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 ought, as we have already stated, to be no
opposition between the two methods. Each has its own special uses
for which it can be best employed, and the skill of the farmer must
be exercised in determining whether the circumstances in which he is
placed are such as to call specially for the one or for the other
instrument. If the subsoil be a rich black mould, or a continuation
of the same alluvial or other fertile soil which forms the surface--it
may be turned up at once by the trench-plough without hesitation. Or,
if the subsoil be more or less full of lime, which has sunk from above,