J 34 On the Growth of Wheat Year after Year, 



In this stage of growth, at the beginning of November, when the 

 triple rows of wheat were distinctly visible, I trenched the intervals 

 for the succeeding crop, bringing up six inches of the subsoil to 

 the surface, and casting the seven ploughed inches of staple to the 

 bottom. In the spring I well hoed and hand-weeded the rows 

 of wheat, and stirred the intervals with a one-horse scarifier three 

 or four times, up to the very period of flowering in June. 



What has been the result? — The field I am describing is a 

 gravelly loam^ with a varied subsoil of gravel, clay, and marl. It 

 has been hard worked, for nearly a century at least, by tenant 

 after tenant ; has never known a bare fallow in the memory of 

 man ; and my operations followed immediately after a heavy crop 

 of wheat sown broadcast, I applied no manure; and, having 

 dropped single grains about three inches apart into the pressed 

 channels, I sowed but little more than a peck of seed to the acre. 

 And, what has been the result? — During winter, and up to 

 April, the plant looked so thin and so very far between, as almost 

 to excite ridicule. The wheat, however, began then to mat and 

 to tiller. May came ; and all through that trying month it kept 

 its colour, without a tinge of yellow. And now the well tilled 

 intervals have told upon the grain, which has swollen to a great 

 size. The compact ears are enormously heavy and large. The 

 reed-like straw has borne up against the storms. And there, at 

 this moment, as level and as laughing as the slightly rippled sea, 

 stands as fine a crop of wheat as ever I beheld, promising from 

 the half portion of each acre a yield of from 36 to 40 bushels. 



I expect a similar crop^year after year, on the same four acres of 

 land, treated in the same loay. I do so, because experience justi- 

 fies my expectation, and, as I conceive, science confirms it. 



First, as to experience. To those who are acquainted with the 

 history of British agriculture I need scarcely say that, while in 

 practice 1 differ wholly from Jethro TuU in the management of 

 wheat, the leading principles by which I am guided are his. And 

 Jethro TuU, whose veracity was never doubted, asserts boldly, 

 that the more successive crops are planted in wide intervals, and 

 often hoed, the better the ground does maintain them. The last 

 crop is still the best, without dung or changing the sort of plant." 

 " My field, whereon is now the ioth crop of wheat, is likely to be 

 very good the crop before it having been the best that ever 

 grew on it." And, to make the statement more remarkable, he 

 adds in a note, " I am sorry that this farm, whereon only I have 

 practised horse-hoeing, being situate upon a hill that consists of 

 chalk on one side and heath ground on the other, has usually been 

 noted for the poorest and shallowest soil in the neighbourhood." 



My own experience, which I will briefly relate, is this. Seven 

 years ago I broke up a few acres of pasture, having breast- 



