198 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



The time to sow it (in the climate of England) is the 24th of 

 June, at all events before July. The condition of the soil must 

 not be poor, and the produce will pay for good land. The soil 

 needs to be compressed after sowing, if the land be at all light, 

 by rolling or sheep treading.&quot; 



In June of the following year, the farmer whom I have quoted 

 above sent Mr. Pusey an account of his further success in the 

 growth of this rye. The stalk was six feet in length, though it 

 had not then flowered. He began to soil eight cart horses with 

 it on the 13th of May, then three feet high, and four cows a 

 week later. Both these kinds of stock ate nearly the whole of 

 it with scarcely any waste ; it had then been twenty-two days 

 in use, and he expected its eatable state would extend through a 

 month. He thinks he should have begun a week earlier, not 

 waiting until it was three feet in height. 



Mr. Pusey, whose growing crop I saw, &quot; sowed some in July, 

 1843, on some poor, moory soil, without manure ; it was fed off 

 in the autumn, and again in the spring, yet produced, on little 

 more than a quarter of an acre, thirteen bushels of seed. The 

 seed was sown again last year, (1844,) in August, as soon as 

 harvested. It produced on a sandy loam very good feed in the 

 autumn ; and in this backward spring, (1845,) it realized the 

 description given of it, and established its character by covering 

 four or five acres with a thick coat of herbage, in which the 

 lambs were browsing breast-high, while there was little or no 

 other feed in the neighborhood.&quot; 



It is said to be called St. John s day rye &quot; because it grows 

 so rapidly that, if sown about St. John s day, it will be fit to 

 mow green by the middle of September : and in favorable sea 

 sons, may be fed off again in November, without preventing 

 its giving ample feed the next spring, and a good crop of grain 

 at harvest.&quot; 



This rye, in Belgium, is deemed inferior to the common rye 

 in yield of grain, but &quot; it has evidently two advantages over the 

 common rye. It tillers so much as to produce double the quan 

 tity of herbage on the same space of ground. In one field, where 

 the two varieties were growing together, the common rye, after 

 twice feeding off, became so thin that I ploughed it up, while 

 (his new rye covers the ground with its third crop, as with its 



