Common Barley, sown once in the burning Sand at Patney in Wiltshire, will, for many Years after, if sown on indifferent warm Ground, be ripe Two or Three Weeks sooner than any other[216], which has never been impregnate at Patney: But if sown a Degree farther North, on cold clayey Land, will, in Two or Three Years, lose this Quality, and become as late ripe as any other.
[216]Barley is far from being improved by becoming rath-ripe; for it loses more good Qualities than it gets by being sown at Patney: ’Tis so tender, that if it be sown early, the Frost is apt to kill it; or if it be sown late in May, on the same Day, and in the same Soil, with the same Sort of Barley that is not rath-ripe, it will be much thinner bodied than the late-ripe; and besides, if it happens to have any Check by Cold or Drought, it never recovers it as the other doth, at what time soever it is sown. It is now, I am informed, gone out of Fashion, and very few Farmers have sown it of late Years. I know a little Parish, that, I believe, formerly lost about Two hundred Pounds per Ann. by sowing rath-ripe Barley: But long and dear Experience hath now convinced them of their Error, and obliged them totally to disuse it.
Indeed Patney is far from improving the Species of Barley, except we think it improved by becoming more weak and tender, and shorter-lived; which last-mentioned Quality fits it for such Countries, where the Summers are too short for other Barley to ripen.
The Grains or Seeds of Vegetables are their Eggs; and the individual Plants, immediately proceeding from them, have not only the Virtues they received in Embryo (or rather in plantulis), but the Diseases also; for when smutty Wheat is sown, unless the Year prove very favourable, the Crop will be smutty; which is an evident Token of mala stamina.
The smutty Grains will not grow; for they turn to a black Powder: But when some of these are in a Crop, then, to be sure, many of the rest are infected; and the Disease will shew itself in the next Generation, or Descent of it, if the Year wherein ’tis planted prove a wet one.
Weeds, and their Seed, in the Fields where they grow naturally, for Time immemorial, come to as great Perfection as ever, without Change of Soil.
These Weeds, with Acorns, and other Masts, Crabs, Sloes, Hips, and Haws, are thought to have been, originally, the only natural Product of our Climate: Therefore other Plants being Exotics, many of them, as to their Individuals, require Culture and Change of Soil, without which they are liable more or less to degenerate.
But to say, that the Soil can cause Wheat to degenerate into Rye, or convert, Rye into Wheat, is what reflects upon the Credit of Laurembergius: ’Tis as easy to believe, that an Horse, by feeding in a certain Pasture, will degenerate into a Bull, and in other Pasture revert to an Horse again; these are scarce of more different Species than Wheat and Rye are: If the different Soil of Wittemberg and Thuringia change one Species, they may the other.
CHAP. XVI.
Of Ridges.
The Method of plowing Land up into Ridges is a particular Sort of Tillage; the chief Use of which is, the Alteration it makes in the Degrees of Heat and Moisture, being two of the grand Requisites of Vegetation; for very different Degrees of these are necessary to different Species of Vegetables.