72 
Some of the Agricultural Lessons of 1868. 
"The dry season of 1SG4, wlien everything in tlie sliape of 
green food for winter, except mangolds and cabbages failed, 
taught us that sheep would do better upon mangolds pulped and 
mixed with a large proportion of dry food (clover and wheat 
chaff) than they had before done with mangolds sliced, and we 
have acted upon that lesson since. This year has convinced us 
that lambs at cabbages do better the more dry food they arcf 
induced to eat; also that, after an early harvest upon light land, 
a crop of rape may be grown upon wheat stubble, and eaten off 
in time to plant cabbages in October. The land having been 
manured for the rape, is ready for the cabbages. 
" I have answered, probably at greater length than you will 
consider necessary, the three last questions of your Circular. My 
replies to the other three shall be more brief: — 
" Land Drainage. — Probably there never was a season ia 
which so little difference v.as observable between drained and un- 
drained lands. The land really could hardly be said to be wtt 
during the winter of 1867-8. If the previous autumn and winter 
had been otherwise, and the dry summer of l^^-GS had followed a 
season of ordinary character, every farmer of clay land knows 
perfectly well that the undrained fields would have cracked in 
all directions, and the wetter the land had been during the winter 
the sooner would it have suffered from the drought of summer,, 
whether in tillage or grass. I must go back some years to give 
you an instance. I have a meadow, 36 acres, very flat, natu- 
rally very difficult to drain. My predecessor told me that ' the 
grass never began to grow there till Pershore Fair (June 26th).' 
The reason was obvious : it was often flooded, and neither floods, 
nor rains could do more than get off the surface until evaporated 
by the summer heat. The land was starved by stagnant moisture 
until the summer was half gone, and tlien it cracked and burned. 
It is now drained and embanked to make the floods manageable, 
and, though not a good meadow, is very much improved. It pro- 
duced more than a ton per acre this year, cut the middle of .June. 
" Steam-Ciiltication.- — I adopted steam-cultivation in 1857. I 
cannot give any positive proof that the land has suffered more or 
less this year by reason of deep cultivation ; but it can scarcely 
be doubted that an additional depth of cultivated soil must enable 
plants better to withstand drought. It is quite certain that the 
drainage is more effective since the adoption of steam-cultivation, 
and this alone is proof that drought is less injurious ; for, as I 
have said before, all know who farm it, that imdrained or imper- 
fectly drained clay-land suffers more from dry seasons, as v/ell as 
wet ones, than land which has been effectually drained. My 
work by steam this season lias been : — 
