^ pernieious effects ranked the Elm. 
- Mr. Gibbs considered the best suited, as in 14 or 15 
1.—1846.] 
THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 
13 
£ -an aere, so that in 20 years it covers an acre of ground. 
E The Ash does moreinjury thanany othertree,seldom suf- 
: fering any kind of grain to grow under it. In estimating 
^ theinjurydone by trees of this description, Mr, G. thought 
rent, labour, manure, seed, &c., all lost. Next in its 
The young Oak 
Should be protected in preference to the Elm, 
out of regard to our posterity, but the Oak seldom if 
ever improved when older than 80 years. Select an 
acre or two of land of the worst deseription, fallow and 
subsoil plough it, and plant Ash, Oak, and Larch. 
There will be no seed, corn, or labour, lost; but the 
Spot of inferior soil enriched. The latter kind of tree 
years it is fit to fell for posts and rails. In a discussion 
that ensued, it was observed as an instance of the ex- 
treme benefit derived from planting Larch, that the f- 
Duke of Athol grew them to an immense extent, and 
that land not worth ls, per acre a few years since, is 
Now valued at 10s. per acre for sheep-grazing, the leaf 
of the tree containing a nutritious matter highly enrich- 
ing to the soil. It required sound land well turned up, 
and the growth was found to be much accelerated by 
placing a handful of lime under each plant. 
Farm Memoranda. 
Wurrrierp Farm, Worron, GLOUCESTERSHIRE,— For 
20 years previous to 1839, this farm, the property of 
the Earl of Ducie, had been occupied by the same 
farmer, under a system of yearly tenaney—and pro- 
bably atno time or place has this system ever shown 
itself so fruitless of anything like energy, or, indeed, 
common;carefulness on the part of the tenant. ‘Tho 
estate then consisted of 232 acres, 65 of which were 
arable, and it was let at a yearly rental of 2007., the 
parochial taxes in addition to this being 657. The valley 
in which it lies was then crowded with hedge-row timber 
—indeed, upwards of 30007. worth were afterwards sold 
upon the farm—and the brook which ran with tortuous 
course throughout its length was fringed with Hazel and 
Alder, while here and there cultivated Willow beds pro- 
claimed the excessive wetness of the land. With the 
exception of a few acres of the arable land, which were 
annually let for Potato culture to farm labourers about, 
and the few pasture fields immediately around the build- 
ings, which were annually depastured by dairy stock, 
and rarely, if ever, mown, the whole farm was miserably 
managed. There were no roads through it passable, 
except in dry weather ; the hedge-rows were wide, 
straggling, and full of gaps; and both pasture and 
arable land were much neglected. Excepting the hill 
sidè on the east, and this was partly covered by brake 
and brushwood, the whole farm was undrained and wet, 
the crooked brook could not take off the water suffi- 
ciently fast, and during heavy rains the lower parts of 
e farm were flooded. The western side of the farm 
3 He a clayey soil, and where this joined on the east of 
the brook with the sandstone rock, which there cropped 
out to the surface, a number of copious springs burst out, 
and added to the already excessive wetness of the land. 
