CLASS OF SOILS SUITABLE. 177 



cultivation. Moisture is generally congenial to its growth, 

 but, like all our other cultivated plants, stagnant water is 

 injurious to it, and will materially, even in the short time 

 it occupies the ground, check its healthy development. 

 The benefits of thorough draining are now so generally 

 understood, and the facilities offered for carrying it out so 

 great, that but very few districts, comparatively speaking, 

 are to be met with where this bane and preventive to 

 anything approaching improved farming still is allowed 

 to exist. The vetch, then, from its cultivation and mode 

 of consumption, we should class as the leguminous forage 

 plant most suitable for the strongest class of soils, or 

 clay loams and clays; the lucerne for the medium class, 

 or ordinary loams; while the clovers and the sainfoin 

 are the plants best adapted for the lighter class the 

 sandy loams, chalks, and gravels the latter plant offering 

 the great advantage of possessing a habit of growth and 

 a power of supporting itself under conditions of the soil 

 which neither of the other plants could successfully con- 

 tend with. 



Vetches can hardly be regarded as a regular rotation 

 crop ; they only occupy the ground a portion of the year, 

 and thus a second crop may, under good management, be 

 obtained the same season. Their proper place, however, is 

 between two straw crops; and although they do not offer 

 the same advantages for cleaning the land as the ordinary 

 root and fallow crops, still if the land be moderately clean 

 at the time of sowing, and the surface be well cleared with 

 the horse-hoe when the plants have made a little progress, 

 they will soon cover up the spaces between the rows, and 

 thus check the growth of the weeds, while those that do 

 spring up will be cut with the crop, and be consumed be- 

 fore they seed. On farms where vetches are regularly 

 grown each year, it is generally the practice to sow one 

 portion in the autumn for early spring keep, and the 

 other in the spring, so as to come to maturity about the 



