BAD CUSTOM IN FARMING. 
40 
passage of the wheel, or frame, of teasels. Should the 
hook of the chaff, when in use, become fixed in a knot, 
or find sufficient resistance, it breaks without injuring 
or contending with the cloth, and care is taken by suc- 
cessive applications to draw the impediment out : but 
all mechanical inventions hitherto made use of offer re- 
sistance to the knot ; and, instead of yielding and break- 
ing as the teasel does, resist and tear it out, making a 
hole, or injuring the surface. The dressing of a piece 
of cloth consumes a great multitude of teasels — it re- 
quiring from 1500 to 2000 heads to accomplish the 
work properly. They are used repeatedly in the different 
stages of the process ; but a piece of fine cloth gene- 
rally breaks this number before it is finished, or we may 
say that there is a consumption answering to the pro- 
posed fineness — pieces of the best kinds requiring one 
hundred and fifty or two hundred runnings up, according 
to circumstances. 
Our small farmers here have a vile practice of pick- 
ing from their turf, in the spring of the year, all the 
droppings of their autumn and winter fed cattle to carry 
on their arable land for the potato, or some grain crop : 
this affords no great supply to, plowed land, and is very 
injurious to their grazing grounds ; but the answer 
generally is, “ that the corn must have manure, and the 
beast can take care of itself;” and in many cases, I fear, 
from the starved appearance of the young cattle, that 
their best endeavors have afforded a very inadequate 
supply. 
This picking of the field was formerly very generally 
resorted to in the midland counties ; but the farmers at 
that time had a sufficient excuse in the scarcity of com- 
mon fuel. The droppings of the cows were collected 
in heaps, and beaten into a mass with water ; then press- 
ed by the feet into moulds like bricks, by regular pro- 
fessional persons, called clatters (dodders); then dried 
in the sun, and stacked like peat, and a dry March for 
the clat-harvest was considered as very desirable. These 
answered very well for heating water for the dairy and 
uses of the farm back-kitchen, giving a steady, dull 
heat, without flame ; but navigable canals, and other 
