422 
Report on the Exhibition of Implements. 
ment of this department of the Show, which far exceeded any anti- 
cipations that had been formed respecting it, and thus, year after 
year, rendered insufficient all the previous arrangements. The 
writer did not again act as steward till the Northampton Show in 
1847, and was then much struck with the increased order and 
method which characterized the whole proceedings, and though it 
would be folly to assert that the present arrangements are perfect, 
still a routine has been established which will materially lighten 
the labours of the present Stewards of Implements, and which 
entide Mr. Miles and Mr. Shelley to their best thanks. The 
long-continued exertions also of Mr. Brandreth Gibbs, and his 
talents for arrangement, have materially contributed to tliat excel- 
lent disposition of the implement-yard which gives every facility 
for viewing these apparently unwieldy collections of machines, 
and has frequently elicited the praise of unprejudiced visitors. 
Moat Hall, November, 1848. 
XXI. — Account of Breaking up Grass-Land by Paring and Btim- 
ing, at Longworth, Berks. By Ph. Pusky. 
In the last Number of the .Journal an excellent farmer, Mr. 
Woodward, was so good as to communicate at my request a plan 
by which he had succeeded in growing four heavy crops of wheat 
in succession from newly broken-up grass-land. It is well known 
that nothing is more difficult than to secure the first corn crop 
on such land, and many will not attempt to grow a white crop at 
starting. Tiie wire-worm, moving about easily in the soil loose 
with the remaining roots of the grass, often destroys a large part of 
the plants of corn; and I believe that, besides the wire-worm, the 
state of the soil itself thus interwoven with a net- work of fibres 
allows the rising corn to shake itself loose at the root, and so to 
perish for want of support. Mr. Woodward's plan was to trench 
the land and bury this loose upper mould. A tenant of my own 
having dealt with the same difficulty by another process with 
equal success, I think it may be useful to lay his plan also before 
the Society, as no one mode of treatment seems applicable to all 
soils. 
The field is of as strong a clay as I have ever seen. It may be 
said to have no soil — to be all subsoil ; and that clay untempered 
by any grit, so that in dry weather the horseway over it shines as 
if the ground were polished ; and in such weather I have seen 
workmen endeavouring to dig it for making a road, but obliged 
to relinquish the attempt, even with the help of a pickaxe. 
