AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



leases, which forbids the taking of more than two 

 grain crops without a whole year's fallow, a crop 

 of turnips, or "a two years' lay." Writing nine 

 years later than Marshall (1804), Arthur Young 

 gives the following clause among "new cove- 

 nants" in use in the county of Norfolk. The 

 tenant "shall not sow any of the lands with two 

 successive crops of corn, grain, pulse, rape or tur- 

 nips for seed," 1 without the consent of the land- 

 lord. The rule that two grain crops should not 

 be grown in succession on the same piece of land 

 became an established custom in most of the 

 grain-growing districts of England. This rule 

 'was in harmony with the Norfolk four-course 

 system of crop rotation. In this four-course sys- 

 tem, a fallow crop, that is a cultivated crop, usu- 

 ally a root crop, is followed by a crop of spring 

 grain with which clover or grass seeds are sown. 

 After harvesting the hay the next season, the 

 field is plowed and put into condition for fall 

 grain which is the fourth crop in the course. For 

 more than a century this system has been the most 

 highly approved of all systems of crop rotation in 

 use in England. This same system was intro- 

 duced into Germany by Albrecht Thaer. 



A study of the leases in use in the various 

 counties of England at the close of the Eighteenth 

 Century, does not give so favorable an impression 

 as do the descriptions of the Norfolk system. 



1 Agriculture of Norfolk, p. 50. 

 296 



