On the Farming of Suffolk. 



289 



lends a helping hand. This cleaning is performed by the due 

 application of the skim-plough and scarifier, with harrowings and 

 rollings as occasion may seem to require. In addition to what has 

 already been stated, the spear-grass and other weeds torn out by 

 the scarifier are collected by repeated harrowings, rakings^, and 

 hand- pickings, and are then carted off the land. When the land 

 is brought into a perfectly clean state — and when the weather and 

 the other more pressing operations of the season, such as wheat- 

 sowing, car ting-off, and storing away roots, will allow — the plough 

 followed by a subsoil plough (the Rackheath or Keid's sub-pul- 

 verizer), the latter drawn by three horses, is set to work. The 

 land is thus stirred to the depth of 14 or 15 inches, and lies ex- 

 posed to the full action of the frost during winter. This will in 

 all likelihood complete the preparation till the ploughing-in the 

 manure and drilling the seed. In order to prevent the trampling 

 of the horses on the subsoiled land, the horses in the common 

 plough walk on the unploughed land, instead of one walking in 

 the furrow where the subsoil plough has just been. The line of 

 draught is adjusted by altering the head or bridle of the plough. 

 In shutting up the furrows the horses are made to go at length 

 instead of abreast. By adopting this plan the poaching the land 

 is prevented. This may not appear to be very injurious at the 

 time ; but the parts compressed by the horses' feet will in wet 

 weather be found to hold water. 



A wet autumn and winter will not allow these operations to go 

 on so smoothly. We must then be content with simply ploughing 

 the cleanest fallows, and with using the skim-plough or scarifier 

 across those that are foul. Any further attempt at cleaning is left 

 till the dry weather of spring commences ; and havino: got rid of 

 the couch and rubbish by the same system of operations as before 

 described, ploughing is resorted to in order to bring a sufficient 

 depth of mould. But by ploughing at this season of the year, 

 clods are very likely to be produced. To pulverize these the land 

 is always kept harrowed and rolled immediately after the plough. 

 If these do not bring the soil into a fine surface, recourse is had to 

 that very effective implement, Crosskill's clod-crusher. Another 

 ploughing may succeed with the same accompaniment of harrow- 

 ing and rolling. And taking it for granted that these operations 

 have been done at proper seasons — viz. when the land is neither 

 saturated by recent rains nor hardened by long- continued drought 

 — the field ought by this time to have a sufficient quantity of fine 

 moulds for ploughing in the manure, and drilling the seed to the 

 best advantage, and in a workmanlike manner. During the winter 

 the farmyard manure intended for the root- crop is carted to the 

 field, and laid in the most convenient places for its future applica- 

 tion on the land at the time of turnip-sowing. Wet weather is 



