18 Lord Leicester's System, and 



all weeds, but not so grase seeds. The cost of cleaning after a 

 corn crop, when the land is foul, is very considerable, and nearly 

 the value of the crop is consumed in the process ; besides, I 

 believe that the constant cultivation that would be necessary 

 would utterly pulverise and destroy the flag* that had been 

 ploughed in, thus reducing the land to its former unfertile state, 

 and precluding the possibility of its producing, without the aid 

 of manure, three more profitable crops. It is a fact well known 

 that very poor soils are injured by constant cultivation and 

 exposure to the sun, though such a procedure is necessary when 

 the land is foul. If a root crop is first taken the pasture should 

 be ploughed in the winter, and cross ploughed in the spring. I 

 have never known a summer when, between March and July 

 — till which month rape or turnips should not be sown — it 

 has not been easy, at a trifling expense, to destroy any vitality 

 that may exist in the flag. The flag should be ploughed in just 

 previous to the sowing of a crop of rape or roots, pressed with a 

 drill-roller, and, should there be any life left in thistles or couch, 

 the extraordinary luxuriance of the rape or turnips would utterly 

 destroy all life ; during the time the land was under cultivation 

 not a weed of any kind, except the annuals, the seed of which 

 is in the soil, would appear. 



" I think that it is evident that under this system the 

 accumulated fertility of the pasture is not' exhausted by the 

 four crops, as I have this year had nearly six quarters of barley 

 per acre, the fourth crop on a forty-acre field, and a con^derably 

 better yield than I have obtained on the good land farmed 

 under the four-course system ; these poor lands after pasture 

 usually produce better crops than the better lands. The root 

 crop would in the first year disintegrate the flag, and prepare 

 the land for a much heavier crop of corn than if the corn was 

 sown immediately after the pasture. In fact, in my opinion, a 

 crop of roots preceding a crop of corn on the first breaking up 

 of the pasture is in every way the more desirable process." 



The seeds used by Lord Leicester are as noted on 

 the next page. 



* Flag is equivalent to turf, 



