e safer plan for the young farmer would be to try one or
two acres in each way, and in his after procedure upon the same kind
of land to be regulated by the result of this trial. Mr. Stephens
expresses a decided opinion in favour of trench-ploughing in the
following passages:--

"I have no hesitation in expressing my preference of trench to
subsoil ploughing: and I cannot see a single instance, with the sole
exception of turning up a very bad subsoil in large quantity, in
which there is any advantage attending subsoil, that cannot be
enjoyed by trench ploughing: and for this single drawback of a very
bad subsoil, trenching has the advantage of being performed in
perfect safety, where subsoil ploughing could not be, without
previous drainage.

"But whilst giving a preference to trench ploughing over subsoil, I
am of opinion that it should not be generally attempted under any
circumstances, however favourable, without previous thorough-draining,
any more than subsoil ploughing; but when so drained, there is no
mode of management, in my opinion, that will render land so soon
amenable to the means of putting it in a high degree of fertility as
trench ploughing."--Vol. i. p. 664.

We confess that, in the first of the above passages, Mr. Stephens
appears to us to assume something of the tone of a partizan, which
has always the effect of lessening the weight of an author's opinion
with the intelligent reader who is in search of the truth only. What
is advanced as the main advantage of trench-ploughing in the first
passage--that it can be safely done without previous draining, is in
the second wholly discarded by the advice, _never to trench-plough
without previous draining_. At the same time it is confessed, that
in the case of a bad subsoil, trench-ploughing may do much harm.
Every practical man in fact knows that bringing up the subsoil in
any quantity, he would in some districts render his fields in a great
measure unproductive for years to come. On the other hand, we believe
that the use of the subsoil-plough can never do harm upon drained
land. We speak, of course, of soils upon which it is already
conceded that either the one method or the other ought to be adopted.
The utmost evil that can follow in any such case from the use of the
subsoil-plough, is that the expense will be thrown away--the land
cannot be rendered more unfruitful by it. Subsoiling, therefore, is
the _safer_ practice.

But in reality, there oug