208 AGRICULTURAL SURVEY OF chap. FIT. 



share of the blame. The truth is, the mischief 

 is not to he imputed to the kinds of crops taken, 

 but to the injudicious system pursued. Rare 

 instances of this, however, are now to be met 

 with : and every intelligent farmer would spurn 

 at such wretched management. 



But supposing they were more common than 

 they really are', this might be a reason, not for 

 prohibiting the sowing of flax, but for restricting 

 to a more rational rriode of cropping. I am au- 

 thorised to state, from the observations and ex- 

 perience of the most intelligent farmers in the 

 practice of raising flax, that it is not a more ex- 

 hausting crop than oats, and not so much so as 

 wheat ; and that, when a judicious method of 

 cropping is followed, it has been found, on re- 

 peated trials, to have no perceptibly bad effects, 

 either on the other cropSj or on the soil. 



When flax is sown after potatoes, and follow- 

 ed by clover and rye-grass ; or when it succeeds 

 oats taken from old pasture-ground, broken up, 

 and followed by wheat properly dunged, or by 

 summer fallow, or by turnip and potatoes, ac- 

 cording, as the soil and state of the ground shall 

 appear to be most answerable, a good crop may 

 be expected, without injury to the land or to 

 the succeeding crops. When sown with grass 

 seeds after potatoes that have been properly 

 dunged, and completely cleaned by horse and 

 hand -hoeing, it requires no weeding ; the pro- 

 duce has been from 30 to 36 tron stones from 

 the acre ; and the land, after yielding two good 

 crops of grass annually, for two successive years, 

 has been broken up for oats,, and produced 10 boll* 



