OF SCOTLAND.

553

with greater vigour, than after any other mode of prepara-tion.”

As turnip husbandry is the sheet-anchor, or sine qua nonof the modern alternate and convertible husbandry, in all dry-soiled districts, the Reporter is induced to enter into a consi-derable detail in this section; more especially as the turniphusbandry, as practised in the best managed districts of Scot-land , admits effectual culture, and is incomparably superiorto any other mode hitherto devised. Being however unwill-ing to enter upon any controversial discussion of the meritsof the drilled turnip husbandry, so universally adopted in allthe well managed districts of Scotland , or to contrast it withthe broadcast manner of sowing, the reporter considers, thathe cannot better fulfil the intentions of the Board of Agri-culture on (he present occasion, than by giving an abstractof the detail formerly communicated in the Berwickshire Sur-vey, concerning the most appropriate way of cultivating tur-nips, according to the drill system. The remainder, there-fore, of this section, chiefly consists of a transcript from theBerwickshire Report, chap, vii, sect. xiii. p. 26G—283.

In the addenda to the original Report of Northumberland,the introduction of drilled turnips is referred to the celebrat-ed Tull, who appears to have chiefly used intervals of threefeet; it farther appears, that Tull gave all, or most of his fa-vourite horse-hoeing husbandry to his turnips, after theywere sown ; whereas, in modern husbandry, the soil is in-variably reduced to a fine friable tilth, before the seed issown, and the horse-hoeing continued during the period oftheir growth.

The Northumberland Reporter considers Mr Craik of Ar-bigland, in Dumfriesshire, as having been the first cultivatorof drilled turnips on the borders, about the year 174-5. Hefarther supposes this practice to have reached Cumberlandabout ten years afterwards ; when Philip Howard, Esq. ofCorby , first cultivated turriips, at intervals of four feet, whichhe afterwards reduced |o two feet.