ALTERNATION OF CROPS. 153 



field simultaneously — the ground being broken up and 

 sowed as fast as the corn was cut and removed. In this 

 way they often get two crops in a season, and very fre- 

 quently three in two years. It is by alternating crops, 

 that the county of Norfolk, and other sandy districts in 

 England, once poor and unproductive, have been con- 

 verted into the most wealthy and populous portions of 

 that country. It is this alternating system which has con- 

 tributed, in a great measure, to the astonishing recent 

 improvements in the agriculture of Scotland — on many 

 farms none of the fields being kept in either meadow or 

 pasture more than two years in succession. And it is 

 this system which constitutes the pioneer-marks of im- 

 proved husbandry in our own land. 



In the preceding essays, we have suggested the impor- 

 tance and the modes of making our lands rich and dry, 

 and of subjecting them to good tillage. Let us now in- 

 quire under what method of management they are likely 

 to make us the largest returns, without diminishing their 

 intrinsic value. 



It must be palpable to every observing farmer, that the 

 old mode of dividing our farms into meadow, plough, and 

 pasture lands, and of permanently using each section for 

 one purpose only, is a most wretched system of exhaustion, 

 both to the land and its occupant. The tillage ground 

 deteriorates, with the scanty manuring it gets, till it ceases 

 to make a return for the expense of culture, or till it is 

 thrown into old fields or commons. The grasses run 

 out in the meadow, and mosses and perennial weeds come 

 in ; the soil becomes too compact and impervious for the 

 ready admission of the great agents of vegetable decom- 

 position and nutrition, heat and air, and the free extension 

 of the roots of the finer grasses ; — and, as all is carried 

 off, and little or nothing brought back, the elements of 

 fertility become exhausted, the land annually becomes 

 poorer, and the crops grow every year lighter. Nothing 

 but a triennial top-dressing of manure or compost will 

 keep up the fertility of perennial meadows ; and these 

 fertilizing substances can seldom be spared from the ara- 

 ble part, to which they may be applied with more certain 



