j -VoiThiTmanare in the autumn for Turnips the en - 



•nin* vear, it might be better to lay it on before the 

 Whin" It should be remembered that the slight 

 dressin* should not at all be considered as given to the 

 R . in reality, it becomes incorporated with the soil, 

 and more intimately mixed with it than by the ordinary 

 mode of spreading it on in the autumn, and any part of 

 it which the Rye may abstract, will be more thin com- 

 pensated by the droppings of the stock, and the carbonic 

 acid gas which they evolve while consuming it, and 

 vhich the soil a: ore readily absorbs in the spring than 

 in any other part of the year, evaporation going at that 

 period to a much smaller extent than in any other. The 

 advantages of its cultivation are summed up thus :— 

 Provision of excellent green food is made at a season 

 of the year when, of all others, it is most wanted. It 

 is produced without sacrificing any portion of the 

 usual rotations pursued on a farm, and with little extra 

 labour ; nor does it interfere with the management of any 

 preceding or succeeding crops. It will grow on any soil, 

 but it is especially calculated for poor loose land, when 

 every other green esculent is more or less uncertain. It 

 will bear any degree of frost to which our climate is sub- 

 ject, and is sufficiently hardy to defy the effects of the 

 cold'est situations in the country, being there cultivated 

 instead of Wheat for a corn crop, from necessity. It 

 ia as inexpensive, or more so, than any Grass or 

 leguminous plant. It is readily consumed by stock, es- 

 pecially young animals. It improves rather than dete- 

 riorates the soil upon which it is grown. On the other 

 hand, it is only fair to state the observations of others 

 in answer to these high praises. Louion remarks that 

 husbandry must be bad or unfortunate which requires 

 the necessity of having recourse to it. The opinions of 

 practical agriculturists, so far as I have been enabled to 

 obtain them, are divided. From one I find that, aft r 

 several years' trial, he has at length abandoned the use 

 of it, from a conviction that it injures the succeeding 

 crop ; and that he could always tell, to a yard, from the 

 appearance of the following, where the Rye had preceded 

 it. Another considers there is something poisonous in 

 its nature to other plants, and that he has invariably 

 found the wire-worm most destructive after Rye, From 

 others I have been informed they always grow a certain 

 portion on their best land, and they are satisfied that the 

 early and abundant quantity of green food it supplies ie 

 of the greatest value. It may be matter for r»ox*Bidera- 

 tion in the present peculiar season, wh"* Lcr i fc would not 

 be advisable* for the farmer. «* *H events this year, to 

 supply himself with tb« earliest food for his cattle, in 

 default of S^cJes, Hay, and indeed, Bean and Barley 



Straw. (To be continued.) 



THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 



643 



PROPER TIME TO REAP WHEAT. 



The discussion and remarks in some of your late 

 Numbers respecting the best time to harvest Wh^at as 

 regards its s'ate of ripeness, has recalled to my remem- 

 brance a circumstance which occurred some five or six 



years 



a o '0. 



I was visiting, a friend in an excellent 



"Wheat-growing district beyond Hounslow, and when 

 conversing with a neighbouring gentleman in whose 

 Wheat-field we were walking, my friend remarked that 

 his piece of Wheat was the forwardest thereahouts, and 

 would be fit to cut in a fortnight. The gentleman said 

 he meant to cut early, as he had understood was often 

 done in parts of Herefordshire, the millers liking the 

 Wheat all the better for it ; and he intended to begin on 

 Monday week. Upon which I remarked that if the 

 grain had ceased to derive nutriment from the straw it, 

 might be cut to morrow, and that it would be easy to 

 ascertain that by examining the thread-like connection 

 of the grain (which I shall call the umbilicd thread) to 

 the receptacle, whether the grain had ceased to receive 

 nutriment. Whereupon we first searched for and found 

 at the edge of the cart-way a plant in a quite green and 

 growing state, and examining it, saw that the umbilical 

 thread was in a healthy and growing state, and the grain 

 still milky. \V e next selected several ears from the crop 

 (not the ripest), and on examining them saw that the 

 umbilical thread was in a withered state, and incapable 

 Of conveying nutriment. Afterwards we selected some 

 of the r pest ears, and saw the umbilicd thread quite 

 withered and dry. But these ripest ears were far short 

 of being dead- ripe. The gentleman said, M This exami- 

 nation has convinced me, and I will begin to-morrow." 

