THE BARLEY CROP. 113 



tion of barley must be with the condition of the soil 

 in which it is grown. The important bearing of this 

 point comes before us when we consider what place bar- 

 lev should occupy in the rotation. In the absence of 

 any sound direct knowledge of the natural habits and 

 requirements of our various crops, rotations or systems of 

 cropping must be more or less mere guess-work, founded, 

 if you please, upon long practice and experience, but good 

 only where exactly the same conditions can be secured. 

 Consequently we find some strongly advocating one order 

 of rotation as the best, whilst others entirely disapprove 

 of it, and recommend an arrangement of cropping entirely 

 the reverse. Yet both may be equally right differing 

 conditions would free them from any charge of error the 

 rotation of each might be the best for themselves, though 

 not necessarily so for others farming under different cir- 

 cumstances of soil, climate, or markets. 



The evidence already adduced shows that barley re- 

 quires a large amount of available food (manurial matter) 

 in the surface soil, and that from its habit of sending out 

 its principal rootlets in a lateral direction through the 

 surface soil in search of food, the soil must be kept in a 

 comparatively loosened state during its period of growth, 

 and be left so after the crop is harvested, and the roots 

 have submitted to the usual process of decay. Hence we 

 may assume that place in the rotation to be the best suited 

 for barley in which the preceding crop has left a large 

 amount of fertilizing matter on, or close to the surface, 

 and in which the crop that follows it may not be preju- 

 diced by the loose and open state of the soil it leaves 

 behind it. 



This order of cropping is seen in what is termed the 

 four-course, or Norfolk rotation, which is especially adap- 

 ted for the lighter descriptions of soils on which the finer 

 qualities of barley are generally grown. Here we have 



