596 = 330 
Practical Agriculture. 
of farmers in some districts, particularly near Penzance, thf 
Lizard, and on the banks of the Rivers Looe and Tamar. Greai 
quantities of early potatoes grown upon the dry friable soils ir 
the sheltered Penzance district, with its mild moist climate, an , 
forwarded to the London and other markets in the spring. The !| 
early kidneys are full grown by the middle of May, while tuber; 
are extracted by hand from the growing crops as early as th( 
second week in April in some seasons. 
.Reclamation of the wastes, strewed over with granite blocks 
some of immense size, with heath and furze shooting up in thi 
interstices, and sometimes at an elevation of many hundreds o 
feet above the sea-level, is a costly and difficult enterprise, oftei 
involving an outlay of 10/. or 12/. per acre for inclosing 
breaking-up, and procuring the first crop. Manuring with bone 
or guano for turnips, followed by oats and then grass-seeds fo 
pasture, is the general practice in making such improvements 
Considerable breadths of rocky wastes have been reclaimed b' 
miners and other cottagers allowed to hold plots of a few acre 
on leases of three lives. 
Soils of Somersetshire physically consists of a central basin betweei 
Somer.set-^hiie. ^^^^ hilly districts, one on the west, the other on the north 
east. The former hill district, lying west of the Quantock am 
Brendon Hills, comprises stony soils on the grauwacke an( 
mica-schist formations, with deposits of peat. It is well wateree 
by hill streams in that moist climate, and breeding and rearin; 
of stock characterise the husbandry. An old-fashioned an( 
not altogether abandoned course of cropping is to break u 
lea which has been grass for several years, taking (1) 
crop of oats " to clean the land ;" (2) oats or wheat (limed) 
(3) turnips ; (4) oats or wheat ; and then laying down again t 
(5) grass. An improved rotation, described by Sir Thoma 
Dyke Acland, Bart., M.P., in his full and admirable " Report o 
the Farming of the County of Somerset," in the ' Royal Agri 
cultural Society's Journal' for 1850, is (1) turnips or rape; (2 
oats or wheat ; (3) swedes ; (4) grass, for two or three yean 
On the clay-slate soil, retentive of moisture, and pn a hill-sid 
not too exposed, the lea lasts three years ; but under other con 
ditions, not more than two years. This system of laying dow 
grass after roots has greatly extended during the last twent 
years, and is held to be a mainstay of that part of Somersel 
shire which is devoted to the breeding and rearing of stock. 
The north-eastern hill district presents a remarkable variety < 
geological formations ; and is largely under permanent pastun 
with dairy farming. 
Rotations on In the central basin of the county, on the New Red sandston 
New itwl j^j^j j.j>j marls of the Vale of the Tone, embracing many qualiti( 
sandstone. a j l 
J 