 «e did so, was satisfied with the result, and continues 

 e P ract »c?. His immediate advantage was that he was 

 enabled to prepare his land and get a good crop of 

 mouse-tail or stubble Turnips. The harvest of that year 

 as generally prolonged by very rainy weather, and in 

 aoout a mon-h after the examination I saw bis Turnips 

 ln S hoed ant * a neighbour's sprouted Wheat being 

 / iv° n *"" e same day. Now there are many reasons 

 with should be harvested as 60on as it can be 



I *-n Ut l0SS of ^' iantit y o r quality of the grain ; and 

 t , Su Ppose that it may be, and ought to be, done 

 t least a week earlier than "is usual by the present gene- 

 a J P rac tice, and then the following may be some of the 

 vantages to be gained : — viz., a week's time in operat- 

 g upon or cultivating the land, in consequence of the 

 op having ben so much the sooner cleared off ; the 



-- "*iug Ueprived 



zonnm by feedin S on the seeds of weeds, such as I'oly- 

 Krain n V,Culare ' and other Spergula, instead; less 

 liable f u e wasted b y scattering, as ears are less 

 Ioo/p ?x brok en off and the chaff less liable to 



of bpn * hen ful1 * or dead ri P e » lhe Stra * must be 



Uer ^ality for every purpose. If the crop of Wheat 



should be thin, then, if s j should have b i sown or 

 the field foul with weeds, there will be a week's less 

 growth of green rubbish to retard the drying of the Straw 

 in sheaf j and if the crop of Wheat should be heavy 

 (which would as a matter of course half starve any H eds 

 sown), then the young seeds would a week sooner begin 

 to gain strength against the v r. I am not a practical 

 farmer, and for that reason cannot precisely say what all 

 the advantages would be, but I hope some of your cor- 

 respondents will enlighten your readers on the subject. 

 I do, however, know a little of botany, so far as English 

 plants are concerned, and though still less of vegetable 

 physiology, yet I venture to assert that the plan of ex- 

 animation of the umbilical thread will be a sure guide. 

 -«/. C. X. 



SKETCHES OF EAST LOTHIAN HUSBANDRY. 



[The communications of the two past weeks from Mr. 

 Sullivan, on the operations of the harvest, were published 

 in order that they might be seasonable, before his pre- 

 vious papers on Tillage operations were concluded. The 

 following is the last of the latter series.] 



Fallowing.— Although the practice of fallowing has 

 existed from the earliest ages, it appears to have been 

 entirely unknown in Scotland tillabout the commencement 

 of the last century. The singular means by which it 

 was introduced into East Lothian, and the unfavourable 

 light in *hich the practice was there first regarded, are thus 

 given by Somerville in his Survey of the County, drawn 

 up for the Board of Agriculture: — u Two persons of 

 high respecf ability are mentioned as being the first who 

 followed the practice ; the one a proprietor, the other a 

 farmer. The proprietor was the Right Hon. Thomas, 

 sixth Earl of Haddington, who set the example upon his 

 own estate. The farmer was Mr. John Walker, in 

 Beanston, as we are informed from respectable authority, 

 who took the hint from some English travellers, while 

 they spent a night at his house, and with whom h? ***** a 

 good deal of conversation upon the subject, >° much to 

 his satisfaction that he made an experiment upon six 

 acres the following summer, which hp carried through in 

 spite of the animadversion* * nis neighbours, who were 

 divided in their or ; " ljas as to tue sanity of his mind or 

 the stab v,k J °* n ' s circumstances. The result of the 

 eyr ciiment gave them a better opinion of both, and the 

 return was so abundant as to induce him to extend his 

 next year's fallow break to twenty acres ; soon after 

 which the prac'.ice began to spread, and so early as 1724, 

 fallowing upon all lhe deep s'rong soils was common 

 throughout the county." 



The practice of fallowing thus soon became general 

 throughout East Lothian upon all kinds of land, but the 

 extension of furrow-draining and of drilled crops, which 

 admit of considerable after-culture, has greatly contri- 

 buted to render bare-fallowing less frequently indis- 

 pensable upon strong adhesive soils, and altogether 

 unnecessary upon those of a light friable description. 

