]16 
On the Improvement of Cold and Heavy Soils. 
with vetches ; but such a crop of crowfoot, charlock, and rubbish 
of all descriptions came up the following spring, that I had all 
mown off together, and carried to the fold-yard. I then proceeded 
to fallow it, but, as if this field was to be unfortunate, the latter 
part of the summer proved wet, and it was very imperfectly done, 
and after draining was left till April, 1842. The whole of that 
month proved dry ; the field was forked at an expense of 25s. per 
acre, and by that means rendered clean at last. No rain fell till 
the night of the llth of May, and on the 12th and loth it was 
drilled with barley, the produce of which, fit for and sold to the 
maltster, was 56 bushels per acre. The next crop was beans, 
mixed with a few grey peas, and certainly the greatest crop of straw 
I had ever seen ; what the produce may be I cannot yet say, but 
I shall be enabled to inform you, as it is stacked by itself; but I 
should suppose nearly or quite as many bushels as there were of 
barley. It is now wheat, without manure; after that crop, my 
intention is to take vetches, wheat, clover, wheat — still without 
manure — in order to see how severe a test the ashes can bear. 
The produce of each corn- crop I shall, if you wish it, be pleased 
to give you. 
The field to which the inquiries of Sir Robert Throckmorton 
referred is called the " Green Hill" — 13 acres of stiff but tolera- 
bly productive wheat-land — and will come under what I have said 
relative to part of the Barn Ground : it was equally foul, was 
burned equally well, was drained, limed, and manured ; and pro- 
duced an excellent crop of swedes — no turnips of any kind having 
ever been planted upon it before. This was done in 1841. It 
has grown barley and seeds since, as good as I could wish, and is 
now planted with wheat. I have also a piece planted with wheat, 
after vetches, for which the field — 11 acres of very bad clay-laiid 
— was burned, and on which no manure has ever been laid : this, 
like the Brake Ground, must support itself for some years. 
All these pieces of land to which I have now alluded had the 
ashes burned and spread upon the field, at the expense, as I have 
said, of from 40s. to 50s. per acre ; the greater part done with 
wood cut from the hedges, the value of which I can scarcely 
state. When that was all exhausted (a good deal having also 
been used to put upon the tiles in draining) I had recourse to 
coal, and can state the expense. Three tons of raked slack, 
which costs here from 9s. to 10s. per ton (at the pits 3s.), will 
burn in the summer in heaps of about a cart-load each — more 
than 100 yards to the acre. I have had in some cases much more 
than this done ; and as the labour of liurning with coal is rather 
less than with wood, the whole can be well done at a cost of 
3/. 1 0.<». per acre. 
But there is another mode of procuring ashes, which, though - 
somewhat more expensive, has its advantages ; these are that it 
