The Conquest of the Desert 



more, of those fundamental methods of tillage 

 so plainly set forth, one hundred and eighty-two 

 years ago, by the genius of Jethro Tull. 



In his agricultural classic (1731) entitled " The 

 New Horse-Hoeing Husbandry, or An Essay on 

 the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation," the 

 inventor of the corn drill wrote : " For the finer 

 land is made by tillage the richer will it become 

 and the more plants will it maintain." This 

 axiom has received ample confirmation on the 

 arid lands of the United States and the British 

 Empire, where the deep ploughing of the virgin 

 prairie and the thorough pulverisation of the 

 stubborn veld sets free aeons of fertility. 



It was Tull who first enunciated the three 

 great principles of the new farming : (1) drilling ; 

 (2) reduction of seed ; (3) absence of weed. 

 And he left a happy epigram which at least is 

 true for the sunlit lands oversea : " Tillage is 

 Manure." 



The principles which we have adopted in our 

 experiments on the Government Dry Land 

 Station at Lichtenburg, in the Transvaal, and 

 which are now being extended to the other 

 dry land stations throughout the Union of 

 South Africa, are eight in number namely, 

 (1) deep ploughing ; (2) pure seed ; (3) thin 



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