58 REPORT OF THE AGRICULTURE OF AYRSHIRE 



once in 9 years or so, the soil has more than time to recover 

 fully for another crop. When seeds are sown with the flax crop, 

 the ensuing hay is always unusually heavy, more so probably 

 than after any other crop that the land can be sown down with. 

 The following rotation would be a most profitable one out of 

 much of the old lea-land (6 years or fully) in Ayrshire, say, (1) 

 break up with broadcast beans, (2) oats, (3) flax with seeds, — but 

 no ryegrass seeding, mind. 



Presently, with wheat scarcely saleable at 35s. per qr., and just 

 very middling crops of it, flax after green crop, with seeds, would 

 pay much better. It is not only the fibre, but the seed of the 

 flax is got also for feeding purposes, and every farmer knows or 

 ought to know how exceedingly valuable lintseed is for fattening. 

 Curious, is it not, that our flax manufacturers and feeding stuff 

 merchants are obliged to import most part of their supplies from 

 Russia, &c, whilst these might be most remuneratively grown 

 at home, and the money thus put into our own farmers' pockets, 

 just where it is greatly needed? Surely Scotchmen are as able 

 to grow and manage flax and flax seed, as are the Russians, 

 or Poles, or Irishmen even ; and these can do it to good 

 pecuniary account. Excepting undrained clays, all the soils in 

 Ayrshire, from the upland moorish on the east, through the 

 meliorated clays and loams, to the improved sands along the 

 shore, are suitable for flax culture , and where properly drained, 

 the constant moistness of climate is most favourable. Tolerably 

 fertile-clayish loams, with clayish subsoil, raise the best flax 

 crops ; and that description of soil abounds most by much 

 in Ayrshire. It is not ignorance of flax culture which pre- 

 vents ourfarmers going into it, but we rather suspect that the 

 trouble connected with the steeping process is the main hind- 

 rance. 



"With the lengthened grass rotations in the more inland dis- 

 tricts of Ayrshire, and the limited areas under cleaning crops, 

 bare or summer fallowing is seldom thought of. Towards the 

 coast, and with shorter and more regular rotations, it is now, we 

 may say, even on the heaviest lands, almost if not quite dis- 

 used. The holders of clay soils, who still attempt to carry on 

 turnip growing upon these to much extent, are often compelled 

 to leave a portion of the break fallow or unsowed, simply be- 

 cause they cannot get on it to work it, but if summer fallowing 

 includes the aerification and cleaning of the soil, then, generally 

 and in the majority of cases, these portions though "fallow "in 

 one sense, cannot be called " summer fallow." A neighbour of 

 the writer's, Mr. Matthew M'Queston, Blair, Hurlford, very suc- 

 cessfully fallowed a ten-acre field this summer (1864), but he 

 could not have got the same chance during the seven or eight 



