504A Cultivation of Arable Land.—Beans.

planted, the pegs to which the Imes are attached are moved exaétly to the diftance that is requifite until the whole field is finithed. The expence of this mode of fetting beans is generally about nine pence or a fhilling the peck. In fome places: it is done by the gallon at the rate of about four pence. In per- forming this bufinefs care mutt conftantly be taken by the employer to fee that the beans are regularly depofited in the holes, and not thrown away or otherwife waited, in order to obtain greater wages. After the beans are thus depofited, a bufh-harrow, drawn by horfes in the furrows, is generally paffed over the ground in order to cover them. The Kentifh farmers have however a much neater and more expeditious method of fowing beans, which is, to ftrike out furrows in the proportion of about eleven to a rod in breadth, in which the feed is thinly depo- fited by means of a fowing-box, which is held by a perfon following the ftrik- ing plough, and who, by flightly agitating it when filled with beans, drops them with regularity into the furrows as they are formed. The feed is then covered by harrowing down the inequalities of the ground. It is ftated that in this method, with two men and two or three horfes to the plough, a perfon to ma- nage the box, and a boy with two horfes to perform the bufinefs of harrowing, the fpace of three acres may be completed in the courfe of a day*.

In accomplifhing this bufinefs, it is, however, the cuftom of fome agricultors to make ufe of a drill plough; but as beans are liable to confiderable inequality of fize, they are feldom delivered in a fufficiently regular manner from the hop- per, large beans occafionally interrupting the fowing in fuch a way as to ren- der the crop vacant or uneven in different places, defe&ts which the picking of the feed over is not even capable of removing. In{peaking of Implements, drills have however been defcribed that feem to depofit the beans with much correctnefs.

In the fowing of this fort of crop, experiment has fhewn that, on the poor and more moift kinds of loamy foils broken up from the ftate of ley, it may fre- quently be more advantageous to put the beans into the ground in rows at nine inches, or on every furrow, than at eighteen inches or every other furrow, though on rich fertile tillage lands the latter may often be the moft proper, or even ftill larger diftances in fome cafes f.

From the nature of the-root of the bean-plant, it has-been inferred,’ that it: fhould conftantly be planted te a good depth in the foil, not lefs than five or fik.. inches below the fettled furface of the Jand, as-by the lateral fibres which con-.-

® Synopfis of Hufbandry, p. 110,+ Young’s Annals of Agriculture, vol. VII. p. 2044