HOW TO PLOUGH.

Otago Witness, Issue 1188, 5 September 1874, Page 6

HOW TO PLOUGH.

The Irish Farmers' Gazette says : — "By the usual mode of ploughing, the soil is cut into solid slices and partialiy turned over. This slicing and partial upsetting of the soil varies in depth, and when the operation is repeated next year it consists in merely reversing what was previously done. The furrows cut in ploughing lea, by most ploughs, present a firm, unbroken, nicely cut surface, very good to look at, but it is not efficient cultivation, and the less effective it is, as is the case with ' high-crested ' ploughing, the better it looks to the eye which is satisfied with mere straight lines. Such lines are, no doubt, very good as showing the skill of the ploughman, and the excellent construction of the implement for the purpose for which it was constructed, namely, cutting the land into nice-looking slices ; but, as has been observed, it is not cultivation. It does not free the earth, ; it does not let light into it, nor heat, nor cold, nor air, nor moisture. Slices of land are aerated on the outside, but it only gets skin deep, and the lumps remain a solid, and it is d either heated, lighted, or watered by atmospheric showers, bringing ammonia with them. Nor does the frost

act on a compact mass of solid, though fine-cut slices, as it would do were those slices knocked about, broken and smashed to the extent of letting the atmosphere in and around it. The finest plough, then, is not the implement to molehills our soil, and hence it is no^ the implement to cultivate them in any true sense of the word."