COMPOSITION OF SOILS AND THEIR ACTION. 59 



farming very apt to be neglected where the 'culture 

 of grain is the exclusive object. Perhaps there is 

 no agricultural maxim more true than the Flemish 

 one : No food, no cattle ; no cattle, no manure ; no 

 manure, no grain ; and when it is remembered that 

 without manures there can be no permanent fertili- 

 ty to the soil, the advantage of such a course is not 

 perhaps overstated. 



Since the experiments of Dombasle, Dutrochet, 

 and Macaire have given some plausibility to the 

 opinion that plants secrete and deposite substances 

 injurious to succeeding crops of the same kind, the 

 attention of foreign agriculturists has been directed 

 to the preventing such succession of the same plant 

 on the same soil as far as practicable. A writer in 

 a late British Farmer's Magazine recommends the 

 following course as suitable on a dry soil, good for 

 wheat, and on which turnips can be fed off by sheep. 



" 1st. Turnips : on half the land prepared for this 

 crop, sow white and red (common or globe), and on 

 the other half ruta-baga, manured with bone-dust, 

 rape-cake, or dung ; the latter applied in a coarse 

 state, ploughed in and well incorporated with the 

 soil by the last ploughings in preparing the fallow. 

 2d crop, barley, half Chevalier and half American. 

 3d crop, seeds, half red clover, with a mixture of rye 

 grass, and half Italian rye grass : manure the young 

 seeds, cut the first crop for hay, and feed the sec- 

 ond. 4th crop, wheat : sow different varieties, such 

 as the Chevalier prolific, ten-rowed prolific, and 

 golden drop. Go through the same course again, 

 except putting on dung where bone-dust and rape- 

 cake was before applied ; ruta-baga where the tur- 

 nips, common and globe, were grown ; changing the 

 Chevalier for A merican barley ; changing the grass- 

 es in the same way ; and substituting another varie- 

 ty of wheat where the former grew. The above is 

 a four-year course, yet the same varieties of grain 

 cannot be grown on the same land oftener than once 



