Thin-Sorcing of Wheat. 
599 
than swedes, yet produce a much larger weight of food per acre. These 
swedes and cabbages, considering the soil and the season, were exceed- 
ingly good. The number of stock upon the farm was 14 cows, 1 bull, 
200 pigs, about 30 colts and brood-mares, 300 fatting down-sheep on 
green crops and oil-cake, and 200 ewes in Inmb. Mr. Davis uses the 
Kentish turn-wrest plough, Smith's subsoil-plough, and Finlayson's 
harrow. He has discarded the old dished wheels of his waggons and 
carts, and substituted for them others, nearly straight, for their lighter 
draught. He prefers the flail to the thrashing-machine. His cart- 
horses were all of the heavy Cleveland carriage-breed, about sixteen 
hands high, clean-legged, with strong bone, and of great activity. Mr. 
Davis has selected them from the job carriage-horses which are sold off 
in London at the end of the season. They cost him from 12/. to 20/. 
each. 
" At Addington Farm the deputation had the opportunity of seeing 
Mr. Davis's wheat drilled, and a Kentish plough at work in an adjoin- 
ing field, plougliing to the depth of 12 inches. This farm, though of 
nearly similar soil in other respects, is yet of better quality than that of 
Spring Park ; but, before Mr. Davis took it, it had four tenants within 
seven years. Mr. Davis's system appeared to have been equally suc- 
cessful here as at Spring Park. 
" Selsdon Farm, the property of G. R. Smith, Esq., however, offered 
the best criterion of Mr. Davis's mode of cultivation. Eleven years ago 
it was offered at 10*. per acre, tithe-free, and no one would hire it, only 
8*. having been offered for it. It then consisted of a thin soil of about 
5 inches upon the chalk, comprising 136 acres of arable land, with 120 
acres of poor park-land. It never had had more three stands for stacks 
in its stack-yard ; there are now fourteen stands in this yard, which 
were last year filled, besides the barns. Mr. Davis has turned up 6 
inches of pure chalk, which has all become disintegrated, and mixed 
with the soil ; by this means he has been enabled to apply his system 
of rotation to it, entirely dispensing with fallows. On one of the fields 
— in which, under the old system, nobody would have thought of trying 
to grow tares or beans — is now to be seen a most luxuriant crop of cab- 
bages and swedes ; and the whole of the farm bears striking evidence of 
the great success of Mr. Davis's management, who states that he had 
of last year's growth fourteen large stacks and the barn full of corn, 
three stacks of clover-hay, and root-crops for the fattening of 200 wether 
sheep and 100 ewes with their lambs, besides 12 oxen. 
" Healing Farm, which has been under Mr. Davis's management for 
only nine months, presents no point worthy of particular observation be- 
yond those that have been mentioned with reference to the other farms, 
except the decided inferiority of the last year's wheat and straw, now 
being thrashed, as compared with those upon Mr. Davis's other farms. 
" Perhaps the most remarkable feature observable in the farms which 
have had a fair trial of Mr. Davis's system, was the perfect cleanliness of 
the land. 
" The leading features of Mr. Davis's system are, deep ploughing, 
early and thin sowing, and frequent cultivation between the drills; 
which system, as applied by him to the farms above named, the deputa- 
