124 THE PRINCIPLES OF 



cultivation. Upon such clay lands it is a point that wheat 

 should be sown early. Wheat ought to have two summers 

 in order to develop thoroughly, or as much of two summers 

 as it can get. The old-fashioned farmers used to sow their 

 wheat early in August, and thought that the young wheat 

 should be peeping out of the ground in time to see the old 

 wheat riding home to the rickyard from the harvest-field. 

 We do not see that now on account of the spread of turnip 

 cultivation. We sacrifice our wheat in some measure to our 

 live stock ; but wheat, if it can be planted in August on cold 

 clay lands, such as I am now speaking of, comes up strongly 

 and rapidly, and spreads itself like a green carpet over the 

 soil, and although it may perhaps become winter-proud, yet at 

 the same time we find that early sowing is the way to get a 

 strong-rooted, thoroughly good crop of wheat. But all this is 

 quite inconsistent with turnip cultivation, because if we culti- 

 vate turnips it is difficult to get them off the ground before 

 October, and it is equally difficult to get our wheat in before 

 November, which is too late for securing the best results. 



Such considerations as these will guide a farmer as to how 

 he should crop his land. In the cultivation of clay land it 

 seems desirable at the present day to extend the rotation 

 beyond that of the ordinary four years' course, which is more 

 adapted for light soils, and these soils, as they yield a good 

 return in grass, may be left down two, three, or four years in 

 a proper mixture of seeds and clover, with very good results. 



I pass on to some of the principles which control the 

 cultivation of light land. I used the word consolidation with 

 reference to the cultivation of light land. We desire to 

 produce a firm condition which is natural to clay soils ; there 

 is no difficulty in getting a firm condition in clay soils, we 

 rather require to operate so as to produce a looser condition 

 in them, but in the cultivation of light soils we want to pro- 

 duce as far as possible a solid, firm condition. Much of the 



