Economy in Cultivation. 
33 
It is customary to have only one type of plough on the farm 
to do all kinds of work, an implement well suited for deep 
winter ploughing, but utterly out of place for spring, summer, 
or autumn work ; and though I know too well the objection to 
a multiplicity of implements, I contend that it is as absurd to 
have only one type of plough as it would be to use only heavy 
drags to effect all the harrowing operations of the farm. 
Being much impressed with this idea, and seeing the absolute 
necessity for every possible economy, my attention was attracted 
by the light four-furrow plough of Ransome, the “ seed plough ” 
I believe it was called. I used a very light form of this some 
years ago, and found it useful for a certain class of work, but it 
was too light for a general-purpose summer plough, and suitable 
only for extremely light work. 
Last spring I fixed upon Ransome’s three-furrow plough as 
being something like the implement I wanted, so ordered three 
of this type, one’to my home farm in Monmouthshire, and the 
others to Salperton, on the Cotswold Hills. At this place I 
was about to put my ordinary digging ploughs into a piece of 
ground that had been ploughed four to five inches deep in the 
autumn and was coming into oats ; ploughing was absolutely 
necessary, there being coltsfoot, thistles, a considerable amount 
of squitch, &c. No scarifier would have made a proper job of 
it. Had the ploughing been done by the digger in the ordinary 
way, one acre per day might have been ploughed. The three- 
furrow light plough with a pair of active little Welsh horses, 
without any special inducement being held out to the ploughman, 
turned over seventeen acres in six days. The field occupies 
eighteen acres ; it was begun with the new plough the first 
time of using on the Monday morning, and by Saturday night 
certainly not more than an acre remained unploughed — seven- 
teen acres instead of six, and the work done decidedly better, as 
a preparation for cleaning, than it would have been done by 
the digger ; for the small furrows, eight inches wide, are more 
penetrable for the harrows than the clumsy, rough, broad fur- 
rows of the digger. The depth was four inches. The work was 
quite enough for the horses, but by no means excessive. 
The next field to be operated upon had been ploughed in 
the ordinary way in the autumn, manured for roots, and on half 
of the piece the dung lay on the top of the ground (not having 
been ploughed in). After two consecutive corn crops, the first 
following a clover ley, the ground was decidedly “ dirty,” and, 
dry weather having thoroughly set in by this time, it had become 
very hard ; in short, it was a really tough job. I sent another 
man with a pair of powerful half-bred horses to tackle this with 
VOL. V. T. S. — 17 D 
