DISCOURSE.
Gentlemen—The secretary has put into my hands a vote of the Society, requesting me to "make to it such communications as may in my opinion most conduce to the interest of Agriculture."
This was an unlooked for request. I have myself much to learn from observing farmers, of longer experience, and whose attentions have been exclusively devoted to husbandry. Mine, since I became a farmer, have been diverted by other pursuits; so that at intervals only my thoughts have been turned to this subject.
No one doubts the importance of our profession; and the actual formation of our society is a declaration that improvements in it are necessary.—But the field of agriculture is of boundless extent; and though traversed for some thousands of years by the greater portion of the human race, yet by no one, nor by all combined, has a complete survey been accomplished. Every year, and every day, presents something new: and even of old things, the practices of ages, there still exist diversities of opinions. For instance, which is preferable, deep or shallow ploughing?—Should manures be spread on the surface, or be buried by the plough? If the latter, at what depth, to produce the greatest effect, with the most lasting fertility?—Should manure be applied in its rough, coarse, and unfermented state, or, by keeping and repeated turnings, be more or less rotted?—These are points which appear to me deeply to affect the interests of agriculture. On these therefore I will give you my opinion, enlightened by the observations of intelligent husbandmen. I will then advert to a few other topics which demand your attention; dwelling on one of them—Root crops for the Food of Live Stock—as lying at the foundation of an improved agriculture.
I. On Deep Ploughing and Manuring.
For myself, I entertain no doubt of the utility of deep ploughing; not at once, in our lands in general, but by an increase of two or three inches at every annual ploughing, until the earth be stirred and pulverized to the depth of ten or twelve inches. Indian corn, planted in such a mass of loosened earth, would not, I am persuaded, ever suffer by ordinary droughts.—Like a spunge, it would absorb a vast quantity of rain water, and become a reservoir to supply the wants of that and all other plants.—Nothing is more common in a dry summer, than the rolling of the leaves of corn; and that circumstance is often mentioned as an evidence of the severity of the drought. This rolling of the leaves of Indian corn, is the consequence, in part, of scant manuring, but still more of shallow ploughing. Few, perhaps, are aware of the depth to which the roots of plants will penetrate in a deeply loosened earth. A gentleman,[11] much inclined to agricultural inquiries and observations, informed me, near fifty years ago, that seeing some men digging a well, in a hollow place, planted with Indian corn, then at its full growth, he stopped to examine how far its roots had descended; and he traced them to the depth of nine feet. The soil was an accumulation of rich earth which had run or been thrown into the hollow.
The seed of the common turnip, sown in warm weather, and on a soil sufficiently moist, I have known to vegetate in about eight-and-forty hours; and in only four or five days afterwards, I found the plants had sent down roots to the depth of four or five inches.
I have often noticed forest trees blown down by violent winds, whose roots, of the same species, were very differently formed. Such as had grown in grounds having a hard, impenetrable pan of clayey gravel, at the depth of twelve or eighteen inches from the surface, exhibiting a flat mass of roots; while others, torn up from a deep loam, or loamy gravel, showed downward roots of several feet in length.
About five months ago, I received from England a pamphlet written by one of the most distinguished agricultural writers in that country—Arthur Young. It was a lecture read, a few years before, to the British Board of Agriculture, of which Mr. Young was the Secretary. Its title is, "On the Husbandry of three celebrated British Farmers, Messrs. Bakewell, Arbuthnot and Ducket,"—all eminent for genius, enterprise, application, and long experience. It was to do honour to their memories, "and to bring to recollection the means by which those celebrated practitioners, in the first and most important of all arts, carried their agriculture to a perfection unknown before," that the lecture was written and published. And this, Mr. Young observes, would be more peculiarly useful, because those men, "confining themselves to practice alone, had left no register of their own meritorious deeds." I will present to you the substance of the information contained in this pamphlet, as in itself very important, and because the practice of Arbuthnot and Ducket has a direct bearing on the points I am now considering—DEEP PLOUGHING and MANURING.
"Mr. Ducket had sand, and sandy soils alone, to deal with; but Arbuthnot's land classed among those harsh, wet, tenacious loams, which are usually called clay, and ought to be esteemed such, relative to every circumstance that attaches to difficulty and management." Passing by what Mr. Young says of Arbuthnot's draining operations, I content myself with mentioning the principal of that improvement: "Lay your land dry, whatever may be the method pursued, before you attempt any thing else."
