270 On the Preservation of the Swedish Turnip. 
strument sufficiently steady, and the turnips were consequently disturbed 
in the rows. The lap-roots having been cut, I then pass the double 
plough up the centre between every six rows, and let the turnips (which 
pull up, the tap-root being cut, as easy as possible) to one of my labourers 
at 2*. 6c?. an acre, at which, he finding two children, probably his own, 
he will make good wages, the average wages in this country being 2s. a 
day for a man. A child on each side of him hands the turnips to him, 
and he places them in the furrow made by the plougii. One ploughing 
then with the common plough completes the business, by turning the 
earth to the turnips and covering them up to the necks : if not quite so 
neat as you wish, a man with a hoe will quickly and easily make it per- 
fect. By this means I believe the plants will resist almost any frost, will 
be ready when wanted, cannot draw the ground, and scarcely a turnip 
will be rotten. 
I will also mention an instrument not so much used as I think it ought 
to be in fallowing, particularly when land is foul — the double mould- 
board plough. My attention was first called to it by reading Sir John 
Sinclair's pamphlet on the ' Agriculture of the Netherlands,' published in 
181.5. He there mentions the Binot as a very useful instrument. Now 
the Binot is really nothing more than a double mould-board plough, and 
used without a coulter. The double mould-board plough elevates the 
land into small ridges; it does not cut the couch-grass, but brings it in 
lumps to the top of the ground. The ridges quickly dry, and the drag 
and harrows do the rest. Cultivators I have always found very apt to 
cut or tear the couch-grass. I liave but little strong land, but on that I 
find it most useful : by ploughing the land for fallows before winter, the 
surface by the spring becomes fine and friable. Now the art is on such 
land, if you intend it for green crops, to keep that surface on the top. If 
you cross-plough this land in the spring with the common plough, you 
turn down that surface, and the ground turned up is as rough as ever; 
but plough it with the double mould-board plough when dry, and you 
keep the fine earih on the top, and will be able to grow Swedes or man- 
gold-wurzel on land so strong, that with common management would be 
hopeless. The double mould-board plough will easily do two acres in 
a day. 
I must also mention a use for another very valuable implement — the 
Presser — which I believe it is not often put to. For wheat on light 
land it is, I may say, universally considered invaluable. Now I have 
found it almost as useful for barley in the spring, when the ground, 
after feeding off the turnij)s, is often as hard as a rock, ploughs up 
like horses' heads, and requires eternal harrowing, and even then is in 
bad order : luider these circumstances use the presser, which I have 
found work invariably avcII, and with half the labour to the horses. 
Charles Allix. 
Willoufjhbij , Grantham, Lincolnshire, May 12. 
