Light-Land Farming. 
109 
operations of making them. The former method need not be 
detailed, but it may be mentioned in passing that farmyard 
manure laid on in winter will seldom, in a moist climate, pro- 
duce so good a crop of turnips as when laid in drills immediately 
under the seed ; and if the former plan be adopted, it is necessary 
U) apply guano or other light man\ne at sowing time, in order to 
give the young plants a quick and vigorous start. The plan, 
which consists in laying down the manure in heaps on the sur- 
face, before commencing to make the ridges, is accomplished in 
the following manner : — The field to be operated on is laid off 
in ()-yard stctches by a single slight marking with a common 
plough, one man lifting and setting the guide poles, and another 
with a plough and pair of horses making the furrows. The 
dung is then laid down in heaps along these furrows at 6 yards 
distance from each other. The ploughs then commence opera- 
tions on the further side of the field, and the spreadei's carry the 
manure forward and deposit it in the bottoms of the drills as 
fast as they are opened, and these are then split and the work 
goes on exactly in the manner described in a former paragraph. 
Supposing the length of the field to be 360 yards, then each 
stetch of 6 yards broad will contain 60 heaps of manure ; and if 
four ploughs are at work, these eight spreaders, having 7i heaps, 
will be required to deposit the dung. There is no practical 
difficulty in carrying out this plan, and little or no additional ex- 
pense is incurred ; care must be taken, however, that the spreaders 
do their duty, so as to have the whole line of heaps on each stetch 
removed and deposited in the drills before the ploughs come 
forward to them. The manure requires also to be rather long 
and rank, otherwise it will be very difficult to lift ; and if very 
short and well made, an additional force of spreaders should be 
placed on the work, so as to have it well done. Two great ad- 
vantages, however, are derived from adopting this plan on hilly 
land. In the first place the raised drills are neither disturbed 
nor consolidated by the treading of the horses' feet and the 
weight of the carts, while, in tlie second place, the manure is 
completely covered up as soon as it is spread. 
VVhen special manures only are used for the turnip -crop, the 
common plan is to make the drills rather shallower than when 
farmyard dung is employed, and to sow these along the bottoms 
of the drills by hand ; but many good farmers prefer broad- 
casting, as being more expeditious and better adapted for 
diffusing the manure through the soil. More recently an opinion 
is gaining ground that it is wrong to make shallow drills for 
such quick and powerful manures as guano and superphosphate 
of lime, for it has been proved by a number of well-authenti- 
cated experiments, that these may be applied with perfect success 
