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British Dairy Farming. 
requires lime, the soil should be slightly calcareous, or lime 
must be added. There is no crop which of late years 
has been so successfully grown by the French farmer in 
this district, and which has at the same time made him 
so profitable a return. It is planted in three forms — by 
drilling at a depth of from 2J to 3 inches, by dibbling when 
two seeds are placed in the hole, or by broad-casting. When 
drilled, it is necessary that the machine should be provided 
with cups sufficiently large to take up the seed, and to deposit 
it regularly. The usual quantity allowed in France is one 
bushel per acre, the drills being 2 feet apart, and the plants, 
when the seed is dibbled, 1 foot apart ; but the systems vary, 
for the Dutch farmers, who, as I can testify, grow maize 
quite as well as the best farmers in France, place their seed 
6 inches apart, and in rows which are only 20 inches distant 
from each other. In Holland the seed is commonly tested 
before it is sown, and the date of sowing is about May 12th, 
the French sowing a little later, where the crop is used for 
forage — the references to maize in these remarks not applying 
to the crop as grown for seed. In each case, however, the 
growers make a point of being guided by the weather. If 
favourable, they sow early, or soak their seed in water or liquid 
manure ; but both soaking and early sowing are risky, where 
there are late frosts, which the young plant finds it difficult to 
withstand. A Dutch farmer, a man of great experience, Herr 
Boeler, whom I visited near Kampen, makes a practice of early 
sowing, and of protecting his plants when they appear above 
the surface by lighting peat fires to windward of the fields. He 
stated that he had found in practice that the smoke which was 
carried over the plants entirely preserved them from frost, whereas 
those of his neighbours who allowed them to take their chance 
were invariably damaged. Although maize drilled or dibbled 
is generally taken as a cleaning crop, it answers the same pur- 
pose when broad-casted, from two to three bushels of seed 
being used. In this way it smothers all weeds which spring 
up ; it furnishes almost an equally large bulk of fodder ; and it 
has this advantage, that the stems are finer, more tender and 
more beneficial to the cattle which consume them. My friend 
M. Henri Cottu, who is a great advocate of maize cultivation, 
regularly grows a crop in this fashion, and I have seen upon 
his property, near Tours, huge giant crops of maize in two suc- 
cessive years upon the same field, they having been the third 
and fourth crops which he had taken in succession upon the 
same soil, although it is fair to remark that he had called in 
the aid of artificial manure. Maize has a tremendous power of 
absorption, and the manure put into the soil for its growth 
