io THE farmer’s manual. 
velly, or a loamy soil, and so does clover. If your 
soil is a stiff clay, you may reduce it to a loam, by 
dressing the surface frequently, when under a sward, 
or covered with herbage, with plaster, sand, and rich 
manures, until you obtain a^rich sward, then turn in 
your sward for tillage, and stock down as soon as 
possible, and dress again as before ; in a few years, 
the stiifest clay may be reduced to a rich clay loam. 
If your land is a coarse, sharp sand, and even a 
blowing sand, you may reduce it to a loam by sowing 
plaster, with red-top, or other fibrous rooted grasses, 
until you can obtain a sward, then dress with plaster; 
with strong clay loam, marl, or even with a stiff 
clay, laid on in the fall, and well spread, and the 
clods well broken with the harrow and roller ; these 
dressings will commix with the sward, by the assist- 
ance of the frosts and rains of winter, and spring. 
When your sward has become strong, and rich, by 
the aid of rich manures, break up by deep plough- 
ing ; take one crop of potatoes, or grain, then stock 
down again, and jiroceed as before; you will in a few 
years obtain a rich sandy loam. It must be remem- 
bered, that the texture of these opposite soils can be 
changed, only by dressing upon the surface, when 
under a sward. The success of this mode of tillage 
depends very much upon the attention of the farmer, 
in avoiding a tillage with the exhausting crops, when 
his lands are ploughed ; and in stocking down again 
as soon as possible, that he may continue the means 
of changing the soil, by raising the strength and fer- 
tility of his land. 
The clay soil, when under tillage, cannot be plough- 
ed too frequently, to obtain the best crop ; and, on the 
other hand, your light sandy soil will do best under 
one ploughing, and that should always be as deep 
as the furrow which buried the sward, when broken 
up, and no deeper. It is therefore of importance, to 
obtain a deep soil by burying the sward under a fur- 
row of 8 or 10 inches, upon all sward-grounds, when 
