ROTATION OF CROPS. 159 



winter, and in the spring to prepare the ground with some strong 

 implement of the cultivator sort. Oats are sowed much thicker 

 than is usual with us. I hear of six bushels to the acre ; but 

 with regard to this there is much difference 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 farmers, cropped with turnips, beets, or with 

 potatoes. The potatoes 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 

 during 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 inter- 

 rupted for awhile 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, sow- 

 ing 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 bushel, or 



