Book VI. FALLOWING. 801 



effects we have endeavoured to explain. (2175.) The Romans with their agriculture in- 

 troduced fallows in every part of Europe; and two crops, succeeded either by a year's 

 fallow, or by leaving the land to rest for two or more years, became the rotation on all 

 soils and under all circumstances. This mode of cultivating arable land is still the most 

 universal in Europe, and was prevalent in Britain till the middle of the last century ; but 

 as a crop was lost every year they occurred, a powerful aversion from naked fallows arose 

 about that time, and called forth numerous attempts to show that they were unnecessarv, 

 and consequently an immense public loss. This anti- fallowing mania, as it has been called, 

 was chiefly supported by Arthur Young, Nathaniel Kent, and others, members or cor- 

 respondents of the Board of Agriculture : it was at its greatest height about the beginning 

 of the present century, but has now spent its force ; and after exhausting all the argu- 

 ments on both sides, as an able author has observed, " the practice does not appear to 

 give way, but rather to extend." 



4945. The expediency or inexpediency of pulverising and cleaning the soil by a bare fallow, 

 is a question that can be determined only by experience, and not by argument. No rea- 

 sons, however ingenious, for the omission of this practice, can bring conviction to the 

 mind of a farmer, who, in spite of all his exertions, finds, at the end of six or eight years, 

 that his land is full of weeds, sour, and comparatively unproductive. Drilled and horse- 

 hoed green crops, though cultivated with advantage on almost every soil are probably in 

 general unprofitable as a substitute for fallow, and after a time altogether inefficient. 

 It is not because turnips, cabbages, &c. will not grow in such soils, that a fallow is re- 

 sorted to, but because, taking a course of years, the value of the successive crops is found 

 to be so much greater, even though an unproductive year is interposed, as to induce a 

 preference to fallowing. Horse-hoed crops, of beans in particular, postpone the recur- 

 rence of fallow, but in few situations can ever exclude it altogether. On the other hand, 

 the instances that have been adduced, of a profitable succession of crops on soils of this 

 description, without the intervention of a fallow, are so well authenticated, that it would 

 be extremely rash to assert that it can in no case be dispensed with on clay soils. In- 

 stances of this kind are to be found in several parts of Young's Annals of Agricul- 

 ture ; and a very notable one, on Greg's farm of Coles, in Hertfordshire, is accurately 

 detailed in the sixth volume of The Communicatiotis to the Hoard of Agriculture. 



4946. The principal causes of this extraordinary difference among men of great experience, may probably 

 be found in the quality of the soil, or in the nature of the climate, or in both. Nothing is more vague 

 than the names by which soils are known in different districts. Greg's farm, in particular, though the 

 soil is denominated " heavy arable land," and " very heavy land," is found so suitable to turnips, that a 

 sixth part of it is always under that crop, and these are consumed on the ground by sheep; a system of 

 management which every farmer must know to be altogether impracticable on the wet tenacious clays of 

 other districts. It may indeed be laid down as a criterion for determining the question, that wherever this 

 management can be profitably adopted, fallow, as a regular branch of the course, must be not less absurd 

 than it is injurious, both to the cultivator and to the public. It is probable, therefore, that, in debating 

 this point, the opposite parties are not agreed about the quality of the soil; and, in particular, about its 

 property of absorbing and retaining moisture, so different in soils that in common language have the same 

 denomination. 



4947. Another cause of difference must be found in the climate. It is well known that a great deal more 

 rain falls on the west than on the east coast of Britain; and that between the northern and southern 

 counties there is at least a month or six weeks' difference in the maturation of the crops. Though the 

 soil, therefore, be as nearly as possible similar in quality and surface, the period in which it is accessible to 

 agricultural operations must vary accordingly. Thus, in the south-eastern counties of the island, where 

 the crops may be all cut down, and almost all carried home by (he end of August, much may be done 

 in cleansing and pulverising the soil, during the months of September and October, while the farmers of 

 the north are exclusively employed in harvest work, which is frequently not finished by the beginning 

 of November. In some districts in the south of England, wheat is rarely sown before December ; w herea* 

 in the north, and still more in Scotland, if it cannot be got completed by the end of October, it must com- 

 monly be delayed till spring, or oats or barley be taken in place of wheat. It does not then seem of any 

 utility to enter farther into this controversy, which every skilful cultivator must determine for himself 

 All tlie crops, and all the modes of management which have been proposed as substitutes for fallow, are 

 well known to such men, and would unquestionably have been generally adopted long ago, if, upon a 

 careful consideration of the advantages and disadvantages on both sides, a bare fallow was found to be un- 

 profitable in a course of years. The reader who wishes to examine the question fully may consult, among 

 many others, the following: — Young's Annals of Agriculture, and his writings generally; Hunter's 

 Georgical Essays ; Dickson's Practical Agriculture ; Sir H. Davy's Agricultural Chemistry ; The 

 Agricultural Chemistry of Chaptal ; Brown's Treatise on Jlural Affairs ; The Comity Reports ; The Ge- 

 neral Report of Scotland, and the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, vol. ii. p. 90. 



4948. The importance of naked fallows has been ably pointed out by a writer in the work last referred 

 to. " In order," he says, " to show more forcibly the difficulty of cleaning heavy lands for green crops, 

 let us take a review of the time of the year in which these crops should be sown. In clay lands, 

 beans must be sown in March at latest, and before that period of the year no one can pretend to 

 clean land at all. Finding it impossible to use them as a fallow crop, they are sown without dung on 

 that part of the rotation which is penultimate to bare fallow. On light lands, beans will not carry 

 much straw without manure, and their utility as a crop in the rotation is, of course, thereby much 

 decreased on such soils; and if they are to be sown as a fallow crop with dung on the land that is 

 to be appropriated to fallow, they give much less time for the preparatory cleaning of the land than 

 turnips, as thev must be sown at latest in April. On all kinds of soil potatoes must be planted by 

 April ; and the'same observations will, therefore, apply to them as to beans as a cleaner of the land. It 

 is onlv from their great value as human food, and from their inability to grow without dung, that they 

 are planted as a fallow crop ; because it is impracticable to keep land clean, and much more so to make 

 it clean, under a potato fallow. Thus there is difficulty in cleaning land, without summer fallow, with 

 beans and potatoes on every kind of soil in any spring, however favourable ; and it is quite impossible to 

 do ^o in a wet one. There is also difficulty in cleaning strong clay land even by turnip-time in May ; and 



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