M remember very well visiting the farm for the first 
P uen a spring day iu 1839. The eastern side is a 
ry limestone eminence, and after passing through a 
eld of Wheat on this calcareous soil, whose scanty 
average, 3 acres apiece in extent—were hardly visible 
s midst of thelr hedg The f: Y 
SOR panes lay close upon the western boundary of 
Elin-tro: e, and were nearly buried amidst clumps of 
IU E E Oaks. The prospect from the same spot 
SU i erent now—its distant features, of course, 
M is e same, and indeed are all the more visible 
of Da of foreground obstructions. The Forest 
mew a or 8 miles off on the other side of the 
SPADA id in places by the neighbouring hills at East- 
pU the western horizon; the course of the 
SE a traceable through the vale by the red cliffs 
cept at ound it, though the river itself is not seen ex- 
fe Gla Ee ; and the rich vale of Berkley, with 
tuas astle in its midst, lies stretehed out northward 
its former beauty. But the f d, former], 
ne 
farm, nearly 80007. have been spent by the landlord in 
permanently improving it in buildings, roads, and 
drainage. Consider the influence on the comforts of 
the labouring population of this district which this 
expenditure has exerted. The present tenant must 
employ a capital in cultivation and in stock to consume 
the produce of that cultivation, nearly four times that 
invested by his predecessor ; his labour bill amounts to 
upwards of 7007. annually, qr. nearly 3l. an aere, and 
the annual gross produce of the land must be worth 
nearly 20007., or between 77. and 8 peracre. Let any 
one consider these facts, not in their personal but in 
their national bearings, and he must confess the great and 
profitable room there still is over large distriets in this 
country for the higher cultivation of the land. I find 
I have already exceeded due limits, and I must, there- 
fore, postpone any account of several instructive 
matters to be noted in the history of this farm. The 
following is a plan of the estate as it is at present laid 
out. It will be seen that it is cut through by a parish 
road, across the valley, and by farm roads across and up 
and down the valley. ‘The buildings are centrically 
| situated. The tenant’s house is on the western side, and 
commands a good view of the farm, The fields are 
numbered ; all, those on the western, and to some 
height on the eastern side, are of a sandy loam more or 
less tenacious. The rest is calcareous, either clayey or 
free, a band of the former character over a bed of mag- 
nesian limestone lying along the tops of fields 9 to 16, 
and the top of the hill on the eastern side (18 and 19) 
being a free stony shallow soil on the limestone rock. 
3Rcbittos. 
The Rotation of Crops, and System of Agriculture, 
best adapted to the different 
shire: an Essay, to which was awarded a Prize of 
10 sovereigns, given by the Right Hon. Farl of Caw- 
dor, July 30, 1845. By Thomas Morgan. Haver- 
fordwest, J. Potter, High-street. 
Tuis is one of those district agricultural reports to 
which we attach so much value, It is not a complete 
account of the agriculture of Pembrokeshire—it does 
not profess to be so: its contents are confined to one 
department of farming; they aim at exhibiting the 
suitableness of certain rotations of cropping to the cir- 
cumstances of a particular district. These circum- 
stances are, accordingly, in the first place, detailed with 
some minuteness, and the author, while he describes 
the geology as an index to the subsoils of Pembroke- 
shire, points out how it fails in accurately indicating 
the soil, or determining the character of its cultivation, 
in consequence of the extreme variety of elevation, and 
therefore of climate, to be met with. Mr, Morgan tells 
us that all the series of stratified rocks met with in 
Pembrokeshire “belong to very early deposits ; and 
few of them possess such decided characteristics with 
reference to the growth of particular crops, as to enable 
us to decide with accuracy on the system of cropping 
best suited to the different geological divisions. The 
diyersity of climate would also render useless any clas- 
sification of soils and crops, having merely reference 
to the rocks from which they may have been produced. 
It would be absurd to lay down a course of crops which 
would be applicable to the parish of Llandewy and 
apply the same to Maenclochog ; and yet geologists do 
not make any great distinction between them. It would 
be not less absurd to class in an agricultural point of 
view, the soils which lie alittle to the south west of 
Tavernspite, along with those which form the ridge of 
land situate to the south east of Pembroke ; and yet 
in a geological point of view they are identical. Such 
lassi ion, even if it could be made, would be ren- 
M oun is uo entirely bare : eleared of its BER: 
id uie mat a straight brook bisecting it—cultivated 
rated Naa of quadrangular 10-acre fields, unsepa- 
wash! Ee „extensive red.tiled and white- 
Tin oboe uildings in the valley below us, and the 
Td x fading where it used, but undisguised, as 
courted Hie" dae Breen trees—so far as beauty is con- 
trast i6 is form RON presents a most unfortunate con- 
not the chief ob} Di appearance, Beauty, however, is 
So EA ac at which proprietors of land must 
mA a Management of their estates. An 
of emilee oe ion of food, and increased opportunity 
ADM ent, are every year becoming more forcibly 
fuga on us as the true objects of farming, and in 
thand espects Whitfield in its present condition is of more 
eae its former national value, The old tenant, ac- 
e a, Mr. Morton’s estimate in his first report, 
bes E a farm capital of about 7307.—less than 70s. 
