TFIE RURAL SOCRATES. 183 



number of acr<*5 divided between two or three occupi- 

 ers. — If there is not fufficient employment for draught 

 horfes upon the farm all the year, they muft either be 

 turned upon the flubble, or ufed iu the carriage of 

 goods for others : in the firfl cafe their keeping is more 

 expenfive than that of oxen ; and in the fecond, the 

 plough-man become a waggoner is on the road to ruin * 

 as is fatally exemplified in fonie parts of the Pai's de 

 Vaud, where mifcrable teams of hor(es perifh with fa- 

 tigue and hunger in road waggons. The manure is lofl 

 :o the land ; the plough man becomes a drunken carrier^ 

 *ind is quarreUbme and diflipated ; habits very improp- 

 er for a hufbandman, th^ bafis of whofe art is temper- 

 ance and application, 



M. de Mirabeau, in Mis letter, computes the mainte- 

 nance of horfes to be three times dearer than that of 

 oxen ; but fays at the i^ime time, that the expence (hould 

 firfl of all be dedudled from the clear prciic of what he 

 calls the great culture ; which, after fuch deduiftionSp 

 he ilili makes amount to more than ten times the mo- 

 ney that has been expended. — But he will permit me to 

 fuggeft the impofTibility that fuch luxuriant crops can 

 be the eife<fr m.erely of ploughing with horfes. With 

 our draught-oxen we certainly cut as. deep and equal^ 

 furrows, as can be performed with the befl horfes. We 

 beftow three. and ibmetlmes four ploughings upon fallow 

 lands, and ycry often two [for cur fpring fowings.]|^ 

 I very much doulDt if this be carried much farther in 

 France ; and, perhaps, there is not any country in Eu- 

 rope where the (oil is more carefully cultivated than in 

 Switzerland ; yet our harv^fls are vaflly inferior to 

 thofe the Marquis fpeaks of. It does not feem to h^, 

 to the nature of the draught ufed in the plough, bai: 

 to the foil and climate that w^e mull attribute the caufe :: 

 and if the fa£b is certain, that in France, after the: 

 deduftions made for t^ic expence of horfes, the clearpro- 

 duce is ten to one greater, the cheap means of fattening 

 sattle mud be a* dill fartber additional projit to the gra- 



