OF EARTH. 



29 



to the gross and violent. For, besides that such compost (at least so pre- 

 pared as it ought to be) is not every where, nor always to be had in 

 quantities, to confide in dungs and ordure is neither so safe, nor of that 

 importance to our husbandman, as some are made to believe ; since, if we 

 shall look back into the best experience of elder days, (Hesiod,) we shall 

 find they made very little or no use at all of stercoration °. I know some 

 there be who attribute this neglect to the natural fertility of the country, 

 considering dung as the busy nurse of vermine and nauseous accidents; 

 but waving these, (without intending to desert the aid of soil in place and 

 time,) I proceed with what I call more natural helps ; namely, opening, 

 stirring, and ventilating the earth, and sometimes the contrary, coverture, 

 shade, rest, and forhearance for a season, as we daily see it practised in 

 our worn-out and exhausted lay-fields, which enjoy their sabbaths. It is 

 certain, that for our gardens of pleasure, the fairest beauties of the parterre 

 require rather a fine, quick, friable, and well-wrought mould, than one 

 rank or richly dunged : and even all fruit-trees affect not to stand upon 

 artificial and loose composts, but in naturally rich and sweet mould, 

 within the scent and neighbourhood of well-consumed soil for the next 

 layer under, and above, so as the virtue thereof may be derived to it 

 through a colature of natural earth ; those forcing mixtures being more 



° Mr. TuU, who revived a mode of husbandry anciently practised, vras a great enemy to 

 dung, being of opinion that frequent ploughing was all that was necessary towards ren- 

 dering the earth fertile. By his theory, earth, minutely pulverized, constitutes the food 

 of plants, and under that erroneous influence, there is no wonder that he recommended the 

 constant working of the plough and horse-hoe. By his method, commonly called the nero 

 husbandry, no change of species is required, as wheat-land is continually cropped with that 

 grain, and so of others. The seed is drilled in rows with an interval of four feet, which 

 in summer is continually worked with the horse-hoe. This interval, kept clear of weeds, 

 constitutes a fallow for the succeeding crop ; and in this manner the land annually produces 

 the same grain. However ingenious this method may appear in the closet, it loses its ex- 

 cellence, when reduced to practice in the field, as from the experiments of Sir Digby 

 Legard, of Ganton, in Yorkshire, and even of Mr. TuU himself, the crop does not suffi- 

 ciently pay the cultivator for his additional trouble and expense. And here I wish to be 

 understood as speaking of the drill husbandry with wide intervals ; for drilling of grain in 

 equi-distant rows constitutes quite a different system. My very worthy and excellent friend 

 the late Rev. Sir William Anderson, has given the public a very just idea of this last me- 

 thod, for which the reader is desired to consult the Georgical Essays, p. 357. Mr. TuU's 

 system has infinite merit, when applied to beans and turnips, which, to the shame of this 

 country, still continue to be cultivated in the old method. In Scotland, the drilling of beans 

 and turnips is well understood. 



