474 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



lightly ploughed, the barley sown, and covered with a harrow. 

 Clover is sometimes sown at the same time, and a light roller 

 passed over it. For barley sown in the autumn, it is not objec 

 tionable that the land should be moist ; but when sown in the 

 spring, the land cannot be too warm and dry. If the land is 

 clayey and cold, the barley is not sown so early as in other 

 cases. 



The Flemish cultivation of this crop is extremely careful and 

 liberal ; and nowhere are better crops to be found. The polders, 

 in Flanders are those lands which, by embankments, have been 

 redeemed from the sea, or from the floods of the rivers, and then 

 drained by cross ditches. These lands, being the alluvial de 

 posits of uncounted years or centuries, are extremely rich ; and 

 large crops of winter barley are grown upon them. Crops as 

 good, however, according to the testimony of a distinguished 

 farmer, are grown upon lighter lands, where they are carefully 

 cultivated, and liberally manured. The brewers prefer the 

 barley grown upon the light lands to that grown upon the 

 heavier soils ; they find the skin of the grain finer, and the grain 

 itself better filled. They prefer, likewise, the winter to the 

 spring barley, because it weighs heavier. It gives, likewise, a 

 larger product. 



In the neighborhood of Ghent, where one witnesses the per 

 fection of agriculture, the mode of cultivating this crop is thus 

 in the main detailed by an experienced agriculturist, to whom 

 I have already referred.* 



They plough the land twice ; they then lay it in beds of 

 about five feet in width ; they then go upon the land Avith a cart 

 of liquid manure, the horse walking in the furrows, and a good 

 deal of the liquid of course falling in the furrows, between the 

 beds ; they then level the land with a harrow ; they then spread 

 upon the field ten or twelve two-horse loads of rotted manure to 

 the acre, and sow the seed upon the manure ; the next step is to 

 clean out the furrows between the beds with a spade, spreading 

 the soil taken out upon the seed, and at the same time covering 

 the manure. The whole field is then trodden by foot, or by a 

 roller drawn by men. The object of this is to retain the hu- 



Van Aelbroeck s Agriculture of Flanders. 



