ENGLISH AGKICULTURE. 123 



cleaning of the land, and lastly, the texture of the ground is 

 vastly improved by the trampling of the sheep ; so that upon 

 light land we have in the turnip crop a great improvement 

 on the old bare fallow, to which we must add a great reduc- 

 tion in cost. Therefore the case is as plain as a pikestaff 

 in favour of turnip cultivation on light land. It is well to 

 note that there must be a good deal of debateable or border 

 land. There must be a good deal of land which is neither 

 heavy nor light, and as to which it may be very difficult to 

 decide whether we should grow roots or not, the question being 

 solved very generally by the character of each season. In 

 some seasons more land will be brought into turnip cultiva- 

 tion. That will be in dry seasons ; in wet seasons more land 

 will go out of turnip cultivation and recruit the area under 

 bare fallow. 



In the case of stiff clay land, whether we consume the 

 turnips on the land with sheep or haul them off the ground, 

 in either case we damage the land. We grow a turnip 

 crop, and instead of a better series of crops after it, we have 

 a worse. This is a very important point. Upon certain 

 classes of stiff land, if we force turnip husbandry upon it we 

 shall find we grow a worse wheat crop, and a worse succession 

 of crops owing to the poaching and the trampling of the 

 ground in the process of turnip cultivation ; so that turnip 

 cultivation is robbed of its greatest attractions, and becomes 

 a difficult and expensive process, followed by inferior results. 

 And when we grow an inferior crop of corn after turnips 

 we may be disposed to think it may be better to bare- 

 fallow such land and to bring it into wheat. There is another 

 point which touches upon this question, and it is that these 

 clay lands of which I am speaking are essentially wheat 

 lands. They have suffered terribly during the last few years 

 on account of the reduction in value of their main product, 

 but they are wheat lands as long as they remain in arable 



