V 



NORFOLK SOCIETY. 317 



Ploughing. 



The committee do not regard bad ploughing as the besetting 

 sin of onr cultivation; we have strong teams, good ploughmen, 

 and the best ploughs in the world — and we need the best. To 

 say nothing of rocks and roots, Avhere else but in the northern 

 States of this Union, especially New England, is it regarded as 

 good culture, to suffer the best arable lands to rest in the sod, 

 producing grass three-quarters of the time ? The process of 

 breaking up an old grass field of five or six years' standing, 

 which occurs annually on all our large farms, is almost un- 

 known in the grain regions, where one or two successive hay 

 crops are the utmost ever raised. This peculiarity in our hus- 

 bandry, is mainly caused by the high price of labor, inducing 

 the owners of large farms often to content themselves with the 

 produce of one ton of decent hay from an acre, in preference to 

 incurring the expense of labor and manure, which the highest 

 cultivation would involve. Another cause for this practice 

 may be found in the fact, that our soil and climate are espe- 

 cially favorable to the production of hay. The cultivation of 

 a perennial crop like grass, which is emphatically the staple 

 produce of our farms, renders the operation of the plough more 

 difficult, though less continued, than under the European sys- 

 tem of agriculture. 



Our exhibition was confined to the breaking up of an old 

 grass field, of rather light land, of hardly eight inches surface 

 soil, and was regarded as a specimen of autumn ploughing. 

 Good work of this kind requires a straight furrow, turning a 

 sod of ten or twelve inches in width, so far inverted as entirely 

 to conceal all vegetation, and yet to suffer the edge of the slice 

 to rest upon its neighbor sufficiently to prevent it from falling 

 flat into the furrow. This was done well by all the teams. 



The Michigan Sod and Subsoil Plough, used by Mr. French's 

 team, is undoubtedly a valuable improvement for breaking up 

 land to be immediately planted or sowed. It splits the furrow 

 slice horizontally, about three inches from the surface, and the 

 main head of the plough following, throws up the bottom of 

 the furrow in a pulverized state, so that newly broken up 



