On the Improvement of Cold and Heavy Soils. 
117 
can be done at a time of year when the other mode would be im- 
practicable from wet, and also that in doing it the banks, bor- 
ders, and high headlands, frequently seen in old enclosures, are 
removed ; it is by burning these in large fires of 50 to 200 yards 
with coal, and carting and wheeling the ashes upon the land. I 
have done a good deal in this way, and the cost, not including 
horse labour, which of course varies with the distance to which 
the ashes have to be drawn, is as follows : — 
£. s. d. 
100 yards per acre, labour to burning, at 6rf. .2100 
2 tons of coal, at 9.y 0 18 0 
Wheeling and spreading a distance of 50 yards 
from the heaps, and filling and spreading the 
remainder, 100 yards, at l^rf. . . . 0 12 6 
£4 0 6 
I give you the following as an instance of the effect ot this 
latter mode. 
A field of clay-land, called " Bitton " — 20 acres, worth 28s. 
per acre — was wheat in 1842. During the following autumn and 
winter I had the banks and headlands all round the ground 
burned, which produced 2400 yards of ashes, 400 of which were 
drawn to another field. Part of the piece, about 5 acres, was 
planted with vetches, which were mown while green for fodder 
for the sheep, to eat while consuming the turnips upon the other 
15; upon these 5 acres a dressing of ashes — 100 yards to the 
acre — were spread when the vetches were removed, and after 
being cleaned by the requisite ploughings and scuffling, it is now 
planted with wheat. The crop upon this portion of the field 
must therefore depend entirely upon the ashes : it has derived 
no benefit from the vetches. Upon the 15 acres, which were 
dressed in like manner during the winter, where no attempt was 
ever before made to grow turnips in consequence of the tenacious 
quality of the land, and without the aid of manure of any descrip- 
tion, except the ashes, I have had a very excellent crop ; and the 
most extraordinary part of the matter is that, though the greater 
part has been eaten off in the months of October and November 
last, which were very wet, by nearly 400 sheep constantly kept 
upon them, the nature of the soil has been, for a time, so changed 
by the ashes that 1 have been enabled to plough close behind 
the sheep, and drill the wheat as fast as ploughed. 
1 need not multiply these instances further. I have dressed, in 
one or other of the modes I have described, upwards of 140 acres, 
besides using a large quantity of ashes as bottoms for dung-heaps, 
and where it has been done a sufficient length of time to give any 
result, the effect has been unvarying. 
