where the tillage is laborious and the produce of the 

 land always small. The labour in cultivating a poor 

 sand is not great, and therefore it may be improved without 

 ruinous expense. 1 know of no employment so wretched, 

 at this time of low prices, as the cultivation of a poor clay 

 soil ; a decent livelihood cannot be obtained by the most 

 industrious and best manager ; by the sweat of his brow, 

 a truly hard- working man may get a bare subsistence, but 

 nothing more. 



The grand desideratum of arable land is, to have it free 

 from couch, and weeds of all kinds ; well drained where 

 necessary, and sufficiently manured. Much arable land 

 may be over- manured for producing a good quality of corn, 

 but not for the production of green crops ; the morn lux- 

 uriant and abundant they are the better, and the greater 

 will be the return of nourishment to the land. A great 

 part of a good Swedish turnip crop may be carted off to be 

 consumed in the fold yard, to turn the straw into good 

 manure for the next year's crops. No one can doubt that 

 eating off turnips on sound, dry land, does much good ; 

 but ploughed land may be so over-manured as to produce 

 an abundance of straw, with a short quantity of an inferior 

 quality of grain ; and the clover crop, from being smothered 

 in its growth, spoiled. On the rich, sandy loam of 

 Thorpelands I have frequently had two good green crops 

 together, with manuring only for the first ; nearly the 

 whole of both of them has been carried off, and I have had 

 the next year as good and clean crops of wheat or barley as 

 I could wish ; such in fact, I have at this time, from having 

 turnips first, mangel wurzel the next year, and wheat 

 sowed as soon as the mangel wurzel was carted off. If a 

 farm is kept free from twitch, and other noxious weeds, and 

 produces good crops, the system acted upon if not more 

 than ordinarily expensive cannot be bad, be it what it 

 may. The best course of cropping for the poor light soils 

 is turnips (eater g . n the land by sheep,) barley, seeds two 

 years, eaten oil ; f".\ heep ; and wheat. For better soils 

 turnips, barley, clover mowed, wheat. The land all round 

 Holkham, which is a poor sandy soil, is excepting 

 in one instance farmed beautifully on the drill system, 

 and so is the greater part of Norfolk ; but it is a large 



