64 
Svmc of the Agricultural Lessons of 1868. 
economy, which, while a necessity now, may bo a profit hereafter. 
The use of the chaff-cutter and pulper, and the more general 
consumption of straw as chaff soaked with root-pulp, or (failing 
that) with water hot or cold, and mixed with a sufficiency of meal 
or cake to make it at once palatable and feeding:, is a practice to 
which the drought of 1868 has driven many who will continue 
it long after the immediate necessity has passed. 
In the following report, kept till the last as one of the best con- 
tributions to this correspondence, it will be seen that all the sub- 
jects are discussed to which the attention of the reader has been 
directed. Mr. Samuel Jonas, of Chrishall Grange, to whom we owe 
it, speaks with confidence of the deep cultivation even of light and 
chalky soils when accompanied by high farming. He refers to 
the alterations of cropping, which the drought has suggested and 
Avill necessitate. And he especially refers to the serviceableness 
of the chaff-cutter, and to the advantage which, not alone in 
years of scarcity, but every year in his district, is derived from 
the practice of cutting all clean straw to chaff at times of thrash- 
ing, storing it in bulk well trod down and salted, to be dug or 
quarried out as wanted during the ensuing season. The following 
is Mr. Jonas 's valuable letter : — 
"The farm I now occupy consists of 850 acres, about 15 acres of whicli 
are grass. The soil is ou the chahc formation, which crops out on about half 
the I'avm ; the rest consists of weak, light gravel and sandy soil, none of which 
requires draining. My sons' farms, which are adjoining mine — 900 acres, 700 
acres, another 700 acres, and 1000 acres respectively — arc of the same de- 
scription of soil, none of which requires draining ; and this prevents me from 
answering your first question. We are all advocates of deep ploughing ; ouir 
first earth is with three horses, and ploughed from 10 to 12 inches deep. I 
myself do not believe it possible to cultivate too deep, if accompanied with 
high farming. By this jilan I have increased the staple on one farm now 
held by my son from 3 and 4 inches to 10 and 12 inches, and the crops in the 
same ratio. 
" Steam cultivation we have only done on a small scale the last two years. 
Wheat was last year a full average crop on the chalk, barely average 
on sand and gravel. Barley has been a very light crop throughout the 
district, and peas and beans bad. But in regartl to green crops I never knew 
them so bad. There are no early turnijis or swedes — all our roots are grown 
since the rains after harvest, and I fear will scarcely have any bulbs. 
"We have ploughed up a large portion of our wheat stubbles, which we 
were enabled to do, being as clean as possible. Tiiis land we have sown some 
with Sutton's six-weeks white turui]is for spring feed, some with rape for ditto,, 
and some with mustard for feeding off this autumn ; all with 3 cwt. root manure. 
We have also sown a large breadth of rye and tares for spring feed. 
"I fear our greatest calamity will be the failure of our next year's 
clover, on some of which wc have drilled trifolium, and on some half a bushel 
of trefoil, and over these red clover with Italian rye-grass, and this has 
planted the best and is most likely to succeed, although I do not like it as u 
jireparation for wheat, I did not leave my old clovers, so that what 1 have 
done will not interfere with my system, which is the four-course. I fear we 
shall have to plough up in tiie spring all our bad planted seed land and 
