142 
The Succession of Green Crops. 
very productive. Where tliere is no pasture on a farm, it may 
bp well to keep a field laid down with one of these plants. 
They will both stand and be productive for several years without 
requiring renewal, and will often yield three or even four crops 
in the season ; but they do not find much favour in the eastern 
counties, because they foul the land and derange the shifts. 
Lupins, too, are amazingly productive on poor sandy land, and 
though sheep do not like them, they will do very well upon them 
if fed oi^ while in bloom. If a layer proves so thin in the first 
crop as not to be worth leaving for a second, the land may be 
ploughed and lupins drilled in. They will grow vigorously be 
it ever so dry ; but we do not recommend the crop for regular 
cultivation unless upon land so poor as to be almost sterile. 
The system we have thus described is perhaps better suited 
for grazing than for breeding stock. Where a flock of ewes is 
kept, in the place of a few of the swedes a few acres of late 
common turnips would probably be provided for them to lamb 
upon ; but we believe that any deviation from the plan we have 
described would lessen the amount of production. Still it is 
quite possible that with some kinds of stock a less weight of a 
different kind and at a different time might be of more pecuniary 
value. 
Land farmed on this system of double cropping will need to 
be kept carefully clean ; but it will be found that clean land 
may be kept clean in this way with very little expense. 
Where a farmer has to do with heavier soils he will have to 
arrange a different system. He will not be able so easily and so 
surely to double-crop. For instance, if rye is grown upon a 
tenacious soil, it will be very uncertain whether a proper tilth can 
be obtained when it is ploughed for beet to be planted in, and 
the hazard of missing a plant of beet will be greater than the value 
of the rye. So neither can trefolium and swedes be depended on 
to follow each other. Unless copious showers fall most oppor- 
tunely, the trefolium stubble will be so hard that the plough will 
hardly break it up ; or if ploughed, it will be so cloddy as to pre- 
clude any safe prospect of a plant of turnips. We have seen the 
two crops grown in one year on mixed soil land, and both of them 
good, but this has been in an unusually favourable season. We 
have found generally that trefolium is a very difficult plant to 
cultivate on good mixed soil. It does not " plant " kindly. 
And when a " plant " is obtained the slug will sometimes clear 
it completely off. We have sown it on such lands again and 
again, and have failed in obtaining enough to be worth leaving 
for a crop. 
There are two methods of dealing with the root shifts on such 
soils, which have commended themselves to our notice. The 
