Vegetable substances used for the food of man / [Edwin Lankester].

  • Lankester, Edwin, 1814-1874.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vegetable substances used for the food of man / [Edwin Lankester]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    its reception by ploughing. It has been held that this important preliminary of pulverizing the soil can hardly be carried to excess, the expense attending it forming almost the only limit to its prosecution. Cato the censor, who, in addition to his accomplish- ments as a warrior and a statesman, showed an in- timate acquaintance with rural economy, has recorded his opinion on the necessity of thoroughly turning upthe soil. In his treatise, ‘ De re rustica,’ he has laid it down as the first rule in husbandry to plough well, and the second rule —to plough.* Two distinct practices are followed in committing the seed to the earth. ‘The most ancient and most commonly used of these is that of scattering the seed from the hand of the sower over the whole surface ; and this is characteristically called sowing broad-cast. The other method, which is comparatively of modern introduction, is that of depositing the seed in holes formed in straight furrows, and at regular intervals, which is called drilling, or dibbling ; while the pro- cesses which accompany it, and which are impracti- cable with the broad-cast method, are distinguished as the horse-hoeing or drill system of husbandry. Lord Bacon says, that, in his time (the beginning of the seventeenth century), attempts had been made to plant wheat, but that the plan was abandoned, although undoubtedly advantageous, as involving too much labour.t In 1669, Evelyn furnished to the Royal Society a description of a sowing ma- chine invented by Locatelli, an Italian, who had ob- tained a patent for its use in Spain, having proved its utility by public experiment. {| The drill plough was, — however, not used in England, and was, perhaps, quite unknown to a body of men who are proverbially * Cap. Ixi. t Sylva Sylvarum. t See Beckmann’s ‘History of Inventions, vol. iv, p. 45, ed. 1817.