98 BRITISH HUSBANDRY. [Ch. VII. 



to prevent its too frequent recurrence. This is a favourite rotation with 

 many of the best farmers on tlie Yorkshire Wolds, who vary it occasionally 

 by sowing winter tares in lieu of the red clover, and alternate the turnips 

 between the common sorts and the Swedes. 



In Norfolk, as well as on the sandy and dry liglit loams of other dis- 

 tricts, the management is, however, confined by some landlords to a six- 

 course shift of cropping, namely : — Wheat the first year ; barley or oats, 

 without clover, the second ; turnips the third ; barley or oats, with clover, 

 tiie fourth ; clover, mown for hay, the fifth ; and the sixth, grazed till 

 Midsummer, when it is again broken up for wheat *. This last rotation 

 has, indeed, become more general during the last few years ; for those who 

 practised the Norfolk system on thin light soils, have found their crops 

 grow so much worse as to be compelled to adopt it. We learn that it has 

 even been tried with good eft'ect, not only upon turnip-soils, but upon 

 strong clayey lands ; substituting naked fallows, or beans drilled at thirty 

 inches, instead of turnips .; and those who have pursued it on such land 

 find, that after two or three years' clover and grass-seeds, fed off with 

 sheep, the land will grow good crops of oats, which they could never get 

 it to do under the old plan f. It appears to us, however, to be more ex- 

 hausting than the four-shift course ; and that, on such light soils, two suc- 

 cessive grain-crops ought not to be allowed. 



On entry to a farm it not unfrequently happens that the tenant finds it 

 has been conducted in a manner wholly different from either of the rota- 

 tions above mentioned, or indeed, from any plan accordant with the alter- 

 nate system of husbandry, and has been entirely thrown out of condition 

 by bad management. There is great difficulty attendant upon any change 

 of cultivation, upon so extensive a scale as to bring the land immediately 

 under a different course from that in which it has been already managed : 

 the regular succession of some of the usual crops must be sacrificed, 

 additional labour may be occasioned, and present expense increased ; but 

 if it be an object to adopt the four-course shift, perhaps the following 

 mode will be found as short and simple, as under most circumstances, can 

 be suggested. Thus — 



Supposing land of any definite extent, and of the fair average quality of 

 dry turnip-soils, to be found the greater part in a foul state, occasioned by 

 the production of successive crops of corn, and the remainder to be under 

 rough pasture not worth keeping in grass. The course which we should 

 recommend would be — to divide the arable into three parts, with a 

 portion of pasture equal to one-third of their quantity, thus forming 

 the whole into four divisions, as nearly equal as the size of the fields 

 will permit: feo break up the pasture. No. 1, for a crop of oats, 

 slightly pared and burnt, if the weeds and herbage be sufficiently 

 rank to admit of the operation without injuring the staple of the soil ; for 

 this grain will uniformly yield a greater return than any other till the 

 surface of the land be completely reduced and the natural grasses destroyed. 



* Kent's Survey of Norfolk, p. 33. Mr. Kent, however, rather recommends wheat, 

 vetches, buck, turnips, barley, clover : which he conceives '' would keep the turnips and 

 clover-crops at such a distance, that there would be no fear of their success; and as the 

 buck-wheat might be considered as a neutral crop, the alternate advantage would not, 

 in fact, be lost in its good effect. By means of the vetches too, more stock might also be 

 kept on very light land than from the six-course shift; and, where a tlock is kept, it 

 can never be employed so well as in feeding upon this sort of light land, as soon as the 

 wheat or rye be sown, especially if the sowing be upon one ploughing ; in which case it 

 is best to begin rather early, and sow by degrees as many ridges each time as the 

 breadth of the fold will cover." 



t Bailey and Culley's Surv. of Northumberland, 3d edit. p. 70. 



