THE SHROPSHIRE PLAIN 215 



At Oswestry we turned, leaving Wales untouched 

 for the time, and made our way back through Shrews- 

 bury and eastwards into the plain that extends across 

 Shropshire and Staffordshire as far as the central 

 backbone of England. It is a level country of light 

 drift soil nearly all under arable cultivation, though 

 we were somewhat surprised in one place to meet with 

 a village given up to fruit growing partly in the open 

 and partly under glass an enterprise, we found, of 

 the Co-operative Wholesale Society, which has also 

 erected a small factory to jam and bottle the surplus 

 produce. Before we reached Newport we called at one 

 of the larger farms in the district, typical of the best 

 management of this light land on the New Red Sand- 

 stone. It was farmed very strictly on a four-course 

 rotation ; occasionally a barley crop might be taken after 

 wheat, and one field of oats was being grown for seed, 

 but in a general way the cropping was roots, barley, 

 seeds, wheat. Swedes were only grown over half the 

 root break, so as to make the interval eight years before 

 they came round again on the same land ; finger-and- 

 toe was very troublesome in the district, and our host 

 had often demonstrated to himself how the disease is 

 carried on through the rotation by the charlock. The 

 swedes were grown wholly with artificial manures, the 

 dung being reserved for the potatoes and for the wheat. 

 In all cases, even for the potatoes, it was spread and 

 ploughed in during the autumn, our host being a great 

 believer in the virtues of autumn dung and autumn 

 cultivation for that class of land. 



Potatoes formed one of the most profitable crops on 

 the farm, and were looking extremely well at the time 

 of our visit, showing no effects of the drought, which, 

 indeed, did not seem to have hurt the swedes, though 

 the mangolds appeared a little short of growth. 



