230 Suggested Changes of Farming System. 



Where the land is suitable for timothy 3 lbs. of it may be added, and 

 the cocksfoot reduced to 12 lbs. I may add that in recent years, in 

 consequence of the greatly-increased use of the grasses and plants 

 recommended by me, they have much gone up in price, the Bank 

 field mixture in 1890 costing £1 19s, sd., while it cost last year 

 £» 2s. 6d., and this year £2 9s. lod. ; but I am informed, on good 

 authority, that prices will again fall when the attention of seed 

 growers is directed to the subject. 



When the natural grasses are used alone, or with but a very small 

 quantity of ryegrass, it is important to note that the clover never 

 fails, even though there may be an almost universal failure of clover 

 in cases where ryegrass alone is used, or with only a small quantity 

 of natural grasses; and though the Clifton farm was in poor 

 condition when I took it in hand, we have never had anything but 

 complete success in growing clover, and have had excellent results 

 in the case of land that was only limed once, when it was taken out 

 of the hill about forty- two years ago, and has never been manured or 

 limed since. It is important to dwell carefully on the great value o 

 clover and its only too common failure, which is by far the weakest 

 point in our farming, while it ought to be, and can be, made the 

 strongest point of all, from a manurial and physical point of view. 



The principle of the rotation of crops is the alternation of crops 

 which take nitrogen from the air with those which can only derive it 

 from the soil— speaking generally, the alternation of the Leguminosse 

 (of which beans, vetches, and clover are commonly used here) and 

 cereals. I this can be carried out annually, land may be cropped for 

 thousands o years with the addition of hardly any manure. In 

 Mysore six drills of a cereal crop are sown with a seventh of beans 

 [Dolichos ivicatus). After harvest the spaces between the drills of 

 beans are ploughed up, and the crop (somewhat like a French bean) 

 soon almost covers the ground, and is harvested in due course. The 

 straw of the crops is eaten by cattle, and their manure is used as 

 fuel, the ashes only being returned to the land, the decaying roots of 

 the beans, and the atmospheric nitrogen collected by them, being the 

 sole manures besides the scanty supply of ashes ; and yet, with the 

 aid of these resources, every year you will see a crop of com and a 

 crop of beans more or less good, according to the season. In our 

 agriculture clover is, generally speaking, the nitrogen-collecting 

 crop, but it only occurs once in four or five years, and, should the 

 crop fail, the land must wait four or five years for another. Now the 

 failure, or partial failure, of the clover crop means much more than 

 the loss of most valuable food, for it means as well the loss of 

 vegetable matter, and the atmospheric nitrogen which would other- 

 wise have been collected through the agency of the nodules on the 

 clover roots. The loss from the latter alone may often be estimated 

 at about los. an acre. By the farming system adopted at Clifton-on- 



