SEEDING THE SOIL 
387 
Small grains, particularly—which require the seeds to be some 
nearer together than it would be convenient to plant them with 
the hand ; for the sowing of these there are two methods in 
common use : 
BROAD CASTING AND DRILLING. 
It is certainly a decision of common sense, that, on either 
very stumpy or very uneven land , seeding can best be done by 
the careful hand, after the broadcast method. These are the 
only cases, however, in which we are able to discover that it 
has the advantage ; unless it be in that other case, when the 
farmer is too poor to buy a good drill, or cannot wait lor its 
manufacture or importation. While, on the other hand, very 
serious objections,both in theory and in practice, arise against it. 
In the first place, broadcast seed-sowing is a difficult work, 
requiring that skill which can only come of a natural aptness, 
cultivated by considerable experience. Now, it often happens 
that the farmer has neither the original aptness or the requisite 
experience to ensure a good and economical doing of the work; 
nor if he had them, would it follow that he would, himself, al¬ 
ways have leisure or be able to attend to it; in which case, 
this most particular work done on the farm must be intrusted 
to some blundering day-laborer, whose interest it is to assume 
to understand it whether he ever sowed a rood of land before or 
not, and whose chief care is to get the seed out of his hand, 
and thus have done the seeding somehow and within the pre¬ 
scribed time. 
Secondly, this method of sowing is quite impracticable in 
windy weather, as the seed will be blown out of line, and a por¬ 
tion of it fall in the wrong place in spite of the most skillful 
sower. 
Thirdly, under the most favorable circumstances of skill and 
weather, it is impossible to get the seed perfectly distributed 
upon lumpy or stony ground ; since falling upon these hard 
bodies its inevitable ?rebound must carry it where it is not 
wanted. 
