5G8 
Report on the Wheat 
square in good land, as that will bring for;h to maturity from 20 to 30 
ears, which I found to be as many as had sufficient room to grow out of 
one sort. As to the ridge which was sown at the rate of 20 lbs. to the 
acre, it was impossible to find a root with above 17 ears at it in the 
best part of the land, and so in proportion in other parts. This was 
the most convincing thing of all to the reapers and bystanders, who 
were all helping to seek, and they found more on the thin-sown ridcre, 
at .30 ears and upwards on one sort, than on the other ridge at 17 ears 
to the root." — " The crop was late before it was ready to reap, it was the 
latter end of October ; it happened to be a fine dry time, or it is a doubt 
to me, if it had been wet, if it would have ripened well at all, for it was 
sown too late, and was still put back by having to branch out. ' No 
pickle used :' and I had from the piece of ground sown with 10 lbs. of 
wheat, 53 stone 5 lbs. of the finest wheat I ever saw. Every sheaf 
yielded a stone or upwards, but the sheaves were made large. The pro- 
duce was at the rate of 32 bushels ])er acre." 
Upon further search I discovered a plate in this work, which might 
be the original from which Newberry's dibbling-machine was formed ; 
from this drawing, and from the information given in the description of 
it, it appears to have either simply acted as a dibbling-machine or to 
have performed the double office of dibbling and sowing. 
Begging pardon for this digression — which, however, I do not think 
will be uninteresting to some of the readers of this Report — I now pro- 
ceed with my details. 
Four different quantities of seed were used per acre : — viz., in the 
drilled wheats, 2 bushels, and 1 bushel and 3 pecks ; in the dibbled 
wheats, 2 pecks, and 2 pecks and 1 quart — the addition of the 1 quart 
of seed to the dibbled portion of the wheat was consequent upon the un- 
favourable state of the weather at the time the seed was deposited. 
The wheats were put in as follows : — 
1. Jonas' prolific seedling. 
2. Red-straw white. 
3. Hopetown. 
4. The Southampton, called the Brittany, or Breedon white wheat. 
5. Fenton. 
On Tuesday, the 5th of November, all the wheats were drilled in 
except the Fenton, which had not arrived from Scotland. On the 
Friday following we began using the dibbling-machine; much rain fell 
during the day, and all that night, so that the ground was in a very 
indiff'erent state for working the machine; the draft was great, and 
against the hill it was as much as four good horses could do : ^the 
machine, however, though far from perfect, seemed to deposit the seed 
tolerably regular ; but the land carried so much, that even with the 
recent improvements there was some difficulty in clearing the dibbles of 
the soil which at every revolution adhered to them. 
The Fenton wheat having arrived on Friday, the drilling and dibbling 
was finished on Saturday morning. An acre was allotted to each of 
the drilled, half an acre to each of the dibbled wheats. On the 16th 
I find the first drilled wheats were up, and the Fenton and dibbled 
wheats weie germinating. On Friday, December 6th, the thermometer 
