402 



Improvement of Peaty Ground. 



frame is formed ; yet they act precisely as farm-yard dung, which 

 is supposed to afford the substance of vegetation. Such is the 

 fact ; the explanation remains for that chemist who at some fu- 

 ture day shall unfold to us the great mystery of the food of plants. 

 I must return^ however, to practice : the rape which has been 

 sown in May is fed by sheep penned on the ground from the 

 middle of July or from August.* As it shoots up again from 

 the root it may be penned twice over, or even three times, before 

 winter. On the best managed field of this kind which I have 

 seen, a flock so penned received corn latterly with the rape, and 

 was sold fat in November. Farmers will be well aware how 

 much that field must have been benefited by the improvement 

 which corn imparted to the dung df the sheep. Swedish turnips 

 have also been grown upon this land instead of rape, and on the 

 best of it, where the peat is not pure, answer well : as much as 16 

 tons, a fair crop for a southern county, may be raised on the acre. 

 They are not, it is true, so certain as the rape, nor are they so 

 firm and nutritious as swedes grown upon sound ground ; hares 

 will not touch them while other swedes are to be found. If sown 

 early they are apt to decay on the ground, and they do not keep 

 well in store ; still they must be sown early as,well as other turnips, 

 because their growth is slow on such land when the days have 

 shortened ; and sheep are said not to thrive if penned upon it in 

 winter. 



I have omitted, however, to mention the manner in which the 

 rape or swedes are sown ; and, in now adverting to it, I have to 

 state an instance in which the knowledge of a practical farmer 

 was better than my own theory. I had been very desirous that 

 one of my tenants should subsoil-plough his peat-land after it 

 had been drained, in order to let down the water through the 

 tenacious subsoil : this he was very reluctant to do, because in his 

 opinion it could not be ploughed too shallow. He was unwilling 

 even to plough it 4 inches deep, thinking the depth of 2 inches 

 enough. Now it happened that in a peaty field of my own, 

 which had just been broken up, one half of the 25 acres was 

 ploughed 2 inches deep, the other half, contrary to my intentions, 

 4 inches deep. On the half which had been ploughed shallow I 

 found a very fine growth of swedes ; on the other, which had 



* Mr. Wingate, however, writes to me that in Lincolnshire they "never 

 sow rape alone so early as May, but chiefly in the middle and latter end of 

 June, and stock it as soon as the weather becomes sufficiently cool, so that 

 it will not injure the lambs, which in warm weather are subject to have the 

 blood-vessels of the ears much enlarged, and often lose a part of the ear, if 

 not taken otf the rape for a few days, which generally sets them right again. 

 It is generally consumed in the months of October, November, and Decem- 

 ber, before it is injured by severe frost. Of late years the crops have not 

 been more than one-third of the original crops." 



