AND RURAL ECONOMIST. 115 



succeeding crop. The custom of naked fallowing, however, 

 is not much approved of in modern husbandry, and that 

 mode of preparing for wheat is rarely adopted by scientific 

 cultivators. Sir John Sinclair says, ' The raising clean, 

 smothering, green crops, and feeding stock with them upon 

 the land, is not only much more profitable, as far as relates 

 to the value of the crop substituted in lieu of a fallow, but is 

 also a more eftectual method of procuring large crops of 

 wheat, or any other crop, which may succeed the green 

 crop.' There is a disadvantage sometimes attending fallows, 

 which we apprehend may be more detrimental in our climate 

 than in that of Great Britain. Land which is kept in a 

 light and pulverized state is liable to be washed away by vio- 

 lent rains, and the showers of our summer season are usually 

 more plentiful, and fall with more impetuosity than those of 

 England, although the mean moisture is less, and there is less 

 rain falls in the course of the year on this than the other 

 side of the Atlantic. 



In modern tillage, wheat more usually follows clover than 

 any other crop ; and Bordley's Husbandry says, ' clover is 

 the best preparative for a crop of wheat.' In such case, 

 English farmers, and indeed all others who loork it rights 

 give but one ploughing, and harrow in the seed, by passing 

 the harrow twice in a place the same way with the furrows. 

 Mr. Bordley directs that the operations of ploughing, har- 

 rowing, and sowing, should immediately follow each other. 

 Mr. Macro, an eminent English farmer, says, ' From upwards 

 of twenty years' experience I am of opinion that the best way 

 of sowing clover lands with wheat, is to plough the land ten 

 or fourteen, days before you soio it, that the land may have 

 time to get dry, and after rain to make it dress well. I am 

 at a loss to account for the wheat thriving better on lands 

 which have been ploughed some time, than it does on fresh 

 ploughed lands which dress as well or better; but I have 

 often tried both ways on the same lands, and always found 

 the former answer best.' Mr. Bordley, in attempting to ac- 

 count for this effect, says, ' I conjecture that the clover plants 

 being buried and the wheat sown at the same time, they both 

 ferment and run into heat in the same period ; the germ 

 then shoots, and the root is extremely delicate and tender for 

 some days ; during which, the buried herbage obtains its 

 highest degree of heat ; which, added to the internal heat of 

 the germ, may, though only slightly, check and a little in- 

 jure the delicate shoots of the wheat. In sprouting barley 



