80 



Oil Cropjnng and Cultivating Light Land. 



rally in the liabit of doing anything of the kind. Scientific dis- 

 coveries are no sooner completed than made known to the world, 

 and become of immediate use, according to their merits. The 

 discoveries and improvements of practical farmers are generally 

 much longer in becoming known to those who need them. It is 

 the perception of this which has chiefly induced the writer of 

 this essay, though not rich in any new discovery, to send in some 

 of the results of his own observation and actual experience, 

 strictly confined to practical farming. Those who seek the aid of 

 scientific research, for the purpose of applying it to the manage- 

 ment of any soil or crop, may find it in the writings of such as 

 have made the various branches of this science their peculiar and 

 earnest study, and who have enriched the world by their dis- 

 coveries. 



The subject treated of in this essay, as having been more im- 

 mediately under the observation of the writer, will be the courses 

 of cropping upon the chalks, loams, and light sandy soils of 

 Surrey and its immediate neighbourhood. 



A few years back the well-knovm four-course system, com- 

 monly called the Norfolk system — wheat, turnips, barley, seeds 

 — was all but universally in use on the soils spoken of. Lately, 

 there have been many departures from this course, partly because 

 landlords upon reletting their farms have found themselves less 

 able, and perhaps less willing, to confine their tenants to one 

 prescribed course, and partly because tenants have been in most 

 cases willing to try whether, by more manure, land would not 

 bear to be cropped more frequently with corn ; in fact, farmers 

 have become more or less experimentalists, and in many cases 

 they have changed their course of cropping, as certain fluc- 

 tuations in the price of their produce gave them reason to 

 change their opinion v/ith regard to the policy of growing more 

 of this or less of that crop ; feeding more stock, and therefore 

 growing more roots ; or, as is too frequently the case, curtailing 

 the root-crop and planting a greater breadth of corn. 



On light dry land, whether chalk or sand, bearing a rent of 

 about 11. per acre, the four-course is still the prevailing system ; 

 and many good farmers contend that more can be produced from 

 a given quantity of land, such as is here alluded to, by this course 

 than by any other. One most essential condition to its success, 

 as to that of every other, is perfect cleanness. The old method 

 of preserving this necessary cleanness, and one still much in use, 

 is to allow the land to lie fallow once in four years, from the 

 time the wheat-crop is harvested until the following May or 

 June, v/hen the root-crop is planted. During this interval of 

 rest the weeds are destroyed by three, four, or even five plough- 

 ings, drag harrowings, small harrowings, and rollings, according 



