the extremes of wet and dry are particu larly inimical to vegetation, the seasons for its exercise are often short and critical. As vigorous plants, such as are produced by this system, require a longer period for attaining maturity, the corn thus cultivated must be sown earlier than in the usual mode. The intervals are usually prepared for sowing again, by placing some well-rotted dung in the deep furrows made in the middle of them, and this dung must be covered by the earth before thrown towards the rows of wheat. This should be performed immediately after harvest, that, before the rows are sowed, there may be time for slightly stirring the land. The intervals of the second year occupy the place taken up by the stubble of the preceding.

The banishment of the plough in spring, to as great a degree as possible, has taken place, in consequence of this most useful and happy innovation. All peas and beans, barley and oats, not only may be put in on an autumnal ploughing, but actually are so in many parts of the country (especially in Suffolk,) the stitches in this ploughing being carefully thrown to the precise breadth, suited to the intention of the farmer, whether to use only one movement of the drill, or what is usually denominated a bout of it; on which subject opinions differ. By the winter frosts a friability is given to the surface of the soil, so great, that very early in the spring, after one scarifying and harrowing, the corn may be drilled, and without a horse-foot treading any where but in the stitch furrows, where it can do no injury. Instead of losing this admirable gift of the atmosphere (which cannot be renewed,) as was done by the former practice of at least two spring ploughings, it is thus completely preserved, and the delay, expense, and vexation, occasioned to the farmer, by the suc cession of rains and north-easterly winds, giving the dreadful alternative of mire and clods, are wholly avoided.

From a comparative estimate of the profits attending the different modes of husbandry, that of the new is stated, after various experiments, to be very nearly in the proportion of three to two: and making the utmost allowance for the influence, by which the sanguine temperament of the partizan will interfere with the dispassionate calculations of philosophy, the advantage on the side of profit is indisputably and greatly with the modern system. It is also to be observed, that most of the accidents attending

crops of wheat originate in their being late sown, which, on the old planı, is unavoidable; whereas, in the new method, the farmer may plough the furrows for the next crop as soon as ever the first is removed. The ground may be ploughed dry, and may be drilled wet. The seed, moreover, is not planted under the furrows, but at the precisely proper depth. The seed has all the advantage of early sowing, therefore, and the crop is more certain than by any other mode. The land, also, is much less exhausted by this method, the weeds being completely destroyed by the hoe, and none of the plants existing to draw nutriment from the ground but what attain their full maturity; whereas in the usual practice seeds are permitted inevitably to impoverish, and three-fourths of the plants themselves, after having derived a certain and a considerable portion of vegetable food from the soil, perish abortively. The state of the land, therefore, must necessarily and obviously be left far better by the new mode than by the old.

The practice of drill-husbandry has been justly remarked to be the management of the garden brought into the field; and the grand question relating to it is, whether the extraordinary expence of this finer cultivation be compensated by the superior quality or abundance of its crop? which the most sagacious and experienced judges have determined in the affirmative.

Even admitting, for a moment, after all, that the practice is not, on the whole, superior, or equal, to the old mode, its introduction has at least been highly serviceable in correcting and refining the old method of cultivation, and some of the reputation of the new one may undoubtedly be allowed to have arisen from a comparison with slovenly and defective methods upon the old plan.

With regard to white crops, there are many practitioners of liberality and sense who reject this practice, although, with respect to potatoes, cabbages, beans, and often turnips also, it is admitted by them to be unexceptionable. On a soil, how. ever, in which the drill machine can move with freedom, there appears no reason, and it may be almost said no excuse, for the rejection of the modern system, which, indeed, however recently it may have been introduced into this country, is practised in every part of China, and is used also by the inhabitants of the Carnatic, and, from the decided aversion of these nations to innovation, may naturally

be supposed to have been their practice for a vast succession of ages. Tobacco, cotton, and the castor-oil plant, are cultivated by it, as well as every species of grain.

The Culture of Grain and Roots.

Of the various plants raised for the nourishment of man, wheat is of the chief importance. To prevent the disease so fatal to this vegetable, called the smut, steeping its seed from twelve to twentyfour hours in a ley of wood ashes, in lime water, and in a solution of arsenic, is completely efficacious, even although it should have been extremely affected by the disease. A less time is insufficient. On cold, wet, and backward soils, the best season for putting this grain into the earth is September, particularly if the weather be rainy, as wheat should never be sown in a dry season. On dry and warm soils the sowing may be best postponed till October. In proportion to the earliness of the sowing, a less quantity of seed is sufficient. The best preparation for it is by beans. Clover forms also an excellent preparation for it: and on a farm dry enough for turnips, and rich enough for wheat, the Norfolk practice of turnips, barley, clover, and wheat, is perhaps the most eligible that can be adopted.

