The Agriculture of Staffordshire. 
281 
the same as the cows, and a little oilcake given to the weaker 
ones. 
The rotation of crops is irregular, the following is an approxi- 
mation : — 
1. Fallow, swedes, mangold, cabbage. 
2. Barley. 
3. Seeds, manured in winter and mowed (the mixture of seeds 
costs 285. an acre). 
4. Ditto, pastured with cows (sheep would destroy the best 
growth). 
5. Ditto (if doing well), pastured ; ploughed once in February 
for 
6. Oats ; ploughed at harvest, cultivated, limed, or dunged, 
ploughed and drilled with 
7. Wheat ; dunged for 
8. Beans, ploughed, cultivated, and cleaned. 
9. Wheat. 
The fallow is carefully and economically made ; 4 horses, a 
man and lad plough 2 acres a day with a double plough, the 
land is then cultivated and picked, and ploughed 10 inches deep 
at least, before winter. This completes the ploughing. In 
spring the land is cultivated twice, harrowed, and rolled, and 
dunged on the flat. The artificial manure is then sown and the 
double-breasted plough, in making a ridge, turns in the whole. 
The deep autumn ploughing is essential to the practice described, 
and it is also essential to the severe cropping, which could not 
be maintained without good feeding and deep cultivation ; but 
then the subsoil is marl, and as good as the top soil. 
A dead fallow is taken every 12 years, and, instead of dung, 
4 tons per acre of quicklime are used, which produces more corn 
and less straw ; seeds, sown in wheat, after liming, never miss. 
2 cwts. of guano are used for oats, if after corn ; prepared bone- 
manure is preferred to guano for all corn-crops, if corn is to 
follow, because it is not all expended in the first crop ; 3 cwts. 
per acre (at 85.) are used for wheat after wheat. 
Cabbages are always dunged heavily ; this year they received 
30 tons per acre of fresh manure taken from the cow-sheds, after 
using spent hops for litter. 
Dung, of artificial manure, is always used for the hay-crop, 
and the 104 acres laid down have been top-dressed every other 
year; 5 cwts. of bone-dust, applied in February, is a favourite 
dressing for permanent pastures ; and in May, this year, the 
change in the herbage of a four-year-old pasture, so treated last 
February, is very striking. 
Hay is taken on 20 acres of seeds and 20 to 30 acres of 
meadow; the meadows are laid up bv the 25th of March. The 
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