ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 193 



The old-fashioned three-field course already noticed may 

 be adapted to modern requirements without altering its 

 general principle. The fallow may be cropped to a greater 

 or less degree, according to the character of the season and 

 the condition of the land. If, for example, we take suitable 

 crops, such as cabbages, rape, mangel, or even a few swedes 

 and early sown turnips for late summer consumption upon 

 half of the fallow breadth; and if we divide the portion 

 usually devoted to beans, and take instead, half beans and 

 half clover, our rotation will then read as follows : 

 1st year. Fallow (bare and cropped). 

 2nd Wheat. 

 3rd Beans or clover. 



And if the portion which has been in beans is brought into 

 bare fallow, and the portion in clover is brought into cropped 

 fallow, then the rotation may be written out as a six years' 

 course : 



1st year. Fallow. 



2nd Wheat. 



3rd Clover. 



4th Swedes, &c. 



5th Wheat. 



6th Beans. 



With regard to rotations for light lands, the four-course or 

 Norfolk rotation is the best known and most widely practised. 

 It is so familiar to most students of agriculture that it seems 

 unnecessary to repeat it, but with a view to its many modifi- 

 cations it is as well to state it in its simplest and best known 

 form of turnips, barley, clover, wheat. This rotation is 

 evidently suitable for the lighter classes of soils. The first 

 year is devoted to turnips or swedes, which are usually con- 

 sumed upon the field that grew them by sheep. Light land 

 will grow heavy crops of turnips, and such soils derive great 

 benefit from the treading of sheep in the winter. In ordinary 





