46 On the Agriculture of the Netherlands. 



gether. The oats are reaped the first year, the clover and young 

 broom-tops the next, and the broom cut in the third. This is a curious 

 practice, and its advantage appears rather problematical. All these 

 various methods of bringing poor sands into cultivation show that no 

 device is omitted which ingenuity can suggest to supply the want of 

 manure. 



" After the land has been gradually brought into a good state, and is 

 cultivated in a regular manner, there appears much less difference be- 

 tween the soils which have been originally good and those which have 

 been made so by labour and industry. At least the crops in both appear 

 more nearly alike at harvest than is the case in soils of different qualities 

 in other countries. This is a great proof of the excellency of the Flemish 

 system ; for it shows that the land is in a constant state of improvement, 

 and that the deficiency of the soil is compensated by greater attention to 

 tillage and manuring, especially the latter. The maxim of the Flemish 

 farmer is, that ' without manure there is no corn ; without cattle there 

 is no manure; and without green crops and roots cattle cannot be kept.' 

 Every farmer calculates how much manure he requires for his land every 

 year. If it can be bought at a reasonable rate, he never grudges the 

 outlay. If it cannot be purchased, it must be made on the farm. A 

 portion of land must be devoted to feed stock, which will make sufficient 

 manure for the remainder : for he thinks it better to keep half the farm 

 only in productive crops well manured, than double the amount of acres 

 sown on badly prepared land. Hence also he does not reckon what 

 the value would be of the food given to the cattle, if sold in the market, 

 but how much labour it costs him to raise it, and what will be the in- 

 crease of his crops from the manure collected. The land is never allowed 

 to be idle so long as the season will permit anything to grow. If it is 

 not stirred by the plough and harrows to clear it of weeds, some useful 

 crop or other is growing in it. Hence the practice of sowing different 

 seeds amongst growing crops, such as clover and carrots amongst corn 

 or flax ; and those which grow rapidly between the reaping of one crop 

 and the sowing of another, such as spurrey or turnips, immediately after 

 the rye is cut, to be taken off before wheat-sowing. These crops seem 

 sometimes scarcely worth the labour of ploughing and sowing; but the 

 ploughing is useful to the next crop, so that the seed and sowing are the 

 only expense ; and while a useful crop is growing, weeds are kept 

 down.'"— pp. 12, 13, 14. 



The process here described is the only one, which, allowing- for 

 difference of soil and other circumstances, can bring very poor 

 land into a state of profitable cultivation. In the neighbourhood 

 of Aberdeen, in Scotland, on a very different, but still very poor 

 soil, deep trenching with the spade, and judiciously mixing the 

 different earths which are dispersed through the soil, have been 

 found the most efficacious, and, in the end, the cheapest mode of 

 transforming large tracts of peaty moor, full of granite rocks and 

 stones of .all sizes, into cultivated fields. The change produced 

 in the aspect of the country is no less striking here, after a few 



