60 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



before the answer can be prudently ventured. I do 

 not mean the question whether there is along Lease: 

 that indeed must speak for itself : it is a question if 

 possible more important than even that. It is a prac- 

 tical question ; let us give it a practical elucidation. 

 It is one of the most expressive and meaning 

 features, rather than a deformity, of agriculture, 

 that it is full of exceptions and variations, and of 

 what men call Disappointments. However good in 

 their way broad principles and laid-down courses of 

 cropping or of treatment may be, experience soon 

 teaches us that not only each soil, but to a certain 

 extent each field, has its own independent character 

 and claim upon the judgment, which will not be 

 wisely submitted to the Procrustean law of this or 

 that succession of crops. Skilful management is at 

 least required to coax a farm into the designed and 

 fore-determined Rotation of four-course or six-course, 

 or any other course of husbandry ; ,and to this end it 

 is generally useful, and sometimes amusing, to in- 

 quire into the local reputation which almost every 

 field will be found, on inquiry, to have established. 

 But when two or three or four fields come to be 

 thrown into one, in a district originally close-fenced, 

 and where great varieties of soil are met with, this 



