5 



About five months ago, I received from England a pamphlet 

 written by one of the most distinguished agricultural writers in 

 that country — Arthur Young. It was a Icclurc read, a few years 

 before, to the British Board of Agriculture, of which Mr. Young 

 ivas the Secretary. Its title is, " On the Husbandry of Three 

 Celebrated British Farmers, Messrs. Bakewell, Arbuthnot and 

 Ducket,'- — all eminent for genius, enterprise, application, and 

 long experience. It was to do honour to their memories, " and 

 to bring to recollection the means by which those celebrated 

 practitioners, in the first and most important of all arts, carried 

 their agriculture to a perfection unknown before," that the lec- 

 ture was written and published. And this, Mr. Young observes, 

 would be more peculiarly useful, because those men, "confining 

 themselves to practice alone, had left no register of their own 

 meritorious deeds." I will present to you the substance of the 

 information contained in this pamphlet, as in itself very impor- 

 lant, and because the practice of Arbuthnot and Ducket has a 

 direct bearing on the poifits I am now considering — deep plough-? 



ING and MANURING. 



" Mr. Ducket had sand, and sandy soils, alone, to deal with ; 

 but Arbuthnot's land classed among those harsh, wet, tenacious 

 loams which are usually called clay, and ought to be esteemed 

 such, relative to every circumstance that attaches to difficulty 

 and management." Passing by what Mr. Young says of Arbuth- 

 not's draining operations, I content myself with mentioning the 

 prii.ciple of that improvement : '• Lay your land dry, whatever 

 may be the method pursued, before you attempt any thing else." 



•• in respect to tillage, Mr. Arbuthnot carried it to great per- 

 fection : He invented a swing plough for a pair of horses and 

 the general depth of six inches, and a much larger one with 

 wheels, for gaining the depth of twelve, and even of eighteen, 

 for some peculiar crops, especially madder. Upon the advanta- 

 ges of deep ploughing he never had the least hesitation ; but al- 

 ways declared that in all he had read or heard, he never met 

 with one argument against the practice that had with him the 

 smallest weight." — "In the essential operation of ploughing, he 

 considered one earth [that is, one ploughing] well timed, and o^ 



