sect. II. THE COUNTY OF FIFE. 149 



has not been stirred by the plough, shall be 

 turned up, it will be found hard, and totally 

 destitute of moisture. In short, the ameliora- 

 tion of land by fallowing is so great, that in 

 many instances, especially when most abound- 

 ing with vegetating substances, it has been found 

 to require either no additional manure at all, or 

 not the half of what would have otherwise been 

 necessary. 



The general utility of fallowing, and its ab- 

 solute necessity in many cases, being ascertained 

 by trial and experience, the practice is. now be- 

 come common in this county ; and, indeed, is 

 in no case neglected, where good husbandry 

 prevails. But though the propriety of fallow- 

 ing for cleaning foul land has been acknowledg- 

 ed by every intelligent improver, the propriety 

 of repeating it has been disputed. Nay, it has 

 been the object of the unqualified reprobation 

 of some whose agricultural abilities cannot be 

 questioned. I am apt to suspect, however, that 

 the ridicule and abuse, with which such persons 

 have treated this practice, have originated in a 

 too limited investigation of the subject. The 

 theories, founded on facts and experiments within 

 the bounds of a single county or district, must, 

 in general, be fallacious, and cannot, with safety, 

 be universally adopted. What is good hus- 

 bandry in one part of the kingdom, may be very 

 bad in another. Thus, for example, shallow 

 ploughing is certainly very proper in the case 

 of sandy porous soils ; but would be very im- 

 proper, where the soil is a thin clay lying upon 

 a closs tilly bottom. It may be granted, how- 

 ever, that if the ground has been once complete- 



