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On the Giant Sainfoin. 



it into general use upon all soils adapted to the cultivation of the 

 plant. In doing this, I shall first give a brief outline of the 

 system I recommend, and then show how far my own experience, 

 and that of my neighbours, is corroborative of the advantages 

 which will attend the system propounded. 



I take it for granted that the system of sowing the whole of the 

 barley shift with clover is no longer practised generally, from a 

 conviction that half the shift, sown every eight years, will produce 

 at least three-fourths as much food as can upon an average be 

 produced from the whole of the shift sown every fourth year. 

 When this plan is adopted, it will leave half the shift to be sown 

 with some other crop. Here it is that 1 would commence opera- 

 tions : upon a part of this — say one-sixth of the entire shift — 

 which I will suppose to be cropped with peas, and which, upon a 

 farm of 100 acres, in each season will amount to about 17 acres ; 

 to this quantity, therefore, I should direct my attention so soon as 

 the peas were harvested, and, by a little extra labour then, and 

 during the period that elapsed before Michaelmas, I should take 

 care to render the process of summer fallowing after the ensuing 

 wheat crop perfectly unnecessary. This being done, I should, in 

 the wheat crop, whether sown broadcast or in rows, deposit the 

 seed with a drill in the spring. In that case, the land will present 

 you with a crop of sainfoin in place of the turnip-crop. This 

 may be mown early in June for hay, and again in August for 

 seed, and it will then produce a fine eddish in October. This I 

 should continue in plant a second year, when it would displace the 

 barley crop, and again in the third year displacing the clover layer. 

 I then propose that it should be taken up for wheat with the rest of 

 the shift, when, in my opinion, it will with the same treatment pro- 

 duce the best crop the shift will afford. I am quite aware that the 

 plant of sainfoin will not be exhausted ; but, upon a sainfoin layer of 

 four or five years' standing, the wireworm sometimes makes sad 

 ravages in the ensuing wheat crop, and even in the turnips and 

 barley that follow : when the plant has been taken up in full 

 vigour, say at the end of three years, I have never known these 

 disasters occur. My practical readers will perceive, that by pur- 

 suing this system, and planting another 17 acres in a similar way 

 in the ensuing year, and another in the third year, a breadth of 

 50 acres may be appropriated each year to the growth of this 

 valuable plant, without any sacrifice of corn-growing crops, save 

 the 17 acres of barley in each year. From 50 acres of sainfoin 

 thus produced, I calculate that from 80 to 100 tons of hay would 

 be realized (in proportion to the productive powers of the soil) 

 by the first mowing, which will for the most part be found suffi- 

 cient for the entire consumption upon the whole farm, especially 

 when the fodder arising from the 50 acres of seed in each year is 



