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Of a man and a pair of horses throughout the year, and thento charge so much a-day against the work in which they aresuccessively employed, such as ploughing, harrowing, carting,&c. The result obtained in this way would no doubt exhi-bit the expence of any particular operation, in any given cir-cumstances, or perhaps of any particular farm, more distinctlythan is done by the common method of dividing the expencesby the number of acres cultivated ; but this mode, besides theobvious objection to its minuteness and prolixity, would notgive a nearer approximation to the truth, in regard to thecultivation of arable land generally. The number of acresthat may be cultivated by a pair of horses does vary indeed,in different situations, according to the nature of the soil andthe course of crops, and also according as a farm is moreor less distant from markets, manure and fuel; but fromthe several statements that have been presented from differentdistricts *, it does not seem difficult to fix on what may betermed an average number of acres, both on heavy and lightsoils. After a careful perusal of these and other documents,the writer of this article is inclined to consider fifty English acres of a clay-soil, and sixty acres of a turnip-soil, theformer cultivated according to a six years’ course, and the lat-ter to one of four years, to be quite as much as two horsesusually work in a sufficient manner, performing at the sametime all carriages, that of lime included, and having no assjs-ance from supernumeraries.
After these explanations, which seemed necessary for en-abling the general reader more readily to understand the fol-lowing calculations, it may be proper to state the several ar-ticles of expence under the different heads already mentioned;first, in regard to clay, and, second, to turnip soils.