94' On Cropping and Cultivating Light Land. 



Corner, has been farmed according to the four-course system 

 during the last 30 years. Omitting this corner piece of 50 rods, 

 the remainder of the field has, during the period above men- 

 tioned, been manured with as much farm-yard manure as is 

 thought consistent with good crops and with good farming. During 

 the last 15 years this corner piece, cut off by the path, has been 

 cultivated and cropped exactly like the rest of the field, but, 

 instead of being manured with the same manure, it has received 

 50 Ihs. of nitrate of soda to each crop, always sown as a top-dress- 

 ing. All roots have been removed, and literally no organic 

 manure has been permitted to fertilize this corner, with the excep- 

 tion of the grass-ley, the wheat and barley stubble, and the 

 leaves of the roots which grew upon it. Care having been 

 taken to sow the 50 lbs. of nitrate of soda when showers were 

 likely to fall, it has had an immediate effect upon the growing 

 plant, and the crops have been uniformly as good as upon the rest 

 of the field. The experiment is still carried on, and is as successful 

 now as it was when first begun. 



The idea of the writer has been to give some of the general 

 results of modern experience in an authentic and tolerably concise 

 form. It is impossible to transcribe here all the minute varia- 

 tions in the rotation of crops and in the process of raising 

 them, for every farmer shows a certain idiosyncrasy in his mode 

 of management and cropping ; but the present general and im- 

 proved method of cultivating such land, as is here alluded to, 

 will be found to harmonize very closely with what has been 

 roughly sketched. 



The improvements which have lately been introduced into 

 our British agriculture tend to perfect every department. They 

 are both various and striking, and as important as might well 

 be expected from the progressive tendency of the age in which 

 we live, and from the attention directed by the wealthiest and 

 most energetic people of the world to what is said to be the 

 most important branch of their national industry. But we must 

 be able to distinguish that which really tends to perfect our 

 economy from any spurious imitation, which, like other coun- 

 terfeits, may be paraded before our eyes in a very alluring form. 



For a farm to be crowded with men, horses, and machines, 

 neither proves that the principles pursued on that farm are 

 good or bad. Nor would the knowledge that the returns from 

 the sale of produce were double what they were formerly prove 

 that the real profit had increased at all. The man who can 

 produce from a given quantity of land 3000Z. at a cost of 2500/. 

 is a more sagacious farmer than the man who can produce 

 6000Z. from the same quantity of land with no profit at all. On 

 the one hand, it is sometimes very easy to persuade a man of small 