By the dibbling of wheat, for a fortnight before which the land must be ploughed, and rolled down with a heavy roller, the seedis deposited in the centre of the flag, and the regular treading which the land receives presses down the furrows, and gives it a most valuable degree of firmness. The chief attention required in dibbling is, to make the holes deep enough, and to see that the children drop the seed equally, without scattering. After this dropping is completed, bushharrowing follows. The quantity of seed should be about six pecks in two rows in a flag. If the drill-machine be used, the preparation of the land by ploughing, harrowing, and rolling, must be extremely accurate, whether for one stroke of the machine, or for a bout of it, and the quantity of seed should be the same as that used in dibbling. In February, slight dressings are with great advantage spread over the green crop of this grain; and if the farmer has his choice for this purpose, he can never hesitate about taking them from dung; as dungs of all sorts are excellent, and no other manures, like these, are universally applicable. In

the drill-husbandry, the practice of hoeing is of the first importance, and has been already mentioned. If horse-hoeing be not employed, the hand-hoe may be used to great advantage, and should be performed, first, early in March, and the second time in the beginning of April. A scarifier is by many employed instead of the hoe, with the same object and effect. Whatever the operation, employed with this view, may be, the bottom should, with respect to wheat, be left firm and untouched. This is of particular import

ance.

No

A mild and open winter is far from being favourable to this grain, pushing it forward with too rapid vegetation, and also cherishing those weeds which become its most injurious enemies. weather is so injurious to wheat in the ground as wet. If, however, it have a good blooming time, though the rest of the summer, both before and after this period, may be unkindly, little apprehension for the crop need be entertained from any state of the weather.

If wheat be attacked by mildew, which is most likely to occur in the month of July, the only effectual application is the sickle, which ought not to be delayed for a moment, though the ear be perfectly green.

Barley requires a mellow soil, and when sown upon clay, therefore, extraordinary care is required to stir the land immediately after the removal of the previous crop; and, with this view, the practice of rib-ploughing, which exposes the greatest possible quantity of surface to the air and frost, has been employed by many. This object should, at all events, be gained, which ever method be adopted for it, of the many which have been suggested, and are indeed practised. Scarification, with Mr. Cooke's machine for this purpose, instead of ploughing, is found to be an excellent method. In proportion to the tenaciousness of the soil must be the extent of this operation, which is easily dispatched, even when repeated, leaving the lands, or stitches, in excellent order for the drill-machine to advance and perfect its work.

The proper season for getting barley into the ground is March. The most useful preparation for it is by turnips. To have the land dry for sowing is of more consequence for this grain, than it is for almost any other. It should always follow either an ameliorating crop or a fallow, and in many cases it should be followed by clover. The quantity of seed

barley should be increased as the season advances, as early sown crops have more time to tiller than later ones; and in the same proportion, the importance of the drill husbandry with regard to this arti cle increases; as, if sown in the latter end of February, in the broadcast method, it would get the start of weeds, which, if it be sown early in April, would extremely annoy it, according to the old mode, but by the hoeing practice may be easily removed.

Oats should never be sown after other corn crops (as the land is by this practice too much exhausted,) and should receive the same preparation as barley: a circumstance often not sufficiently attended to. Warm, forward sands yield as great a quantity of barley as of oats, and should, therefore be applied to the culture of the former, as generally yielding a better price. Upon various other soils, however, the produce of oats will be in considerably greater proportion than that of barley, and by superior quantity more than compensate for being sold at the smaller price. To relieve the business of the succeeding months, oats may sometimes be sown in January; without this view, however, February is preferable. The land should have been ploughed in October. Six bushels per acre may be sown in broadcast, and on poor soils even eight, to great advantage: the crop being, by thick sowing, several days sooner ripe, and the idea of saving seed with respect to this grain not being an object worth any particular attention. In the drill husbandry five bushels per acre are sufficient, and they should be horse-hoed early in the month of May.

Peas are extremely ameliorating to the soil, and may therefore, with very great advantage, be substituted in tillage for white corn, a succession of which is peculiarly impoverishing. They should, however, not be sown on lands negligent ly prepared, as is too commonly done; and indeed the maxim cannot be too much attended to, with respect to grain, that none should be sown but on lands in really good order, with respect to heart, cleanness from weeds, and well-finished tilth. The uncertainty generally ascribed to this crop is to be attributed in a great degree to a neglect of these circumstan.

ces.

