Wealden Clay of Sussex. 185 



A winter's fallow is indispensable for root-crops, and excel- 

 lent also for oats, which will produce G or 8 bushels more per 

 acre on a stale furrow than on land ploughed in February or 

 March. 



In a fine dry autumn, turnips may be fed off to great advan- 

 tage with sheep, but such autumns do not often occur ; when 

 they do, a portion of the turnips may be thrown on grass- 

 lands for sheep or cattle; but they will be all the better for 

 being cut. 



If turnips or swedes be sown early, they will be fit for use 

 early in the autumn, but 110 opportunity of getting them off the 

 land must he neglected, and the same may be said as to harvesting 

 beet. 



In no part of England is the want of keep after Christmas for 

 cattle, sheep, and pigs, more felt than in the Weald. At this 

 time beet comes in and fills up the void admirably. Through 

 the trying months of March, April, and May it is in perfection. 

 It is both better and cheaper than rye, and, acre for acre, it will 

 keep more stock than any grass on this stiff soil. If the farmer 

 have abundance of it, he will find it excellent for all stock, even 

 in June and July, when fatting cattle in boxes may be kept on 

 it with great advantage. Beet will not bear frost, either in the 

 ground or out of it, but keeps perfectly well when packed close 

 in long clamps covered with straw and then with earth. In 

 these clamps it will ripen till it is wanted after Christmas. 

 Swedes may be thrown in heaps of any size, and covered in the 

 same manner, though they bear frost much better than beet. 



Potatoes, though they do not yield heavy crops, are of good 

 quality. The Jerusalem artichoke grows well on the clay, with 

 a fair portion of manure, and is good for all stock during winter 

 and spring, if it can be taken up and carted, without poaching 

 the land too much. Whilst it remains in the ground no frost, 

 however severe, will hurt it ; in fact, it bears the intense cold ol 

 a North American winter without injury, but it will not keep 

 out of the ground, for the tubers become shrivelled and worthless 

 in a short time after they are dug. The tops yield a good deal 

 of food, of which both horses and cattle are very fond. I have 

 cut it late in the summer for this purpose, but have grown it 

 only on a small scale, and in little odd corners of land which 

 would not otherwise have been used at all. The long-continued 

 Avet autumn and winter of 1852-1853 was very injurious to my 

 crop, a great part of which rotted in the ground ; but, as the 

 plants were grown on recently-cleared and undrained land, the 

 chances were very much against them. 



Beans are not much grown in the Weald ; they are generally 

 a poor crop, though now and then a fair crop of winter beans is 



