Ch. VII.] ON THE ROTATION OF CROPS. 101 



of diminutive size, will yet, in some seasons, produce a fair crop of succu- 

 lent food for lambs in the trying season of spring ; and spurry, if mo e 

 generally known, would be found a useful article for cattle during the 

 winter. In Flanders, the spurry is extensively grown, upon a slight 

 ploughing after wheat, and is there universally employed in the feeding of 

 the dairy cows. The farmers of that country are, indeed, famous for other 

 double-crops, as for instance — carrots after flax ; turnips after wheat, rye, 

 and oats; and green corn before flax, or potatoes. Sometimes they even 

 procure three crops in one year : first, a crop of corn to be cut green ; 

 then flax, with which carrots are sown; or after the flax is pulled, turnips, 

 spurry, or buck-wheat; and in that manner, the cattle being soiled, they 

 make prodigious quantities of manure, by which they are enabled to raise a 

 large produce from soils of such a light sandy nature, that, until thus im- 

 proved, they were nearly sterile *. 



The Flemings have, however, been farmers time out of mind, and there 

 is not a cultivated acre, the properties of which are not matter of notoriety. 

 According to those properties, the most suitable succession of crops, and 

 the most profitable application of manure, have been long invariably 

 adopted from the tried results of acknowledged practice in different dis- 

 tricts. To follow their rotations, indiscriminately, in this country, cannot 

 indeed be recommended ; but it has been justly remarked, that if we could 

 be brought to imitate them, generally, by the adoption of some kind of rota- 

 tion system, governed by our experience of soil and circumstances, a 

 valuable improvement might thus be effected in British agriculture f. 



While on the subject of the different rotations which are apparently fol- 

 lowed in conformity with the alternate system of cropping light lands, it 

 may be proper to notice that two or more green crops are frequently grown 

 in succession during two following years ; so that no general rule separates 

 them by a white crop in the same manner as a regular course. Except in 

 the vicinity of large towns, which aftbrd a profitable demand for such 

 produce, or in cases where tlie state of the land may render two drilled and 

 horse-hoed crops advisable to assist in cleansing it, and thus preventing the 

 necessity of a fallow, it however appears to us that the propriety, or 

 rather the economy, of the practice, may be justly doubted. A farmer who 

 takes more than one crop of corn in succession, from light land, is 

 blameable, because he, to a certain extent, exhausts it ; but if he unneces- 

 sarily takes two green crops in following years, he suffers a loss ; for, 

 when consumed upon the ground, they are rarely found to pay so well as 

 corn. In defence of the practice it is indeed argued — " that a succession 

 of green crops will keep the land clean and in good condition: " but to 

 this it may be answered— that if the land be carefully tilled at proper 

 seasons, a green crop every other year on light lands, and the occasional 

 introduction of a complete summer fallow on those which are strong, will 



* After a crop of cole-seed, or hemp, spurry, carrots, or turnips are grown ; and after 

 wheat, a crop of carrots, sown with the wheat, or spurry, or turnips, sown after the crop, 

 is reaped. Carrots are also sown with rye ; or turnips, or spurry, after the crop is cut 

 down. It is however thought indispensable to vary the crops, and never to sow the 

 same for two years in succession. — Vanderstraeten's Flemish Husbandry, p. 42. We 

 learn also from Mr. RadcliflF, that upon the inferior sands in some parts of Flanders, 

 after a crop of rye has been taken, rape and turnips are both sown in succession. The 

 rape, which is transplanted from seed-beds, sown in August, is dibbled after three 

 ploughings, with about a ton and a-half of lime, and .52 hhds. of urine per acre : after 

 the rape is harvested the turnips are sown upon one ploughing — with 10 tons of farm- 

 yard manure per English acre.— Rep. on the Agric. of Flanders, p. 100. 



t Ibid. p. 58. 



