ROTATIONS. 225 
sown gave 19.7 tons or 34 per cent more. The yield of late 
sown rutabagas in 1901 gave 26 per cent more than the 
early sown, and this result will probably be obtained in an 
ordinary season. The mangels have always given larger 
yields when sown early—the difference averaging 1.7 tons in 
favor of the early sown. With carrots and sugar beets the 
results have also favored early sowing. 
Rotations.—The necessity for growing the principal 
crops of this section, as grain, grass, potatoes and corn- 
fodder, in rotation, in order to maintain the yield of the 
crop and the fertility of the soil, has been pointed out for 
each crop. It is perhaps the most important question con- 
nected with our farming, at least the one in which mistakes 
are most apt to be made. The amount of land devoted to 
grain, grass and potatoes or corn respectively, will vary 
with the amount of stock kept, nearness to market and 
other factors. But the farmer generally knows about how 
much of his land he would like to have in each kind of crop. 
We have seen how largely the yield of grass may be increased 
by plowing up the meadow at the end of two or three years 
and seeding down a new piece, and how oats or cornfodder 
or potatoes give bigger crops on sod than on land under 
continuous cultivation. A proper rotation which will bene- 
fit the soil, depends almost absolutely on the plowing under 
of sod, and unless one is willing to plan his farm manage- 
ment with this end in view, he can do very little of real 
value, by rotating his other crops. A perfect rotation 
cannot be devised for a new farm which is being cleared up 
but the principle can be applied on any farm and the details 
altered every year if necessary, to meet the conditions. A 
perfect rotation is a system by which the farm is divided in- 
to a definite number of fields of nearly equal size, and a 
rotation of crops grown, so that there are as many different 
crops as the farm has fields. Each crop is grown on a differ- 
ent field each year, in a regular order, so that the acreage of 
each crop each year is the same. An example of a four year 
rotation, would be corn or potatoes, then oats seeded down, 
and meadow two years, the fifth year bringing it back to 
the starting point with corn again. Should this rotation 
be perfected for a farm, there would be four fields, two of 
