free from clods ; 

 in all such cases of narrow furrows, the extra 

 expense of ploughing will be saved in the ex- 

 pense of harrowing, with this advantage to 

 the crop, that the harrow pulverizes only the 

 surface ; — but the plough, when properly di- 

 rected, renders the earth mellow, to the whole 

 depth of the furrow. This again involves 

 the question, how deep is best! To this I 

 shall reply particularly, as it has become one 

 of the most important questions in field hus- 

 bandry. 



That ploughing deep is of the utmost im- 

 portance to make land productive, no one 

 (who is a good farmer) will deny. Yet how 

 deplorable is it to see so many of our farmers, 

 instead of ploughing their land, persist in 

 the old ruinous practice of merely skimming 

 it ! Soils of the best quality may be very 

 shortly impoverished by shallow ploughing: 

 while, on the other hand, those of an inferior 

 quality may be materially improved by judi- 

 cious ploughing. — Why, it may be asked, are 

 swamps and bogs so inexhaustibly fertile after 

 being drained? One simple reason is, be- 

 <cau6e they are possessed of a soil of very 



considerable depth. Then why not plough 

 deep, in order to increase the depth of the 

 soils of uplands ] Lands which have been 

 ploughed shallow, on receiving the first deep 

 ploughing will generally fail, in some mea- 

 sure, in producing a good crop, in consequence 

 of turning up the clay. This has disheart- 

 ened some that have made trial of it, so as to 

 abandon it immediately again. But the ac- 

 tion of the sun and atmosphere on the up- 

 turned clay, will contribute greatly to its fer- 

 tilization. This being ploughed down, and 

 the former surface turned up again, with the 

 addition of proper manures, will give land 

 a deep soil and render it fertile and pro- 

 ductive. 



But few persons are aware of the length 

 to which the fibrous roots of grass descend 

 into the ground. It has been discovered, 

 with very few exceptions, that they reach to 

 the bottom of soils, however deep; conse- 

 quently, plants growing in deep soil will be 

 much better protected against the effects of 

 drought than those growing in a shallow 

 soil. 



I would suggest, therefore, that land, in 

 ordinary cases, be ploughed not less than 

 eight inches deep. Will it not be much bet- 

 ter to suffer partially in one crop, and thereby 

 to have afterwards a manifold increase, than 

 to be always toiling, with very imperfect re- 

 turns for our labour] 



These statements here given, contain the 

 outlines or first principles of good ploughing, 

 and the minute attention of every farmer 

 will soon discover the mode which shall be 

 best adapted to his different soils, and differ- 

 ent crops, with this general principle, to 

 deepen his soil, at every ploughing, as the 

 nature of the substratum, or under soil, and 

 the safety of his crop will admit; and, there- 

 fore, in this way, he may soon bring his farm 

 into deep tillage. The success of one-half 

 of any of his fields, under a regular deep till- 

 age, compared with the other half, under a 

 shallow tillage, will be the most convincing 

 argument in favour of deep ploughing, that 

 can be laid before the practical farmer. — Se- 

 lected. 



Varieties of Fruit. 



Some idea may be formed of the progress 

 of cultivation in increasing the varieties of 

 fruit, from the following enumeration of 

 those in the gardens of the Horticultural So- 

 ciety at Chiswick, which amounts to 2165, 

 of which there are 910 apples, 510 pears, 

 160 plums, 60 cherries, 30 peaches, 20 nec- 

 tarines, 14 apricots, 115 grapes, 50 figs, 

 24 nuts, 230 gooseberries, 10 currants, 8 

 raspberries and 24 strawberries. — English 

 Paper, 



