REMEDIES SUGGESTED. 63 



system," which requires a bare fallow to clean the land. 

 Of course, wheat can be grown continuously, and, as Mr. 

 Prout has shown at Sawbridgeworth — and others else- 

 where ; it can even be so grown at a profit. But why 

 labour for a second or third best, when we can have the 

 very best in an even more profitable way ? Wheat requires 

 some other crop — clover, or roots, or some leguminous 

 plant — as a " preparation," and the interposed crop makes 

 husbandry all the more profitable. " Greater reliance on 

 green crops, grass and forage, as contradistinguished from 

 corn, but not to the exclusion of corn," is what Sir J. Caird 

 warmly recommends as a " substitute for Protection." 

 And there can be no better advice given. " We need be 

 under no apprehension," so he continues, " of thereby 

 unduly diminishing the growth of corn ; for the more 

 stock an arable farm maintains, the more productive will 

 be its yield of corn." It is " rotation cropping," which 

 has raised modern Agriculture to its actual height, from 

 which it may ver}^ well, with intelligence and application, 

 rise to a higher point still. Mr. T. Wibberley has oppor- 

 tunely shown us the way of carrying Sir J. Caird's maxim 

 of " The more fodder, the more grain " very much farther 

 than its own author can ever have thought possible. In 

 1886 people spoke of " Three Acres and a Cow." Mr. 

 Wibberley now speaks of " A Cow to the Acre." By means 

 of his "Continuous Cropping" — the practice of which has 

 lately extended into England (on a farm in Surrey) — under 

 which the land is practically never left idle (hardy fodder 

 plants occupying it in winter), so much fodder is raised, in 

 the most convenient and economic way, that a third, or 

 at most half, the land will produce in fodder what now 

 the entire area produces, leaving accordingly a considerable 

 portion free for extended corn growing, should such be 

 deemed necessary. The system has other advantages. It 

 greatly economises labour, and allots it in such manner 

 to the various seasons that it comes to be equally distri- 

 buted over the whole length of the year. There is no 

 special " rush " in spring. Fewer hands suftice. And, much 

 of the plough work being relegated to summer time, whereas 



