Band 
Vol. I.
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521
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OF SCOTLAND.

521

or free bom weeds, the intervals between the rows or drillsare gone over with the hone-hoe, scraper, or Dutch hoe. Thehand-hoe follows immediately after, to cut up such weeds asare beyond the reach of the horse-hoe; and for this purpose,besides the ordinary broad edged hacking hoe, some husband-men have a narrow hoe on the back of the larger one, thatthe hoers may get between the stems of the beans. In thepractice of good husbandmen, all the weeds which grow umongthe beans, beyond the reach of the hoe, are pulled up by hand.These operations of horse-hoeing, and hand-weeding are, orought to be, repeated successively, as long as the growth ofweeds call for them, and are generally finished off with thehorse-hoe. A well managed field of beans, ought to be asclean as a garden bed, and always is so in the hands of anindustrious husbandman. Nothing surely can be more pre-posterous, or more contradictory to every principle of goodhusbandry, than to see a crop of beans labouring hard forsubsistence among a host of weeds, this being not only de-structive to the immediate crop, but highly injurious to thesucceeding crop of wheat. Unless a field be previously wellcleaned from vivacious root-weeds, such as docks, couch,and bulbous rooted oat-grass, provincial!)’ knot-grass, bymeans of a thoroughly well wrought summer fallow, it is invain to grow beans as a meliorating crop, and absurd to lookafterwards for valuable crops of wheat or other grain. Far-mers who cultivate in this slovenly manner, are a disgrace totheir profession, and are actual nuisances.

Before the introduction of the horse-hoe, a common smallplough drawn by one horse, was employed for working andcleaning the soil between the rows of drilled beans. In thefirst place, this plough went one bout, or up and down in eachinterval, gathering the soil from the beans into a ridgcletin the middle, after which hand-hoes were employed to cutthe weeds close to the rows. A second hand-hoeing followed,to destroy any fresh growth of weeds : and, some time after-