290 SOW-THISTLE. 
the furrows previously prepared by the plough. 
The quantity to be discharged is regulated by 
sliders which lie over the orifices. In depositing 
manure by this machine, it is laid in the furrows 
between the first- formed drills, and is then 
covered up by passing the plough along the drill 
and cleaving it. After this operation, the seed 
is deposited by the common turnip sowing-ma- 
chine. The bone-sower may be drawn by one 
horse. 
The English manure-drill is a moveable, facile, 
and very efficient appendage to the common lever 
corn-drill ; and can at any time be adjusted, and 
put into working trim, by any husbandman. 
“Tt is,’ says Mr. Ransome, “a simple yet ac- 
curately- working apparatus for delivering the 
manure,—which, in the best drills, it does with’ 
great evenness, and in quantities varying, as ‘the 
slip’ is placed, from six to eight bushels per acre. 
In the best -drills, also, a very important im- 
provement has been made within the last few 
years, which consists in the use of separate coul- 
ters for manure and seed. The manure is now 
deposited according to the mode preferred by 
the cultivator, not only from two to three inches 
deeper in the ground than the seed, but from 
ten to twelve inches in advance of it, so as to 
give the soil time to cover the manure before the 
next coulters deposit the seed.” This improve- 
ment exists in all its amplitude in all Garrett’s 
seed and manure drills. 
Crosskill’s improved portable manure-drill is a 
one-horse skeleton cart, surmounted by seed-box 
and sowing-gear. It serves for sowing soot, salt, 
guano, and other special manures. It is six feet 
wide, and contains eight bushels of manure, and 
sows a comparatively great or small extent of 
land per day according to the speed of the horse. 
The acreable quantity sown is regulated by the 
position of the seed-box and the extra cog-wheels ; 
for according as the box is placed toward a ver- 
tical or toward a horizontal position, the quan- 
tity per acre is increased or diminished.—fan- 
some’s Implements of Agriculture. — Gray's Im- 
plements of Husbandry.—Catalogue of the Highland 
Society's Museum.—Catalogues of Garrett, Crosskill, 
and other principal Implement-Makers.—Annual 
Register of Agricultural Implements—Slight’s De- 
scriptions of Implements in Stephen's Book of the 
Larm.—The Society of Gentlemen's Complete Far- 
mer.—Low’s Elements of Agriculture.— Rham’s 
Dictionary of the Farm.— The Bath Papers.— 
Quarterly Journal of Agriculture—Transactions 
of the Highland Society.—Journal of the Royal 
Agricultural Society of England. 
SOW-THISTLE,—botanically Sonchus. A di- 
versified genus of plants, of the succory division 
of the composite order. Four species grow wild 
in Britain; upwards of twenty have been intro- 
duced from other countries; a number of unin- 
troduced exotic species are known; and nine 
or ten species which recently ranked as sow- 
thistles are now assigned to other genera: Seven 
SPADE HUSBANDRY. 
of the introduced species are ornamental, green- 
house, yellow-flowered, evergreen shrubs, of from 
2 to 5 feet in height; eight or nine are orna- 
mental herbs, some annual, some biennial, and 
some perennial, all with runcinate or lyrate 
leaves, and most with yellow flowers, and about 
2 or 3 feet in height; one is a handsome, hardy, 
perennial-rooted herb, with entire leaves and 
yellow flowers; and three are respectively an- 
nual, biennial, and perennial herbs, with pinna- 
tifid leaves and weed-like appearance. — The 
stems of the four indigenous species are hollow ; 
the leaves are runcinate or lyrate, and have 
toothed or prickly edges; the inflorescence is hairy 
or glandular; the flowers are yellow; and the 
whole herbage is smooth without, and has a bitter 
white juice within.—The potherb species, or | 
common sow-thistle, Sonchus oleraceus, is one of 
the most generally diffused of our annual weeds, 
and abounds in multitudes of fields both waste 
and cultivated. It has commonly a height of 
about two feet, and blooms from June till August, 
Its roots are milky and bitter, but have occa- 
sionally been converted into bread ; and its leaves 
are greedily eaten by hares and rabbits, and are 
sometimes dressed and eaten in the manner of 
culinary herbs.—The rough species, Sonchus asper, 
is also an annual weed of our fields, and is similar 
in height and bloom to the common species.— 
The corn-field species, Sonchus arvensis, is @ per- 
ennial-rooted weed of our corn-fields, and has a 
height of about 20 inches, and blooms in July 
and August——The marsh species, Sonchus palus- 
tris, is a perennial-rooted indigen of the river- 
banks of some parts of England, and has com- 
monly a height of from 5 to 8 feet, and blooms 
in July and August, and makes an interesting 
and even handsome appearance. 
SOY. See Sosa. 
SPADE. A hand implement used for digging. 
It comprises a number of varieties; yet, even 
inclusive of these, is everywhere so well known | 
as not to require any description. 
SPADE HUSBANDRY. The cultivation of 
land by means of the spade, either without the 
plough or along with the plough. Spade hus- 
bandry without the plough is practised in kitchen 
gardens, in allotment plots, in cottier farms, on 
rocky grounds, on precipitous banks, and in all 
other circumstances of tillage where the intro- 
duction of the plough is impracticable or uneco- 
nomical. ‘The superior power of it to ploughing, 
on almost all varieties of land of the same na- 
tural depth and character as that of ploughed 
fields, is well known to all classes of cultivators ; 
and consists in greater depth of tillage, in open- 
ing a far wider scope for the varying and rami- 
fying of the roots of plants, in effecting a far 
fuller degree of every kind of subsoil stirring, in 
rendering the whole soil much more pulverulent, 
friable, and mellow, and in avoiding all the bad 
effects of the tread of the feet of horses, and of 
the pan-forming action of the sole of the plough. 
