2 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 



bronchial affections warns us how little we can trust 

 the climate of perfidious Albion ! How lovely was the 

 weather we had previously, in the which your humble 

 servant, being an Epicurean, revelled — a sort of second 

 summer without the damp of the like Canadian season. 

 But the good this broiling autumn did the tillage- 

 farmer, who shall fairly recount ? — to those especially 

 who, like my unfortunate self, succeeded to a foul farm. 

 This is a red sandstone formation, and in the sandy 

 loam couch-grass seems to thrive luxuriantly, spreading 

 out most rapidly its bunch of clawlike rootlets, each 

 one in diameter no less than a full-sized pipe of 

 Neapolitan macaroni. 



The custom of this country is to scarify the stubbles 

 directly after harvest — an excellent practice, no doubt, 

 when the scarifier bites, which it will not always do, 

 and when the ground is sufficiently soft for its tines to 

 tear up the couch mass bodily. Still, under the best of 

 circumstances, with this practice many is the rootlet 

 broken off, and left as a cutting to strike, against the 

 planting of the spring. The plan of ploughing in the 

 couch I like still less, as that is nothing less than 

 deliberately setting new beds, and each separate severed 

 stem of this pertinacious grass will grow. 



The plan I find answer best is to take off all but the 

 «hare of Woofe's paring plough, and then go down into 

 the soil some four to five inches deep. The fresh flakes 

 of the last year's growth are thus thrown, like sods 

 half-shaken of their soil, roots upwards with scarcely 

 one cut in the sun, who rapidly does his part in turn. 

 It is surprising how hard a surface this implement will 

 break up. Then come the harrows and the roller — the 

 scarifier afterwards, and then the chain-harrows to roll 



