QUANTITY OF SEED-MODE AND TIME OF SOWING. 159 



cases sufficient. It is always of importance to use fresh 

 seed. The quality may readily be determined by open- 

 ing the husk and cutting the seed across the middle. 

 Good seed should be plump, of a light gray colour outside, 

 and of a greenish tint inside ; if of a dark colour, it has 

 either been badly matured, or else has been injured in the 

 stack, and is so far of an inferior character. It requires 

 to be deposited in the soil a little deeper than the clover 

 seed. A double turn with the seed harrows and the light 

 roller then finishes the operation. 



In the southern and south-western counties re- 

 ferred to, it is the practice to leave the sainfoin down 

 for a long period eight, ten, or twelve years and to 

 follow it with a regular rotation, commencing usually 

 with wheat. In the eastern counties, where sainfoin 

 is also met with in cultivation, it is treated in a very 

 different way. There on the light sandy and calcareous 

 soils, it frequently takes the place of clover in the regular 

 rotation, and remains down in some cases only a single 

 year, when it is fed off and the land ploughed up for wheat. 

 By others, again, it is allowed to remain a second or a third 

 year, thus prolonging the usual rotation, when it is treated 

 exactly as the clover crop, mown the first two years, then 

 fed off with corn or cake, and succeeded by wheat, for 

 which it forms an excellent preparation. 1 On some of 

 the light thin soils it is left down for four years ; in such 

 case there is no break in the regular "four-course shift/' 

 and the ordinary cropping is resumed. For these short 

 periods, the Giant sainfoin var. bifera is generally re- 

 commended. 



When the straw crop is harvested, and the field 

 cleared, the plant speedily covers the ground; and the 

 same precautions should be taken as have been recom- 

 mended for the clover crop (p. 107), to preserve it from in- 



1 Roy. Agri. Soc. Journal, vol. x. p. 54. 