 The land in this coun'y is too high rented and too valu- 

 able to devote any portion of it unnecessarily to an entire 

 year's cultivation without producing any immediate 

 return ; fallowing, therefore, is now almost exclusively 

 restricted to the strong cold adhesive clays, which have 

 not been yet properly drained, and on which the cultiva- 

 tion of Turnips would be very unprofitable in many 

 seasons, and most laborious and expensive in all ; or to 

 land which has become so much infested with Couch- 

 grass (Triticum repens), Knot-grass (Arrhenatherum 

 avenaceum), and other weeds, that their complete 

 destruction could not be effected while preparing it for 

 green crops. The extension of the culture of drilled 

 crops has, no doubt, greatly diminished the extent of 

 land annually under bare fallow ; but for many reasons, 

 which it is unnecessary here to specify, these crops have 

 not entirely superseded the process, and are not likely to 

 do so for a considerable time to come. Wheat, the 

 staple crop of East Lothian, is the most valuable produc- 

 tion of our strong heavy soils, and for it summer fallow evi- 

 dently affords an excellent preparation; but independently 

 of this, another and perhaps a stronger reason for annually 

 devoting a certain portion of the farm to fallow, arises 

 from the fact that almost the whole of the operations 

 connected with the process are performed at a time 

 (from the conclusion of Turnip sowing till harvest) when 

 the men and horses, at least the latter, would be other- 

 wise comparatively idle. Although strong, stiff, adhesive 

 clays — the only description of land upon which bare 

 fallows are held to be indispensable — derive undo :bted 

 benefit from aeration during the summer months, yet no 

 farmer here ever thinks of sacrificing so much rent and 

 labour in fallowing land merely to afford his men and 

 horses constant employment, or to give the soil rest and 

 the benefit of exposuie to the atmosphere ; but when a 

 field, or some part cf it (for an entire field is seldom 

 fallowed indiscriminately), becomes, after a course of 

 cropping, excessively foul with root-weeds, bare or naked 

 fallow is resorted to as the only effectual means of extir- 

 pating the greatest enemies with which useful crops have 

 to contend. 



The first or winter furrow for fallow is seldom given 

 until the other stubble land intended for green crops has 

 been ploughed. Either of three methods of plough- 

 ing is adopted, according as the land may be in a wet or 

 a dry condition. In wet retentive soils, the ridges are 

 either gathered up or cloven out into halves, keeping the 

 furrows open in order to preserve the land in a dry state 

 in winter ; but the general mode of ploughing is casting. 



The second ploughing is sometimes given after the 

 spring seed-time is past; but unless the weeds happen 

 to be very numerous and luxuriant, it is most frequently 

 delayed until the Potatoes and Swedish Turnips are 



sown. If gathered up before, the ridges are now cloven 

 down, and vice vend. This ploughing is also not unu- 

 sually made in a direction c; ; the ridges, but in 

 whatever manner the land may be ploughed, it remains 

 in that state until the Turnip-s< og is completed. 

 Should a fall of rain, however, occur after a continuance 

 of dry weather, advantage is taken of it, and when the 

 suiface becomes sufficiently dry again, it is harrowed 

 with facility into a fine stite, which effectually disen- 

 gages the weeds from the soil and e s poses them to the 



atmosphere. 



As soon as the Turnip-soring is fini^ I, which is 

 usually about the end of June, the working of the fallow 

 is again resumed. After the weeds, brought to the sur- 

 face by previous operations, have been gathered off, the 

 land is ploughed in a direction crossing the former 

 ploughings, and as deep as the strength of the horses 

 can accomplish. Deep ploughing is deemed indispen- 

 sable at this stage of the fallowing process, not only to 

 increase the depth of active soil, but also to bring to the 

 top .the roots of all vivacious weeds. After being 

 ploughed the land is repeatedly harrowed and rolled ; 

 the grubber is also employed with effect at this stage, in 

 dragging to the surface root-weeds remaining in the soil. 



