SOIL EXHAUSTION AND ROTATION OF CROPS. Jgp, 



the second year. The third year the ground wms put in summer 

 grain which completed the shift. Then the farmer began again 

 with a year of fallow and manure, a year of winter grain, a 

 year of summer grain ; and so he went on — three years — three 

 years — three years — indefinitely. I suppose there are districts in 

 Europe that could be pointed out where this practice has prevailed 

 for nearly a thousand years, and it was early imported into this 

 country. It was the subject of legislation in the time of Charle- 

 magne. Some historians think that this monarch decreed the 

 adoption of the three years shift; others think that he merely 

 recommended it, as an improvement on what had been previously 

 the custom among the less advanced peasants, of simply using 

 the plow for a succession of years, without any rest for the land. 

 In the vicinity of cities, where the plowed land increased in pro- 

 portion to the quantity of pasture, and the supply of dung be- 

 came inadequate to manure it sufficiently, so that the manure and 

 fallow together could not make two good grain crops, forage 

 plants — grass, clover, or roots— were introduced into the course ; 

 and in that way, a great variety of rotations came into use. 



In England, there has been practiced, over a considerable part 

 of the country, what is known as " the Norfolk rotation " — a four 

 years shift. You have all read of it, doubtless; The first year, 

 clover and mixed grass seed ; the second year, wheat ; the third 

 year, turnips or rutabagas ; the fourth year barley ; and then the 

 same course again, with, perhaps a little variation ; perhaps the 

 land was kept two years in clover and grass. In Dorset, Wilts, 

 Essex, Herts, Suffolk, and Cambridge, in England, ten or fifteen 

 years ago, this course was in almost universal use. I speak of this 

 matter to bring up one point. There are certain advantages in 

 rotation which being observed or conceived led to its adoption. 

 But farmers, especially in long-settled countries like England, are 

 apt, having once accustomed themselves to a routine, to adhere to 

 it long after its advantages cease to exist. This is illustrated by 

 the fact that Norfolk, which gave England the four-course system 

 just described, began more than thirty years ago to amend its 

 own improvements. The command of concentrated and artificial 

 fertilizers which admit of easy application at any point in a rota- 

 tion, led some of the best farmers there to introduce another grain 

 crop — oats — into the shift, making a five years course, and accord- 

 ing to Caird, in his "English Agriculture," "on a large farm 

 where this system has supplanted the four years course the 



