to the Cultivation of the Land. 
211 
Having drained his farm with pipes laid 4 feet deep, Mr. Pike 
has been bold enough to level the ridges and furrows, with great 
advantage to his management, but with the fears and doubts of 
many practical critics, on this, some of the stiffest soil in the 
whole county. Certainly this step of levelling the surface, now 
proved in every strong-land district to be safe as well as bene- 
ficial, ought everywhere to precede and prepare for the advent 
of the steam-plough and the reaping-machine. With no water- 
furrows, Mr. Pike's land (with some steep declivities) has not 
had any water standing on it after a heavy twelve hours' rain. 
Without staying to describe the homestead, the arrangement of 
chaff-cutting, pulping machines, tlie useful meal-mill, &c. (driven 
with belts and fixed shafting by the same engine that cultivates 
and threshes), or the new houses erected purposely to shelter the 
steam field-machinery, I pass at once into the business of the 
fields, which I inspected early in February, 1859. 
And here it should be noticed that while the hedges (clipped 
once, and often twice a year by covenant) are low and neat, and 
there are everywhere — whether in the sheep-fold upon fine turnips, 
in the regular wheat plant, and the clean deeply-upturned lallow 
— evidences of good husbandry, yet you meet with spots in which 
such weeds as wild onions indicate a natural poverty in the soil ; 
the pastures produce a very inferior quality of herbage; and 
certain low portions of small extent are infested with couch-grass. 
Mr. Pike has only farmed here for p. few years, and will, doubt- 
less, master this tendency. 
First, we find a 22-acre piece of vetches looking uncommonly 
well, though sown with only five peeks per acre. The field was 
a wheat stubble: 12 acres were steam-grubbed with the Woolslon 
" three-tiner," and crossed with a horse-scarifier, then harrowed 
and drilled by horses ; the other 10 acres were ploughed, &c., in 
the ordinary way, but no particular difference is at present obser- 
vable. All the piece is free from weeds, with the exception of 
a few annuals, which the tares will quickly smother. 
On 50 acres of wheat I observed everywhere a fine plant, 
slightly blue with the frosts, which, however, will prove bene- 
ficial rather than otb.erwise, by checking the upward growth. 
The higher portion of this field is after tares, and was broken 
up and crossed with the two steam implements ; the lower part 
is after seeds, that is, ryegrass, trefoil, &c., sown on a fallow ; 
and this was broken up and crossed by steam-power in the 
summer, and afterwards worked with a 5-liorse scarifier ; tlie five 
horses effecting about 3^ to 4 acres a day. All the wheat looks 
well, though put in without ploughing ; little or no couch is to 
be seen, and but a few annuals, excepting a sprinkling of scratch- 
P 2 