"In respect to tillage, Mr. Arbuthnot carried it to great perfection: He invented a swing plough for a pair of horses and the general depth of six inches, and a much larger one with wheels, for gaining the depth of 12, and even of eighteen, for some peculiar crops, especially madder. Upon the advantages of deep ploughing he never had the least hesitation; but always declared that in all he had read or heard, he never met with one argument against the practice that had with him the smallest weight."—"In the essential operation of ploughing, he considered one earth [that is, one ploughing] well timed, and of a right depth, as being much more efficacious than that repetition of tillage so common in every district."[12]
A judicious rotation, or round of crops, has long been considered, in England, essential to good husbandry: and so it is by skilful farmers in our own country; particularly in the middle States, where clover, so highly important in the rotation, has, for more than thirty years, been rendered wonderfully productive, by the application of plaster of Paris. The most usual course in England has been (excepting on stiff clayey soils) first year turnips, manured and kept clean by hoeing; the second year barley, with clover seed; the third year the clover mown for hay; and its second crop, at wheat seed time, ploughed in, and, where necessary to fill the seams, the ground harrowed, the wheat sown, and then harrowed in. This is called "wheat upon a clover lay."—But by the long and frequent repetition of clover, (that is, once in four years) in their rotations, lands in England became (as they express it) "sick of clover:" and I have been informed that some lands in our middle States, long subjected to the like application of clover, exhibit like symptoms of disease or failure. But Mr. Arbuthnot introduced clover once in three years, without suffering by such more frequent repetition. "He attributed the failure of this plant to shallow and ill-executed ploughing; the result (says Mr. Young) justified his opinion."
Mr. Young mentions a lecture he had read to the Board of Agriculture, "on the means by which a farm can be made, by a right proportion of all the products, to support itself, without foreign assistance, in a state of high fertility, a question depending on the quantity or weight of dung resulting from the consumption in litter of a given weight of straw." This lecture I have not seen. But he considers the question as successfully decided, in Mr. Arbuthnot's practice, in the following manner; 134 sheep and 30 lambs were turnip fed, in a pen on a headland, well littered with straw: in six weeks they required nearly six tons of straw [to give them clean and comfortable beds:] and in that time made 40 tons of dung, equal to that brought from London [stable dung it is to be presumed.] So every ton of litter produced near seven tons of dung.—But this weight must have been obtained chiefly by the earth of the headland absorbing the urine, of which, when fed on turnips, sheep make great quantities, and being finally mixed with their dung and litter. This recital reminds me of the recommendation, in my address to this Society, in May, 1818, to carry earth into the barn yard, once in every two weeks, from spring to autumn; adding to every layer of earth a coat of litter. I should then have advised a plentiful spreading of litter, had I not known that our courses of husbandry in Essex yielded very little straw.
In the same communication to the Society, I presented my ideas on the proper application of manure; to wit, always to bury it up quickly, when carried to the field, to prevent great loss by its exposure to the sun and air; remarking, that the essence of manure was lost, not by sinking into the earth below the roots of cultivated plants, but by rising into the atmosphere, and so fleeing away. Here, also, I have the satisfaction of seeing the theory I had formed nineteen years ago (in the manner suggested in that communication) supported by the opinions and practices of such eminent agriculturists as Messrs. Arbuthnot and Ducket. After noticing Arbuthnot's cultivation of madder, an article requiring a rich soil and extremely deep tillage, Mr. Young says, "there was one circumstance in his management, which, being applicable to more important articles, merits a more durable attention; this is, the depth to which he ploughed in the dung: his tillage went to that of eighteen inches; and he conceived there was no danger of losing, by this circumstance, either vegetable or animal manures, as their tendency, contrary to all fossil ones, was not to sink, but to rise in the atmosphere." Fossil manures are lime, marl, plaster of Paris, and other substances dug out of the earth, which increase the productive powers of soils.
Mr. Ducket's manner of applying dung, although his was a sand farm, was similar to Mr. Arbuthnot's.—"Immediately connected with the depth of tillage, is that to which dung may be safely deposited. He [Mr. Ducket] had not the least apprehension of losing it by deep ploughing; but freely turned it down to two or three times the depth common among his neighbours." Yet Mr. Young says, that farmers (and good farmers too) persist in a contrary practice. But he adds, "Enlightened individuals, thinly scattered, know better: having convinced themselves that Mr. Ducket's practice is not only safe but beneficial;" and then names one who "ploughs in his dung as deeply as his ploughs can go, turning it in nine inches, and would bury it twelve, did he stir to such a depth."
