The Theory and Practice of the Drill Husbandry; Founded Upon Philosophical Principles, and Confirmed by Experience (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1802 Excerpt: ...plants, is the atmosphere, which is the great fund or magazine of all the principles of vegetation; and it is from that great and inexhaustible source that the fertility of the earth is derived, of which fallowing is a manifest proof. But; pulverization is absolutely necessary to prepare the soil for the reception of those particles; for earth, in its natural compact state, admits neither rain, dew, snow, nor any of those finer and more subtilized particles which are continually floating in the atmosphere, descend with them to the earth, and are carried off with them in the streams they form on the surface together with such other particles as they take up and arrest in their way' - In In this respect nature is particularly assisted by the drill-husbandry, which breaks, divides, and pulverizes the foil, so as to prepare it for the easy entrance os those fertilizing principles with which the atmosphere abounds., Hence it is evident, that the advantages of the drill-husbandry are very great, and that it is far superior to the broad-cast method, whether it is considered as connected with the horsehoe, or only for sowing the land in equidistant rows. But the following comparative experiments will set the advantages of the drill above the broad-cast husbandry in so clear a point of view that he that runs may read. t t In the year 1783, I began those experiments upon various kinds of foil, and in every one of them I employed two acres of land, laid up in eleven feet ridges, and drilled and sown broadcast alternately.' N 2 Expe. Experiments on Oats, The soil a hazel-coloured stiff loam, worth twenty shillings per acre. Drilled Acre Dr. Mar. 6. To ploughing it up from fwarth 10. To five harrowings and 1 rolling at 6d. To drilling the feed 2 In. deep and 8 asu...