roL. I.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 33 



improvement of it, began their work with drawing up certain heads of inquiries, 

 to be distributed to persons experienced in husbandry all over England, Scot- 

 land, and Ireland, for procuring faithful and solid information of the know- 

 ledge and practice now employed in these kingdoms ; and to consider what im- 

 provements may be further made in this whole matter. They have accordingly 

 proposed the inquiries following : 



1. For Arable Grounds. 



1 . The several kinds of soils in England, being supposed to be either sandy, 

 gravelly, stony, clayey, chalky, light-mould, heathy, marish, boggy, fenny, or 

 cold weeping ground : what is the soil of each country, and how prepared for 

 arable ? 



2. What peculiar preparation each soil undergoes for each kind of grain; 

 with what kind of manure they are prepared ; when, how, and in what quantity 

 it is laid on ? 



3. At what seasons and how often they are ploughed; and what kind of 

 ploughs are used for several sorts of ground ? 



4. How long the several grounds are let lie fallow? 



5. How, and for what productions, heathy grounds may be improved? 



6. What ground has marl ? how deep commonly it lies from the surface ? 

 what is the depth of the marl itself? what the colour of it? upon what grounds 

 it is used? what time of the year it is to be laid on? how many loads to an acre? 

 what grains marled land will bear ; and how many years together? how such 

 marled land is to be used afterwards, &c. ? 



7. The kinds of grain or seed, usual in England, being either wheat, misce- 

 lane, rye, barley, oats, peas, beans, fitches, buck-wheat, hemp, flax, rape ; what 

 sorts of these are sown in each county, and how prepared for sowing? whether 

 by steeping, and in what kind of liquor ; or by mixing it, and with what ? 



8. There being many sorts of wheat, as the white or red lammas, the bearded 

 Kentish wheat, the gray wheat, the red or gray pollard, the ducks-bill wheat, 

 the red-eared bearded wheat, &c. And so of oats, as the common black, blue, 

 naked, bearded in North-Wales, and the like of barley, peas, beans, &c. The 

 inquiry is, which of these grow in each country, and in what soil ; which of 

 them thrive best there, and whether each of them require a peculiar tillage, and 

 how they differ in goodness? 



p. What are the chief particulars obser\^able in the choice of seed-corn, and 

 all kinds of grain ; and what kinds of grain are most proper to succeed each 

 other ? 



10. What quantity of each kind is sown on the statute acre ? And in what 

 season of the moon and year ? 



VOL. I, E 