Confirmatory of the correctness of the practice of these two celebrated English farmers, is the fact stated by Mr. John Sinclair, President of the British Board of Agriculture, in his account of the Improved Scottish Husbandry. He mentions one farmer who ridged his carrot ground, and buried the manure sixteen or seventeen inches deep, the ridges thirty inches wide. This farmer preferred, as a manure, a well prepared compost of peat-moss[13] and dung, ten tons, or double cart-loads, per English acre. "The dung (or compost) being at the bottom, makes the tap root of the carrot push immediately down, and swell to an enormous size; the roots being often sixteen inches in girt, and 18 or twenty inches in length."
To return to Mr. Ducket. His deep ploughing (says Mr. Young) was not practised above once in two or three years, and the successive tillage shallow. "By such deep ploughing, seldom given, Mr. Ducket conceived that a due degree of moisture was preserved in his light land, by means of which his crops were flourishing in seasons of drought which destroyed those of his neighbours: and no one could more severely condemn the ideas which governed the Norfolk farmers, in leaving what they called their pan unbroken at the depth only of 4 or 5 inches.—The operation of ploughing he thought could scarcely be given too seldom, provided when given it was done effectively: and he always carried this paucity of tillage as far as circumstances would permit: thus I have known him put in seven crops with only four ploughings." In another part of his lecture, Mr. Young says, "If I were to name the circumstance which more than any other governed his (Mr. Ducket's) practice, I should say that the whole was founded in trench ploughing; and that the principle which governed this practice (a principle thoroughly impressed upon his mind, as well as on the minds of those who draw intelligent conclusions) was that of giving as little tillage as possible to sandy soils."
"The next circumstance which I shall advert to (says Mr. Young) in the husbandry of Mr. Ducket, is the use of long, fresh dung, instead of that which in common management is turned and mixed till it becomes rotten: and in justice to his memory, I shall read the short recital of his practice, as I printed it three-and-twenty years ago. "Dependent on the Trench-Plough,[14] is Mr. Ducket's system of dunging. He conceives, and I apprehend very justly, that the more dunghills are stirred and turned over, and rotted, the more of their virtue is lost. It is not a question of straw merely wetted; but good long dung he esteems more than that quantity of short dung, which time will convert the former to. Two loads of long may become one of short; but the two are much more valuable than the one. Without the Trenching-plough, however, his opinion would be different. If long dung is ploughed in, in the common manner, with lumps and bundles sticking out at many places along every furrow, which lets the sun and air into the rest that seems covered, he thinks, so used, it is mostly lost, or given to the winds: in such a case, short rotted manure will be better covered, and should be preferred. But with his plough nothing of this happens; and it enables him to use his dung in such a state as gives him a large quantity instead of a small one. The good sense of these observations must be obvious at the first blush." Mr. Young adds—"The use of FRESH instead of ROTTEN dung, is, in my opinion, one of the greatest agricultural discoveries that has been made in the present age." He then states a striking experiment made by himself—67 small cart loads of fresh yard dung produced two successive crops of potatoes, yielding together 742 bushels; at the same time, the same quantity of yard dung, after 6 months rotting, yielded 708 bushels, leaving [to the fresh long dung] a superiority of 34 bushels. But had the fresh dung been kept as long as the other, it would have required at least twice, perhaps thrice as much, to have produced the quantity used." [That is, twice or three times 67 loads of fresh long dung, if kept and often turned and mixed to produce fermentation and rotting, would have shrunk, or been reduced, to 67 loads of short rotten dung.] "If the crops therefore had been only equal, still the advantage [of the fresh dung] would have been most decisive."
"I shall not quit (says Mr. Young) the husbandry of two men who carried tillage, on soils so extremely different, to its utmost perfection, without remarking the circumstances in which they agreed. Both were equal friends to deep ploughing; both rejected the common repetition of tillage, and reduced the number of their operations to a degree that merits attention; both rejected fallows; and both ploughed deeply for depositing manure, without any apprehension of losing it. These are very important points in Practical Agriculture."
To this account of the successful practices of these two celebrated English farmers, it may be useful to subjoin a few observations. I have thought it proper so far to present them in detail, in order to develope principles; not expecting a precise adoption of their practices; which indeed, without their or similar superior ploughs and other implements, would be impracticable: but with such instruments as we possess, or may easily obtain, we can materially increase the depth of our ploughing, and I hope contrive effectually to cover our manure. This should be wholly applied to Tillage Crops; for which the manuring should be so ample as to ensure a succession of good crops through the whole rotation, without the aid of any additional manure, especially for wheat, rye, barley or oats: for besides increasing the seeds of weeds (with which all our lands are too much infested) such additional manuring, immediately applied to the small grain crops, renders them more liable to injury from mildews. Of this I am fully satisfied, as well from numerous statements of facts which I have seen in books of husbandry, as from the circumstances under which remarkable mildews have otherwise been noticed. One of our countrymen, who wrote a short essay on the subject prior to the American Revolution, has given the only solution of the causes of mildews that has ever appeared satisfactory to me: perhaps at some future time I may find leisure to show the correspondence of facts with his principles.[15]
(To be continued.)
