476 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



will, better than any other crop, bear the application of coarse 

 manure. I give these opinions, as I receive them, from good 

 authority. 



There are several varieties cultivated, divided by the French 

 into white and black ; by the Flemish, into white, yellow, and 

 black. The white oat is most congenial to a soil which is 

 humid, the black to a dry soil. The black oat, in comparison 

 with the white, is represented as worth an eighth more for use : 

 that is, it is more nutritive in the same weight, and its cultiva 

 tion less exhausting to the soil. 



The Hungarian oat, called sometimes the Tartarian oat, with 

 all its panicles pendent on one side, is here found under two 

 varieties, the white and the black. This species weighs heavier 

 than the white, but not so heavy as the common black oat. It 

 gives more grain and more straw than the common white oat, 

 but it requires rich and strong land. 



The potato oat is very little cultivated in France. Indeed, it 

 can only succeed under a far better cultivation than is here 

 bestowed upon the crop. The Siberian oat is of early maturity : 

 the grains are yellow and very heavy, but the straw hard and 

 coarse. The growth of this kind is so rapid, that it is said to 

 have been cut when young for a green crop, and afterwards 

 yielded a good grain crop. 



There are two kinds of oats cultivated in France, known as 

 winter and spring oats; the former kind being sown in the 

 autumn ; but this kind is only safe in parts of the country where 

 the winters are mild, as oats are liable to be destroyed by severe 

 frosts. 



The best crops in France, rating thirty-three pounds to a 

 bushel, give about forty-eight bushels to the acre, but a great 

 portion of the crops gives much less; and the average crop is 

 rated at about sixteen bushels per acre, which indicates very 

 negligent cultivation; an eminent French cultivator calls it 



O O * 



detestable, but it would not be civil in a stranger to use so harsh 

 a term. 



The value of oats, compared with hay, in nutritive matter, is 

 rated at one hundred to one hundred seventy-five. It is strongly 

 advised by the French farmers to use the oats without threshing, 

 cutting up the grain and the straw together; and by all means, 

 to harvest the oats at so early a season that they may not shell 



