Table Explanatory of the Scotch Mode of Cultivating Turnips in Drills, from The General Report of the Agricultural State and Political Circumstances of Scotland edited by John Sinclair (1814)

Transcribed explanation of the Plate:

Fig.1. Is a section of the drills, as first formed, and having the dung spread out in the hollow drills.

Fig.2. Represents these drills, as split open, to cover the dung; what was formerly the hollow drills being converted, by this operation, into the ridgelets, and vice versa.

Fig.3. Gives an idea of the figure of the drills, or ridgelets, after having been seeded by the drill-machine.

Fig.4. Is a representation of the appearance of the field, after the earth has been gathered into the intervals between the turnip drills, as formerly practised, but which is now in a horse-hoed state.

Fig.5. Shews the situation of the drills, on finishing off the field in the older method, by splitting open the gathered ridgelets of Fig.4.; but which practice is not now generally followed, for reasons already assigned in the body of this section.

Fig.6. Gives an idea of the situation of a field of drilled turnips when finished off; the furrows or hollow drills not being opened out, for the reasons already assigned; and the turnips are represented as having their shaws or tops removed, for the use of young stock, previously to the feeding stock of sheep being laid on. 

Fig.7. Contains a plan, upon a smaller scale than the preceding sections, of a turnip field in regular drills, in which these are laid off obliquely to the usual direction of the ridges, to facilitate the more equable distribution of the dung covered up in the drills, when the field is afterwards ploughed for a crop of grain.