184 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



with some strong implement of the cultivator sort. Oats are 

 sowed much thicker than is usual with us. I hear of six bush 

 els to the acre ; but with regard to this there is much differ 

 ence of opinion. The crop of oats is not often large (from thirty 

 to forty bushels from an acre is common) ; but oats seldom 

 make a large crop upon clay soils. The next year the ground 

 will be summer-fallowed, or, by the more enterprising farm 

 ers, cropped with turnips, beets, or with potatoes. The pota 

 toes are sold, the turnips and beets fed to the cows during the 

 winter. On the poorer farms, the cows get little but hay 

 from December to April ; and cheese-making is given up du 

 ring the winter. Others, by the help of turnips, beets, and 

 linseed cake, keep a constant flow of milk, and cheese-making 

 is never interrupted. (Of course the milking of each cow is 

 interrupted for a while at her calving time, which they try to 

 have in March.) 



The crop after roots is commonly barley ; after fallow, 

 wheat, of which twenty-five to thirty bushels is a common 

 crop, and forty not uncommon. After wheat, oats again, and 

 perhaps after the oats another crop of wheat ; if so, the land 

 is manured with bones or boughten manure, and sometimes 

 limed at the rate, say of four tons to the acre of stone lime. 



Grass. With the last crop of oats or wheat, clover and 

 grass seeds are sowed. Grass was thought to come better 

 after wheat upon under-drained land. The best farmers sow 

 a very great variety and large measure of grass seeds ; the 

 poorer ones are often content with what they can find under 

 their hay bays, sowing it, weeds and all, purchasing only 

 clover seed. 



The quantity of grass seeds sowed is always much greater 

 here than in America. I should think it was commonly from 

 a bushel to three bushels on an acre ; rarely less than one, or 

 more than three. I do not think more than one quarter of a 



