416

ON THE ARABLE LAND

SECT. II.

DISADVANTAGES OF FALLOW.

I o a person long experienced in the management of landunder the fallow system judiciously conducted, it is difficult toconceive that any disadvantage should be attributable to theprocess, unless, merely on theoretic views, it may be allegedthat it is an expensive and unprofitable waste of labour withoutany product. Nature, it is asserted by the anti-fallowists, ad-mits of no pause or rest in the production of vegetables fromthe soil, and why, therefore, should the husbandman permithis land to remain fojr a whole season unproductive, when bya judicious rotation, and a constant exercise of industriousmanagement, it may be made to yield a regular and uninter-rupted succession of profitable crops ? W ere it possible byany series of agricultural operations, within the compass ofeconomical cxpence, to clean wet or strong soils from rootweeds, as may be done in garden culture, the opinion of thosewho reprobate fallow as wasteful and unprofitable might beadopted. But, in the present state of agriculture, and insuch a climate as that of Scotland , strong clays, underthe best management known at present, pan neither be madeclean without having recourse to the radical operationof summer fallow, nor preserved in a clean state withoutthe recurrence of fallow at proper intervals, which must bejudged of by individual cultivators according to circumstan-ces. A too frequent recurrence, however, would be destruc-tive to old tillage lands, by allowing the soluble matter in thesoil to escape in a gaseous form into the atmosphere; whilelittle pulverisation is required, and few or no inert vegetableremains exist in this description of soil, to be converted intpsoluble matter.