DISTANCE BETWEEN KOWS. 221 



and the sun, and thus enable it, with its numerous large 

 leaves, to appropriate as much organic food from the at- 

 mosphere as possible, and increase its productive powers. 

 To effect this, they recommend that something like the 

 Lois-Weedon practice, which has been already described 

 (p. 41), should be carried out, and the beans sown either 

 in single rows or two or three rows together, at very 

 wide intervals from 3 to 6 feet or, at all events, equal to 

 the width occupied by the rows of beans, the vacant spaces 

 being either left bare or else occupied by some other fal- 

 low crop which possesses a more lowly habit of growth 

 carrots, turnips, or mangold, for instance so that the plants 

 of the primary crop, the beans, should be as free from 

 contact with each other and as fully exposed as possible, 

 and placed in full possession of the upper stratum of the 

 atmosphere of the field. 1 To carry out this principle pro- 

 perly, only two rows of beans should be placed together, 

 with intervals between each pair of rows, all over the field. 

 Then each row has one side fully exposed. If more than 

 two rows are tried, the centre rows are no better off than 

 if they had been planted in the customary way. 



Where beans are looked upon and treated as a fallow crop, 

 it is customary to drill them at the same distances as the 

 other fallowing crops. In the north this distance is usually 

 27 inches, which is ample for all the operations of horse- 

 hoeing husbandry to be efficiently carried out. It has, 

 however, been remarked by some of the leading agricul- 

 turists, that by sowing at closer distances the growth of 

 weeds is very much checked, less hoeing required, and 

 that the produce is rather increased than diminished. At 

 one of the monthly meetings of the Highland Society, 2 

 the "Cultivation of the Bean Crop" was discussed; and 



1 Full details of the results of this practice are given in the Roy. Agri. Soc. 

 Jour., vol. xiv. p. 425, and also in vol. xi. p. 427. 



2 The paper is given in full in the High. Soc. Trans, for July, 1859, 

 p. 22. 



