Some of the Agricultural Lessons of 1868. 
47 
as a stifyma on any preceding peculiarity of management what- 
ever. The turnip-crop was almost universally, last year, as great 
a failure under good management as under bad. Nothing sown 
in June, 1868, had any chance of growing, whether the land had 
been deeply tilled or not. His belief that the greater amount of 
evaporation occasioned by deep cultivation is damaging to the 
turnip-crop ought to have been preceded by a proof that the 
assumed increase of evaporation is a fact. The probabilities are 
all against it. The last showers before the drought left undrained 
clay land in a waterlogged condition. This water all escaped by 
evaporation ; and the subsoil, if any of it could get there, was 
searched by deep fissures. The case in favour of deep drainage 
and deep tillage is, that the last showers before the drought sank 
into soils so treated beyond the reach of evaporation, where the 
roots of plants already were at work to use them, and where no 
cracks could reach them. Mr. Rowley's examples of the failure 
of 4-feet drainage, and Mr. Evershed's instances of the failure of 
deep tillage, have, I think, considerable light thrown upon them 
by Mr. Evershed's own concluding sentence. These examples, 
like that of the Woolstone meadow, seem to me to prove that the 
true opinion of any agricultural operation, defended by one 
farmer and condemned by another, can be gathered only in those 
places where the full use has been made of the advantages it 
offers, and where due regard has been paid to the subsequent 
management of the land. There is many an example of deep 
drainage having failed through the poaching and mismanagement 
of subsequent shallow cultivation. And, from Mr. Evershed's 
reference to the garden tillage of the cottager with his pigstye, 
we may properly infer that there are instances of deep cultiva- 
tion proving useless simply from the tenant having failed to treat 
his doubled land with corresponding liberality. He has virtually 
doubled his field by the double depth of its cultivation, and it 
needs an almost corresponding increase of capital to " stock " it 
properly, or so as to do it justice. Notwithstanding, therefore, 
the exceptional examples referred to by Mr. Read, M.P., Mr. 
Rowley, and Mr. Evershed, I believe that the testimony thus pre- 
sented to the reader is conclusive of the fact that deep drainage 
and deep tillage are conducive to fertility, not only during seasons 
of unusual rainfall, but during seasons of unusual drought. 
Altered Cropping. 
Proceeding from the soil to the plant, I have now to collate 
those parts of the correspondence before me which convey the 
lessons of last year's drought upon the cropping of the land. 
The power of a deeply-rooted plant to resist the drought, is one 