To Farmers.—In the winter of 1818-19, a gentleman in this city made the following experiment. He placed a turkey in an enclosure about four or five feet long, two feet wide, and three or four feet high. He excluded as much light as he could without preventing a circulation of air, and fed the turkey with soft brick broken into pieces, with charcoal also broken, and with six grains of corn per day. Fresh water was daily supplied. The box or coop in which the turkey was placed, he always locked up with his own hands, and is perfectly confident that nobody interfered with the experiment.
At the end of one month he invited a number of his neighbours among others two physicians. The turkey, now very large and heavy, was killed and opened by the physicians, and was found to be filled up full with fat. The gizzard and entrails were dissected, and nothing was found but a residuum of charcoal and brick. To conclude the examination satisfactorily, the turkey was eaten, and found to be very good.
Last winter he again repeated the experiment with the same success.
The circumstance by which he was induced to make the experiment is a very curious one. One of his neighbours informed him, that being driven from the city by the fever of 1793, his family recollected that some fowls that had lived in a kind of loft over his workshop, had been forgotten in the hurry of their removal, and would certainly be starved. They were absent six or eight weeks, and on the retiring of the pestilence returned. To their great astonishment, the fowls were not only alive, but very fat, although there was nothing but charcoal and shavings that they could have eaten, and some water that had been left in the trough of a grindstone had supplied them with drink.
[Nat. Recorder.
Introduction of Glass Making in France.
(From Parke's Chymical Essays.)
The government of France, in the early part of the fourteenth century, took great pains to improve the manufacture of glass, and ordained that none but gentlemen, or the sons of the nobility, should be allowed to exercise the trade, or even to work as artificers in the manufactories of this most highly esteemed commodity.—In consequence of this injunction, a company of persons, all born gentlemen, was incorporated, and obtained many important privileges and immunities from the state; particularly that of being allowed to work at this curious art without derogating from their nobility. It is indeed asserted by the writer,[16] who is the best authority we have on this subject, that there never was an instance of any one being attainted, to whom these privileges had been granted; for they conducted themselves so irreproachably, that these orders were invariably transmitted inviolate to their posterity. In the year 1453, Anthony de Brossord, Lord of St. Martin, and prince of the blood royal, finding the business of glass making to be so considerable; and knowing that it did not derogate from nobility, obtained a grant from the Prince to establish a glass house in his own county, with prohibition of any other; and in consequence of this, the elder sons of that family continued uninterruptedly to exercise the art till the latter end of the sixteenth century, when the proprietor was killed while commanding a troop at the siege of Chartres.—On the death of this individual the younger sons of the same family undertook to carry on the art, and continued in it for more than a century. Whether the trade continues still in the same line, I have not been able to ascertain.
An ancient family of the name of Vaillant, also obtained the grant of a glass house, as a recompense for their valour and public services, together with a poignard d'or, on azure, for their arms.—Mr. Blancourt, who long resided in France, likewise notices, that at the time he wrote, they had many other great families among them, who were descended from gentleman glass-makers that had declined following the art; and that some of these had been honoured with purple, and with the highest dignities and offices in the state.
FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE.
Anecdote of Anthony Benezet,
Not inserted in Vaux's interesting Memoir of that Philanthropist.
Soon after the arrival of the Chevalier Luzerne, minister from the court of France, Benezet called on him with a French copy of Barclay's Apology, with a view of informing him of the principles of the Society of Friends. The minister being a Knight of Malta, and of course at enmity with the Turks, appeared much surprised that any professed Christians should object to the destruction of the Ottoman Empire—which increased on being informed that his profession would not permit taking the life of any man: on which the minister observed that it was very good, but too straight for him to object to killing a Musselman.
The interview prepared the way for frequent visits to the embassador, who always received him with pleasure, the latter often observing that he had but a small body; but added, extending his arms nearly at full length, as if to embrace a large object—"Oh what a capacious soul he possesses!"—evincing by his whole conduct, that he valued him as an extraordinary man, possessing true Christian principles.
G.