69 



In truth this plan of Mr. Raddiffe's, of which I 

 have read and heard much, is most important to any 

 man who has old gra.ss fiekls to break up, jjrovided 

 that the soil is not too light, and even in this case, the 

 sods (after thorough harrowing-, to shake off the clay) 

 should be collected into heaps, and planted with po- 

 tatoes, instead of being- wastefully burned, or suffered 

 to lie withering- on the surface, injuriously deposit- 

 ing- seeds, worms, and the eg-gs of numberless in- 

 sects. 



A good manuring of the intervah in the first year, 

 from the dunghill, sets the whole business g-oing- for 

 several years, but this is indispensably necessary in 

 the first instance, as I have ascertained by expei'i- 

 ment ; having- tried corn in the intervals without ma- 

 nuring-, after I had stripped the land of its sod, the 

 corn, (wheat, oats, barley,) failed. In the second 

 year, you will have corn in those intervals, while 

 the banks are again under potatoes or any other green 

 crops, and every second year you are to take a\A-ay 

 a portion of those banks for the intermediate spaces, 

 until the whole mass of rotten sods shall have been 

 put out upon the ground from which it was origi- 

 nally taken. There is no robbing of Peter to pay 

 Paul in this case. The field, in the course of crop- 

 ping-, gets back in rich manure what at first Avas taken 

 off in unclean and unproductive surface, for there is 

 to be no shifting- of the banks to other fields, or 

 other parts of the field, else the economy of the 

 plan will be destroyed. 



The drilling- of corn crops is the next matter which 

 this number will treat of, and it is a subject of ex- 

 treme importance to the farmer's interest. The advan- 

 tages of the drill system in green crops, I have already 

 shewn in two or three cases by actual calculation — 

 and where corn and green crops have been alternately 

 cultivated in drills, I learn that it has been proved 

 by a Mr. Baker, that there is a clear profit arising 

 from one Plantation acre in fifteen years (in the 



