136 Rotation of Crops. 



utmost degree of efficiency and economy. When an 

 eminent agriculturist was one day looking at a field on 

 my property laid down with the mixture of grasses used 

 in my system of farming, and carrying a large stock of 

 sheep at least double what can be kept on the old system 

 under ryegrass and a little clover— he said " we have no 

 idea of the stock this country could carry were this 

 subject attended to," and if that is so, and in my opinion 

 it undoubtedly is so, then the possible increase of the 

 fertility of our soils through the agency of the vastly 

 increased stock that may be maintained, far exceeds 

 anything that could be conceived as possible under our 

 present system of agriculture. What is its greatest 

 defect? That it has no true rotation of crops and no 

 self-acting manurial, drainage, and tillage system. 

 What is a true rotation of crops, or, to put it in another 

 way, what is that principle which ought to guide the 

 farmer when he grows a rotation of crops ? It is 

 important to remember that crops of various kinds may 

 be found on a farm, and that you may have a different 

 crop every year for a series of years and yet be far 

 removed from carrying out a scientific rotation of crops, 

 i.e., a system which will yield the best results to the 

 farmer at the smallest cost, and the only effective way of 

 carrying out the most profitable form of rotation lies in 

 the cultivation of crops which take nitrogen — equal in 

 the end to ammonia — from the air with those which can 

 only derive it from the soil. In Scotland at least there 

 is no such rotation excepting in those occasional cases 

 where a crop of beans is grown. The only nitrogen 

 collecting crop grown, or rather attempted to be grown, 

 consists of the clover sown along with the grass seeds, 

 and this clover is not only insignificant in amount, but is 

 commonly a partial and often a coriiplete failure. From 

 a nitrogen collecting point of view then there is practi- 

 cally no rotation of crops at all, and never will be till, as is 

 the case under my system, large crops of red clover and 

 other nitrogen collecting plants are grown. When such 



