50 CULTURE OF FARM CROPS. 



good crops if the com is sown broadcast, in comparison 

 to the work necessary when the cereals are sown in 

 drills, because a small amount of cleaning work required 

 for each crop in turn during the proper time is more effi- 

 cacious and more economical than a great amount of work 

 done in a single year, and accumulated upon the single 

 area of the roots, or other fallow ground crops. When 

 the cultivation in rows is systematically followed in a 

 proper way, and in a favourable time for hoeing with the 

 hand and by horse-hoe, the earth is easily kept in order, 

 and consequently gives its produce more regularly and 

 more independently of the seasons than cultivating and 

 sowing it at random, by which the cultivator has no more 

 control or power as soon as he has sown the seed and 

 harrowed it in. 



" Above all, in a soft soil which naturally is overrun in 

 spring by many bad herbs, the cultivation of corn in rows 

 ought to be beyond doubt adopted, because of the ease 

 which it gives during the interlineary work to destroy bad 

 branchy herbs, such as the wild vetch, &c., which destroy 

 completely, in the course of time, the crop of wheat by 

 taking complete possession of the ground. 



" Light soils, such as sandy earth, calcareous or gravelly, 

 is also good for cultivation in drills. The error principally 

 committed by sowing corn in these soils in rows is indubita- 

 bly the use of too much seed, which gives a greater num- 

 ber of plants than can vegetate and mature well there. 

 In these light soils, drilling in rows ought to be adopted, 

 and following the systematical use, careful of horse or 

 hand hoeing, an operation which may be executed with 

 much greater effect, and more frequently upon dry soils 

 than on retentive clayey soils, however well drained they 

 may be. 



" A fact too little taken into consideration by cultivators 

 is, wheat when uniformly sown in drills resists dryriess, 

 preserves its colour much better for a. longer time, and gives 

 a greater produce of grain in light soils than by being 

 thickly sown. 



