The horse-hoeing husbandry: or, an essay on the principles of vegetation and tillage. Designed to introduce a new method of culture; whereby the produce of land will be increased, and the usual expence lessened. Together with accurate descriptions and cuts of the instruments employed in it / By I.T. [Jethro Tull].

Jethro Tull

Date:: 1751

Credit: The horse-hoeing husbandry: or, an essay on the principles of vegetation and tillage. Designed to introduce a new method of culture; whereby the produce of land will be increased, and the usual expence lessened. Together with accurate descriptions and cuts of the instruments employed in it / By I.T. [Jethro Tull]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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Till a Field in Lands ; make one Land very fine, ~ by frequent deep Plowings ; and let another be rough, by infufficient Tillage, alternately ; then plow the whole Field crofs-ways in the drieft Weather, which has continued long; and you will perceive, by the Colour of the Earth, that every fine Land will be turn’d up moift; but every rough Land will be dry as Powder, from Top to Bottom. Altho’ hard Ground, when thoroughly foak’d with Rain, will continue wet longer than fine till’d Land adjoining to it; yet this Water ferves rather to chill, than nourifh the Plants ftanding therein, and to keep out the other Benefits of the Atmofphere, leaving the Ground ftill harder when *tis thence exhaled; and being at laft once become dry, it can.admit no more Moifture, unlefs from a long-continued Deluge of Rain, which feldom falls till Winter, which is not the Seafon for Vegetation. | As fine hoed Ground is not fo long foaked by Rain, fo the Dews never fuffer it to become perfeétly dry : This appears by the Plants, which flourifh and erow fat in this, whilft thofe in the hard Ground are ftarved, except fuch of them, which ftand near enough to the hoed (a) Earth, for the Roots to bor- row Moifture and Nourifhment from it. : And (a) As when Wheat is drill’d late in very poor Land, fo that in the Spring the young Plants look all very yellow; let your Hoe-Piough, making a crooked Line, like an Indenture, on one fide of a ftrait Row of this poor Wheat in the Spring, turn a Furrow from it ; and in a fhort time you will fee all thofe yellow Plants, that are contiguous to this Furrow, change their yellow Colour to a deep Green ; whilft thofe Plants of the fame Row; which ftand fartheft off from this indented Furrow, change not theirColour til] afterwards; and all the Plants change or retain their Colour fooner or later gradually, as they fland nearer to, or far- ther from it; and the other Rows, which have no Furraw neat them, continue their Yellow, after all this Row is become green and flonrifhing: But this Experiment is beft to be made in poor fandy Ground, when the Mould is friable; elfe perhaps the differ-

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