\M 
AGRICULTURE. 
corn, turnips, and other vegetables, by de- 
priving them of a certain portion of nourish- 
ment. They serve likewise as a harbour for 
worms, the only effectual way to clear the 
ground from which is to burn it; the old 
and the young, together with their eggs, 
being thus destroyed or smothered. The 
ashes procured by paring and burning will 
furnish manure for several crops. The les- 
sening of the soil by this husbandry was 
long apprehended; such a consequence, 
however, may be safely and positively de- 
nied, uniess perhaps in cases in which the 
practice is carried to great excess. In poor 
soils, peat, and sedgy bottoms, the process 
is universally admitted ,to be a proper one. 
With respect even to clay lands ; it produces 
not only the common manure found in vege- 
table ashes, but a substance which acts me- 
chanically to the utmost advantage, loosen- 
ing and opening the stubborn adhesion of 
the soil. In loam itself, the ploughing of 
rough pastures to the depth of eight or nine 
inches, and burning the whole furrow in 
heaps of about thirty bushels each, has been 
attended with most decided and durable 
improvement ; and even though this depth 
be nearly twenty times the depth of com- 
mon paring, the soil has not been supposed 
to be wasted eventually by the practice. Its 
texture has been rendered less stiff: the re- 
dundance of water has been expelled; and 
the immediate fertility attending this me- 
thod of treatment fills it speedily with far 
more vegetable particles than it previously 
possessed. Sandy grounds are as improve- 
able by this method as those of a different 
description, and chalk lands in eveiy part 
of England have been so treated, and most 
profitably been brought into culture. In 
Gloucestershire, Yorkshire, and Lincoln- 
shire ; in Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Kent, 
the consequent crops of wheat, barley, oats, 
and sainfoin, have been of sufficient value 
to buy the land at more than forty years’ 
purchase, at a fairly estimated rent before 
these improvements were applied. But 
whatever difference may exist with respect 
to the practice on such lands as have been 
just mentioned, and which is rapidly vanish- 
ing before obvious and impressive facts, no 
one, as already observed, doubts the pro- 
priety of it on peat. From the fens of 
Cambridgeshire to the bogs of Ireland, the 
moors of the north, or the sedgy bottoms 
abounding in almost every part of the united 
kingdom, paring and burning are universally 
employed, on their being broken up, by 
pien of real experience and observation. 
The method of doing it by fallow is com- 
pletely abandoned by all persons of this 
description, after the most regular and de- 
cided experiments of its results. In Cam- 
bridgeshire the work is performed by a 
plough, purposely constructed, and admira- 
bly adapted for it, which reduces the expense 
considerably. With respect to meadow and 
pasture land, it is performed by what is de- 
nominated a breast plough, which requiring 
great strength and labour in its application, 
much increases the cost. With regard to the 
genera! practice, it may be observed, that the 
heaps should not consist of more than twenty 
bushels, as, if they are much larger, the 
turfs will be too much burnt, Their size 
must be regulated in a great degree by the 
nature of the weather, and the thickness of 
the paring. When the ashes are spread, 
which should be completed as soon as pos- 
sible, the land, as is usually the case, should 
be thinly ploughed. In almost all circum- 
stances, the ashes should be left ploughed 
in for sowing turnips upon lands burnt in 
the months of March and April. If pota- 
toes are desired, this preparation is excel- 
lently adapted to them, and they should be 
planted in April on lands burnt in March. 
THE CULTURE OF GRASSES. 
A close and sound turf may be considered 
as the best manure yet discovered, on which 
account it is justly remarked, that those 
who have grass can at any time have corn, 
the reverse of which is by no means true. 
Excellent grass lands therefore are valuable, 
not only directly, for the food of cattle, but 
indirectly, as containing ample means of 
raising grain, never failing, upon being 
broken up, to produce for a time a succes- 
sion of valuable crops, whether of grain or 
roots. The small degree of labour and 
hazard attending the pasture of land, re- 
commends it to many; and also the oppor- 
tunity it supplies of laying out considerable 
property to great advantage in stock. Lands 
are preserved by it in good condition, and 
large estates may be managed under it with 
peculiar ease. 
Grass lands, designed to be cut for hay, 
are to be distinguished from those on which 
the herbage is intended to be consumed by 
cattle upon the spot. In fields of the latter 
kind, properly called pastures, manure is 
supplied by the cattle ; in the others it must 
be applied artificially, as large crops of hay 
exhaust the land, and always in proportion 
to the maturity which the herbage is suffered 
to attain before cropping, while nothing is 
