in Denmark, Sweden, and Russia. 419 



milk, and it improves the land in an extraordinary degree. If 

 the land is to be several years in pasture, white clover must be 

 sown with it. Sown in the middle of April, it is ripe for pasture 

 by the end of May. Eaten off before the end of June, the land 

 is ploughed flat, and sown a second time, when it gives another 

 beautiful pasture in August and September. If rye be now 

 sown, the land is as much improved as if it had received 10 

 cart-loads of manure per acre. The blessing of spurry, the 

 CLOVER OF SANDY SOILS, is incredible when it is rightly em- 

 ployed. I sow it on the rye and oat-stubble^ and I obtain a 

 beautiful pasture and a manuring equal to 4 or 6 cart-loads of 

 manure per acre," ''' 



Schwartz, in his account of the Belgian husbandry (ii., p. 33), 

 says — '•' Without spurry, the Campine^f the best cultivated soil 

 in the world, would have been still a desert. A plant this v/hicli 

 requires no manure for itself, and which even when mown, by the 

 residue it leaves, gives back more than it takes from the soil — 

 which demands no fixed place in the rotation, but which is satis- 

 fied to come in as an after-crop whenever the soil is at liberty — • 

 which, except for the seed, requires no preparation — which is 

 satisfied with a soil on which nothing else but rye will grow — 

 which increases the quantity of milk and butter, and improves 

 their quality — and which, I am persuaded, may be raised with 

 advantage, even on the best soils, provided only they are some- 

 what light. A proof of this is the land of Waas (Waesland in 

 Flanders), the garden of Europe." J 



In many parts of Germany Schv/artz is regarded as a high 

 authority in practical agriculture, and there is certainly much 

 land in the Jutlands upon which, if its qualities be always such 

 as are above stated, it may be sown with the greatest prospect of 

 advantage. I cannot venture to recommend it to the attention of 

 English farmers in general, because I am aware that it has in 

 former years been so recommended by persons more versant in 

 agricultural practice than myself, without finding much favour in 

 this country ; and yet there may be some desolate and unproduc- 

 tive corners of our island on which its use might prove eminently 

 advantageous. It is sov/n on the stubble for autumn feed near 

 York ; but the soil there is not of the kind I should think for 

 which this crop is most especially adapted. 



* Uebe?- mayiche Vortheile der Grilner Dungung, p. 23. In this work Von 

 Voglit details the results of many long-continued experiments made upon 

 his own estate at Flottbeck. 



t Kempenland, a district in Dutch Brabant. 



X In his later systematic work, however, {Anleitimg zum Practischeii 

 Ackerhau, iii,, p. 514,) while he speaks of spurry in terms almost equally 

 high, he distinctly limits his recommendation to poor, sandy soils, and insists 

 upon its value on such especially as will grow neither clover nor grass. 



