'FALLOWS' AND WHAT FOLLOWS. 63 



The first field which I had drained, and to whose 

 chronicled history I must now return, was a tolerably 

 rectangular result of what had formerly been two 

 fields, and part of a third ; and consisted, after its 

 enlargement, of about twenty-two acres. One half 

 of this, that is to say, one of the fields as previously 

 fenced, I devoted to a crop of Swedes the first 

 that ever had been heard of on the farm (and the 

 last, in the opinion of all surrounding Wisdom, that 

 ever would be) ; the other part, for reasons in which 

 I suspect you would have acquiesced, had you seen 

 it, I determined to indulge with its old but long- 

 forgotten friend, a bare summer fallow, and with a 

 dose of that same LIME, about whose chemical 

 effects and influences we had so long a soliloquy 

 some time back. Until the end of April all went 

 on alike over the whole of the twenty-two acres. 

 Ploughing, scuffling, and levelling were the order 

 of the day ; but on the ponderous and august 

 entry of the clod-crusher (a new monster in those 

 days), the first-mentioned half of the field took leave 

 of the other, and as each clod yielded up its indi- 

 viduality under the potent arguments of that most 

 persuasive of implements, the modern fallow went 

 a-head of the ancient, and old Jethro Tull himself 



