RETURNS FROM CROP. 4 1 1 



with a light-framed two-wheeled vehicle, on which the 

 "packs" are built up, and taken away to the centres of 

 consumption in the clothing districts. 



As the cultivation of teazles involves a large amount 

 of careful and constant labour, it seems to be a crop well 

 suited for cottagers or small farmers, who can give their 

 personal attention to it, or even the labour may be let out 

 at so much the acre from the time of sowing to the 

 harvesting of the crop In some cases the field is let for 

 the crop at a certain price per acre ; in others, the farmer 

 finds the land, manure, and horse labour, and takes the 

 risks of the produce, merely contracting for the manual 

 labour during the growth, harvesting, and making up of 

 the produce. The cost of cultivation, including rent for 

 the two seasons the crop requires for its production, 

 amounts to about 15 or 16 per acre; while the returns 

 are subject to great fluctuations, as if the weather should 

 continue wet and unfavourable at the time of flowering, 

 the yield is greatly diminished. The average produce may 

 be taken at from five to eight packs to the acre; from 

 twelve to fifteen packs, however, have been obtained in 

 favourable seasons. This variation we can readily under- 

 stand, when we recollect that each plant carries from ten 

 to thirty heads, and that at the distances recommended 

 24 by 18 inches apart there would be 14,520 plants to 

 the acre. The money return is subject also to considerable 

 fluctuation, though the range of prices has, not been so 

 great since the importation of foreign teazles as it was be- 

 fore. An instance is given 1 " of a field of poor clay land 

 which grew an enormous crop more than forty years ago, 

 worth at the time in the market more than twice the 

 value of the land upon which it was grown. That land 

 was laid down to grass after this crop, and remained for 

 thirty years capable of feeding not a sheep, hardly half a 



1 Cycla. of Acjri., .vol. ii. p.. 955. 



