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162 AGRICULTURAL SURVEY

ing for a house, stable, or barn, when a handsome cover- ing of pantile might be laid thereon, free from the above inconveniences, and nearly at the same expence; I repeat, was such straw converted into manure, and applied to the grass. or corn land of such farms as are thus deprived, the effects would be profitable and lasting: for I consider the additional manure laid upon land, not to have finished its task when it has produced one, two, or three crops, but presume that the increase of such crops contain as much materials for another dunghill as that which produced it, and so on ad infinitum.

Ifevery farmer would seriously consider the above ob- servations, he would hoard every thing that might be converted into this grand primum mobile of agriculture, as gold. Ido assure you, I myself am so ntuch a slave, to the thirst after it, that Iam sorry to sce my servants make use of too large a whisp for the kitchen fire.

Upon my little inclosed farm, little of which is fit for turnips, till of late in grass, I began with manuring such Jand upon the swarth as I intended to break up in the coutse of three or four years, at the rate of fifteen or six- teen loads to the acre, during which time| find the pas- turage and hay crops much improved, and I doubt not an advantage will be again found when in tillage. I do not, for the sake of a first crop, intend to pare and burn the swarth, and thereby destroy the best part of the soil; but to pare as thin as possibe, and lead the sods on heaps, by means of a broad-wheeled cart, to rot down, with a

“mixture of long litter and other things, as a valuable provision for future wants. The land thus cleared will be more certain of its first and second crop, than if the swarth were ploughed in, as is often the custom, to the injury of all the crops grown before the sward is rotten, especially when it contains the roots and blades of old sharp wood- dand grass, which is found to occupy cold clay land when long laid down; for the sods are apt to lie hollow and contain much water, which starve the roots of the grain,