248 CULTURE OF FARM CROPS. 



medium texture, Mr. Vallentine prefers to take a bean or 

 a pea crop only every second course, as a substitute for the 

 roots which are taken in the first course, the object being 

 to save manure by curtailing the extent of the root or 

 green crops ; the pulse (bean or pea) crop having thus no 

 manure, but following the wheat, oats, or barley, as the 

 case may be. 



45. Land intended for pulse crops should be ploughed as 

 early in autumn as possible, and the drier the soil is the 

 better ; the heaviest lands should be taken in hand first. 

 Where the beans follow a grain crop, the manure should 

 be spread upon the stubble during the winter; the carting 

 of the manure can easily be done without injury to the 

 land. This laying of the dung on the surface to lie for 

 weeks before it is ploughed in, is one of the disputed 

 points in modern farming; but it is right to say that 

 opinion is becoming very generally held that it is a good 

 plan. Professor Yoelcker maintains that there is no loss 

 of manurial substances ; Mr. Baldwin, on the contrary, 

 maintains, or at least did maintain, that there is. On this 

 point, Professor Donaldson refers to the practice often dis- 

 played in East Lothian, where the manure is spread along 

 the furrows, or deposited in heaps at intervals, and in this 

 way exposed for weeks to rain, wind, and sun, till it is 

 apparently washed, bleached, and dried ; and yet the crops 

 are equal to those obtained by the usual mode of covering 

 the dung, and even in some cases a certain superiority for 

 the crops has been claimed; many years, says this author- 

 ity, have tested the matter, and, " however much it may 

 clash with the doctrines of chemistry about exposure and 

 loss by evaporation, such facts are stubborn things." We 

 have seen however, above, that chemistry, as expounded 

 by Professor Voelcker, is in favour rather than otherwise 

 of the exposure of the dung. The practical authority in 

 the Journal of Agriculture we have already quoted, is 

 decidedly in favour of the system of carting on the manure 

 to, and spreading it over the stubbles in winter, and 

 ploughing it in. He says, that when so applied in winter 



