FAILURE IN THE GROWTH OF WHEAT. 127 



Sussex Vale formerly produced excellent wheat, 

 which it refuses to do now. It is complained, also, 

 that, though the barley rises to a great height, it does 

 not fill. But let any one who knows even the rudi 

 ments of farming say, if, after the following treatment, 

 he would expect that good crops of wheat should be 

 reaped, or heavy ears of barley. When the land is 

 cleared of wood, potatoes are put in with (sometimes) a 

 little manure, and these are followed in succession by a 

 crop of wheat, a crop of oats, and a crop of barley, when 

 grass-seeds are sown and hay is cut, without the addi 

 tion of any manure, for ten or twelve successive years. 

 Would any English farmer expect his best land, after 

 such a sixteen years cropping, either to fill his barley 

 or to give him a good crop of wheat ? But in Sussex 

 Vale the same exhausting system has been carried on 

 continuously long after the first sixteen years of crop 

 ping had expired ; so that the wonder is that it continues 

 to produce straw, not that it refuses to produce abun 

 dant grain also. I do not venture to say whether or no 

 the wheat-midge is more likely to attack and ravage 

 the crops on exhausted than upon rich and well-treated 

 land 5 but it is certain that, leaving out of view the 

 visitations of insects and fungi, whose source and 

 InVory are almost unknown, a sufficiently generous 

 and skilful treatment ought to make and, if the cli 

 mate has not altered, will make this and other parts 

 of New Brunswick produce the same crops in the 

 same luxuriance as they have been used to do in past 

 years. 



Buckwheat is grown in the valley as a substitute 

 for wheat in home consumption. The rough or curly 

 variety, of which I have already spoken, gives a sweet 

 white flour, which makes excellent hot pancakes. When 

 well prepared, as I had them at this place, they more 

 nearly resemble our English crumpet than any other 



