594=525 
Practical Agriculture. 
Dorsetshire. Dorsetshire has been divided by an old author into Felix. 
Petrcea, and Deserta ; representing its strong fertile soils in tht 
vales, its chalk and oolite hill-ranges, and its barren heaths. 
Rotations. On the manj-soiled but generally thin-stapled chalk-district 
the most extensive in the county, excellent farm-managemen 
prevails ; and great breadths of the bleak Downs have beer 
converted into arable. The four-course rotation — (1) turnips 
swedes, and mangolds ; (2) barley or oats, sown with seeds 
(3) seeds ; (4) wheat ; is usual on the better lands, while on th 
thinner and poorer soils the grass is left for two years. Sheep 
breeding and sheep-folding are universal; and for providin 
plentiful supplies of food in succession for the flock has led t 
the adoption of the same systems of multiple green and root 
cropping which have been stated with respect to Hampshire an 
Wiltshire. Sainfoin, however, is less extensively cultivate 
than in those counties. 
On the clays, including the rich grazing county of the Va' 
of Blackmore and the genial soils on the marlstones, no unifori 
or general rotations of crops are found. Wheat is frequent 
grown in alternate years, the intermediate crops being roots fi 
stall-fed beasts. Another rotation is roots, wheat, barley, clove 
Another : wheat, beans, half clover, half vetches, followed 1 
swedes drawn off. Another is wheat, barley, grass, whe; 
vetches, or stubble-turnips. Another is wheat, rape, whe; 
clover : and another is mangolds, or turnips and swedes, oats 
barley, wheat, oats, stubble-turnips or vetches. 
Devonshire. Devonshire. — Famed for its cattle, its cream, its cider, and 
climate, Devonshire is pre-eminently a grass-land and gree 
crop county, though, from the great extent of its boundaries, t 
acreage of corn grown is also large. Lofty and barren wast 
like the ranges of Dartmoor, locally modify the otherwise m 
as well as moist climate. There are tracts of poor sands a 
gravels, like the wastes of Haldon and Woodbury Common, a 
the soils on Black Down hills ; and the Carboniferous formatic • 
occupying a great portion of the county are for the most p : 
covered by a poor clay. But rich sandy loams, and loams oi . 
clayey subsoil, prevail in the fertile vale of Exeter and Honit , i 
in the valley of the Exe ; the calcareous clays and light loa 5 : 
of the South Hams district on the south coast surpass all J 1 1 
county in fertility ; and in North Devon are the luxuri t i 
pastures on the hills, which are the home of the native I ii| 
cattle. < 
Orchards are in profusion, and woods abound in many loc - 4> 
ties; but a feature which enriches almost every landscape inn 
artistic point of view is the enormous number of hcdgerlB* 
thickly stocked with timber, cutting up the land into diminu lWk 
