318 
Experiencefi of a Scotsman on the Essex Clays. 
to tlie ploughing alone. The next thing is to have the crop 
well manured. If there has not been dung put in the land, 
then there must be artificials given ; but I prefer both together 
— the artificials rich in nitrogen. Then there must be thick 
seeding. I am convinced that many crops — especially wheat — 
are sown too thin, and are lost for this reason. So we use 
quite 50 per cent, more seed per acre than many in the neigh- 
bourhood do, and are satisfied with the results. All these things 
combined produce comparatively thick, heavy crops, which help 
to smother all other growths, so that weeds never become so 
rampant as where a thin, poor crop, on badly ploughed land, 
is grown. For the same reason, we find tares one of the best 
crops, and always grow as many as we can possibly use, to be 
followed by wheat. 
But, of course, all this would not be sufficient to keep the 
land perfectly clean, so that it is necessary to attend to some 
other alterations in the management — and a description of these 
I now take up. 
As a point of great importance in the system of reducing 
labour, there comes the reduction of the laboured area by 
the putting away in temporary pasture. The making of per- 
manent pastures is a subject that has been greatly exercising 
the agricultural mind for some years past ; but I do not hesitate 
to state my personal opinion that, on ordinary soils, this is a 
great mistake, though, of course, there are many exceptional 
cases where the land ought to be in grass, and never ploughed 
up again. But putting into grass for a few years is quite a 
different matter, and has everything to recommend it. It is, in 
fact, adopting a six, seven, or eight years' rotation, three, four, 
or five of which are in " seeds." By this means the total 
amount of actually ploughed land is permanently reduced, as 
f()r every lea field broken up there is one laid down ; at the 
same time, the " vegetable soul "' of the soil is renovated by* the 
formation of a young turf, while the weeds disappear more or 
less. 
We thus attain a great many desirable ends, the first of 
which— saving of labour — has already been commented on. 
Regarding the second, it may be pointed out that the perpetual 
cultivation of land not only tends to reduce its store of fertility, 
but actually to change the mechanical nature of the soil. A 
clay soil like ours becomes stickier, and worse to work, a state- 
of matters greatly modified by the growth of a mat of roots of 
grasses for a time. In the same way the eflfect of a dressing 
of dung ploughed in is wonderful. Practical farmers are well 
aware of the good crops derived from newly broken up land, and 
the superior benefit accruing from any manures put on such a 
