4 New Farming System Ensures Good Crops. 



to tliose who may choose to adopt fanning as a pro- 

 fession, but who are not of the fanning classes. And 

 this consideration makes it highly probable that, and to 

 the obvious advantage of our future prospects, much 

 more capital, enterprise, and intelligence will be 

 attracted to fanning than is now the case. This 

 remark has been suggested to me by the admirable 

 advice given to landholders by Dr. Keith (in his 

 " General View of the Agriculture of Aberdeenshire "), 

 who advises them in general "to be contented with 

 raising grass and green crops, and a small proportion 

 of com, remembering that a tenant who rises early, and 

 is his own bailiff, or farm overseer, is best qualified to 

 be a com farmer." To suit the advice to these days, 

 and for the general use of all agriculturists, instead of 

 " a small proportion of corn," we should say the smallest 

 /possible proportion of com. 



It must further be considered in this connection that 

 the system of farming to be afterwards recommended 

 as the one most suited to the times, not only, as I have 

 said, carries with it less risk of loss, but ensures good 

 crops of all kinds, whether the seasons may be over-wet 

 or over-dry. For the system provides a deeply-tilled 

 and humus-fed soil, and when you have both you have 

 those physical conditions which make failures in crops 

 an impossibility, for, as has been pointed out by Mr. Hall 

 in " The Soil " — " Mechanical texture is of fundamental 

 importance, and many soils owe their value to this 

 property alone, as is evidenced by the high rents 

 obtained in East Kent for soils which contain but little 

 plant food, but which are of uniformly fine texture 

 owing to the fine-grained sand or silt of which' they are 

 composed." And if this is the case with such soils, how 

 much more productive must soils be which are cultivated 

 on my system, in other words amply supplied with 

 humus, and deeply tilled, aerated, and drained by the 

 agency of the deep-rooting plants which are recommended 

 in my mixtures. 



