352

ON THE AllABLE LAND

In cultivating uninclosed land, where a conical hill of con-siderable declivity requires to be ploughed, it is an excellentplan to plough continually round the hill in a spiral direction,beginning at the bottom, and always keeping the left hand ofthe ploughman to the hill. In this way, any number ofploughs may work at the same time, only taking care thatthe lowest, and first entered, keeps uniformly foremost, andall the rest in regular progression behind each other.

§ 6. Of feiring, or striking furrows _It may be proper

to explain at some length, the manner of laying off a field in-to regular ridges or lands, all perfectly straight lined, and allof uniform breadth, which is called feiring in Scotland , andstriking furrows in England, as it has not hitherto been muchdwelt on. Supposing a field in a perfectly level state, after across-ploughing, and that it is intended to be laid off into ga-thered ridges of fifteen feet broad; the best ploughman be-longing to the farm commences the operation, in the follow-ing manner: He is provided with three or more poles shodwith iron, each seven and a half feet long, where the ridgesare to be fifteen feet. The first operation is to lay oft' thehead ridges in the field of the intended breadth. A breadthof eighteen feet is narrow enough for the head land of anyfield, to allow two horses abreast in a plough sufficient roomto turn. If the limits of the head-lands be not drawn as tobreadth, to direct the ploughman where to step out his plough,in ploughing the ridges of the field, the surface of the head-lands will be gored and gashed, particularly at every furrowbetween the ridges, and when ploughed up will look very un-sightly. Water will also be apt to lodge in these gashes orhollows in the head-lands, which several ploughings will notcompletely obliterate. The ploughman who is to feir thefield, ought therefore first to measure off the intended breadthof the head-land with his poles, setting off the breadth at rightangles to the boundary of that end of the field, or at rightangles to a straight furrow drawn by the plough and poles