256 OF FALLOWING. 



year to the fanner, and the most difficult to provide for. 

 Some maintain, that cabbages do not exhaust the. soil, if 

 drawn before the white fibres shoot out from the roots in 

 spring, that is, so long as they can be pulled up with ease; 

 but by others they are regarded as the most scourging 

 green crop that can be cultivated. 



7. A most intelligent correspondent on the borders, (the 

 late George Culley), informed me, that the best way he 

 ever knew of treating clay soils is, instead of a naked tallow, 

 to sow rape or cole, (as it is called in the southern counties 

 of England), in drills, with a little dung in the drills The 

 crop may be eat off in August, or the beginning of Septem- 

 ber, and then wheat may be sown.* This is the method he 

 generally prefers with clays, instead of a naked fallow, and 

 he never saw more beneficial crops of red wheat, than he 

 has thus obtained upon poor clays. The rape was fed where 

 it grew, and after making cast or culled ewes as fat as bacon, 

 (indeed nothing of the vegetable tribe will feed sheep so 

 quick as rape in autumn), he immediately ploughed it, and 

 sowed invariably red wheat, as being the hardiest sort for 

 poor clays, and he never missed a fair crop, and much safer 

 and better than he got on naked fallows ; namely, from 23 

 to near 32 Winchester bushels per English acre. He well 

 remembers a crop of red wheat, upon one of these poor clay 

 fields, got in the year 1795, after rape sheep-fed, which crop 

 was fully worth the value of the land it grew upon, wheat 

 indeed being very dear that year. The circumstances of 

 this statement, coming from such respectable authority, 



* Might it not be eaten off in spring, and sown later ? The rotation 

 would then be, 1. Rape, 2. Barley, 3. Clover, 4. Oats, 5. Beans and 

 Peas, 6. Wheat. What a resource in spring, would not the rape be, for 

 feeding stock, and in the dry spring months, even clay land might be fed 

 with sheep, without detriment. 



