LEASES AND YEARLY TENANCY. 75 



good condition : First year, potatoes, vetches, and turnips ; second year, 

 wheat and barley ; third year, grass for soiling, hay, or pasture ; fourth 

 year, oats ; fifth year, beans, swedes, mangolds ; sixth year, wheat. 



One kind of rotation is suited for one kind of soil and husbandry, and 

 another kind of rotation for another description of the same; so that 

 one set form of rotation is not suited for any district of country, or 

 even for all the farms on one estate, where there is a diversity of soil and 

 climate ; but we generally find, as in the case of the form of lease given, 

 that all the tenants on an estate are obliged to follow a fixed course 

 of rotation, although their farms may be very different from each other 

 in many essential respects. For the proper working of a farm, with 

 advantage to itself and to the tenant who occupies it, conditions 

 should be drawn out suitable to the circumstances in connection with 

 the farm. If this is not attended to, a greater or less degree of disap- 

 pointment in the working of the farm will be the result, as indeed it is 

 the case in very many instances at the present day. Each description 

 of soil requires special treatment peculiar to itself : a strong soil will bear 

 more cropping than a thin weak one ; a clay soil will be benefited by 

 one sort of treatment, but the same system carried out on a light loam 

 might be injurious to it. 



This shows, therefore, the necessity of carefully considering the course 

 of cropping best adapted to each farm ; and the rotation best suited for 

 any particular soil must be decided by the nature of the soil, and also by 

 taking into consideration the amount of food which different plants take 

 from the soil. As a rule, all plants which are allowed to produce seed be- 

 fore they are removed from the soil take more nourishment from it than 

 those plants which are removed before producing seed ; as, for example, 

 wheat, barley, oats, and rye take more from the soil than turnips do if 

 they are removed before being allowed to produce seed. But where 

 turnips are grown for seed, they take a very large amount of food from 

 the soil, even more than grain crops do. In practice it is generally 

 found that wheat takes the greatest amount of nutrition from the land, 

 and next to it oats take a place as being most exhausting ; and then in 

 order there is barley, rye, potatoes, peas, beans, carrots, turnips, 

 mangold-wurzel ; and, lastly, the least exhausting of all are the per- 

 manent grasses. 



Taking these things into consideration, it may be safely inferred 

 that all soils which are naturally rich will bear more cropping than 

 those which are thin and poor. Of course, soils can be made rich by a 

 liberal application of manures and deep cultivation ; but if light soils 

 receive such a course of cropping as tends least to exhaust them, they 

 will be worked more profitably. 



