The Agriculture of Staffordshire. 
273 
Avitlth of the lands is 9 feet to 12 feet ; these are drilled at one 
bout, and in some instances the wheat is sown and ploughed in. 
Two bushels is a common seeding for fallow wheat. The fallows 
are seldom touched with the harrow till the time of wheat-sowing^. 
When roots are grown, the heavy-land farmer ploughs in autumn, 
having first broadshared the land and made every effort to 
clean it. 
Seeds, after lying several years, are often followed by oats, 
wheat, beans, wheat; or fallow is followed by wheat, barley, 
beans, wheat. Stubbles, to be followed by spring corn, are 
ploughed early in autumn, worked and cleaned, dunged and 
ploughed again late in winter or in spring. Wheat after oats is 
dressed with 3 tons to 4 tons of lime, which costs IO5. 6rf. i,ier 
ton at the kiln. Lime is applied on fallows in April and May 
previous to sowing turnips, or in the autumn after tares, or on 
seeds previous to sowing wheat. The usual dressing is 3 to 5 tons. 
The universal use of lime may be partly attributed to the neces- 
sity of a corrective after several years' seeds. It acts as a medicine, 
not as a manure; it checks slugs, and prevents club in cabbages. 
Land is found to lie better for wheat on the 9-foot ridges than on 
the flat, however well the land is drained and tilled. When wheat 
follows oats, the stubble is broadshared — the land cleaned before 
ploughing ; a three years' lea followed by wheat receives a half- 
fallow, and should be ploughed before Midsummer, in which case 
an outgoing tenant is entitled to two-thirds of the crop of wheat, 
as in the case of bare fallow. 
With a good seedsman, corn is often sown broadcast by choice. 
Horse-hoeing corn is not practised. Seven quarters of oats are 
a large crop, only obtained when artificial manure is used, and 
perhaps the general average does not exceed five quarters. 
Many farmers look too much to their cheese for profit, and to 
their corn-crops as merely supplying food and litter for cows. 
Leas are ploughed once only for oats. In case of an old lea, 
the land is ploughed about Christmas, so that it may settle and 
the grass rot ; a one-year-old lea is ploughed and sown as 
wanted. 
The principal root-crops are swedes and mangold. They are 
cleaned and hoed by the milkers and odd hands, working by the 
day. The scarifier used in spring is usually drawn by four horses, 
walking in the furrows. 
The cultivation of the cabbage is greatly extending. It comes 
into use when other things begin to fail, and it is by far the best 
succulent vegetable for milking-cows — keeping up the yield of 
milk, and preserving better than any other food some portion of 
the quality which cheese loses when the cows quit their natural 
pasturage. Cows fed on cabbages are always quiet and satisfied. 