At the same time, however, it is not meant to be asserted, that for all grain the preparation should be equally high and finished. The earlier peas are sown, the better they will thrive, and the more easily they will be moved off the ground

in due time for turnips, a circumstance of particular importance. February is the proper month for their being sown. Early peas will seldom prove beneficial upon wet soils, and should be cultivated only on dry ones, upon sands, dry sandy loams, gravels, and chalks. The broadcast method should be most clearly rejected in relation to them. The only question is between drilling and dibbling them. On a ley, the latter practice cannot be too decidedly adopted. Put in on a layer, they do not want manure, which will often make them run to long straw, a circumstance unfavourable to podding, and likewise encourages weeds, which, in the infant stage of the growth of peas, cannot be extirpated without danger. If the land be in good heart, therefore, as it ought to be, dung may be applied with much more advantage to other crops; and being an article for which the farmer has, perhaps in all cases, a greater demand than he can supply, should be used with economy, and only where it is sure to answer best. The proper quantity of seeds to be applied in the drill-husbandry, in equally distant rows, about one foot asunder, is seven pecks per acre. judicious and valuable observation, the result of long experience, that peas should not be sown above once in about ten years, being not found to succeed, if sown oftener.

It is a

Beans, where the land is proper for them, deserve from the farmer every attention, constituting one of the surest funds of profit. He is enabled by them to lessen, if not absolutely explode, the practice of fallowing. When cultivated, however, with a view of substituting them in the room of fallow, drilling or dibbling must be uniformly employed, so as to admit the plough between their rows, as no hand-work will sufficiently pulverize the lands for the purpose, without extreme expence. Dibbling, when well performed, with respect to beans, is an admirable method. The difficulty, however, of procuring it to be well done must be considered as no trifling objection to it. Beans are too often imperfectly delivered by the various drill-machines employed. On the other hand, however, the practice is less expensive than dibbling, and the seed is more surely put into the desired depth, so that, on the whole, the drilling method seems preferable to that by dibbling. It is a point on which different circumstances will safely and judiciously lead to different conclusions; and soil, season, dependance upon servants, together with

other considerations, will be resorted to, previously to the decision upon either of these methods. The common little horsebean has the advantage of being more marketable than any other. Beans thrive upon light loams better than has been generally imagined. The soils, however, generally applied to their culture, are all the strong and heavy ones. Wherever they can be cultivated, the farmer ought to have them. They do not exhaust the soil. Wheat is prepared for by them, perhaps, better than by any other mode. They preserve their upright attitude to the latest period, admitting of horsehoeing to the very last. The ground is well shaded by them from the sun; and, if they are harvested favourably, their straw is valuable, and, at all events, may be converted into admirable dung. By a bad crop of peas, the land is often filled with weeds; but though a crop of beans should be extremely bad, the land may nevertheless be in the highest state of cleanness. The quantity of seed differs according to the variety of the grain. About two bushels of the horse-beans per acre, in rows equi-distant, at eighteen inches, is a proper allowance, and February is the month in which they should be put in.

Buck-wheat is known to a vast majority of the farmers of this kingdom only by name. It has, however, numerous excellencies, is of an enriching nature, and prepares well for wheat or any other crop. One bushel of seed is sufficient to sow an acre, which is only about the fourth part of the expence of seed barley. It is sold at the same price as barley, and is equal to it for the fatting of hogs and poultry The end of May is the proper season for its being sown, and grass seeds may be sown with it, if the practice should be thought in any instance eligible, with more advantage than with any other grain, unless barley may be excepted. Buck-wheat may be sown even so late as the first week in July, a circumstance, by which the period of tillage is considerably protracted, and an ameliorating crop may thus be produced, after the usual period has, from any unavoidable or casual occurrence, been neglected.

Potatoes form a most important article of food, both for the human species and for cattle, and are an inestimable substitute for bread formed of grain, the best resource in periods of scarcity of wheat; and, happily, when the crops of grain fail, through redundant moisture, the potatoe is far from being equally injured, and

sometimes is even benefited by the wet season. The choice of soil for the culture of this root is of prime importance. Potatoes never make palatable nourishment for man, if grown in a clay soil, or in rank, black loam, although in these circumstances they are well fitted for cattle, and relished by them, and also produced in great abundance. They grow to perfection for human food in gravelly and sandy soils. The drill should be universally preferred for their cultivation. In September, or October, the field intended for them should have successively a rousing furrow, a cross braking, and the operation of the cleaning harrow; and being formed into three-feet ridges, should remain in that state till April, which is the proper season for planting this root. After cross braking them, to raise in a small degree the furrows, well rotted horsedung should be laid along them, on which the roots should be laid at eight inches distance. The plough should then pass once round every row, to cover them. As soon as they appear above ground, the plough should be passed round them a second time, laying on the plants about an inch, or somewhat more, of mould, in addition. When they have attained the height of six inches, the plough should go twice along the middle of each interval, in opposite directions, laying earth first to one row, and then to another; and, to apply it more closely to the roots, a spade should afterwards be used to cover four inches of the plants, and bury all the weeds. The weeds which arise afterwards must be extirpated by the hand, as the hoes would go too deep, and damage the roots of the plants. From ten to fifteen bushels will be sufficient to plant an acre, the produce of which may probably be three hundred bushels. Sets should be cut for some few before they are planted, with at least one eye to each, and not in very small pieces, and the depredations of the grub upon them may be effectually prevented by scattering on the surface of the land about two bushels per acre of lime, fresh slaked. The most certain method of taking them up is, to plough once round every row, at the distance of four inches, after which they may easily be raised, by a three-clawed fork, rather than by a spade, and scarcely a single one will by this practice be left in the ground. They may with care be preserved till the ensuing crop, particularly by the allowance necessary till April being closely covered in the barn with dry and pressed down straw, while the remainder for the ensuing part

