120 OUR FARM CROPS. 



sown turnips are reserved for spring keep for the sheep, 

 and may be seen carrying their stunted flower-stems long 

 after the period when on other farms the barley land has 

 been ploughed and sown. Still, owing to the increasing 

 temperature as the season advances, vegetation proceeds 

 more rapidly, and a crop of barley inferior, it is true, 

 both in quantity and quality has sometimes been obtained 

 from seed sown even late in the month of May. As a rule, 

 however, we may recollect that, all circumstances being the 

 same, the longer the plant is in the ground the more food 

 it is able to procure from it, and the greater return it is 

 capable of producing. Barley is naturally a very hardy 

 plant; and although, from constantly sowing it in the 

 spring, we have, no doubt, somewhat induced a more 

 tender habit, still it may in our climate be sown at the 

 earliest period of the spring at which the land can be got 

 ready for it. Indeed, in most parts of the south and west 

 of England, the ordinary barleys would stand the winter 

 without injury. They would tiller out and produce capital 

 and early herbage in the spring, which is very valuable at 

 that period of the year, and might be fed close down up to 

 the middle of April, and then be allowed to stand for a crop. 

 Great difference of opinion exists among practical far- 

 mers as to the effects of early or late sowing. Kesults 

 have been from time to time given, which, not being com- 

 parative, are really of no value except, perhaps, in their 

 own immediate district as they do not admit of general 

 application ; and probably in some cases, indeed, the results 

 were attributable to other causes than the time of sowing. 

 This is a subject which might with advantage be taken 

 up by our great Agricultural Societies. A series of compa- 

 rable trials on our barley-growing soils, in different parts 

 of the country, would, no doubt, settle this disputed point. 

 The only experiments recorded are those by Arthur Young, 

 towards the close of the last century, and these are still 



