8 



nected with the depili of tillage, is that to which dung may he 

 safely deposited. He [Mr. Ducket] had not the least appre- 

 hension of losing it by deep ploughing ; but freely turned it 

 down to two or three times the depth common among his neigh- 

 bours." Yet Mr. Young says, that farmers (and good farmers 

 too) persist in a contrary practice. But he adds — '• Enlight- 

 ened individuals, thinly scattered, know better; having con- 

 vinced themselves that Mr. Ducket's practice is not only safe 

 but beneficial ;" and then names one who " ploughs in his 

 dung as deeply as his ploughs can go, turning it in nine inches, 

 and would bury it twelve, did he stir to such a depth." 



Confirmatory of the correctness of the practice of these two 

 celebrated English farmers, is the fact stated by Sir John Sin- 

 clair, President of the British Board of Agriculture, in his ac- 

 count of the Improved Scottish Husbandry. He mentions one 

 farmer who ridged his carrot ground, and buried the manure 

 sixteen or seventeen inches deep, the ridges thirty inches wide. 

 This farmer preferred, as a manure, a well prepared compost 

 of peat-moss* and dung, ten tons, or double cartloads, per Eng- 

 lish acre. " The dung (or compost) being at the bottom, 

 makes the top root of the carrot push immediately down, and 

 swell to an enormous size ; the roots being often sixteen inches 

 in girt, and 18 or 20 inches in length." 



To return to Mr. Ducket. His deep ploughing (says Mr 

 Young) was not practised above once in two or three years, 

 and the successive tillage shallow. " By such deep ploughing, 

 seldom given, Mr Ducket conceived that a due degree of mois- 

 ture was preserved in his light land, by means of which his 

 crops were flourishing in seasons of drought which destroyed 

 those of his neighbours: and no one could more severely con- 

 demn the ideas which governed the Norfolk farmers, in leaving 

 what they called their pan unbroken at the depth only of four 

 or five inches. The operation of ploughing he thought could 

 scarcely be given too seldom, provided when given it was done 

 effectively : and he always carried this paucity of tillage as far 

 as circumstances would permit : thus I have known him put in 

 «even crops with only four ploughings." In another part of 



In Scotland, their peat lands are called peat- 



mosses. 



