], which renders it necessary to the farmer to break it
up.
I am aware of the difficulty of persuading persons (farmers in
particular) to adopt any new systems; and I have often, when speaking of
this subject amongst men of enlightened understandings, been told it
would be next to madness, to sacrifice the benefit of a crop of oats or
barley when the land is in fine tilth, and whilst we can grow grass
seeds underneath it.
"To this I reply, that there is no land whatever, when left for a few
months in a state of rest, but will produce naturally some kind of
herbage, good and bad; and thus we find the industry of man excited, and
the application of the hoe and the weeder continually among all our
crops, this being essential to their welfare. I cannot help, therefore,
observing how extremely absurd it is to endeavour to form clean and good
pasturage under a crop hat gives as much protection to every noxious
weed as to the young grass itself. Weeds are of two descriptions, and
each requires a very different mode of extermination: thus, if annual,
as the Charlock and Poppy, they will flower among the corn, and the
seeds will ripen and drop before harvest, and be ready to vegetate as
soon as the corn is removed; and if perennial, as Thistles, Docks,
Couch-grass, and a long tribe of others in this way, well known to the
farmer, they will be found to take such firm possession of the ground
that they will not be got rid of without great trouble and expense.
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