282 THE COMPLETE FARMER 



most as well attempt to plough up a brick pavement or slate 

 rock. Green sward in general can hardly be ploughed too 

 wet, if it be not miry. Marshy, moory, and peaty or mossy 

 descriptions of soil should in general, when already reduced 

 to a state of tillage, be ploughed when the season is dry. 



In dry, sandy, and perhaps in some of the more mellow 

 kinds of loamy soils, the business of ploughing may be per- 

 formed when the earth is in a state of considerable moisture. 

 But very dry sandy land, whenever the weather is hot and 

 dry, should merely be stirred in such a way as may be ne- 

 cessary to prevent the growth of weeds; otherwise the 

 great exhalation of moisture in such seasons may render 

 them too dry for the vigorous vegetation of the seeds or 

 plants which may be sown or growing upon them. The 

 cultivators of this kind of soil have, therefore, many ad- 

 vantages over others who are engaged in the more stiff and 

 heavy sorts of land, in being able to perform the various 

 operation! of arable husbandry with much less strength and 

 expense of team, and by being much less interrupted by the 

 wetness of the seasons. Stiff clayey soils, which are al- 

 ready under the plough, may be beneficially ploughed in dry 

 weather, and it is said that stirring such soils in a dry sea- 

 son causes them to imbibe moisture, but in sandy soils the 

 opposite result is produced by the same means. 



It is very fashionable, and, as a general rule, very correct 

 to recommend deep ploughing. But this rule has a great 

 many exceptions, and the cultivator who should be governed 

 by it without regard to the nature of the soil and the pro- 

 posed crops, would only labor hard to injure his land and 

 reduce his products. 



It may not be amiss to attend to what some writers have 

 observed respecting the dangers and disadvantages which 

 attend ploughing deep without regard to the nature of the 

 soil and other circumstances. It is observed in Dickson's 

 Agriculture, that ' though deep ploughing has been recom- 

 mended by some modern writers upon particular kinds of 

 land, where the bottom and top were of two opposite quali- 

 ties, and neither of them perfectly good, that a mixture may 

 sometimes be very beneficial, and the experiment of going 

 below the common depth sometimes answer ; but that when 

 the top and bottom for eighteen or twenty inches depth con- 

 sists of the same soil, it is not believed it is ever worth while 

 to exchange the upper part, which has been enriched for 

 centuries back, for a part less rich, merely because it is 



