THE CULTIVATOR. 
March, 
of three horses tandem , sometimes four even, hitched 
in no very compact order to a plow having a beam 
nearly as long as a rod-pole, and handles long enough 
to knock off chestnuts with! Electricity would get 
tired in going from one end to the other of such a 
team. And then think of putting “such a length” of 
team into a little, compact lot, nearly square, and sur¬ 
rounded by a hedge. If you could plow within 16 
feet of the end of the lands you would do well. As for 
throwing the plow round, it would be impossible. The 
conquerer at Gaza would not be stout enough for that. 
But English plowmen always plow their head-lands 
crosswise. This accounts very well for the plowing of 
the whole field except the corners; and how in the 
name of common sense those are plowed I never could 
learn; for though I saw thousands of plowmen at the 
regular through work of the fields, and often entered 
the lots and went the rounds with them, chatting as 
we went, and observing the straightness and evenness 
of their work, yet as long as. I was in England, nearly 
six months, I never saw a head-land plowed. I could 
see everywhere that they had been plowed, and that 
the work was done neatly to the very corners; but 
how, or when, I could not divine, unless St. Nicholas, 
pitying the plowman as much as he loves the children, 
comes, with a shorter team and does up that part of 
the work in the night. I was the more inclined to take 
this view, irom the fact that as often as I made inqui¬ 
ry, which was many times, I was always turned off 
with the reply, that; there was not the least difficulty; 
whereas it appeared to me about as difficult as it would 
be to descend and reascend all the chimneys in Chris¬ 
tendom in one night. I can understand how the Irish 
girl can (don’t) sweep out the corner of a room—the 
broom gives a little, shapes itself to the place; but 
how the long iron plow, used so much in England, can 
be got into the corner of a hedged field is among the 
mysteries , to me unrevealed. All I know is that it 
gets there and does the work handsomely, unless it be 
done in the night under the agency before surmised. 
English fields are every where plowed with wonderful 
neatness. The furrows are cut with almost perfect 
equality of width and depth. It contributes not a 
little to this, that their fields are old; have been under 
cultivation thousands of years; and were either free 
from stones originally, or have been cleared. It con¬ 
tributes to the perfection of the work also, that plow¬ 
ing is there a x-egular subdivision of farm labor, a sort 
of trade by itself, so that the laborer who plows, does 
nothing else but plow—plows nearly all the year, and 
thus acquires great skill in that branch of labor. And 
it cannot be denied that the great length of the team 
and plow contributes to the straightness of the work. 
You often see furrows, in which you cannot detect a 
bend, whole fields indeed without a crooked furrow in 
them. But it is perfectly manifest that undeviating 
straightness of furrows is a sort of a whistle for which 
you may pay too dear. So far as it is attained by the 
skill of the plowman it is well; but if it be procured 
by an addition of thirty-three per cent, to the necessa¬ 
ry expense for team work, then it costs more than it is* 
worth. 
Science has pretty clearly indicated that the soil 
should be loosened to a great depth; that air and 
water should have a free circulation from fifteen to 
twenty inches instead of from th#ee to five ; and that 
roots should have no obstruction to running downwards 
to regions of equable temperature and moisture. What 
Science indicates,'should, in this case, as in all others, 
be tested by careful experiment. I would go so far 
even, as to say, that nothing should be regarded as 
settled, till the practical farmer can put his seal to it. 
This matter of deep plowing is proved to be good 
policy. Farmers, here and there, all over the British 
Islands, have practiced it for many years—have plow¬ 
ed eight or nine inches deep, sub-soiled as much deep¬ 
er, and reported to the world the great benefit. Other 
farmers have heard their, story. Noarly all have 
learned to talk well on the subject. As happens in 
many other cases, their practice is not as good as their 
talk would lead you to expect. With the isolated ex¬ 
ceptions before alluded to, their plowing is beautiful, 
straight, even, making a perfect corduroy , but not 
sufficiently deep. 
2. Clod-crushing. If Samuel son’s digger, so much 
applauded by Mr. Mechi, or any other implement cal¬ 
culated for tearing up the ground in small fragments, 
shall drive the plow from the field, as that distinguish¬ 
ed farmer seems to expect, there may then be no ne¬ 
cessity for a Crosskill’s Clod-crusher, nor for any simi¬ 
lar implement. But so long as the essential principle 
of plowing—that of inverting the turf in long strips 
over a mould-board—shall be in operation, another 
process will be wanted, in order to break the turf into 
short pieces, and at the same time to crush the pieces, 
and to crumble the earth away from the grass roots. 
All these ends I suppose to be gained by the use of 
the Clod-crusher. The turf is cut into short pieces; 
these pieces are finely crushed; the grass roots are 
dislodged from their hold on the soil; and the grass is 
put into a condition to be so separated from the soil 
by the harrow as to die out. This business of clod¬ 
crushing is more important in the damp climate of 
Great Britain than among us, because there the mere 
covering of grass, owing to a want of heat in the soil, 
is not as sure to kill it as here; nor will buried sods as 
readily ferment and give their nutriment to the crops. 
3. Of Harrowing. This branch df field culture is 
“done up” in fine style by English farmers, almost 
uniformly. It is hardly possible to conceive any thing 
more beautiful than their fields, when the work of har¬ 
rowing is completed. I observed that in France and 
in Belgium, harrows with wooden teeth are much used. 
In either of those countries it is very common to see a 
man working three horses, each horse attached to a 
harrow with something like forty or fifty wooden teeth. 
The horses are trained to the business perfectly. The 
man walks along the line between the harrowed and 
the unharrowed land. The first horse walks by his 
side, without being led, and about three feet-distant. 
The second horse follows the off side of the first har¬ 
row ; and the third horse follows the off side of the 
second harrow, which produces a lap of about .half the 
width of each harrow on the ground gone over by the 
one proceeding. But the harrows in England, so far 
as I noticed, had iron teeth, were much heavier than 
those in France and Belgium, and required more than 
one horse to draw them. Many of them were made 
wholly of iron, and were very heavy; but they cer¬ 
tainly have the merit of “doing their work well.” 
4. Although English farmers do not plow as deeply 
as I am confident is for our interest to plow, nor as 
deeply as their own theory seems to demand, for they 
are aiways talking in praise of deep plowing, yet they 
have the merit of working over the soil, so far as it 
has been loosened up by the plow, admirably well, of 
pulverizing it as finely as its character permits, of mix¬ 
ing its parts thoroughly together, and of distributing 
the manure evenly throughout the whole. Their suc¬ 
cess is no doubt attributable in part to this trait in 
their husbandry. - 
I ought perhaps to speak of a process, which, with 
them, often precedes that of the plow. It is what they 
call scarifying . It consists in cutting over the ground, 
so as to sever the grass from its roots, just below the 
surface; and it is done, in some cases, with the scari¬ 
fier, a sort of mammoth horse-hoe, but more generally 
with the ordinary plow. The grass and weeds thus 
cut are afterwards raked into heaps, and subsequently 
either burned, or carried to the barn-yard for manure. 
The object is to cleanse fields, which, from having too 
seldom produced hoe-crops, have become foul. When 
the operation is performed with the plow, it is done by 
turning furrows as wide and as sboal^as possible, thus 
cutting over the whole surface and burying the grass 
to the least possible depth, in order that it may first 
