Elements of practical agriculture; comprehending the cultivation of plants, the husbandry of the domestic animals, and the economy of the farm / By David Low.

  • David Low
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of practical agriculture; comprehending the cultivation of plants, the husbandry of the domestic animals, and the economy of the farm / By David Low. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    £> These bear weighty crops of all the cultivated kinds of corn. They do not excel the better soils of other classes so greatly in the production of oats, and still less in that of barley, in which respect the lighter loams may surpass them; but they are un¬ equalled for the production of wheat, and, in many places, de¬ rive their distinctive appellation from that circumstance, being termed wheat soils. They are well suited for the growth of the bean, a plant with a weighty stem, and requiring a stiff soil to support it. They will yield large returns of the cultivated grasses and leguminous herbage plants, though they are not so quickly covered with the natural herbage plants of the soil, when laid down to perennial pasturage, as the lighter soils. Clays, like the other soils, approach to their most perfect condition, as they advance to that state which has been termed loam. The effect of judicious tillage, and of the application of manures, is to improve the texture of such soils as well as to enrich them. Thus, clays in the neighbourhood of cities be¬ come dark in their colour and less cohesive in their texture, from the mixture of animal and vegetable matter, and thence acquire the properties of the most valued soils of their class. Natural changes, however, yet more than art, have furnished the rich soils of clay. The best, for the most part, of the soils of clay, are those which are formed from the depositions of mud of rivers or the sea. The finest natural soils of this and other countries are those which are thus formed. The deposi¬ tions of rivers, indeed, are not always of a clayey nature. In mountainous districts they generally form soils of the lighter kinds. Where the sea, however, is the agent, or where both the rivers and the tides combine their action, the depositions generally are of the nature of clay. Such alluvial soils have every where local terms to mark their character and ferti¬ lity. On the great rivers and estuaries in England, and in what are termed carses in Scotland, fine and extensive districts of this kind exist. The next class of soils is the Light or Free. These are readily distinguished from the last by their smaller degree of
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