Arable Districts. 
287 
tliey are more often planted on the ridge ; but one of the best 
fields in the county last year was on the flat, the ground being 
marked out both ways at 22 inches, and on the spot where the 
marks crossed the seed was set, and the roots could be horse-hoed 
both ways. There is much to commend in this practice. There 
is a saving of seed, and also of hand-hoeing, but 22 inches is too 
narrow for constant horse-hoeing, and 24 would be better. In 
the south of the county, most farmers grow from three to ten acres 
•of this valuable root : the yellow globe seems the favourite. 
Crops of mangold, weighing 25 and even 30 tons, are frequently 
produced, but 16 tons per acre is a fair average for the swedes 
throughout the county. Farm-yard manure is mostly applied for 
all root crops ; but in some parts of the county, where land is well 
dunged for wheat, turnips are grown without any further dressing. 
Indeed, one or two instances might be mentioned where the pre- 
paration and management of the root crop is most primitive. 
On a rough and half-cleaned fallow, in the month of June, some 
turnip-seed is sown broadcast, a single hand-hoeing constitutes 
the after-culture, and in the autumn some large weeds and small 
turnips form a scanty meal for a half-starved agistment flock. 
Happily this style of farming is rapidly on the decline, and 
though broadcast sowing is still in favour in the south, a proper 
cultivation of turnips is now looked upon as an essential requisite 
in all light-land farms. The occupiers of the thin chalks find 
that the less the land is stirred about in the spring, the better the 
turnips grow, and they also like the seed-bed to be tolerably firm. 
On the loams at Scotsgrove it is common to fold the sheep with 
short straw or caving scattered over the stubble-land during 
autumn. This is deeply ploughed in ; sometimes the ground 
has farm-yard manure in the spring, but it always receives a dose 
of artificial manure when the swedes are sown. At Lillingstone 
the same sort of long manuring is practised, only the manure is 
brought from the stables of Buckingham, and strawed over the 
land, which is a clay loam. The ewes are then folded on it, and 
it is double-ploughed for the winter. The land receives but one 
ploughing in the spring, and roots are drilled with ashes without 
further dressing. Some other excellent modes of growing roots 
are occasionally practised in various parts of the county, but as 
they are general in other districts of the kingdom, it is not neces- 
sary to describe them here. 
The common cultivation of naked fallows may not be so gene- 
rally known. All the clay soils lie in large round lands or 
ridges, from 8 to 12 yards wide, with height varying from 18 
inches to 4 feet. This excessive height precludes the possibility 
of properly cross-ploughing, and consequently the land is mostly 
turned backwards and forwards by the plough in the same direc- 
u 2 
