248 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



inches apart, and then harrows it with a light harrow, and sows 

 clover and other grass seeds upon it with a machine drawn by a 

 horse, that it may be the more evenly spread. The barley under 

 his management is always carefully weeded. A double-rowed 

 barley, called Chevalier, from the name of the person who first 

 selected a single head in his field and grew ultimately a crop 

 from its product, has for many years been greatly preferred in 

 England, and continues to maintain its high reputation. The 

 average weight of barley is from forty-five to fifty-five pounds 

 per bushel, and a crop on land well prepared is from thirty to fifty 

 bushels. Its proportion of nutritive matter is sixty-five per 

 cent. ; that of wheat being seventy-eight per cent. On good 

 loamy soils, barley is more profitable than oats. It is not so eli 

 gible on stiff and cold clays. It is considered not so great an 

 exhauster of the soil as oats. A good deal is sown in the neigh 

 borhood of London, to be cut as green feed for milch cows in 

 the large milk establishments. Machines are in use for hummel- 

 ling barley, that is, breaking off all the awns close to the 

 grain, and likewise for hulling it, so as to form what is called 

 pot or pearl barley, a very nutritious and agreeable ingredient 

 in broths and in drinks for invalids. 



4. RYE is very little cultivated in Great Britain, and I have 

 never seen it used here for bread. It is, however, sown for green 

 fodder, and with great advantage, as it cornes early. I have 

 described already an early and extraordinarily-useful kind under 

 the designation of St. JoJm s day rye, which produced, besides 

 ! being repeatedly cropped, thirty-six bushels to the acre. I believe 

 that rye might be more extensively cultivated in England, to great 

 advantage, for human food, if its proper use was understood, 

 for the feed of dairy cows in the spring, as nothing will produce 

 greater secretions of milk than rye meal, and also for the fat 

 tening of swine. In the best dairy districts of the United States, 

 where the amount of cheese made to a cow is nowhere ex 

 ceeded, nor within my knowledge equalled, a draught of about 

 three quarts of rye meal per day given to a milch cow, in the 

 spring, before the grass is abundant, is amply compensated by the 

 increased amount of milk and cheese produced ; and I have 

 known it applied to the feeding of swine with great success. 



Having thus far treated the cereal or bread grains, called white 



