144 
Continental Farming. 
being applied per English acre for either beetroot or turnips, 
after a crop of tares had been cut off for house-feeding cows. 
The farming implements were of a simple and apparently rude 
description, but their ploughs were very efficient and the pul- 
verisation of the land was perfect. The ploughs are short light 
wooden implements, with two wheels ; the form of the turn- 
furrow is such that it completely pulverises the furrow in the 
act of turning it over, so that the after operations to complete 
the cleaning and perfect tillage of the soil are few and simple. 
After passing Dusseldorf we went through a district of useful, 
light, dry soil, in large farms, with good and extensive homesteads 
and some distilleries : farming similar to that betwixt Cologne 
and Dusseldorf. 
We next passed through a large well-managed forest of oaks, 
beeches, and lime-trees, and entered a light, poor, sandy district, 
in small farms, producing rye, wheat, oats, peas, turnips, and 
clover ; the farming is beautifully clean and neat, but all the 
crops were very light, except the clover, which was in many cases 
a capital crop. Much of the rye and wheat would not exceed 
12 bushels per English acre ; there is no grass-land nor waste. ' 
This was followed by a district of rather poor, light soil, 
wholly in tillage ; the farms large, kept beautifully clean, and not 
a yard of waste land to be seen. The crops, except clover, 
were all light. There is too great a proportion of corn grown. 
We then passed through a large forest, pretty well managed, 
to the town of Duisberg. 
The whole of the country between Dusseldorf and Duisberg 
is open field, and light, dry, sandy soil, except a few patches 
that would be easily drained. I have no doubt that, if these lands 
were enclosed, and large flocks of sheep kept upon green crops, 
the produce of corn would be more than doubled, although half of 
the land Avere growing green crops, producing wool and mutton.* 
* Large flocks of sheep presuppose large consumption of mutton ; an encourage- 
ment to the improvement of the lighter class of soils, which lends one of its most 
characteristic features to English farming, but exists to the same extent in few, if 
any, parts of the Continent. The traveller abroad has need to bear this in mind 
(and the caution does not confine itself to this point, in contrasting the agriculture 
of other countries with our own), in order that remarks may not take the tone of 
criticism which, in fact, may present only points of self-congratulation. In the 
course of a tour through the corn-districts of Silesia and Pomerauia, during the 
autumn of 18:)0, the writer saw, i\pon a large farm near the corn-port of Stettin, a 
field of rye of great extent, divided across the centre by a broad strip of land 
perfectly bare of crop. The corn dwindled away towards it on both sides, thiimer 
and thinner, till it disappeared altogether. On inquiry, the reason given was that 
the soil on this part of the field was too light to grow any corn-crop. " But why 
not try to grow turnips, and tread it into closer texture by feeding off with 
sheep?" I inquired. " I might do that," was the farmer's answer; " but what am 
I to do afterwards with the sheep 7 The demand here for meat would not be suffi- 
cient to find me a market for them." The answer sounded strangely, but it 
applies to most of the districts passed through in the earlier part of the journey 
described in the above Essay. Throughout the country, from the Ehine to the 