As the great object is the thorough extirpation of 

 weeds, the utmost attention is bestowed, and comiderable 

 expense incurred upon their collection. The q aickens. 

 as the roots of the Couch-grass and other weed- u £ e 

 termed, are disposed of in different ways, ac ' l ' i f^,,° 

 the state of the weather and the ii ltu ? n °' Uie 

 farmer. When the surface admits "* 0Cl r n * reduc # ed to * 



fine tilth, the strong vegetate *°™ e l* ° f *! r o° t ' weed 1 8 

 thereby exposed to the -»tW, are frequently d« oyed 

 by the powerful h v of a July sun ; and in his case 



they are pin ' ed down a S am lnto lne lami wltu ,afet J» 

 econor^ ' and advantage. But the long continuance of 

 ^ r; and warm weather, requisite to destroy Couch-grass, 

 seldom occurs here ; and hand-picking, tedious and ex- 

 pensive though it be, is therefore the most general way 

 of getting rid of the enemy. After being gathered the 

 weeds are sometimes burned, and the ashes spread upon 

 the surface; but the usual, and perhaps the most 

 judicious practice is, to cart them to some convenient 

 corner of the field, to be afterwards formed into a valu- 

 able compost with quick-lime. 



In most cases the land is a second time cross-ploughed, 



revering the last furrow-slices, well harrowed and rolled, 

 and any weeds which may still appear are hand-picked 

 as before, after which it is, in ordinary cases, perfectly 

 clean ; at all events the ridges are now formed in order 

 to provide against wet weather. They are always 

 gathered up, and every attention bestowed in giving them 

 the necessary and uniform degree of curvature. The 

 original ridges are usually followed in marking off the 

 new ones ; but if it be desirable to alter their direction 

 or breadth, this is the proper time for doing so. 



The application of manure is the next operation. The 

 usual practice is to convey the dung to the field some 

 time before it is required'for use, in order to undergo 

 the necessary process of fermentation, and to have it at 

 hand, but when the field lies contiguous to the farm- 

 offices the dung is commonly prepared in the yards. In 

 either case it is carted along the ridges, and pulled out 

 by a man with a dung-drag into equal and equidistant 

 heaps, proportionate to the quantity allowed per acre. 

 To facilitate and insure accuracy in spreading, the middle 

 of each ridge is sometimes lightly rolled. The ploughs 

 follow close upon the spreaders, in order to prevent any 

 loss arising to the dung from evaporation. Lime is also 

 equently applied to fallow, with or without dung : it is 

 scittered upon the surface and ploughed in with a light 

 furrow, and incorporated with the soil by the action of 

 the harrows. Many farmers consider this to be the most 

 judicious period for the application of lime to the land. 



In ploughing in the dung the ridges are gathered 

 up again, by which an increased degree of curvature 

 is imparted to them, or cast by ploughing two ridges 

 together. In either case the furrow-slices are taken 

 broad and shallow in order not to bury the dung too deep. 

 This ploughing generally concludes the fallowing process, 

 nothing more being done with it until seed-'ime, when it 

 receives the last seed-furrow. Instead of giving the seed- 

 furrow in the ordinary manner, some farmers plough the 

 ridges into small drills about 10 inches apart. This is 

 what is termed ribbing, and its object is to prevent the 

 throwing out the plants in winter, by affording a good 

 cover to the seed. The preceding operations are in 

 most cases completed about the end of July or early m 

 August if the season have proved favourable, but the 

 working of fallows is often continued during harvest. 



Land is generally fallowed after a crop of Wheat or 

 Oats, but when a Grass-field happens to be in a very 

 diity and unthiiving condition, it is in many instances 

 ploughed up during the summer, cleaned and otherwise 

 prepared for Wheat to be sown in the succeeding autumn. 

 Wheat usually precedes and succeeds the summer fallow. 

 Many farmers have found, however, that the young plants 

 of that crop are very liable to be thrown out of the sou 

 by the influence of the winter frosts, when sown on 

 fallows ; it is not uncommon, therefore, to grow Oats or 

 Barley instead of Wheat on bare fallows, where the ^soii 

 is of that strong clayey character so much affected oy 

 alternate frost and thaw in winter. 



I have now briefly detailed the general routine oT 

 fallowing pursued in the best-conducted farms m this 

 county f but the nature of the season, the q«l«ty and 

 condition of the land, and «ther circumstam.es often 

 render it expedient to vary the mode of procedure As 

 the leading objects sought to be attained b> fallowing 

 are the effectual extirpation of weeds, and the minute 



