82 On Plaister of Paris, 



clover getting too forward, by being sown at the season 

 of seeding wheat. Yet a comparison with that in the 

 same field not plaistered, sufficiently shewed the eiFects 

 of the gypsum. I have not repeated this mode of 

 sowing clover, which I then practised to avoid the loss 

 I had sustained from late frosts, which sometimes de- 

 stroy the young clover, sown on wheat in the winter. 



Some farmers object to sowing plaister on the clo- 

 ver sown on winter grain, while the grain is in the 

 ground yfgj and do not strew the plaister till the next 

 season. Perhaps this may be best. But I have met 

 with no loss by strewing the plaister on the clover and 

 wheat, when the clover seed was sown on the wheat in 

 February. On the contrary, in a dry spring, it has 

 saved my young clover, and forwarded the grass, so as 

 to enable me to mow a tolerable crop in the autumn 

 next after the wheat harvest, which, being cut with the 

 stubble, 1 have given, in the winter, to dry cattle. What 

 they rejected, increased my dung heap. It has been» 

 however, most common with me, to sow the plaister in 

 the spring next succeeding the grain harvest.* 



CgJ It is an opinion, perhaps founded in prejudice, among 

 some farmers, that its quality of attracting moisture, assists 

 in producing mildew, I have had fields plaistered, and those 

 which were not, equally mildewed, and equally free from it, 

 in the same seasons, according as the mildew prevailed or 

 not, in the country surrounding my farms. # 



* This is now, and has long been, my practice. I have found 

 sowing the plaister on the clover and wheat too hazardous. 



R. P. 

 September ^ 1810. 



