On the Rotation of Crops. 



285 



In presenting the foregoing table^ candour requires that I 

 acknowledge to have on more than one occasion communicated 

 it to the pubHc through other channels^ for I was struck with its 

 apparent comprehensiveness. I also sent a copy to the editor of 

 the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture^ submitting it to his judg- 

 ment whether to publish it or not in that able periodical. He 

 however thought it inapplicable to Scotland, more especially as 

 lucern was not found to prosper in N orth Britain. 



I do not conceive myself fully qualified to offer any strong 

 opinion upon the applicabihty of the entire rotation to the farms 

 of the southern and midland counties; nevertheless, when the 

 numerical extent of the crops, the precision and order of their 

 arrangement, and the proportion they bear one to the other, are 

 viewed in connexion with the facts that clover begins to give way, 

 and that the turnip deteriorates when each follows in a frequently 

 recurring rotation, we can scarcely fail to perceive the basis of 

 much improvement in the plan suggested by the veteran Blaikie, 

 whose experience had, at the time he wTote, extended to above 

 three quarters of a century." 



If it be permitted, when considering the operations of the field, 

 to take advantage of the analogy afforded by those of the garden, 

 much light will be throw^n upon the order and agency of rotation. 

 In the latter, particularly when the substratum of a soil is chalky, 

 the leguminous crops must not follow in frequent succession : the 

 pea furnishes the strongest proof of the fact ; for not only is the 

 land so soon saturated with its fecal excretions as to refuse to bring 

 a crop to perfection, but it is found to emit a powerful and specific 

 odour which cannot be mistaken ; yet it is proved that, if peas be 

 grown between two vegetable crops — one a perennial and herba- 

 ceous plant, as the strawberry, and the other an annual gross 

 feeder, as the cabbage or broccoli — they may be sown year after 

 year with perfect safety and success. 



It is also found, experimentally, that the cabbage tribe rotates 

 admirably with the potato in all strong hazel loams, for years in 

 succession, without deterioration. If the scheme proposed by 

 Mr. Blaikie be attentively viewed, and compared with the well- 

 balanced succession of crops which keeps a good garden in high 

 condition, with a very m.oderate supply of putrescent manures, it 

 must be perceived that each successive crop is remedial, and serves 

 as an antidote to its predecessor. I therefore offer it to the So- 

 ciety as a subject for trial on experimental farms — one from which 

 much improvement in practice may be derived, but not by any 

 means as a precise model. At present it lies dormant in the 

 pages of the Gardener's Magazine, for 1 830 ; but, if permitted to 

 appear in the Journal of our new, and I trust most eminently 

 useful. Society, it may also attract the attention of experimental 



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