6 



a right depth, as being much more efficacious than that repeti- 

 tion of tillage so common in every district."* 



A judicious rotation, or round of crops, has long been consid- 

 ered, in England, essential to good husbandry : and so it is by 

 skilful farmers in our own country ; particularly in the middle 

 States, where clover, so highly important in the rotation, has, 

 for more than thirty years, been rendered wonderfully produc-^ 

 live, by the application of plaister of Paris. The most usual 

 course in England has beeh (excepting on stiff clayey soils) 

 first year turnips, manured and kept clean by hoeing; thesecoild 

 year barley, with clover seed ; the third year the clover mown 

 for hay ; and its second crop, at wheat seed time, ploughed in, 

 •and, where necessary to fill the seams, the ground harrowed, 

 the wheat sown, and then harrowed in. This is called " wheat 

 upon a clover lay." But by the long and frequent repetition of 

 clover, (that is, once in four years) in their rotations, lands in 

 England became (as they express it) " sick of clover :" and I 

 have been informed that some lands in our middle States, long 

 subjected to the like application of clover, exhibit like symp- 

 toms of disease or failure. But Mr. Arbuthnot introduced clover 

 once in three years, without suffering by such more frequent re- 

 petition. " He attributed the failure of this plant to shallow and 

 ill-executed ploughing : the result (says Mr. Young) justified 

 his opinion." 



Mr. Young mentions a lecture he had read to the Board of 

 Agriculture, " on the means by which a farm can be made, by a 

 right proportion of all the products, to support itself, without 

 foreign assistance, in a state of high fertility ; a question depend- 

 ing on the quantity or weight of dung resulting from the con- 

 sumption in litter of a given weight of straw." This lecture I 

 have not seen. But he considers the question as successfully 

 decided, in Mr. Arbuthnot's practice, in the following manner : 

 134 sheep and 30 lambs were turnip fed, in a pen on a headland, 



* The repetition of tillajre here reprobated, refers, I presume, to the nn- 

 merous ploughings given by many English farmers, at that period, prepara- 

 tory to the putting in of their crops ; which the single, deep and "effica- 

 cious" ploughing of Arbuthnot rendered unnecessary. — Were our plough- 

 ing for Indian C'orn and Root Crops alike deep and efficacious^ before 

 planting, shallow tillage (called horsc-hoeing) with light ploughs, during 

 their growth, would suffice. 



