600 Cultivation of Arable Land.— Beans.

accomplifhed in fome bean diftrifts, and at the fame time a great degree of pul- verifation effected, by /puddling the land with a kind of plough, to the fhare of which an iron plate is attached crofsways, at the diftance of about four or five inches from the point, the fame axle-tree and wheels being employed as were ufed in ftriking the furrows. By this implement, with two horfes and a man, it is afferted three acres of land may be finifhed in a day, by fetting the point of the fhare in the intervals in fuch a manner as that the plate or fin may extend to a row on each fide. After this operation has been performed, by paffing the hharrows and the roller over the land, the whole is cleared with little expence, and left ready for the feed earth*. On the more thin and light kinds of foils, whether of the chalky or gravelly fort, fuch a procefs may, however, be improper, as fuch lands may be rendered too open and porous for wheat crops by it.

Potatoes.—The cultivation of this highly valuable vegetable has rapidly in- creafed within thefe laft twenty years, fo that it may now be confidered as{tand- ing next to wheat in refpe& to human food.

Though the varieties of this plant that are cultivated are extremely numerous on account of their being raifed continually from feed, there does not appear to be more than two diftinét{pecies; the red-rooted, or that which bears a pur- ple blofiom or flower, and the white-rooted, or that which has a white flower.

It is fuggefted by an intelligent pra@lical writer, that much ftill remains to be performed in refpe& to the improvement of the quality and produétivenefs of this plant, by raifing it from feed. The farmers in Yorkfhire, it is obferved, adopt this method.‘* In autumn when the apples are beginning to fall fpon- tancoufly, they are gathered by hand, and preferved among fand until the{pring, when they are mafhed among the fand, or among frefh mold, feparating the feeds, and mixing them evenly with the mold. So foon as the{pring frofts are judged to be over, they are fown in fine garden mold; and as faft as the plants get into rough leaf, and are ftrong enough to be handled without injury, they are tranfplanted into another bed of frefh mold in rows, which are kept clean during fummer. In autumn, bunches of fmall potatoes are found at the roots of thefe plants, varying in fize, the firft year from an hazel nut to that of a crab apple.‘Thefe being planted in the fucceeding fpring, produce potatoes of the middle fize; but they do not arrive at their full bulk until the third or fourth year. When the ufe of the ftove or the garden frame can be procured, this procefs may be fhortened; the feeds being fown within thefe early in the ipring,

* Synopfis of Hufbandry.