SAVING OF SEED WHEAT.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 155, 22 February 1845, Page 201

SAVING OF SEED WHEAT.

At a meeting of the farmers held lately in Yorkshire, Mr. Lane Fox, an extensive landlord, said — " It had been the custom in this country, in sowing wheat, to sow as much as three bushels per acre. It was now found that they could get a heavier crop by sowing only three pecks to the acre. He had been told, and he believed it was the fact, from calculations that had been made, that the difference between sowing only three pecks instead of three bushels to the acre would amount to a saving of not only 200,000 quarters of wheat, but of all the wheat that had been imported for the benefit of the people. With regard to thin sowing, he would not drill at all, but he would dibble : and he had at that moment, on his farm, an instance of what might be accomplished by dibbling. He had about a rood of ground which was dibbled with barley the first week in may, the rows being two feet apart and the grains three inches apart ; and after it came up, to see what would be the consequences, one half of it was thinned to six inches apart; and at the present time the amount of corn growing on that rood of land was beyond conception. Any gentleman who wished to see it was welcome. He was there on the previous day with a friend who was now within hearing, and who got off his horse and took the trouble to measure the ears of grain, and the first that he took hold of measured from six to eight inches in length : and he had been told by a gentlemen who understood these things perfectly well, that from the appearance of that corn it was likely to yield to the extent of ten quarters per acre. If, then, by thin sowing and dibbling he could produce ten quarters per acre, how easy would it be for the tenant not only to pay his rent, but to put something into his pocket !" This is in conformity with the experience of Mr. Hewitt Davis, who says in hia pamphlet, " On the Injury and Waste of Corn," — " The practice throughout England is to sow two and a half or three bushels per acre, and the yield seldom reaches forty bushels, aud more commonly less than twenty bushels, so that one- tenth at least of the crop grown is consumed as seed." He adds — "I have gradually reduced my proportion of seed from three bushels per acre, which was my practice to sow, down to about three pecks." If this new practice becomes general, Mr. Lane Fox probably underrates the saving of food which will accrue, as well as the increase of produce from the improvement. It may also be remarked that it will put an end to the common method of estimating the fertility of the soil by the proportion which the produce bears to the seed, for that proportion will be suddenly changed by diminishing the quantity of seed used. Were we to continue to speak according to the old practice, the fertility of the land, where the new method of sowing ib adopted, would appear to be immediately doubled. — English paper.