PRACTICE OPPOSED TO PRINCIPLES. 101 



it is an erroneous one, and in the long run detrimental 

 to the produce of the farm. We hear on all sides com- 

 plaints of the tendency of our fields to become what is 

 termed " clover sick/' and we see far too often, and over 

 far too large a range of country, the scanty propor- 

 tions of clover and the large proportions of grass that 

 form what are called our "clover crops." In these 

 districts, too, the succeeding wheat 'crop^By 1 ' j'ts stuiitsd 

 growth and diminished returns, .generally, tells, }fcs '.ta'lft 

 of bad treatment, the preceding ^ropV^^bStrley'a'nd 'tlie'^ 

 ryegrass of the clover crop having abstracted largely from 

 the soil the same substances which the wheat requires 

 for its growth. Although this practice of mixing grass 

 seeds with the clover is so common throughout the whole 

 country, some of our more enlightened farmers recognize 

 and believe in the principles upon which rotations should 

 be based, and take care to avoid such an anomaly in their 

 practice as to cultivate three graminaceous crops in succes- 

 sion. On these farms the intermediate clover crop is 

 either sown down unmixed, or if any other plant is added, 

 care is taken to avoid those included in the same order as 

 that to which our grain crops belong. The good effect of 

 this good farming is seen, not only in the superior vigour 

 and produce of the clover crop, but also in the succeeding 

 crop of wheat, which, irrespective of the larger amount 

 of manurial matter left in the ground by the clover crop, 

 has also had the full benefit of its fallowing effects, and 

 finds in the soil a large supply of readily assimilable 

 mineral food, which was not suitable to the requirements 

 of the clover, but which is absolutely necessary to itself. 



In the four-course rotation, where the clover follows 

 barley, it is either fed off altogether on the field, or it is 

 mown for hay, and the aftergrowth fed off with cake or 

 corn, so as to compensate, in a manurial point of view, for 

 the portion of the crop consumed off the field. If some 