the ha and his labour bill did not amount to 2007. in 
aha A or 185. per acre, and the gross produce of the 
Salue a us 5001, or less than 2/. per acre in annual 
- Since his time 30 acres have been added to the 
dered useless in practice, by the great changes which 
have been effected in the soils of the ccunty, by the 
aetion of water, in having conveyed soils from one for- 
mation to another, and also by the extensive application 
of lime. These considerations induce us to place less 
reliance upon geology than we should perhaps do, in 
assigning limits to particular rotations.” 
Mr. Morgan, in the first part of his Essay, adopts De 
Candolle’s theory of root excretions as the true expla- 
nation of the rotation of crops. He brings forward 
various facts of year in the exp! ol 
the farmer, illustrative of the suitability of the land for 
certain crops after they have borne certain others ; he 
says that “some plants have the power of conveying to 
the soil a quantity of food for vegetables, more than 
equal to that which they take from it for their own 
nourishment,” and contends that “ it is very difficult, if 
not impossible, to account rationally for this power in 
any other way than that of assigning it to the function 
of excretion, supposed to be possessed by the roots of 
lants.” Now Mr. Daubeny's experiments, lately re- 
ferred to in this Paper, have shown that there is an 
Districts of Pembroke- | ig 
adequate reason for the necessity of the rotatiom 
of crops, in the exhaustion, by each, of certain 
substances in the soil whose presence in an available state 
very limited, though in a dormant state it is- 
abundant. Each crop thus takes up the portion of 
vegetable food that is ready for it, and then the soil has 
all the other years of the rotation, during which, with the 
assistance of the air and rain, to bring a fresh portion 
of the requisite substances into a state of solubility, be- 
fore the time of the crop requiring them comes roun 
again. This isa theory in agreement with facts which 
have been proved to exist ; and it is greatly preferable 
to one founded on ideas whose accuracy has never yet 
been determined except under unnatural circumstances. 
The root excretions of De Candolle have never been 
seen or examined ; Dr. Daubeny failed to detect them 
in soil on which the most acrid plants had been grown 
—and they are not necessary to account for the fer- 
tility of land consequent upon the growth of particular 
crops. It was a practice long ago among the best 
farmers of Italy, and it is a common practice still, to 
The fer- 
the whole vegetable substance of them, which, during 
their existence, they had drawn from the air; and so, 
with an old pasture ploughed up—we need not refer to the 
years during which, while the land was resting, agents 
Were at work comminuting the soil and improving its- 
texture, we mean the worms, 
most of surface soils—and surely, 
to the excrementitious matters of 
may during that period have accum? 1 
all probability have an existence only in the mind of the 
theorist ; the true cause of the fertility which we ob- 
serve lies in the fact, that during all these years the 
plants have been drawing stores of valuable food from 
the air, a large per centage of which has each year been: 
given to the soil in the dung of the animals fed upon its. 
and a still larger portion has been ploughed in with the 
sward, in the roots and stems of which it had accu- 
mulated. 
Mr. Morgan describes the rotation of crops suitable 
for Pembrokeshire in three classes. 
« One is the system of growing white and green crops 
alternately, in uninterrupted succession ; another is that 
of growing white and green crops, alternately, for a 
series of years, and then of laying down to pasture for 
another series ; the third is that of growing a succes- 
sion of white crops, followed by a few years pasture. 
Of the first of these systems, we have examples in Nor- 
f | folk, and other parts of the kingdom, and also in Flan- 
ders; of the second, we have examples in Scotland, and 
in the north of England; of the third system, we have 
numerous examples at home." 
The essay concludes with a series of tables explanatory 
of the various rotations which have been considered, 
and illustrative of their relative profitableness or 
economy. We might, perhaps, dispute in some of their 
details the expense of the various operations perform: 
during the various courses of crops there described, and 
perhaps also the amount of return derived from them 5 
but no one can question the accuracy of the writer in 
