11} 
IMPROVEMENTS IN TILLAGE 549 
the soil being sandy, the requsite team is certainly nearer a A.D. 1689 
" : - —1776. 
single jackass than five horses. This miserable management 
cannot be too much condemnedt” At Offley, near Hitchin, 
“they never plough without four horses and two men, and 
do but an acre a day; this terrible custom, which is such a 
bane to the profits of husbandry, cannot be too much con- 
demned; for the whole expense (on comparison with the 
common custom) of tillage might be saved by the farmer if 
he would adopt the rational method of tillage with a pair of 
horses, and one man to hold the plough and drive at the 
same time?” He was, however, by no means a reckless in- 
novator; he was much interested in weighing the relative 
merits of oxen and horses for ploughing and draught, and 
was inclined to question the wisdom of dispensing with 
oxen, 
The raising of peas and beans formed part of the and 
traditional agriculture; near Woburn “they give but one et on 
tilth for beans alone, sow them broadcast, never hoe them, % 
but turn in sheep® to feed off the weeds, and reckon three 
quarters a middling crop” from four bushels sown. “This 
is an execrable custom, and ought to be exploded by all 
landlords of the country.” In fact, the prevailing evil of 
the old husbandry was the mass of weeds, which sometimes 
appear to have got the better of the crop altogether. 
Thorough ploughing and fallowing did much to clear the 
land; but it appears that some of the earlier attempts at 
improvement were most unsatisfactory. Thus the intro- 
duction of turnips in the East Riding of Yorkshire seems 
to have been positively mischievous. though “the soil is 
good turnip land, but,” as he continues, “their culture is 
so wretchedly defective, that I may, without the imputation 
of a paradox, assert, they had better have let it alone. Very 
few of them hoe at all, and those who do, execute it in so 
slovenly a way, that neither the crop nor the land are the 
least the better for'it. With such management, turnips are 
1 Northern Tour, 1. 41. 2 1b. 1. 22. 
3 Ib. 1. 169, 11. 70, and Southern Counties, 151, 203, 212, 
* Northern Tour, 1. 146. He argues for oxen in the Farmer's Letters, 166. 
5 Northern Tour, 1. 40, 41. Compare the Scotch practice (1785), as described 
in Alexander's Notes and Sketches of Northern Rural Life (1877). 25.