Report on the Agriculture of Belgium. 
13 
the land is dug as deeply as the soil will allow, down to 20 inches. 
This is not only a subsoiliu"-, but it is a complete turning of 
the cultivated soil upside down. The frequency of the operation 
depends upon the shift, but it usually occurs about once in nine 
years. Another very important use is also made of the spade, in 
addition to this, and similar to the process of reclamation which 
we have already described. On all light-land farms, whatever 
their size, the land is cultivated in strips, about 6 or 7 feet 
wide, separated by trenches from a few inches to a foot in 
width. After a crop, when the stubble is ploughed, these 
trenches will be nearly obliterated ; but after the seed for the 
next course has been sown and harrowed in, they will be dug 
out again, not exactly in the same position, but closely adjoining 
it. The earth dug out is thrown over the seed-beds, harrowed 
in, and rolled. If the farm has not long been under cultivation 
(a rare thing to see now-a-days except in the Campine), a little 
of the subsoil will also be dug out and spread on the surface, 
and in this way the whole area receives a gradual subsoiling in 
the course of years. The reason why these trenches are so 
common, even where the land has been under cultivation for 
generations, is that the farmers have no other means of drainage. 
Not that it is impossible to drain even so flat a country, but 
because the art of pipe-draining is not understood by the small 
farmer. Some large farms on strong land have been drained, 
but to these we shall refer more particularly hereafter. 
The Flemish ploughs, harrows, and roller have been so fre- 
quently described, that it is unnecessary for us to say much 
about them except to record the fact that they are precisely 
the same now as they were thirty or forty years ago, when the 
old books on Flemish husbandry were written. Almost the 
smallest farmer possesses a plough, otherwise he borrows one. 
On the very small farms one or two cows are put into the 
plough, the harrow, or the cart ; but occasionally the most 
grotesque " teams " may be seen. We saw also on a large farm, 
near the Pays de Waes, a very small plough, intended to be 
pushed by a man ; but we never saw one actually in work, nor 
even in the collection of implements of a small farmer. The 
old wooden Flemish ploughs are still in use everywhere, even 
by men of otherwise advanced ideas; for a Flemish labourer, 
who lets this " machine " almost guide itself, would hardly like 
the work of an English ploughman. 
Although the plough is a clumsy implement, the harrow and 
the roller are both worse. They are made of wood ; the former 
is three-cornered usually, and the teeth (which are wooden 
spikes) are driven obliquely into holes in the frame. The roller 
is a wooden log, more or less trimmed into a cylindrical shape, 
