ROTATION OP CHOPS. 269 



is beneficial rather than otherwise ; for though some of the 

 plants are pulled out and others broken, their places are 

 more than supplied by the subsequent growth. 



CHAPTER XII. 



MISCELLANEOUS AIDS AND OBJECTS OF AGRICULTURE. 



I HAVE thus far treated of soils and manures, the prepara- 

 tion of the ground, and the ordinary cultivated field crops, as 

 fully as my limits permit. It remains briefly to add such 

 incidental aids and objects of agriculture, as could not ap- 

 propriately be embraced under either of the foregoing heads. 



ROTATION OF CROPS ITS USES AND EFFECTS. 



The practice of rotation in crops is an agricultural im- 

 provement of very modern date. It is first mentioned in 

 Dickson's Treatise on Agriculture, published in Edinburgh, 

 in 1777. For more than a century it has been partially 

 practiced in Flanders, and perhaps in some other adjoining 

 and highly-cultivated countries. It was afterwards intro- 

 duced, and imperfectly carried out on a limited scale in the 

 Norfolk district in Great Britain ; but its general introduc- 

 tion did not take place till the beginning of the present 

 century. The system of rotation is one of the first and most 

 important principles of general husbandry, and it cannot be 

 omitted without manifest disadvantage and loss. Its place 

 was formerly supplied by naked fallows. This practice 

 consists, as I have before shown, in giving the soil an occa- 

 sional or periodical rest, in which no crop is taken off, and 

 the soil is allowed to produce just what it pleases or nothing 

 at all, ^r one or more years, when it is refreshed and invig- 

 orated for the production of its accustomed useful crops. 

 This system, it will be perceived, implies the loss of the in- 

 come from the soil for a certain portion of the time, and it can 

 be tolerated only where there is more land than can be cul- 

 tivated. 