of the year is buried in a dry cave, mixed with the husks of dried oats, sand, or leaves, especially if a hay or corn-stack is erected over it.

Potatoes are subject to a disease called the curl, which has drawn the attention of sagacious and experienced men, and suggested, in consequence, a great variety of opinions on its cause and remedy. Some kinds of this root, however, it is almost unanimously agreed, are less susceptible of the disease than others, and the old red, the golden dun, and the long dun, are the least of all so. One or more of the following circumstances may be most probably considered as causing it; frost, insects, the planting from sets of unripe and large potatoes, the planting in old and exhausted grounds, and too near the surface, or the small shoots of the sets being broken off before planting. Where certainty on any interesting subject cannot be obtained, the hints of the judicious are always desirable. The methods most successfully exercised for the prevention of the curl are, to cut the sets from smooth ripe potatoes, of the middle size, which have been kept particularly dry, to guard against the rubbing off the first shoots, and to plant them rather deeply in fresh earth, with a mixture of quick lime.

No plant thrives better even in the coldest part of this island than the turnip, and none are more advantageous to the soil. Its introduction was an improvement of the most valuable nature. There is no soil which will not produce it, when previously prepared for it by art; but the gravelly one is best of all adapted to it. No root requires a finer mould than the turnip, and with a view to this object, the land intended for it should be exposed to frost by ribbing it after the harvest. The season for sowing must be regulated by the time intended for feeding, the later from the first of June to the end of July, in proportion to the designed protraction of this feeding. The field should be first ploughed by a shallow furrow. Lime, if necessary, should be then harrowed into it. Single furrows, at the interval of three feet, should be drawn, and dung laid in them, which should be then covered by going round it with the plough, and forming the three feet spaces into ridges. Wider rows answer no profitable object, and with straiter ones a horse has not room to walk. Thick sowing is far better than thin, bearing better the depredations of the fly, and forming also a protection against drought. The weeds may, in many cases, be most effectually extirpa

ted by women, without injuring the crop; and the standing turnips should be left at twelve inches distance from each other. On average seasons, with good preparation, the produce from this number per acre may be considered as amounting to 46 tons of valuable nourishment. For preservation they may be stacked with straw; and 42 tons may be thus secured by one load of straw, or of stubble and old haulm. A method preferred by many is that of sowing late crops, even in August, by which a succession of them remains on the field to be consumed on the spot, even so late as the ensuing May, and the advantage of having turnips good till the spring grasses are ready for food has greatly encouraged this practice. To prevent the devastations of the fly, the most destructive enemy to a crop of turnips, the most effectual methods as little dependance can be placed on steepings, or on fumigations, is to sow the seed at such a season, that they may be well grown before the appearance of the insect; and by well dunging and manuring the ground, to hasten their attainment of the rough leaf, in which the fly does not at all affect them. New seed, it may also be observed, vegetates more rapidly and vigorously than old; and the more healthy and vigorous the plants are, the more likely they are to escape depredation. The sowing of turnips with grain is by many recommended in this connection, and stated to be highly efficacious.

The culture of cabbages for cattle is a subject well meriting the attention of the agriculturist. The cabbage is subject to few diseases, and resists frost more easily than the turnip. It is palatable to cattle, and sooner fills them than carrots or potatoes; and, in every respect but one, cabbages are superior to turnips. On all soils they require manure; whereas, on good land, turnips may be raised without it. Fifty-four tons have been raised upon an acre of ground not worth more than twelve shillings per annum. Some lands have produced sixty-eight. The time of setting them depends on their intended use. If for feeding in November, plants, procured from seed sown in the end of July in the former year, must be set in March or April: if for feeding in March, April, and May, they must be set in the beginning of the preceding July, from seed sown in the previous February. Repeated transplantation may be applied to them with singular advantage. When they are of the large species, four feet by two and a