Fifty Years' Progress of British Agriculture. 21 
agricultural writer of liis day, Earl Spencer, Sir James Graham, 
Henry Handley, M.P., Sir Edward Stracey, J. E. Denison, M.P. 
— have long since passed away ; the only two survivors up to 
last year, each a nonagenarian, being Lord Eversley and Mr. 
John Dudgeon, the writer of the paper on Scotch agriculture, 
both since dead. 
Mr. Pusey then estimated the quantity and value of the 
English wheat crop at 12,350,000 quarters— worth, at 50s. a 
quarter, nearly 31,000,000/. The average produce he put at 20 
bushels an acre, and pointed out the gain which would be made 
by the addition to that average of one bushel an acre. He further 
showed that an immense impulse, not only to increased pro- 
duction, but to the demand for labour, would arise by the ex- 
penditure of an additional 1/., profitably made, on each acre of 
the cultivated land of this country. The average rate of pro- 
duce has since that time risen two bushels an acre, by the 
poorest class of wheat land having gone out of cultivation. 
From fall of price, the money value of the 28 bushels in 1889 
was only 5/. 5s. an acre, while that of the 26 bushels in 1840 
was 8/. 2s. Gd. 
Among the subjects which then engaged the attention of 
landlords and farmers, the application of special manures to 
crops was beginning to attract notice. Foreign bones to the 
value of 254,000/. were imported in 1837. Nitrate of soda 
was experimentally tried in 1839. Peruvian guano soon after- 
wards was introduced. In 1843 I grew an excellent crop of 
potatoes with it in the south-west of Scotland. The kind and 
mode of applying manure to each crop became the subject of 
scientific study and experiment. The Norfolk four-course sys- 
tem had shown signs of failure by the difficulty of getting 
good crops of turnips or clover when repeated every fourth 
year. In Flanders the skilful farmers, in view of this, had 
extended their rotations so that the same crop should not be 
repeated in less than ten, twelve, or fourteen years. Their 
more intensive system had led them earlier to notice this. 
Another question arose. Could no remedy be found for leaving 
the land idle during the nine months between the removal of 
the corn crop in August and the sowing of the turnip crop in 
the following June ? To fill up the vacant time, rye was sown 
in the more southerly counties, which was eaten in its green 
state on the ground in May by sheep, as a good preparation for 
the winter green crop sown in June. And vetches followed 
later, to carry on the stock to the aftermaths from the hay, the 
vetches to be eaten on the grouud as a good preparation for 
later turnips. 
