12 PEDIGREE CORN AND STOCK 



quarter level. The soil was rather different from that 

 seen earlier on the chalk ; even at its thinnest it was 

 red in colour, and the flints were neither so small nor 

 so sharp as on the bake ; in the hollows it became a 

 deep loam of some consistency, though always easy to 

 work. An outbreak of springs towards the lower end 

 of the farm, which united into a " winter bourne," not 

 only provided a source of water which was forced to 

 various parts of the farm, but gave rise to some rich 

 pasture and meadow supporting a comparatively new 

 venture in the shape of a dairy herd of fifty cows. 

 The arable land was farmed on the typical Wiltshire 

 four-field plan wheat, barley, followed by two years 

 of green crops. As on most of the chalk land, rape 

 was preferred to swedes, winter barley was highly 

 esteemed and considered to yield better fodder than 

 rye ; mangolds, of which a fine field was seen, were 

 only grown for the ewes at lambing-time and for the 

 dairy cattle. On this thin land it was instructive to 

 see such excellent barley crops following wheat, a 

 custom usually regarded as only appropriate to com- 

 paratively strong and retentive soils, but the Wiltshire 

 farmer has always been able to grow a fair crop of 

 barley of malting quality after the wheat without 

 requiring any manure. Our host, with his large farm 

 and the varying exigencies of his flock, naturally 

 enough did not always adhere to his usual rotation ; 

 from time to time he would find himself taking 

 barley after roots ; but though the quality of the grain 

 was good enough he was still minded to follow the 

 local custom, because the two years of successive green 

 crops give a better opportunity of introducing the 

 third catch crop than is provided by the interval 

 between the wheat and the turnips in the Norfolk four- 

 course system. 



